Things Are Not Always As They Seem

Here are two quick examples:

A couple weeks ago I drove the girls to Ogden to go shopping for new bedspreads. On the way through Brigham City, Morgan and I were having a philosophical discussion about why someone famous (allegedly) beat his girlfriend. It got to the point where we were being silly about it so as I was driving I gave her a little pretend punch to the side of her head.

Well, I didn't really think about how it would look to anyone else until the truck behind me started swerving and honking. I was horrified when I realized that he thought I had really hit her.

I couldn't think of any way to let him know we were just kidding, so we did the only thing I could think of: I had her pretend to hit me back. Once. (Just once, so we were even. He couldn't have a problem with that, I figured.)

This was right about the time that we decided that our family needed our own reality show.

(Or maybe a reality check is more what we need.)


And....

Last Saturday Ally had a soccer game. She wasn't quite dressed when we needed to leave so I told her to hurry and get ready and then I would drive Austin's friend home and come back and get her. I also told her to be watching for me when I pulled up (or else).

Well, I dropped off the friend and talked to his mom for a few minutes. I pulled around the corner and was about a half a block away from our house when I saw Ally trotting up the street in her soccer uniform. I thought, "Good, she really was listening and is trying to make things a little easier on me."

And then I saw her go to get into a car that was parked up the street about 100 yards ahead of me. She got all the way up to it and grabbed the door handle. I could not figure out what in the world was going on. I wondered if she thought I wasn't coming back and she had called someone else for a ride or something like that. And I have to admit, I wasn't thrilled.

But, as quickly as she went to get into the car, she got away from the car and started running toward me with a funny look on her face. (Luckily she saw me or she would have had to run clear home.)

It was then that I noticed that the car in front of me was identical to ours.

Now really, what are the odds? In the year and a half we've had this new Pilot, I've only seen one other that is this same dark gray color. Anywhere, even on vacation. Now one just happens to be parked a half a block away from our house? Crazy.

So she jumped into our car, looking more than a little freaked out and as I drove past the other Pilot the guy got out and started taking a little girl out of the back, probably to look at the horses in the pasture they were parked in front of.

I realized then that I was heading the wrong direction for the game, so I turned the car around in the driveway directly across the street from them and rolled my window down to make some comment like "Nice car." but Ally told me to put it back up and just get out of there. I have no idea what that guy thought was going on with us.

It wasn't very funny to Ally at the time, but now it's hilariously funny to me.

I thought I was the only person stuff like this happened to.

I wonder if it's hereditary.