What, no friends?

The kids are about to graduate from their current school and move on to another. Wife has been ranting for most of this school year about how they don't learn anything where they are, so you'd think she would be looking forward to the change.

At least, that's what I thought.

So I was a little surprised this weekend when she began bemoaning the upcoming transition to a new school. But Wife explained that this school asks for a lot of parent involvement, while the next school might not; and -- what is more -- her "entire social life" revolves around her involvement in this school. So when that is taken away, she will be completely isolated and alone.

I'm not really sure what to say to this. "Gosh, dear, that's terrible, we should find some way to keep them here at a school you hate even beyond graduation"? Or maybe "You're right, sweetheart, that's intolerable -- let's find a way to stop them from growing or aging so that they never have to get a day older -- never grow up, never leave home -- and you can live out your life in the PTA, living vicariously through them"?

Somehow neither of these comes out sounding quite right.

Then there's a third option, which runs something like this. "How can your entire social life possibly be bounded by your children's school? If that is true, then that is the problem you need to address, not the fact that it is time for them to graduate. Why exactly is it that you have no other social life? Fine, I understand that you don't hold a job, so you don't have office mates. But we aren't exactly new in town. Maybe you could take a class, or volunteer somewhere, or do any of a hundred other things that other people do in order to meet new people."

But I didn't say that, because I know the answer. Wife doesn't do things like that because she doesn't make friends that way, or at any rate not lasting ones. To put this in perspective, Wife doesn't actually have lasting friends, unless you count one sister and one ex-coworker who is now thousands of miles away and calls once a year.

How come? Heck, I don't know. Maybe it's because Wife despises so many people, and sneers at what they do. ("You can't honestly expect that I would volunteer to go do that! You know the kind of people who do that.") Maybe it's because Wife stakes out extreme positions on every subject under the sun, and is unwilling to concede that she might be wrong about any of them. Maybe it is because she is so blind and deaf to normal unspoken social cues that she offends people without the slightest awareness that she has done so, and then (if the fact is pointed out to her) she insists that she was right and that they are fools for being offended.

Maybe this is why she has no social life. Maybe the restricted scope of her social circle is the direct consequence of things that she has done which have driven people away and tightened the circle ever closer around her. Or maybe I'm all wet.

But I'm not about so suggest any of this to her. She is not especially generous about accepting personal criticisms, even if they are meant only tactically, to help her get what she wants. It would be nice if she figured this all out herself, but after this many years I'm not holdiong my breath.