The O's versus the C's, a/k/a The Walgreen's Parking Lot

You just never know when your past is going to come back to haunt you. Or make you wet your pants from laughing too hard. It all depends on whether you're an O or a C. (Not to be confused with "The O.C." -- and no, I don't watch it!)

I realize more and more that people are generally divisible into roughly the following two types:

Wear their hearts on their sleeves (Type O)

Prefer the comfort of secrets (Type C)

Enjoy belly laughs at their own expense (Type O)

Would rather boil in their own blood than suffer that embarassment (Type C)

... Where O stands for Open/Out and C stand for Closed/Contained

Suffice to say, the fact that this blog even exists should give you a clue that I'm more O than C. (Although, to date, to my knowledge only four people have ever seen it, so this is hardly about the need for exposure.)

Recently I had an email exchange with my friend, who is also the husband of another friend. (This matters later, stay with me.) Almost as an aside, he made a reference to something having to do with me and the Walgreen's parking lot. Huh? I had to get to the bottom of it.

Let's rewind a few years, back when my Thursday nights consisted of (A) putting the kids down, (B) holding either a board or committee meeting then (C) dovetailing into an ER night with girlfriends. Apparently, during one of the (B) to (C) crossovers, his wife stayed on after the meeting and met the ER contingent of friends, including my friend Karen.

Karen and I always laugh (and apparently talk) about when we first got to know each other, we would always ride together to whatever event or goings-on was happening (we met through Newcomers), and then spend an inordinate amount of time gabbing in the parking lot at Walgreen's (read: our park'n'ride). Instead of the evening lasting say until 10:00pm, it inevitably would go on and on as we started one topic, tangented onto another, and another, and another.

One night I had turned off the engine to my car, because we were clearly not finished with whatever topic was at hand. It was a cold midwest evening and eventually the windows were completely fogged up. Then the security lights in the parking lot -- now activated because it was past midnight, I'm guessing -- were going on and off in the parking lot whenever one of us would make a gesture. This made us laugh even harder. So went the (really not that interesting) tale.

Back to the ER night when two factions of friends collided. Apparently Karen talked about our lengthy conversations in the Walgreen's parking lot. In fact, several other friends chimed in with similar stories.

The takeaway was that I had had "interesting escapades" (my words, not hers) with girlfriends in the Walgreen's parking lot. Or rather, that was what he heard.

So all these years later, an innocuous comment became a punchline about some wild streak I didn't even know I had.

Maybe it's time to reign in myself a bit and at least pretend to care how things might appear. Then again, my "O" personality has really done nothing but serve to provide me (and apparently others) lots of laughs over the years. Why quit now, when I can most use the humor?