road trip outtakes

No trip with me is complete without a few weird and/or awkward moment. And since yesterday's report was getting long, I decided to dedicate an entire post to the random things that went down. Plus, the tone of the official post was kinda sappy and nostalgic, so I didn't want to kill the mood.

1. I'm gonna ease you in to the weird with something that's really not weird but that I just wanted to share anyway. I have a slightly unexplainable aversion to desserts that involve fruit (unless it's like a trifle or fruit pizza with fresh fruit. that's kosher). This includes fruit ice cream. But the family we stayed with was ridiculously hospitable and had a bunch of homemade strawberry ice cream and wanted to feed us, so I was like, "What the heck? I'll give it a try." AND IT WAS AMAZING. Is all strawberry ice cream like that, and I just somehow missed the memo? Or maybe it was because it was homemade? I'm not sure, but maybe I will have to give strawberry ice cream another try. Baby steps, guys, baby steps.

2. I looked out the window and what did I see?

THIS:

Guys. The dog was wearing sunglasses. It was the cutest/weirdest thing I ever did see. 

3. You guys ready for a healthy dose of awkward? I have to be ready for that pretty much 24/7, because my life is just full of amazingly awkward experiences. Here it goes:

While we were waiting for Priesthood and Relief Society to begin, we were standing in the hallway chatting. Lissa introduced us to the occasional ward member and we did the whole "we're Lissa's friends from college" routine that we were quite proficient at by the end of the trip. The missionaries assigned to her ward came up then and introduced themselves to Lissa. I noted the name tag on one of the elders, and it was the same last name (a very uncommon one) as a family from my stake back home. And I thought, "Huh, that's weird. He kinda looks familiar, but it's probably just a coincidence." 

And then I heard him say, "I'm from Kentucky." 

That got my attention. He turned away from Lissa, and I asked him if he was in the Cincinnati Stake. He confirmed that he was, and I told him that I'm from that stake too. 

Now I feel that this is a good point to mention that the family he belongs to has two sons, one a year older than me and one a year (or maybe two) younger than me. And they look a lot a like. Okay? Keep that in mind and don't judge me too much until I get a chance to give my full list of justifications/explanations at the end of this story. 

I could tell he was trying to figure out who I was, and I was trying to figure out which brother he was. It didn't make sense for him to be the one older than me, because he'd gotten a mission call a long time ago and would have been home by that point. He asked for my name, and I told him, and thinking he was the younger brother who I'd never actually met, tacked on "you probably know my dad." I almost said, "I know your older brother." And thankfully I didn't. 

And then he kept looking at me, and I didn't know why because I didn't think he actually knew me, so I asked for his first name, thereby breaking the Address Me as Elder Code of Missionaries. I had to do it, guys. I needed confirmation of who this guy was. 

"Todd*," he said. He paused. "We went to prom together." 

Yep. So that happened. "Yeah," I said, unsure what else to say at this point because AWKWARD. 

And so you guys don't think I'm a terrible person, let me explain a few things:

1. I barely knew the guy in the first place. We met at some stake activity, and he got my number and then BAM! asked me to HIS prom at HIS school.
2. This was my sophomore year of high school. And I saw him maybe once after that, if ever. 
3. It didn't make sense for him to be on a mission! He should have already gone home by that point. (As it turns out he got injured while on his mission and had to go home to heal before getting reassigned to Lissa's home mission. So I was right! He should have been finished by that point.)
4. He and his brother really do look a lot alike. And his brother being on a mission made more sense age-wise because he's younger than me.
5. I was really caught off guard and was not expecting to see this kid ever again, let alone at my friend's mission homecoming!

Okay, you Judgy McJudgersons who are tsk tsking me for not recognizing somebody I went to prom with, are you satisfied? Because my friends weren't! It took a solid hour after our meetings were over for them to stop teasing me about it. But I don't think I deserve any grief whatsoever, because the painfully intense awkwardness of the situation was punishment enough. Seriously. You ever hear the saying about the tension in the room being so thick you could cut it with a knife? It was like that. Except with awkwardness. And we were in a hallway.


And because I'm feeling awkward again, and I'm not sure how to end awkward posts about awkward things, I'm just going to awkwardly stop writing now.

*Name has been changed to protect the innocent