Sweet16

As I approach my seventeenth birthday, I am reminded of my last birthday: my Sweet16.

A few weeks before my Sweet16 my Mama asked what I wanted as far as cake, party, a special dinner, or outing, whatever. I said, just a cake and presents, like every year, would be fine with me. My Mama was....concerned. She knows most girls have something special on their Sweet16 and I didn't seem to care. And, like always, whenever I do something that excludes people from outside my family, when it's customary to have someone from the outside become involved, she wondered if she was doing something wrong with me; she wasn't worried about what other people would think of her bringing me up, she was concerned that later I might regret not having some memories of an average Sweet16 party, making me have even fewer things in common with most girls of my generation.
I assured her (several times) that I really didn't care, "Even if I wanted to invite someone, who would I invite?? I don't have any close friends." Now that just opened a whole other can of worms inside my Mama's head. So I quickly added, "Having no friends isn't a bad thing....it just means that I don't have anybody that can stab me in the back." Once Mama stopped laughing, she had stopped worrying.