You know you've done something right (wrong?) when your kids react seriously to one of your hilarious childhood stories...
Case in Point? Well, Story in point I guess...
I used to work at a Theatre. Not a theater - you see, a theater is a place where you pay too much to see a movie that has been polished to perfection (or imperfection) and wash it down with popcorn and soda... a Theatre is someplace where you pay 4 times as much for the ticket, starve until intermission then chug down your $3 water bottle, and have about a 50% chance that there will be an actor who is having an off day...
I was a higher class usher...
But one week I had sprained my ankle and could not handle taking patrons (yeah, at the theater you're just a customer... but Theatre has "patrons") to their seats. My boss decided we'd do something a little different and sat me on a chair where I greeted each patron with a winning smile, tore off their ticket stub and then handed the ticket to the next in a line of about 4 ushers, introducing them with "and Shawn will take you to your seat..." His name really was Shawn... and all was going really well until I looked at the end of the line and realized that (although I had met her... and worked with her earlier that week) I had completely blanked on the new girl's name. Completely.
Rather than admitting defeat I proceeded through the line... "and Tim here will now show you to your seats" (with the winning smile... always the winning smile!)
Shawn looked at me... glanced over his shoulder... looked at me again...
"Tim? their seats please..." (as I force the tickets into Shawn's hand)
and so on and so forth throughout the next 1/2 hour... making up different names each time... hoping I guess to eventually hit on the right name?
It was hi-freakin'-larious... and rather ingenious if I must say so myself.
And apparently - I do have to say so myself... because when I told the Veggie-Teen my story... he just looked at me with a blank stare and asked why on earth I didn't just own up and ask her name...
Yeah... right... that requires a certain maturity that even now I don't have.
Given the same situation - I'd do exactly the same thing today...
Except instead of starting with "Tim" - Shawn would have been called "Donatello"...
