I'll never call it 'dumb' again

I'm sitting here after lunch and a conference call, thinking yet again about how I am smack dab in the middle of the bell curve for many marketing areas right now. How irritating. Aren't I special, unlike every other almost-middle-aged mom out there? No, not at all.

I find my car is fairly common when I scan for it in the grocery parking lot. I look forward to 'GNOs' as much as the next working-from-home mother, cornering and close-talking to anyone with a pulse after a glass or two of chardonnay. I have a sensible haircut that causes me incredible stress to finance a couple times a year. I have lots of capris and t-shirts. I feel guilty when I don't organize play dates enough. I spend too much time worrying about how clean my house is. I get poison ivy after gardening in my yard. And I know ALL the pop songs from the 70's and 80's (and the 90's too, but they're not on commercials or in many movies yet).

Don't you get sick of being pegged like this? Or this? Maybe that's why the grocery store music gets under my skin. The fact that I know all these songs makes me feel common. If I wasn't there, someone else would be humming along with something terrible, something that no one ever wants to hear again while eyeing the avacados. In this way, I am one of millions, and it would be meaningless on many levels if I weren't making my meager contribution to society. I mean, really, what has changed all that much since the time of Betty Draper?

But wait. I chose this - to be where I am right now, and it is exactly what I want to be doing, after getting to do the whole career/MBA/buying my own damn house and car thing in my twenties. And not every woman can say that. Maybe I am unique in some ways, and maybe not. But I can tell you that at The Dumb Food Lion last weekend I was the only woman in workout clothes, hair back in a pony tail, rushing around to get home quickly because my husband had some stuff to do and didn't want to be on kid duty too long, but singing every effing word to this - my MAN! (I bet Ryan is pissed that one of his songs was chosen to be played at a sub-par grocery in EBF, Maryland, right after 'I Want a New Drug' by Huey Lewis and the News.) And underneath it all, lots of other seemingly black-and-white people are techinicolor, getting back in there mini-vans or sitting at a desk job, singing along with who-knows what that I haven't even heard of, going home to happy lives that are much more than common.

If you're one of those people, let me know next time you get a good babysitter. We'll go out for chardonnay.