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Someone Like Me

All of us have moments when we either do something good and look good in front of other people or we do something so embarrassing we pretend it never happened. It's just how it goes. No one is perfect, and we all have ups and downs. Every now and then, one of the ups happens in front of other people. This particular blog post relies on two stories of that kind.

The first story harkens back to a time when I wasn't dating anyone, before the Mild Wife and I had gotten together. I don't quite remember what the occasion was, but I remember my parents, my brother, my brother's wife, my brother's mother-in-law, and a family friend of my brother's in-laws were all there. It was quite the motley crew.

At the end of the meal, I ended up paying for it all. I don't quite remember what circumstances led to this occurrence, especially given my mom's penchant for grabbing the check before others can even see it. Regardless, this was deemed acceptable. I suspect that I owed my brother money or something, and that was the easiest way to simplify the whole money process. Either way, I ended up covering the meal.

Well, as it turned out, the family friend was quite amused by this turn of events. She went so far as to mention that she had a single daughter. Um, yeah. She not-so-subtly praised me for handling the bill, and she even went so far as to say good bye with a "bye, future son-in-law!" Now, this was not the Mild Wife's mother, so I most definitely did not become this lady's son-in-law.

The second story is in the same vein as the first, only a lot less weird. It all started when the Mild Wife and I had dinner with one of the Mild Wife's good friends. However, when we dropped her off, she invited us to come up to hang out. In particular, we could say hello to some of the folks she was staying with. These folks were technically family friends, but they were so close that they considered themselves family. The Mild Wife had met these folks before, so she was thrilled to say hello.

It was a good time, and everyone involved had a good time. We had some wine, chatted about all sorts of stuff, and shared lots of laughs. Like I said, it was a good time. In fact, we had such a good time that the friend's mom whispered to the Mild Wife, "can we find someone like Sam for [the Mild Wife's friend]?" I only heard about it after the fact, but it was still a nice boost to my ego. Like I said, sometimes you do stuff to look good in front of other people.

Now, all of that is nice, but that's not really the point of this blog post. It's all just the set up. I needed to explain those stories so that you had sufficient background knowledge to understand the amusing part. The actual point of this blog post is that sometimes, one of the devices around you will incorrectly assume that you are trying to give it a command. In that case, goofiness can happen.

In this case, the Mild Wife and I were driving and we'd turned on the GPS navigation on one of our devices. We didn't think anything of it, so we continued chatting about random things during that drive, including the stories above. We're still not entirely sure how, but the GPS just so happened to interpret the finish to that story as a command. It was very, very confused, which it announced to the world by replying:

"I'm sorry, I can't help you find someone like Sam."

The Mild Wife and I just burst out laughing. The Mild Wife, in particular, laughed for several minutes and suggested that that exchange would make a great blog post between fits of laughter. I'll let you bet the judge of that, but we were both thoroughly amused.

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