Single people bite!

Or maybe I'm off my rocker right now, 'cause I just strolled back to the Herald from the dentist's office across the street, and I'm a little groggy.

I am not an anti-dentite. I am a big fan of this dentist. He gives good drugs and has hands like cotton. And that's a good thing, 'cause while I have a high pain threshold (something I learned through multiple knee-rebuilding surgeries and the subsequent therapy), all bets are off with my mouth. I can't stand even a smidgen of pain in that region. I'd rather have my fellas locked in a vice clamp than deal with mouth pain.

This dentist's assistant, however, does not have hands like cotton. She's very nice. And I have no doubt she did a great job on my teeth today, but I think maybe she was a boxer or slammed her hand into brick walls in a past life. No gentle touch here.

But I digress. I think I really might be a little loopy right now.

What prompted the title to this post was a call I got from an old friend as I strolled across the street to the dentist's office about two hours ago. One of the first things out of her mouth was "Where have you been!!!" I know good punctuation. I used exclamation points instead of a question mark on purpose, because her question was more of a statement. She was suggesting that I have been off the charts and out of the loop lately.

Now here' s the funny thing about this. In the weeks leading up to my wedding nearly two years ago this friend was one of many - male and female - who cautioned Mrs. B and me to not turn into one of those married couples after we tied the knot.

They begged us to not suddenly fall off the social radar after the wedding. They warned us that marriage would make us inaccessible and would zap our desire to stay connected with friends. They shared with us tales of married friends, who within weeks of their weddings stopped returning calls or emails.

To be fair, I believe prior to my own wedding that I said some of the same stuff to single friends who were about to be married.

But this friend was nuts. In my case, with one exception, I've found this doom and gloom prediction to be just the opposite. My single friends have been inaccessible. They haven't returned phone calls. They never send emails asking how things are, unless they're responding to an email I sent them. And so on and so forth.

In fact, when I think back to when I was giving the same kinds of warnings to soon-to-be-married friends, I realize that they didn't abandon me after they got married. I subconsciously abandoned them.

My friend this morning wasn't really scolding me when she called. She was teasing. Still, it prompted me to share all the thoughts I've just written.

I expected her to tell me "whatever!" But she agreed with me. After a friend gets married, you see them with a full-time partner and instinctively you back off a little and give them more space than you might have before. After a friend gets married you start to feel a little like a third wheel, and you get a little uncomfortable inserting yourself into social situations with them. Even if your friend and his/her new spouse tells you to continue coming around you just sort of assume that they have magical married people things to do. Really, all I do more of since marriage is yard work, maintenance stuff around our house, and run errands.

If anything, after I got married I was sort of eager to hang onto my buddies, so I didn't feel completely isolated from my old life. Did I hang out with them as often after work? Not even close. I certainly didn't stay out as late on those days we did do Happy Hour. But I kept an iron in the fire so they wouldn't forget that "Independent George" still exists. Mrs. B was the same. She still did things regularly with her girlfriends. We had become a team, not a single organism. We still had separate friends and interests.

So I'm left to conclude that in this case single people are full of it. You guys abandon us just as often as we abandon you, maybe more. I think secretly you guys just might not want to deal with your old single buddy or single gal pal suddenly becoming a Siamese twin.

OK, I'm gonna go pop a Motrin and get back to work.