I feel like an outcast.

My sweet, southern, girlfriends that I find so refreshing, have a little secret.

You can drive by their brick houses and see that something is going on with the family that lives there. The pansies that were planted last fall are leggy in their flower beds and should have been pulled out a month ago, and replaced with begonias. Their flower pots are sitting empty. Has there been a separation? Impending divorce? Illness?

No, they just discovered “mommy porn.” They are hiding in a little corner in their homes reading “Fifty Shades of Grey.” I know because when we go to soccer practices or the club their whispering about it, giggling. They greet each other with, “what page are you on?” They declare that the second book is better than the first. Everyone my age is talking about it as if they have never seen the opposite sex’s private parts in the daylight. They are acting like a locker room full of high school boys with a dirty magazine. I feel so left out!