Sunday, April 7, 2013

What's wrong with this message?

On Friday, our former bishop and neighbor, OJ Hansen, retired from his job of 34 years. As friends and ward members, a good 20 of us gathered at Red Robin after the Priesthood session last night to celebrate with him. His job required him to travel A LOT! His wife, Vickie, was alone, more than she wasn't. In fact, about a month ago, the little kids and I ran into them out on a walk. I about died when I saw OJ with her.

As a gift, I had purchased him a gift card for a dinner out at a restaurant of his choice. I also got him a retirement card, that I signed while Jared was at the session.

This is more or less what I wrote:

Wow! 34 years--that's amazing!! Congratulations! Now that you have all this extra time, take your wife out to dinner. And maybe we can go on some walks together.

Love,
Jenn and Houghlings

Did you catch my "mistake"? O.my.gosh. I am just thanking my lucky stars for my OCD-ness, that I actually went back and proofread my message. When I discovered my error, I about fell off my chair in embarrassment. I actually felt the heat rise in my face even with no one else around me at the time.

I had unintentionally solicited the Bishop to go on walks with me! That is NOT what I had meant but it was so mortifying to see what my suggestion COULD mean. I panicked as I tried to figure out how to remedy this without destroying the card all together.

So I went back and put an editing caret in between "we" and "can" and wrote "four" above it so that it now read, "And maybe we ^four^ can go on some walks together." Not 100% fixed especially because it wouldn't hide the mistake, but better than had been.

Of course, my conscience required I had to confess my innocent slip-up to Jared, Vickie and OJ. But we all got a good laugh (several, in fact) over it, my face turning deeper shades of red than my hair the whole night. Ahhh, the memories.

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