The other morning, I was at a school mixer, chatting with a fellow parent. “So,” he asked me, as he sipped his coffee, “Do your group texts have names?” His question made me laugh — what an opening conversational gambit! — but I also had answers…

My most active group text is called… Vulvas. We were trying to come up with a name that reflected female friendship, and our friend Anna said, “The Vulvateen Rabbit?” We died laughing and that became the name, now shorted to “Vulvas” or “Vs.” The funniest thing is when we order birthday flowers for someone in the group and have to ask the florist to please sign the card “Love, Vulvas.” Or our children will ask, “Are you having dinner tonight with the Vulvas?” Yes, guys. Yes, I am.

My sister Lucy has a text group with her neighbors called “Whatnot,” as in “you guys want to get together tonight for pizza and whatnot?” And her sister-in-law Emily told me, “I have one called ‘We Are Heroes’ — it started deep in the pandemic when we needed any sort of validation we could get.”

Cup of Jo’s marketing director Maureen knows groups called:
— Bendy Budz: friends who go to yoga together.
— Club Larry: my cousin and his friend making fun of our aunt’s husband. We mainly send pix of this man Larry.
— ~*miLfS*~: friends from middle school who are now all moms. The type is how we all used to write our aol screen names.

Group names can be cross-cultural, too. “‘Soap’ is between two Americans and a Brit,” said Colby, who lives in London. “We chose the name after we got into a debate about how Brits calling dish soap ‘washing up liquid’ is stupid because it’s just soap! The Brit disagreed.”

At the end of the day, though, my friend Lina’s might take the cake: “‘Fab faces’ is group that just shares pics of faces we see in inanimate objects.” Then she sent these:

What are your group texts called? It’s the MOST random question but I love hearing the answers!

P.S. 10 of the funniest reader comments, and what comedy scenes do you love?

(Photo by Lucas Ottone/Stocksy.)