A real Real Housewife activity

Today, I'm doing my best impersonation of a real Real Housewife of Charlotte. I'm spending the day at a country club.

My husband and I belong to a country club. It's not what you think - we didn't pay an enormous initiation fee or have ridiculous dues or anything. Country clubs are a way of life in Charlotte. For example, we have three, no FOUR, within a two mile radius of our place. It's kind of ridiculous. Anyway, our neighborhood has a country club and the initiation fees and dues are part of the home owners association so it just made sense to join.

Our club offers a lot, including a restaurant/bar with good food, four televisions, and a table next to an outlet. Really, the table next to the outfit is key for me because I like to go to the restaurant/bar and work. Generally it's very quiet, except for Fridays when all the golfers descend upon quiet place, drink a lot, and get obnoxiously loud. There is also no internet access, which is usually good for me because I get distracted by things like the internet. (I can get internet, when I need to, but that's another story.) The other major benefit is that I can get up and go to the bathroom while I'm working without fear of someone swiping my stuff, which is the major downside to places like Panera and Starbucks. I love those places, but when I'm working alone, use of the bathroom usually signals that it's time to pack up and go.

So today I'm working at the club, but not without a little eavesdropping first.

Usually it's just men in here, who stop in for a drink and a snack after golfing. They have two conversations: 1) Tiger Woods, and whether his extracurricular activities have affected their perception of him, his popularity, and/or his golf game, and 2) Poorly dissecting whatever non-golf sporting event is happening at the time. For men who claim to be sports fanatics and refuse to let me change the televisions off of the ESPN networks, they really know very little about sports. For example, this was the conversation I overheard during the World Cup:

Dope 1: "The US plays tomorrow (Thursday) at 10am against Slovakia ."
Actually, they played Friday against Slovenia, as I had just told the dope who incorrectly repeated this information to his friend.

Dope 2: "They have the possibility of advancing, but we gotta get through England first."
All true, except the US had already played England and tied 1-1.

My favorite quotes were during March Madness, but I can't remember the quotes for the life of me. I do remember thinking, "This is ACC country, the supposed Mecca of college basketball, and you don't even know that UNI upset Kansas?"

The women, on the other hand, gossip about the other women in the club. They talk about everything, and quite viciously at times. Today, it was about a woman in their tennis league and whether she can really afford to continue in the tennis league, given her financial situation. I mean, her car has 200,000 miles on it and if she can't afford to get a new one, how can she afford to play in the tennis league? Over a lunch, these women decided to replace the woman with the difficult financial situation. They weren't going to ask her, of course, whether she was planning to continue playing tennis or really what her financial situation was. They just were going to replace her. Got it.

This is my fear of becoming a real housewife - I could become one of these women. I gossip and judge people of course, and I'm obviously doing it right now, but I don't spread rumors about people and I definitely don't make decisions to cut people out of my activities. Rather, I'm afraid that this will become normal for me because this is normal conversation at the country club. It's part of our culture, and I'm afraid that it will become part of my normal world if I become too involved in these activities.

However, their cattiness or the men's ignorance of sports doesn't prevent me from spending my Thursday afternoon hanging at the country club just like a real housewife of Charlotte should.