Despite their three year age difference, my kids are generally invited together to birthday parties. This makes me happy for a number of reasons, for not only are Brainiac and I keen to avoid the playmate age stratification thing that is so common these days, but I'm also not generally a drop-off mom, preferring instead to stick around while the party is underway and it's easier to stay when both kids are among the partygoers. This isn't due to any helicopter inclinations I might have (but to which I am loathe to admit) but rather because staying at birthday parties, which tend to be fairly short affairs, suits my desire to make my life as uncomplicated as possible. If I leave, then I have to go somewhere and do something to fill the time but if I stay, I can hang around with other staying moms for some chit-chat and a diet soda. This is what I like - going somewhere as busy work is complicating and annoying (and by the time I get back home, I have maybe 20 minutes before having to leave to go back, which is dumb), but chit-chat with other parents can be fortifying even if it's just that, chit-chat, and not a BFF-type situation.

So usually ('round these parts, anyway) at parties where parents are welcome to stay there is a special seating section with parent-specific snacks and drinks. Lovely. And it was in just such parental seating where, at a recent party, I stopped the conversation cold by throwing in the following during a discussion about young celebrities showing off their pantylessness while getting into and out of cars: "I remember from charm school that one is supposed to kind of pivot...."

I got no further. Dropped jaws and looks of utter disbelief will do that to a person, and when the conversation started up again we had completely moved away from celebrity pantylessness and landed directly in charm school. "Did you really go to charm school?" asked one woman, "I didn't think they existed anymore."

I pointed out that this was maybe 25 year ago so it's possible that they don't, in fact, exist. But they did and at mine I learned all about how to get into and out of a car so that one's personal attributes remain so, and also about wedding stationery (white border) and funeral stationery (black border), French vs. British vs. Russian table service, doing one's own manicure should that be necessary for some reason (remember: this is at least a decade before every strip mall boasted a nail joint) and so on. Oh, and that cold water is a natural astringent.

Although I've never asked her, I suspect my mother chose to send me because I was a sort a galumphing kind of kid, awkward and mouthy, not at all the delicate and sweet child she might have anticipated. Charm school didn't really make me galumph less, but I did become aware of when a more, say, nuanced approach to life might be appropriate. I remember a great deal of what I guess you'd call the curriculum so the effort doesn't seem to have been wasted and as I've never advertised the presence or non- of my underpants while getting into or out of a vehicle I'd say we can safely say it was also at least partially successful.