THIS never happened before!

Texting exchange yesterday and City Girl asked, "Are you posting this to your Facebook?"

Y'all, I shut down. Totally froze. WHY would such a simple question throw me into a tizzy? How complicated can this BE?

If you know us, you know I had a kid at 40 after several years of very expensive trying and she was the Miracle Child and life was good. Then I had a freebie...a totally impossible pregnancy and another baby at 44. The Nice Kid, the 40-year-old miracle, introduced me to a set of parents ten to 15 years younger than I was. Amusing.

The set NOW? I am 58 years old and hanging with moms just turning 40. We don't speak the same language, walk the same walk or talk the same talk. I am tired. My fuse is short and no, I don't want to do things with you. Not that these aren't some of the nicest people I ever met, they are, but....I don't leave the house except under duress. The Nice Kid told me last week, after I sat in my car for 45 minutes waiting on that woman to get off my walking trail: "Mom, you're the most anti-social person I know."

What's the problem? Y'all...these people don't drink. I don't mean, they don't hit bars and get shit-faced drunk and wake up the next morning and call someone to find out how bad it was, I mean....I KNOW GROWN HUMAN BEINGS WHO HAVE NEVER TASTED AN ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE. Ever. In their lives. Ever. Which is their business and not mine and I never would have noticed except, therein lies the problem. They notice. They keep count. They watch, and it is not okay. I have lived all over the Southeast and never in my life have I paid attention to someone else's drinking habits...IT'S NOT MY JOB! But then somehow, I find myself responsible for the social well-being of a 14-year-old whose friends' parents don't go in stores that sell alcohol. This county ever goes wet? My family has a store building for rent. We won't be selling DVD's.

So. I pretty much have two lives. Which is fine. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..." No problem; I've been walking both.

Enter Facebook. I have never asked one single person to be my friend on FB, because all it would take is one refusal and I would walk around in a slump-shouldered funk for a week. Fifty-eight years old, and I still get my feelings hurt. So I have all these....acquaintances. School mom acquaintances. People who don't know me but want to use my pictures and keep up with school stuff. People who know my parents, and therefore assume I am one of them. You know....the nice, straight, non-drinking people.

The less-traveled path would burn City Girl at the stake if they knew her. She's funny, sacrilegious, off-the-cuff, well-read and...oh shit, she drinks bourbon. The ONLY reason I haven't been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail myself is my last name. I'm from around here. I may be the black sheep, but blood tells. So if I link this? Jesus Christ. There's liable to be a cross-burning in my yard. A lynching. A drawing and quartering. My children will be orphans.

But I've been mulling it over; I am, after all an adult with my own life and my own path. I'm not an alcoholic (I don't go to meetings....old joke) and I don't drink and drive or even drink in public too often these days. What's wrong with a few recipes that call for a touch of spirits, or a fun party that involves shooting beer cans off a fence post? So the more I thought, the more it seemed like there was no harm. There's nothing criminal involved here.

And then, while I was wrestling with accessing this spot from various electronic devices, THIS popped up. As God is my witness....

If there are seven deadly sins? We apparently need a check-off list.