So earlier I had discussed how I joined a nonfiction book club on meetup.com and I was too chicken to go to the meeting. Well I found one that was about fiction, writing, and coffee hosted by someone who was actually in my age group (score!). Of course like any girl ever, I creeped on the other potential attendees to get a sense of what I was up against. Besides the moderator, there was another girl around my age so I was pretty optimistic about the odds. There were two older gentlemen signed up to go as well.

To be completely honest, I was dismayed when I saw the two older dudes on the list. It has been my experience that most men that age participating in the event are either inappropriately flirtatious trying to seek out a potential young caregiver, very lonely and use the group as a talk therapy session, or both. So on the first meeting I had my reservations, but I went anyway.

The first sign I knew it would go well was the fact that it was held at a Starbucks (reading and my java addiction fueled at once?! Hallelujah!). I met the moderator and it turned out that we hit it off. I knew I liked her once we had shared our mutual disdain about how pretentious Juno was (My apologies if you love that movie, but no 16 year old pregnant girl has the sense of humor that of a cynical 30 year old). Was I really about to make a new friend in this crazy city?! Though I did thoroughly enjoy my time during the meeting, my reservations were not completely off base. Cue creepy old dude…

I have to first start off by saying only 1 out of the 2 older gentlemen was pervy. He was definitely over sharing about his personal life. (Hey, this is the first meeting of a book club, not an Oprah couch session).  The topic of magazines came about and he just had to mention his only magazine of choice was “Playboy”. Naturally…What the pervy guy lacked the other guy made up for. He had this grandfatherly sage wisdom appearance about him. He spoke thoughtfully and contributed intelligent and relevant banter into the conversation. I will admit that I’m really a 45 year old trapped inside of a 23 year old, so I enjoy the company of people twice+ my age from time to time. (Ugh I think I sound like Juno 😉 )

All in all, I am very excited that I grew a pair and went to the first meeting. I ended up meeting people whose company I actually enjoyed. Admittedly I’ve fallen off the bandwagon of being a fully functional human being and boarded the workaholic train. Even the creepy old guy was a somewhat welcome change to my monotonous work fueled life that I’ve been living for the better part of a year. If stepping off the ledge and jumping into a book club could be this fun, who knows what other interesting endeavors I could be missing out on. Until next time…