Lost in the Condom Kingdom--Part I

This is a tale of generation gaps, true friendship, and glow-in-the-dark birth control devices.

If you’ve been reading along, you probably know I got divorced about 12 years ago. Divorce is almost always ugly; this one was hideous. I didn’t react well at all. In fact, I pretty much made myself the guest of honor at a year-long pity party.

Eventually, I snapped out of it. Some time later, I fell in love. (With my divorce attorney, but that’s another story entirely.)

To celebrate this amazing turn of events, two friends and I went to a concert in the park. We sipped wine and ate a decadent picnic as music drifted over us and the sun streamed through the clouds, setting the lake on fire. It felt as though I'd just been let out of prison.

My friends began to lay odds on when I was finally going to "do it," and I protested that I wasn't anywhere near ready. They asked if I was prepared for safe sex, and I said I wasn't sure that sex could be safe at my age.

They suggested strategies for having "the talk" with the man in my life. I pointed out that if the talk required strategies, perhaps I did not know this man well enough to let him see my spider veins.

They talked lingerie.

I talked turtlenecks.

We laughed so much that people around us rolled their eyes and muttered meanly to themselves.

An hour into this adventure, the gods began pelting us with raindrops as big as fists. We grabbed the picnic stuff and ran for our lives. When we fell into the car, those two middle-aged juvenile delinquents decided that a little retail therapy was in order--that a trip to the Condom Kingdom might jar me out of my reluctance to take the leap. From the back seat, I screamed in protest.

Dripping, disheveled, and two-glasses-of-wine-to-the-winds, we burst through the door of the little store in question.

When I spied a display of actual condoms, I took a hard look and slumped against a wall, howling with laughter as the DVD player in my head replayed a scene from my childhood.