Today is the last day of work before my company closes for the holiday; I only had to work until 11:30. I was awesomely productive with desk work until 10:00 when I had a meeting scheduled. Of all my project teams, I was meeting with my favorite. We've worked together on our project for about two years now, and we have all become good friends. Our conversations steered away from our agenda almost immediately.

Karen started talking about her dog…her dog Max who goes to doggie day care every day. Apparently they gave him "dog nog" the other day (which I had never heard of but Google says it exists). Before I consulted with Google, I challenged the existence of the eggnog for dogs. Mona piped in that she's heard of it, but some dogs are allergic.

Karen:
"Yeah, some dogs are sensitive to the whey…"

Mona:
"Isn't whey in a lot of dog food too?" Karen nodded.

Karen (softly, almost singing):
"…eating her curds and whey!"

Mona:
"Hah! Yeah! Curds and whey!"

Then "whey" became a funny word for some reason, and Patty and Becky started to have an entire conversation using only that word and varied intonation.

Patty:
"Whey?"

Becky:
"Whey!"

Me (distracted by an email I was answering):
"I don't like spiders."

Now, I thought this was perfectly in line with the conversation because they were talking about Little Miss Muffet, weren't they? And didn't a spider come along and scare her away? Well, it would have scared me away too, and that's reason enough to dislike spiders.

But apparently, they were not thinking of what scared Little Miss Muffet or Little Miss Muffet at all. They thought I was suffering some sort of psychotic break: why else would I randomly confess my dislike for spiders? The room was suddenly engulfed with laughter—and not just any laughter, but the kind of laughter that reduces you to tears and that you just can't snap out of…the contagious kind that goes on long after the subject is forgotten.

Me (focused now and speaking in my best bored monotone):
"'Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey. Along came a SPIDER who sat down beside her, and frightened Miss Muffet away.' You know, you really shouldn't put someone down just because their brain works better than yours."

I went back to my email before Karen started talking to me through hiccuping starts and stops.

Karen:
"You're just like my husband. We were watching TV one night and he just up and says, 'I hate snakes.'"

Mona:
"Can you imagine the conversation? She'd say, 'I don't like spiders.' He'd say, 'I hate snakes.' One of them would say, 'Will you be my friend?'"

Though I have no proof, I am sure that Karen's husband was making perfect sense at the time. I bet he'd be an awesome friend who wouldn't mistake my brilliance for idiocy like everyone else seems to!