Today I took the smallest fruit of my loins to a kiddy soccer class.  We went once before, and we have a couple of friends and acquaintances in the class.  Normally, I don’t do many programs with the kids.  I just don’t want to have to get up and get moving every single day for, say kiddy soccer.  Library we do, because, duh; it’s books.  No one in my house is going to succeed or fail in life based on whether or not they did a four-year-old sport.  Reading?  I could see that being important down the road.   

But anyhoo, once we arrived, I signed us up for the next fútbol session.  My friends told me to.  I’m an easy mark for peer pressure.  Could be the sucker tattoo on my forehead.

So, to get to the ever-loving point of my post, I notice a woman (obviously a parent, sitting on the bleachers) whom I had met once before.  Now, the once before was at a women’s night out with a friend (who has since moved, we’ll call her Pammy).  Pammy invited me out with three other women from her church group.  Now Pammy (not an ex-friend, just to be clear–she moved, but she still tolerates my shit) asked me along in a “you need to get out and should totally come with us–my friends will love you” kind of moment.  I was probably complaining about how the meaning of Mother’s Day has gone the way of the Dodo and she took pity on me.

As I recall, it was Mother’s Day two years ago, and I was pissed at my husband for going for a near-half-marathon run for a couple of hours on the day that was supposed to be mine.  Now, all of you mothers out there who love to spend your one day a year with your kids/family–that is truly sterling.  For you.  Me?  I think that Mother’s Day is the one day a year that I should get to pretend I’m not a mother.  That’s a happy Mom’s Day in the Vale household.

So anyway, there I was, seething, throwing back Jack Daniel’s, and chopping down an eight-inch-thick tree that looked at me the wrong way.  My old man had gone out running and then showered for an additional hour.  I don’t call him Pretty Boy Vale for nothing–the guy requires way more prep time than I do.

Well, I offed that damn tree and may or may not have showered after.  Let’s say, for the sake of the story that I did, in fact, at least rinse the important parts before getting dressed and meeting the ladies out for pizza and beer.

Now, I already had a lovely little buzz on before arriving at the set location.  Let’s also say, for the sake of this story, that I was carpooling with Pammy. 

So Pammy makes the intros, hands shaking all around.  The waitress comes over to our pretentious, beat nick couches and I order a beer.  I believe approximately 2.5 of the other women present also had a beer.  One beer.  We eat pizza, I have another beer, meanwhile regaling everyone with the tales of my crappy Mother’s Day and showing off my tree-slaying guns.  I get stuck sitting next to a mousy little woman who didn’t have much to say, and with whom it was quite evident I had absolutely nothing in common.  Fine.  We made it work.  I was drunk and entertaining.  Everything was rainbows and mango hot sauce.  I completed my Mother’s Day binge with a final glass of Jack, more to shock and appall the church ladies than anything else.

When I spoke with Pammy the next day, worried I had made a drunken spectacle of myself; she assured me that everyone thought I was a lot of fun and simply blowing off some steam after a bad day.

Well, I am.  And I did.

Sooooo, back to soccer today.  I see the mousy woman I sat next to that night.  “Shit,” I think, after I figure out how I know her, “if she looks at me, I should say ‘hi’ so I don’t look rude.”  Cue the next eye lock.

“Hey!  How are you?”  I say. 

I’m sitting on the floor, mind you, because there was no more bleacher space by the time I arrived late, so, essentially, I am on display for every parent present.  Yippee!

The mouse woman looks at me curiously.  Now, just to note, she doesn’t look behind her to see if I am perhaps lazy-eyed and am speaking with someone over her shoulder.  But she doesn’t reply at all, either.  Knows I’m addressing her, and just looks at me like I’m an idiot.

Everyone else thinks I’m an idiot too.  I can see it as they look back and forth between us.

“I met you at that girls’ night out,” I say.  “At the fancy pizza place.”  I look to my BFF for a little help, let’s call her Lefty. 

“Flat Bread?”  Says Lefty.  She’s my go-to person when I draw a blank on people and place names.  I can say, “You know that guy, who was in that movie with the chick–oh what’s her name–who was in the movie with that guy, you know, ‘the two yutes’ movie?”  And she’ll be like “Mickey Rourke?”  And I’ll lick her ear.  She’s great at that game.

Anyway, Steph, I mean Lefty says “Flatbread?”  And I’m all, “YES!”  And another girl who I feel doesn’t like me all that much snickers “Flatbread is fancy pizza?”  And I’m thinking, “hipster couches and large pies that are pushing $30 a pop for their all-natural ingredients?  Yeah, that’s fancy pizza.”  She is not good at my mind-reading game.

So then Mousy looks down her glasses at me because maybe that will help her better recognize my fairly distinctive mug.  I start listing names of people who were there, talking about the tree I chopped down, and spiral out in a disbelieving, “I was drunk as a skunk and I remember you.”  You could almost hear a pin drop despite twenty screaming Jr. Pelés in the background.  She’s just shaking her head saying, “I’m sorry.”

Lefty’s parents were there, visiting from out of state.  She told me that when they got in the car to leave her dad said, “Did Kimber say she was drunk?”

In hindsight, I should have powered through.  Stood up and yelled, “What?  None of you here booze it up on occasion??!!!  Well, then, more for me!”  Then I should have grabbed someone’s Vitamin Water and chugged it, just to prove some non-existent point.  But you know what they say about hindsight.  It’s a mother fucker.  Maybe I should have gone with my gut and pretended that I didn’t recognize the woman.

That’s what Lefty would have done.  I need a bracelet or bumper sticker that says W.W.L.D.? 

All I know is I can’t wait to go back for more soccer shenanigans now that I’ve signed my name in blood.  Should be a great eleven weeks.

Think I’ll start bringing my Elvis flask.  For the purposes of this story, I would carpool.