A Series of Unfortunate (Senior) Events…

Yesterday, Greg and I drove to church together.  It was Sunday, so that probably doesn’t sound so strange to you.  But in truth, we seldom ride together to church.  You see, Greg sings in the choir and on choir Sundays, he has to be there an hour and a half early so I come along later.  On other Sundays, sometimes he decides not to go or I decide not to go.  In total, we probably ride to church together four or five Sundays during the nine month church year.

But yesterday, we rode to Brookfield together.  We sat next to each other through a wonderful service and afterwards drifted over to coffee hour.  At coffee hours, Greg and I rarely talk to the same people at the same time.  Yesterday was no exception.  So, in the middle of a conversation, I glanced up to see Greg, in his coat, leaving the church.  “Look at that,” I said to the person I was talking to, “Greg forgot that we came to church together and he’s leaving.  I’d better go, too.”  Of course, it took another five minutes or so for me to say my goodbyes and to scoot out the door.

I looked down the street.  Sure enough, Greg’s car was gone.  I had to laugh. I mean, I didn’t blame him.  I figured he was on cruise control and just took off.  So I did the logical thing.  I got a ride home with Amy.

Once in Amy’s car, I gave Greg a call to tell him not to worry because I had gotten a ride home.  The call went directly to voice mail.  I put the phone away and chatted with Amy for a while.  All of a sudden I remembered that my phone was on mute because, duh!, we had been in church.  In those few minutes, I had missed a call from Greg who had missed my call because his phone was also on mute because, duh!, we had been in church.  However, he didn’t leave a message.  So about five minutes from our house, I called him back.  This time he answered.  I won’t tell you exactly what he said because your kids might read this, but long story short, he had gone to the package store to get a bottle of wine to take to our friends Rita and Michelle’s house.  We were invited there for brunch after church to see their new house, remember??

Greg came home and collected me.  We got to Rita and Michelle’s a little late but we got there.  Our friends Mary Ann and Rob, who were going to follow us to the house because they forgot to bring the directions, were already there having taken Greg’s directions with them.  Believe it or not, though I forgot I was going there, I had actually printed out the directions and had them with me.  Ultimately, we had no trouble finding the house.

Over brunch, as we were laughing about this Series of Unfortunate (Senior) Events, Rob confessed that he had seen me get into Amy’s car and drive away but didn’t think to stop me.  Greg neglected to tell me he was going over to the package store to get some wine.  And me, I just plain old forgot even though I had the printed directions on me.

We had a lovely brunch and got quite a few laughs out of our misadventures knowing that there are going to be plenty more of them in our futures.  In the end, it all worked out.  But you have to laugh, because, friends, if you can’t laugh about such things, what’s the use of going on?

Here's a photo of Rita's beautiful dog, Jessie, who is also a Senior and can sympathize.