why i have so few friends - a mystery unraveled

okay, so i just got back from a girls' lunch. it was a birthday lunch - but stop right there if you are thinking birthday cake, drinks, gag gifts or anything fun. it was salads and tea all the way around - and expensive gifts - like the $75 name brand monogrammed beach bag kind of gifts. but i have to back up to give you a more accurate picture of how this went down. i arrived and i knew the birthday girl and two of her eight friends that had come to celebrate.
the tea ordering commenced and i ordered a stella on tap. the ordering of an alcoholic beverage at the lunch did not go unnoticed - although one girl commented that she would have ordered a beer had she known i was going to - nevermind that this was right after mine came and still well before our meals arrived which would have given her plenty of time to order one, which she did not. i ordered the cuban sandwich (yes, the kind with, dare i say it - bread and cheese and meat) and the black bean chili.
during the course of lunch conversation, the girl beside me who is very nice, catholic and from birmingham (mountain brook, to be exact) was telling everyone how she had given up sweets for lent. she went on to say that her daughter had also given up sweets and how hard it had been for the two of them especially since a gourmet chocolate shop had just opened up right down the street, yada yada yada. now, this girl is very nice, but she is the personality type that makes me want to say things that i shouldn't - shocking or at the very least, not very proper things - the kind of things that wouldn't be said at a ladies' lunch in mountain brook. that is the only reason i can come up with for why i belted out with "i don't think god cares if you eat candy." this silenced the table and all eyes turned to me. all i could say at that point, with my face burgundy, was that i had given up vacuuming for lent. this didn't smooth things over as i had hoped and i think they may have suspected that it wasn't true. and as if that wasn't enough, i proceeded to get into an argument with another guest about the local school over-crowding issue that people here seem to be in denial about. as you might have guessed, that didn't go over so well either - although slightly better than the god comment, i have to say. and to think i had been worried that the real embarrassment of the lunch would be that my gift was a crappy $10 coffee mug.
eventually though, after salads, tea refills and the oohing and aahing over fancy presents (save mine), the ladies' lunch concluded. i thought i couldn't have been more disappointed in my ability to blend with lunching-ladies - but the real cherry on top was when i got in my car and looked in the rear view mirror and caught a glimpse of a black bean lodged, not just in between, but on top of one of my front teeth. as an after-thought, i decided that maybe instead of remembering all of the offensive and inappropriate things i had said or my crappy gift, the ladies would just remember the black bean on my tooth. in any event, i don't see any more lunch invitations in my future.