and I live in a small town...

This was a Bunco week, but to tell the truth I wasn't too excited about it. I wasn't thrilled about breaking my news to the eight out of eleven other gals who didn't know. We go way back, but I'm finding that there is no real casual way to let this particular cat out of the bag. It's like when you're pregnant and dying to tell someone, but the right moment doesn't come. ("Will that be cash or charge?" "Why yes, thanks, I am pregnant!")


The situation was complicated because we were breaking tradition and not playing at someone's house, due to a home remodeling project gone wild. We were meeting at the local bowling alley instead to do a kind of Lebowski Bunco, which is a horrifying thought in itself and I need to get it out of my head as fast as possible. The thought of standing up in a loud and boisterous bowling alley full of frat boys and spilling my guts didn't do a lot for me, so I decided ahead of time not to. I would catch up with them all later somehow and bring them up to speed. That was the plan, anyway. I should have known better.


When four separate people asked me what the hell was wrong with me, I almost caved. But I didn't. After the bowling most everyone headed to the attached bar. I ducked out and went home, arriving just in time to watch everything in my bedroom that didn't belong to me move out. Do I know how to party or what?


It's taken me the better part of today to put together the pieces of what happened in the bar after I left, but I've finally got it all figured out. All it took was five phone calls and a lot of non-lice head scratching. But here's what took place after I went home - taking my "secret" with me. One of the gals left to go meet someone else in another restaurant. My good buddy Elly Mae, who knows more about this whole situation than any decent human should have to, was having a drink and minding her own business when another of our bunch leaned back on her stool and mouthed "oh, my god, are they getting a divorce??" and EM was left open mouthed and wondering where the hell that came from.


I'll tell you where that came from. The friend who left to go the other restaurant was sitting with a friend there when an acquaintance of hers came up to the table and started chatting. The acquaintance said Hey, don't you know RC? and my friend said Sure do, and the acquaintance, who works with the FG, said Did you hear they're getting a divorce? and my friend said No way and the acquaintance said Way and then my friend picked up her blackberry and texted her best friend in the Bunco bar and said Oh my god, are they getting a divorce?, at which point that friend collared Elly Mae knowing that she would have the full scoop of dirt, and nailed her squirming little body to the wall.


(It kind of reminded me of that college party I was at all those years ago where a guy I'd never met before was telling me all about this couple he had been on a ski trip with who were embarrassing the rest of the group with their, uh, nocturnal noises. I'm not sure which of us was more horrified when we both realized the vocal man in question was my boyfriend at the time who had told me he was going skiing with "the guys". Oops).


There are no secrets in a small town. And that's something this LA girl is learning fast.