Selling out

I didn’t set out to become a sell-out. I’m just saying. For the record and all. I had no intention of becoming an impersonal cog in the corporate machine.
Do you think I’m too old to blame peer pressure?
Hooligans. It all began when I realized that I had become the person my mother warned me about. An unwelcome hooligan. A common interloper.
Worse, my closest friends didn’t tell me. Of course, therein lies the problem: My friends are hooligans too.
Trust me when I say that I was the last to know I was running with a bad crowd.
I thought we were an orderly group of mothers enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee (or six) once a week or so.
So finely honed was our interest in the community that we took seriously our commitment to buy locally.
Commitment. After waiting what seemed dinosaur years for a coffee establishment to open which didn’t prominently feature a drive-thru and food products served up in paper, we were committed to seeing that business do well – or die of a caffeine-induced arrhythmia trying.
As a result, every week we would meet, like clockwork, after dropping our respective children at school.
We would sit for a few blessed hours, sliding tables together and inter-weaving coffee and conversation until what brewed was real friendship.
At worst, you could call us a clique, but we were for the most part, harmless.
Thus, after more than a year of the most faithful coffee swilling, we came to know, through the tried and true small town grapevine, that we weren’t quite welcome at all.
Imagine our chagrin, our dismay, and as is often the case when embarrassment has worked it’s way to a nice healthy sense of indignation