There’s no downtime quite so down as an airport layover, so I called a dear old long-time friend from DCA last night, knowing that for once I’d actually have time for more than a ten minute conversation. Over the course of the next 40 minutes, this is what we talked about:

• Color choices in polyester golf shirts, if one is obligated to wear a polyester golf shirt.
• How long 30 bottles of wine in your house should reasonably last.
• Whether there is ever any reason for baggy track pants.
• The child who said about Thanksgiving dinner, “Well, the water tastes pretty good.”
• Back fat and the possibilities for its removal.
• Loose teeth: are they actually revolting and if so, how to hide said revulsion from the kids.
• New teeth: ridiculously over-sized in little mouths.
• How to leave a job with grace, or at least try to.
• The extremely frustrating “I’m being bad, what are you going to about it?” expression that some kids (other people’s kids) get.
• Rude things we might say to rude people, if only we were also rude people.
• Whether having a cat who acts like a dog actually counts as having a dog.
• How young children tend to grimace in pictures instead of smiling, and whether bribes are an appropriate solution.
• Whether wearing a name tag to work is a sign that you’re heading in the wrong direction.
• Whether serving holiday food with plastic utensils is a sign that you’ve given up, and grounds for an intervention of some kind.
• Whose responsibility it is to explain sex to children who only yesterday were tiny infants.
• Whether pregnant women get silently judged for having one tiny glass of wine.
• The horror of literally falling down on the job.
• How to make ginger champagne cocktails.
• When and how to ask holiday guests to leave the crazy at home.
• Pajama holidays.
• Where to travel when we’re old people and whether or not we’ll have to invite our husbands.

What we did not discuss is this: what a joy it is to have friends who will happily discuss the details and trivia of an ordinary life, and who make you laugh about nothing even after a decade or two. I’m so lucky and grateful.