Do you ever feel like you dont fit in?

So my first official post will put you smack in the middle of a Birthday Party of my son's classmate.

Josh, my 6 year old, is looking forward to playing with all his new friends from school. We arrive at the party place promptly at 12PM. When we walk in, Josh immediately runs to the Birthday Boy and wishes him a Happy Birthday. I aimlessly look around for the Birthday Boys' parents. I spot his Mom with a half dozen other Moms. I walk up and hand over the gift and thank her for inviting us and pass on my happy birthday wishes. She thanks me both for the gift and for coming, offers me coffee and promptly returns to her ongoing conversation. All the other mothers don't even acknowledge my presence.

I make a hasty retreat recognizing when my presence is not wanted. Don't get me wrong, this certainly is not the first time this happened. It has happened on numerous occasions last year, while Joshua was in Kindergarten.

So as I sit , alone, as if I am suffering from lapracy and fighting back tears, I start thinking may be there is something wrong with me. I could at times be hard headed and opinionated, but by all means not with total strangers.

I run comparison's in my head: Job= Me - paralegal, Them - stay at home Moms; House= Me - modest semi-attached in a middle class neighborhood, Them - who knows. So goes on a never ending cycle of thought. Hmmmmm. I must be losing it. It has certainly never been important for me to be liked, why is it is so important for me to start fitting in after rebelling for the last 20 years.

For the next hour or so, I sit reading my book, watching the kids playing out of the corner of my eye and listening to the conversations of the other moms behind my back. Pizza time, finally, I feel that this torturous afternoon is coming to an end. As we head to the party room for pizza and cake, one of the Moms that I have had an occassion to speak with a week earlier, waves and yells across the room "how are you", yet again turning her back on me even before I have had a chance to respond.

I stand frowning openly at this point. As I stand watching through the window as my son laughs up a storm with his friends over pizza and punch I feel a tap on my shoulder. A teenage girl who works at the party place informs me that there is pizza for parents being seved in an adjacent room. PIZZA? Are you kidding me? Have you seen the size of my thighs and did you count the number of chins I am carrying around? No, I dont want any pizza, but I let myself be ushered into the room.

I pick an empty table and park myself. Feeling perfectly invisible, I wonder to my self, should I let out a really loud fart at this point, will my presence finally be acknowledged and will I be stared at with contempt? Or will they turn and look aimlessly around, not seeing me, wondering who would have done such a thing. I smiled at that thought. Yes, I could be crude at times.

I get up and move back to the window to watch the kids. A woman, not one of the class mothers, engages me in simple chit chat. EUREKA!!!!! I am not invisible after all. At least not to everyone. We talked for a few minutes about our kids and the party was finally over. We dress and thank the Birthday boy and his parents for the great party and make our exit.

I can finally take a deep breath and relax my abdominal muscles, finnaly letting my fat hang out. Silly I know, but that is whole different blog.

To be continued..........................