In other news.

I caught this today on a blog I'd visited for the first time:

Drunk man stumbles into wrong house, is treated to soup

The 50-year-old man returned to what he thought was his home and climbed into bed and went to sleep. But he was eight miles away from his residence. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry," the homeowners recall him saying. "By the way, you have a very comfortable bed." The family told cops to give the intruder their soup, cookies and spare ribs.

The blurb reminded me instantly of the story of my three great aunts, Oni, Mary and Lucy, who were visiting us in sleepy, small town Iowa back when I was little.

One day while we were out, the Great Aunts Three left the house and took a walk down our street.  I don't remember why -- it may have been to do a little shopping, as we lived right up the block from Jenson's grocery store, where I regularly frequented on behalf of my metspapa, who would send his grade-school grandson to buy $2 lottery tickets (and where I made fast friends with the ladies behind the deli counter, who'd sneak me double helpings of mashed potatoes* when I'd scrape together enough change to buy a pint). 

Anyway, after winding their way back up Rainbow Drive, they walked in the front door and found a little old lady watching television in the living room.  Wondering who this person was and what she was about, they proceeded to chat, after a limited fashion -- they spoke precious little English.  The stranger on the couch was very sweet, and they spent a bit of time around the dining room table as she served them coffee and cookies. Having been in the States visiting for a very short while, Oni and Lucy were rather less than familiar with our neighborhood. So they had no idea who this woman was, or why she was there at all while no one else was at home, or why she was acting like she owned the place.

They also had no idea that the living room and dining room looked nothing like the way they left it, that they had in fact wandered in through a door two houses down from ours, that they were the uninvited guests they assumed their host to be, and that, in fact, this woman did own the place.

The Aunts discovered their error when one of them, feeling a nagging little suspicion that something wasn't quite right, spotted an enormous crucifix on the wall and realized, to her mortification, that they were in the wrong house. Rather than confess her mistake, she conspired rapidly in Armenian with her sisters and explained to our neighbor, inclining her head to the cross, that they had come to pray for my metsmama.

And that's exactly what happened next.

How hilarious it must have been, the four of them sitting at the dinner table, all sharing the same silent question: "What are you doing in my house?"  And our neighbor, to just sit down these two unannounced, foreign visitors and start feeding them -- well, I suspect that's not exactly how it would have played out in Boston.

*Yeah, that's right.  When I had money burning a whole in my pocket, I wasn't raiding the candy store -- I'd go straight for those mashed potatoes and gravy.  I was a weird kid.

Comments

[vonnie]

this is the gratest post derek! and i really identify with the mashed potatoes. seems like we could feed the whole world if we could get everyone hooked on them. the very best tasting food, and what a comfort!

[sarah]

hey, mashed potatoes are fantastic! when i missed thanksgiving last year, my grandad proposed a toast in my honor...with mashed potatoes and gravy. :)