The Play Date Method

I am thankful for new friendship.

I tell ya, making new friends at this age is worse than dating. I think there is a whole Paul Rudd movie devoted to this concept. Who makes the first move? When's it appropriate? Am I coming on too strongly? What if she doesn't want to be my friend? Isn't being rejected as a potential friend a much deeper rejection than being rejected as a potential date?

The good thing about having children is that you can use them to get to new friends. I mean, really, when you're proposing a play date with someone you met recently, are you seriously thinking that your one-year-olds are going to find intellectual stimulation in one another? By asking someone for a play date, you're really just saying "I think I want to be your friend, but to come out and say that would be to discover unrecorded levels of awkwardness."

But yes, I met my new friend using the Play Date Method. Cheap, I know. I was enormously pregnant with Macy when we had our 2-year-olds in a little sports class together. At the end of the 9-week session, we exchanged email addresses and eventually got in touch and planned, yes, a play date. We found that we are very, very similar, both in our circumstances and our personalities. We're both moms of 2 similarly-aged and similarly-spaced kids (though she has two girls), who work in an office environment. Yes, year-round. We both supervise a staff and would probably go nuts if we stayed at home. We both live and work very close to each other.

Soon after, I decided to be bold. I emailed her and was like, to paraphrase, "let me know if you ever want to meet up for coffee after the kids are in bed. C-R-A-Z-Y, yes. I mean, I KNOW we are at that age where that kind of thing just doesn't happen, CAN'T happen, but I am just throwing it out there for the sake of throwing it out there. Don't feel like you have to...I TOTALLY understand if you can't, and if you can't then just pretend I never said anything quite so high on the insane-meter. I am normal. I am not psycho. I SWEAR that even though I would even suggest something so out-of-this-world, I am a very normal girl, who breathes the same air that you breathe and drinks the same H2O that you drink." Okay, so maybe that is not at all what I said, but that was what was running through my mind as I wrote it.

And you know what? She said yes. And we had a really, really good time. And we continued to think up after-hours girl dates and make them happen. She didn't think I was insane when I suggested joining the Y and working out at 5am, so we see each other while getting ready for work a couple times a week. We meet up for lunch often. We have honest conversation. And the funny thing is, we rarely have play dates. It's hard to help each other navigate life's issues when you're essentially engaged in parallel parenting.

Maybe it doesn't work out that way often, but when it does, it is nice.

Now I just hope that she doesn't read this blog because that might be the end of that!