New single girl generation

It just hit me. There's a new generation of single girls, and my older niece is one of them.

I'm spending the weekend with her and with my family at her university where she'll graduate next month. While I knew she had many of my brother-in-law's unfortunate traits, I just realized how that affects her life as a single girl.

She loves being in control. So much that she's the director for her dorm. That means she's in charge of college student and their living quarters. Mom, manager and big sister. She was complaining about having to discipline a girl for leaving her cigarette butts on the sidewalk outside of the dorm.

Tonight she has a sorority formal, so she and her date will join the family for dinner then go to the formal. Our first stop after she picked me up from the airport this morning was the liquor store to buy her date a bottle of booze.

"It's the polite thing to do," she said. "But I'm sure you know that."

Actually I didn't. She's in the deep south and in my version of southern upbringing, that wasn't in any manners rules that I've ever seen. It's nice she's following tradition, I suppose.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, she's driving her date to dinner and to the formal. And when she talked about him she seemed so matter of fact. "Of course I'll drive us." Perhaps he's going to break into that bottle of honey she bought for him? Perhaps he'll need it.

I know she's only one of millions of new single girls. I'm not sure I understand some of the new dating and relationship rules. But then again, I think most people just make it up as they go.

Love to the single girls,
Addison