Wherein I Am That Person

Husband and I traveled back to my childhood over the weekend, visiting my dad and his sweet wife and getting away from the skyscrapers and traffic noise of Small Town. You may think I'm exaggerating but our skyscraper is six stories high, and if you have the windows open on a summer weekend, you can hear a boatload of camper traffic headed for the city lake.

Boy#1 and Lovely Girl escaped their own Significantly Larger Town to join us for this trip down memory lane and the majority of my sentences began "When I was a kid..." (...this creek was a lot deeper; it was much farther from the house to the barn; Older Sister and I did ALL THE CHORES; etc.)

We walked to the mailbox (this time to get steps on our Fitbits rather than the mail), slept in the bedroom where I slept as a teenager, and leaned over the fence to see if we could catch a glimpse of the feral sheep my brother keeps as pets. Sadly, we did not see any fleeces that rivaled Shrek in sheer bulk.

The most memorable moment, though, came during Sunday morning church when, during a quiet moment, a cell phone rang several pews behind us.

"Whoops!" I thought. "That sure was embarrassing for someone."

So that I wouldn't be guilty of being that person, I reached down to turn off my own ringer. Unfortunately, sometime during the four-hour trip between the House on the Corner and the farm, I had put my phone into my purse upside down. Instead of grabbing it by the top corner as I normally do, I grabbed it by the bottom half.

You know where this is going, right? Straight to Siri. And while Siri could hear the sermon, she couldn't hear it quite well enough.

"I'M SORRY. I'M NOT SURE WHAT YOU SAID THERE, MOMQUEENBEE."

Yes.

In case anyone in the sanctuary had not been able to pinpoint where the Siri shout came from, my phone j'accuse-d me to the entire congregation.

Boy#1 immediately sent a note down the pew. "Most embarrassing moment in this church since we dropped that Matchbox car."

He was right: Until now, the low point on our church disruption barometer had been when one of my darling toddlers dropped a toy car and that car somehow miraculously missed every single foot to vrreeeeeeeeee its way to the front, only stopping when it hit the carpet in front of the communion rail. I'll never forget the look on the preacher's face as he tried to identify the noise.

Anyway, I'm recovering from the embarrassment to the point that when I was shooting the photos for this morning's illustrations I was amused by the things Siri suggested I ask her. Who is Barack Obama? Look up my videos from my last trip to New York City? I don't think so. Instead I'll leave you with the reaction from the Marie Antoinette action figure given to me by a dear friend.

Off with my head.