Five girls sat outside my house, some on porch steps, some on lawn chairs. Two were moms and one was celebrating her 30th birthday.

“Hey, I’m drinking beer and I’m 30,” Debbie yelled at a college kid as he walked past the house at 9:30 p.m., probably on his way to a party where he’d have to shake off the fear his mother was watching.

My wife’s college friends were in town for their annual reunion. They’d met every year since 1999 to bond, reminisce and, if tonight were any example, get drunk and yell at pedestrians.

One of them farted. The rest laughed.

“Good Lord,” I wondered as I stood amongst this group of stay-at-home moms, a corrections officer, and two elementary school teachers. “Is the whole weekend going to be like this?”

One of them belched, and they laughed again.

Yeah, it was.

How can people who’ve grown up with innocent, fluffy things like the Rainbow Brite, Hello Kitty, My Little Pony, and the Care Bears be this foul? At least guys have a good excuse. When we were five, our dads let us stay up and watch “Dirty Harry” “punk.”

I guess I should have been prepared for this display of girl guyism. Women are gross; my wife taught me that while watching “Star Trek.”

The room was dark as we stuffed popcorn into our mouths, chunks of it spilling onto our shirts like manly popcorn should. The USS Enterprise zoomed across the screen and Captain Kirk spoke. My wife, a calm mother with a college degree who writes thank-you cards, and has read ?The Collected Works of William Shakespeare,? “To Kill a Mockingbird” and the Bible, giggled.

He said “Captain’s log,” she whispered, then giggled again.

Then during the World Series …

“What’s his name?” she asked after an announcer had screamed the fact that the Cardinals first baseman got an RBI.

“Albert Pujols,” I said, not considering why she wanted to know something about a game she considered almost as interesting as a PBS special on the social life of plankton.

“Poo holes,” she said, and laughed in a way I can only assume would have shot milk out her nose in seventh grade.

OK, so my wife has the sense of humor of a 12-year-old boy. “Why,” I asked myself while hanging around these otherwise respectable women who were now playing “pull my finger,” “would her friends be any different?”

They wouldn’t.

Ladies, stop trying to be ladies. I’ve been on the inside, and I know how you are. Did I mention the girls stopped up our toilet?”twice?”