First Impressions

On Martin Luther King Day last year, Mike and I went on our first date. (See blog entry dated 9/16/10.) Actually, whether or not it's our actual first date is up for debate. I went with the mindset that Mike had told me about hiking at Ape Caves as a fun singles activity. He went with the mindset that he wanted to get to know me better and spend some one-on-one time together. He subliminally convinced me his idea was better by a huge smile and an awesome hug when I got out of the car. The memory of that first impression makes me smile every time.

But speaking of first impressions, yesterday, Mike and I went to meet his new home teaching family after church. He hasn't been assigned a partner yet so I've been filling in. We took over some muffins and had a lovely visit. Afterwards, he and I walked out the door, followed by the family. As we made our way down the stairs, I felt a little, well, breezy. I felt my back and realized that my entire zipper from stem to stern had split wide open. My first thought was, "How embarrassing!" My second thought was, "How long has it been like that?!?" Because I had not only arrived late to Sunday School and sat at the front, I had later taught the lesson to the entire Young Women.

When Mike could stop laughing, he assured me that there's no way that the zipper was split open at church, because someone would have commented on it. That provided me some peace of mind until this morning, when I was cleaning up some things and saw one of my old driver's licenses--the one where there's a piece of broccoli in between my two front teeth. I got that picture taken at the very end of the day--just before the DMV closed. I'd had broccoli salad for lunch about 6 hours before that. During the course of the afternoon, I had met with friends, worked at the office, gone to a class, and greeted the DMV lady and no one--no one--had mentioned the fact that there was a huge green mass lodged between my teeth. Not sure if they were embarrassed or polite or just thought I wanted it that way.

Anyway, I had to live with that picture until just recently and I'm going to have to live with the mortification of a first impression where I revealed more of myself than I intended.