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Seneca Said the Complaining Is the Only Real Trouble (Listen for Who Always Has It Worse)
“Every story she told at book group ended with someone treating her unfairly. Then I drove home and told my husband about her the same way.”
Our book group met at Bev’s house on the first Thursday in November.
Seven of us sat around her dining table, with a plate of shortbread and a novel about a lighthouse keeper that only three of us had finished. Bev had made coffee and decaf, and labeled them, which is very Bev.
A woman joined the group in the spring. I won’t name her, because she may read this, and because what I noticed about her says as much about me as about her. She is bright, well-read, and good company in the first half hour.
We started on the book. Then, the way book groups do, we drifted.
A woman across the table said her flight back from her daughter’s had been delayed three hours. The newer member said hers had been canceled outright in September, and the airline lost her bag, and nobody at the counter would even look at her.
Bev said her knee had been bad since the rain started. The newer member said she had waited four months for an appointment about her shoulder, and when she finally got one, the doctor looked at his screen the whole time.
