Tuesday is my busy day. It’s a continual rush from one place to another so I never really have time to use my cell phone, which usually just sits in my coat pocket on silent. This particular week, in between one of my classes I checked my phone and saw that I'd missed 3 calls from mom. Kinda weird, but my class was starting and I didn't have time to call her back just yet. Right after class ended, I got my phone back out and to my surprise, I had thirteen more missed calls from various members of my family! I began to worry that something was wrong, so I quickly checked my voicemails. My little sister didn’t leave any details, but just told me to call her back ASAP, so I did and hurriedly asked if everything was alright. Her response bewildered me: "No, everything is NOT alright. You are engaged and didn't even tell us!" It took a second for these words to register in my mind. Uh... what? Did you just say what I think you said? I was dumbfounded. "What are you talking about?" She assured me that she wasn't going to fall for any of my cover-up stories and that I had better fess up and tell the family about this girl that I was going to marry. Naturally my mind is racing, and I'm trying desperately to come up with anything that would have given her this idea. After trying to convince her for several minutes that I really don’t know what she is talking about, she asks me if I know Wendy Peppercorn (name changed to protect the innocent). I replied "Oh yeah, we were friends from freshman year. I think she just got back from a mission in Hong Kong; but how do you know her?"
My cousin Nicole was also serving a mission in the Hong Kong, and I had told her to keep an eye out for my old friend Wendy. Sure enough, they ran into each other and soon became good friends. I had written Wendy a letter or two while she was still abroad, and my cousin thought that we must have feelings for each other. When she got home a few months later, she tells a bunch of her mission friends that she is engaged to a boy named Spencer from her freshman year. Naturally my cousin assumes this is me, when in actuality it was my freshman roommate who also happened to be named Spencer! (Crazy, right?) So my cousin sends out an email saying: "family, you're never going to believe this, one of my old mission friends just got engaged to our cousin Spencer!" She sends the message to 29 members of our extended family--but ironically I did not get the email and had no idea until my little sister called me up demanding to know everything. Naturally this created quite a stir amidst my relatives and I got several calls that night congratulating me, chewing me out, or asking for more details about my fiancée. It was a big hilarious mess, but to top it all off, I never even got invited to the real wedding?
