From Patrick Neilsen Hayden (actually commenting on a funny anti-blogging post by Robin Hobb which I found through Jay Lake)

(whoo, that was a very convoluted path. Really, the lengths I go to)

Anyway, he says, "Maureen McHugh once observed that 99% of all relationship arguments boil down to shocked cries of YOU'RE NOT ME!"

How true, I thought to myself. Sometimes I find myself sitting down with mommy friends (and this especially happens with "wives of Japanese" mommy friends, which makes no sense, really, because although we're married to Japanese men, this is likely the ONLY thing we have in common. Yet these are the women I expect to have the most in common with. How illogical is that?) and we're having this great conversation where I'm listening and nodding and thinking "yeah, yeah", and then the other person will say something that totally makes me blink.

Something totally out of my ball park. And it makes me reexamine the entire conversation so far because I feel like somewhere we must have crossed into La La Land and I didn't notice it.

So then I go through this little mini drama in my head for the next few mintues wherein I say "I don't know this person at all, maybe she's really freaky and I didn't notice it. But, aren't we all freaky? There's so much she doesn't know about me. So maybe we all are a little freaky. I guess I can live with that. Okay, back to the conversation now"

And I have to do it like EVERY TIME even though I know we're all different and nobody is me, not even my mom or brother or Naoto.

Why do I do that?