Thanks to everyone who reached out after my last post, because gaining a new daughter-in-law is definitely worth celebrating. And I love, love, love having a two-way conversation with you!
Well, I might have left you all hanging with the teaser that there was more to the story. And here it is.
(If you missed it, my youngest (nickname Carpenter) took a risk over a year ago to move out of state, started a new job, then a months ago bought a house, and then popped a very important question to a very sweet girl.)
In all Carpenter’s intentions to keep the proposal a surprise, he honestly didn’t do a whole lot of planning other than arranging a date where she had the perfect excuse to get semi-dressed up and getting a photographer friend to the right spot at the right time.
He joked that there was no way she’d figure out his plans if he didn’t have any.
Well, in the celebratory aftermath of the happy couple calling to let various family members know, an interesting coincidence came to light: His brother (my middle son a.k.a. Banker) proposed to his now wife (a.k.a. CPA) on the exact same day five years earlier.
And then a few of the other parallel details came to light such as by a lake and hiding the ring box in an innocuous object he carried (picnic blanket/hammock).
I write fiction and I can’t make up some of this stuff.
Kinda like the fact my sweet grandson was born on Carpenter’s birthday.
Or that when Banker met the CPA, they were introduced by mutual friends that had no connections whatsoever to either family. Then a few weeks into dating, it came to light that HER uncle had been high school best friends and best man in the wedding of HIS uncle. And that HER mom was in the same class as HIS other uncle.
Cue the tune of “It’s a Small World” because their engagement party was like a school reunion.
Like I said, I write fiction, but even I couldn’t make up the fact I walked into the local Emergency Room on Christmas Eve for what I thought was a retinal tear…and the doctor on call turned out to be an old acquaintance from high school youth group over an hour away. And his dad had been my teaching mentor for a year.
And then there’s a family story I heard just a couple of weeks ago when my aunt and uncle were in town from ?California. Guess one of my uncle’s early jobs was as a repo man. (Gotta make a buck however you can when you’re supporting a new family!) When it came to repossessing cars that had fallen way behind on payments, he typically arrived after dark and took them off the street so as to avoid confrontations.
But he’ll never forget the night he was driving one particular car. A few blocks away from the home, a tiny voice popped up from the backseat. “Mom?”
Needless to say, my uncle whipped the car around and returned it to the delinquent owner before he got arrested for accidental kidnapping. (Although the conversation shifted to other stories before I got the chance to ask why the kid was outside alone and if the cops were called.)
I have to admit that I have an active imagination. You could say it’s sorta a requirement as an author.
But if I were to put the above truths into a story, I might get clobbered in the reviews! Ha.
Turns out there’s a fine balance between truth and fiction. Meaning I aim to make my fiction as believable as possible.
What about you? Do you have a “truth is stranger than fiction” story you’d like to share?
