Now that my husband is all Buddy the Elf about making friends in his outdoors organization, I have met many people. 

Many, many people. 

I have friends all over the country. And one acquaintance in Canada. Or maybe he’s just from Canada. I don’t know. But he makes me look like a better cook so he could be from the Klingon home world for all I care. 

Well, it would actually be awesome if he was from the Klingon home world.  

And while we’re on the subject of Klingons, we have reached John de Lancie’s arc on Breaking Bad.  

It has put me in a quandary.  

Bingeing Breaking Bad with our 15-year-old son is not exactly a highlight of my parenting career. I could easily end our binge by telling him John de Lancie is a major character in the Star Trek universe. 

He’d never watch another episode of Breaking Bad. 

But I’m kind of enjoying watching it with him.  

As long as, you know, there’s no sex, drugs, drug abuse, murders, blood, death, or anything else I wouldn’t find on Star Trek. 

Right. 

Anyway, I have also become friends with the non-hunting spouses in my international network of outdoorsy friends.  

Spouses like me.  

We have breakfast and go to hot yoga and dodge pint nights to grab lip-plumping lipstick whose efficacy I’m still dying to hear about. 

They all make me happy.  

Weird, right? Socialization usually doesn’t make introverts feel good. 

They must be some extraordinary people. 

Maybe it’s their stories. 

Outdoorsy people have interesting tales. And, often, interesting tails. 

Seriously. Visit the home of any lover of the outdoors. I promise you’ll find a tail, a pelt, a skull, feathers, something — anything — reflecting their outdoor pursuits. 

The stories outdoorsy folks tell are, in fact, so interesting there’s an annual meeting with a night of people regaling the crowd with their outdoor adventures. 

I was asked to share a story once. Me.  

I had to stand outside to tell it.  

I don’t think anyone was happy that night. 

Now, I could never tell someone else’s story. I would tell it for them, but I couldn’t tell it instead of them.  

But sometimes, their stories get me thinking.  

I heard a great hunting story earlier this year — and enjoyed the fruits of that hunt. But the real takeaway from the story left me troubled.  

Did you know truck stops have showers? 

Not showers for the trucks. Showers for people. As in one person pays to use the shower. Then the shower is cleaned before the next person pays to use it. 

I mean, I’ve done spray-tan booths and I don’t think they’re cleaned between patron usage. And now that I’ve realized this I’ll never sleep again. 

I don’t like the idea of truck stop showers. And I don’t like that I don’t like the idea of truck stop showers. 

But I feel the same way about chocolate chip cookies. I don’t like chocolate chip cookies that aren’t my chocolate chip cookies. Whatever gene that is, it’s on the same DNA strand as the distaste for truck stop showers. 

Maybe it’s the idea of thousands of people passing through those showers. Or that the highway is, like, right there.  

Or it’s that I’m a complete snob because I’ll be honest. I have zero problems with hotel showers.  

Well, four-star hotel showers.  

You know the kind. They have huge showerheads and body wash with scents like white tea and honeysuckle. They have those towels — the fresh white ones so long you could twirl yourself into a mummy.  

Those amenities go a long way toward curing snobbery. 

“You didn’t know,” my friend said, “about truck stop showers?” 

I would rather wet my pants while telling my story at that annual meeting than use a portable toilet and I’ve never stood fully naked in our cabin shower. So no. Nobody in my life could ever see any possible use I might have for truck stop showers. 

Or, more likely, they didn’t want to hear the absolute meltdown I would have — and ultimately did have — over simply knowing truck stop showers exist.  

Even if I was bold enough to be a truck driver, I’d never be bold enough to use a truck stop shower. “If I am in a truck stop shower,” I said to my husband, “things have gone seriously sideways.” 

As if he was completely unfamiliar with the priss he married. As if he’s never been on the receiving end of a phone call from me, in tears because I found a bug in my hotel room. As if he’s never left a hotel he reached before me because he knew it wasn’t up to my standards.  

“You know,” he said, “your dad probably used truck stop showers.” 

Yeah. He was also a Marine. Not all of us are that tough. 

Recently, I took my daughter to visit colleges. The two hotels we booked had bathrooms separated from the main room by barn doors. 

My distaste for barn doors on hotel bathrooms approximates my distaste for chocolate chip cookies not my own. Unless you’re alone, whoever is occupying that room with you is as close to your toilet as the highway is to a truck stop shower. 

Which is to say, too close. 

“Ugh,” my daughter sighed when she saw the barn doors in our second hotel. “Here too? I’m not a fan of these bathroom doors.” 

Huh. Interesting. 

“Hey,” I said to her one day when our refrigerator appeared doomed. She had requested my cookies for a class party. “If I can’t make my cookies, are store-bought, OK?” 

She explained although fine, store-bought cookies were no match for my cookies. 

I should really ask her about truck stop showers. 

Because that snob gene seems to have been passed on completely unadulterated. 

And that’s not such a good thing.