The Outsider
Have you thought about your shorthand? When we spend a lot of time with the people we choose and love, we have a short hand with how we interact with one another. It is the privilege and the consequence of time spent with the same people. We know the same jokes, the same stories, and we use the same jargon(shorthand). In my house we know that dinner is made and eaten at the same time every night regardless of who cooks it, even though dad is sometimes a bit later than mom. About once a week Molly and I decide to take a night to break from cooking a meal to eat down leftovers, or nuke something for dinner. This one or two nights a week are what we call "fend for yourselves night". I don't remember exactly when we labeled leftovers night this, because we would just say we were eating leftovers growing up and didn't label that night anything. We don't have take out nights at our house even though rarely we will do take-out. We don't label an evening take-o