Ho Boy.

I am gonna write this one in plain ol' black. Cause it was a BLACK moment for me at the time. Now it is kind of okay but I am still upset a bit. Alright. So. The night was Wednesday and I was there helping out my sister at the Halloween family fun night at the new elementary school inbetween Iona and the middle school. I was to be a fortune teller along side my sis, at six. Unfortunately I got there half an hour late and flustered, worried about being there so late. But there I am in all my fortune telling garb, and let me say, walking through a school hall filled with kids dressed up for Halloween next to their parents, I drew a lot of attention to my six foot self wearing a shiny silver do rag on my head and goth style clothes and makeup.
So there I am uncomfortable, and worried. THat should set my mental state. So then as I am just chatting with Jana out in the hall at our "station", an older gentleman and his beautiful wife (and she was very pretty) were strolling by with their kids kind of swirling and bouncing around their feet with excitement. He looks at me and slows down. He obviously recognizes me, and then does the same to Jana, but she talks to him first, so I figure she knows him already. Me? No. I do not know him, although he looks a bit familiar, and by his body language, I know I am supposed to know him. But I don't. Of course he stops to talk, and I try to play it off that I know him. But I am thinking wildly in my mind, "where do I know him? How do I know him? Is he a customer at the store? I just don't know. Be smooth and get through it without offending." Well, then the turn of events. For fun he decides to sit at my table to get his palm read. Oh no! I am supposed to know him. Don't know him from Adam. One slip and oblivion.

So first thing I say is, " you have a beautiful wife." Large reaction then ensues which I can't remember that well, but it is best described as kind of a wave crashing over me. But instead of water, it was more like energy from a gasp, chuckle, someone saying "Ohp!" all wrapped in one.
Oblivion.
They are now chuckling, I am red from not knowing what I just said, and trying to get through A STUPID FORTUNE TELLING ASSIGNMENT THAT I AM NO GOOD AT! Ahem.
The rest of the story.
After his reading, they still kind of hover around me and Jana just talking. A little girl walks up to them and starts talking. I recognize the little girl and figure out who the family is. Turns out the "wife" is a mom whose husband just died about a couple years ago. The "husband" is a guy in my stake, that visits our ward, and he knows my parents pretty well. Thus him knowing me, but me not knowing him that well.
But still, he knows I was just playing that I knew him. And that is embarrassing. Very embarrassing. It is important to me that people feel like I know who they are, and that I always get their name right (names are important) and that I don't make them feel bad in anyway. I hate to make people feel bad. So now he knows. And I feel very bad that I didn't recognize him.
I get through the night and meander home.
Oh it gets better. In bed later on that night Dave and I were discussing how it went that night. I tell him about my plight and how I was embarrassed. I said," They just looked so happy together, and all those little kids swirling about, I thought they were just a big happy family. They were just together." So he asks," Were they together?" And then it came crashing into my mind. He was single, too.
"Dave? Did his wife die?"
" Umm, yeah."
"When?"
"A few months ago."
Oblivion.
Remember what I had told him in his reading? First thing I said was " You have a beautiful wife." I was talking about the lady right there. But I was suddenly petrified that he thought I was talking about his recently deceased wife, because I was supposed to know who he was, after all. At anyrate. I was mortified. I get worried if I get a name wrong. Let alone a situation like this.
Well, it has a happy ending. I called a relative of the "wife" to get her number so I could apologize the next morning. She reassured me of there not being a problem, and that they were actually dating. They have people thinking they are married all the time, and that they weren't offended in the least. Thank heavens. So that was my embarrassing Kirsten moment. Thanks for enduring to the end of this blog! Quite a little saga. Ho boy.