My husband had a best friend since school. I happened to meet them together at a festival, and my husband and I fell in love at first sight. We kissed before we knew each other’s ages and surnames. We moved in together a year later and have been happy ever since.

That was 2003. Life changes, and for thirteen years I’ve been his girlfriend, but basically we are living the married life. Childhood friendships drift apart, but we traditionally invite everybody at least once a year for a very nice Christmas party.

At 30, I decide kids are now or never, and we are soon expecting twins. As we are very unceremonial, but want to avoid legal annoyances, we want to marry before the kids are born. As I am not christened and never missed anything, we do a simple legal wedding at the town house with only our parents and the future godparents for the twins.

We don’t tell anybody, as we feel it unnecessary; I’m pregnant-brained as f*** and don’t want to deal with a big party. We also don’t want people to feel obligated to gift us stuff or money.

Cut to a year later. The twins are born and are a lovely handful. We are stressed beyond belief, but want to celebrate the occasion with friends. We invite everybody and celebrate the kid’s birthday, revealing at the party that we got married. Everybody is happy, we party, and again, life goes on. The kids grow and we are fully occupied with them.

They have just turned three. At their birthday party, one of the godparents asks us what we are doing about the wedding of my husband’s childhood best friend, mentioned earlier. We didn’t even know he was engaged, but we say, “How nice! No, we did not get the card yet! Do tell, when is the wedding?”

He pauses and then very carefully tells us the invite came six months ago, and the wedding is next month. The friend was being childish and wanted to pay us back for not telling him personally about our wedding before we married.

He seriously planned to have the wedding and just tell his wife, sister, and our whole circle of mutual friends that he gave us the invite personally while he just threw it away. He, and I quote him here, wanted to have his wedding and send us a picture afterwards to “see how it feels.”

As our godparent-friend was close with the friend’s sister and future wife, he got a very stern talking to and now we are invited. As we want to make his day special — as he values his wedding day more than we did ours — I am painting something for their special day and we will give some money for their honeymoon.

Still, amazing how petty a man in his forties can be.

(I am watching a video of the aftermath of a tornado after it directly hits a [Giant Retailer]. My friend, who works at [Giant Retailer], is chatting with me over instant messenger, so I send him the video. It is important to note that he lives in South Carolina.)

Me: *jokingly* “So, what’s the [Giant Retailer] code for, ‘Oh, s***, a tornado!’?”

Friend: “I… don’t know for certain, besides the usual shelter-in-place routine, you know, finding a nice, safe, empty room or hall — with no windows or anything — to sit and put my head between my legs in. We only ever had the one thing happen not long after I started. Store-wise, though, we shut down. Everyone already in the store needs to get ready to shelter in place if the tornado actually hits; anybody trying to come in after we shut down needs to go back home, ‘cause we ain’t opening the doors until it passes… Yeah, we literally had a guy demanding to be let in for ‘one thing’ that time.”

Me: “That joke flew so far over your head, it’s somewhere between Neptune and Pluto.”

(There is one member of my circle of “friends” who has a nasty tendency to insult people, and then immediately make an excuse that he has a social disability. Given how gleefully unrepentant he seems during it, I have difficulty actually believing it, and at one point, I just snap.)

Friend: “Hey, you’re looking less like a cow than usual.” *pauses, then smirks* “Oh, sorry, was that rude? You know that I can’t tell with my disability.”

Me: “Apparently, you can tell well enough to realize you need a disclaimer.”

(A couple of the people nearby chuckled, while he just glared at me, and then went to complain to some other people there about how “rude” I was. Now, he tends to avoid me, which I am not sad about at all.)

(My husband and I are hosting a get-together of his friends and mine in our new apartment. He is introducing me to a friend of his who is a huge book nerd.)

My Husband: “I think you’ll like [My Name]; she’s a bibliophile, too! She just started reading Hannibal.“

Friend: “Ugh, I hated that book. Doesn’t it seem so forced that Clarice runs off with Hannibal in the end?”

Me: “…”

My Husband: “What part of ‘just started reading’ did you not get?”

Friend: “But… but it came out years ago! There was a movie!”

Me: “’JUST STARTED READING,’ [FRIEND]!”

Friend: “THERE WAS A MOVIE!”

Me: “This book is useless to me now. You should just eat it. EAT THE BOOK, SPOILER DEMON!”

Friend: “I’m sorry! My book nerd hatred for a bad plot overcame my book nerd hatred for spoilers!”

(This happens in college. I’m doing some homework in my dorm when my friend and roommate comes in.)

Friend: “Hey, do you want to see the movie The Witch with me tonight?”

Me: “That’s the horror movie that just came out, right? Sure. You wanted to see it?”

Friend: “A little, but the professor for my mythology and folklore course said we can get extra credit if we go see it, so it’s mostly that.”

(That night, we head to the movie theater. When we get there, I see a movie poster on the wall of the building for “Deadpool,” a movie we’ve both been very excited to see, and see that the release date was over a week ago.)

Me: *pointing out the poster* “I didn’t realize Deadpool was out already.”

Friend: “Me, either. Huh.”

(We go inside to wait in line, since we haven’t actually bought our tickets yet. Inside, there’s another very large poster for “Deadpool” that we can see from the line. After waiting in line for a couple minutes, my friend turns to me.)

Friend: “Hey, [My Name].”

Me: “Yeah?”

Friend: “Do you want to see Deadpool, instead?”

Me: “I was hoping you’d ask!”

(Needless to say, my friend did not end up getting the extra credit, but she had no regrets about watching “Deadpool,” which we both greatly enjoyed!)