I would even have talked about religion and politics.

This weekend, I attended a reunion with about 10 of my sorority sisters. There was beer and general frivolity.

A funny thing happened, though. All of these women have college degrees, most of them advanced. They have traveled far and wide, had adventures, lived life. And we all knew each other back when oversized sweatshirts were in vogue, when we didn’t know what we wanted to be when we grew up, when The Rachel was every girl’s hairstyle goal.

We should have a lot to talk about.

And yet? And yet, the topic of conversation all weekend was motherhood. Children. Pregnancy. Feedings. Preschools. Discipline. You get the picture.

Granted, not everyone in the group was BFF during college, and so some of that reminiscing would have been an odd fit. But really, is parenting the only topic we had in common?

Because I didn’t.

When I found myself single at 30, surrounded by married and childful friends, I felt very Other. There was an appreciation for our differences, but sometimes I would leave social gatherings feeling like a leper.

Now that I’m in a serious relationship that’s Going Somewhere, I don’t feel that type of leprosy anymore. But this weekend, I felt a different strain of the disease.

If you want to talk about feeling Other, consider being an Almost Stepmom in a room of Bio Moms. “It will be fine” and “You’ll figure it out” don’t constitute a meaningful dialogue about my brand of parenting. There was almost an implied “Just have a baby of your own and you’ll know what we’re talking about. A step is a good starter.”

I am on the fence about having a biological child. Having a biological child just so you have something to talk about with your friends is, uh, not a good reason to have a child. But why can’t we manage to talk about anything else?