Stacy Nicholson

I don't have a single memory of ever having lunch in the lunchroom during my entire four years of high school.

I must have, but if I did, I likely ate my lunch as quickly as possible and then spent the rest of the lunch period roaming the hallways, because I do have a lot of memories of roaming the hallways.

In my mind, the tables in the lunchroom were reserved for the cool kids, the big groups of friends who sat around laughing and making plans for the weekend ahead, and I was definitely not one of the cool kids.

I was a shy, weird introvert, but I wished I could be the kind of person who could sit around a table laughing and making plans with friends.

Then in my 20s, I developed an almost crippling social anxiety to the point where I might make myself physically ill if I had to go anywhere, especially if somewhere where I might not know anybody, because I had decided that the world was divided into two groups of people, the people who thought I was weird and the people who knew I was weird.

And since I wasn't going to be welcome at any of the cool tables, and I didn't want to spend my time roaming the halls, it was easier to just stay home.

But eventually I realized that if I was ever going to have the life I wanted to have, I was going to have to make myself leave the house, which is how I found myself being introduced to my now-husband Skip at Ralph's Corner Bar.

Skip played bridge, and despite its reputation for being a difficult card game, I thought it might be something fun that we could do together.

So I signed up for beginning bridge class, three times.

Because bridge is hard, but I was determined to learn.

The last bridge class I took was held in one of the meeting rooms of the bowler.

There were four or five tables with four bridge players per table and we would sit around practicing with whoever had ended up at our table, raising our hands frequently to ask the teacher questions about how to bid or score or play a hand.

I was 26 and everyone else was at least 60.

It was mostly women, mostly widowed or divorced, and mostly retired.

And I liked these women, but I was intimidated by them.

So I would usually sit quietly and listen while they told stories between the hands, and these women told great stories.

Like when one was explaining how her husband had left him after his high school reunion for his high school sweetheart, and another one piped up, you're kidding, the exact same thing happened to me.

And I was finally feeling like I was getting the hang of Bridge, and I probably could play socially, but the people in the class and Skip were the only people I knew who played Bridge, and he worked nights and I worked days.

So I was sad when the class was ending and I wasn't going to have anyone to play with anymore.

But I completely shocked myself when at the end of that last class, I looked around and blurted out, does anyone want to come to my house next week and just play bridge?