by Stanley Anderson » September 20th, 2006, 3:40 pm
We read Flight to the Ford aloud, and I alway love the discovery of the three stone trolls that Merry and Pippin mistake for living dangerous trolls even though it is daylight and one has a birds nest on him.
For this chapter's post theme, I suggest relating a situation or event where you mistook or misunderstood something that caused you to do or say something that in retrospect looked pretty funny or weird.
My prime example for the moment is something I posted about in the Wardrobe a while back where I had written a letter to the weekly publication "Science News" in reply to an article. After a few weeks I forgot about even having written the letter. Then, a month or so later, I was reading the issue that had just come in the mail that day and when I got to the letters section, I began reading a letter about an article from a previous issue. The letter struck me as having remarkably similar ideas to what I had thought about when I originally read the article. I remember thinking "boy, this person thinks a lot like I do". And when I got to the end of the letter, I even remember thinking "...and look -- he even has a similar name to my...OH! it IS me!" I had completely forgotten that I had written the letter and it was a very strange experience to read my own writing from the "outside" as it were.
As another example, just the other night I was waiting in a small shopping center's parking lot for another person who would be pulling into the lot with their car from quite a distance away. As they turned into the driveway of the parking lot, I waved at them to let them know I was there. But I suddenly noticed that nearby and approaching in my direction was a rather attractive woman riding a bicycle. Even as I waved I thought "Oh, no -- she'll think I'm waving at her". And sure enough, with a big smile she waved back and came riding up to me and said "Are you from Martini Blues?" (it's a bar/food/music place somewhere in the shopping center). She sounded a bit tipsy and I suspect she was expecting to meet someone there. Fortunately about that time the person I was waiting for drove up and I was able to say, "uh, no, I was waving to this person here -- sorry". Well, it was clear that we were both pretty embarrassed, and she quickly went on, but it was a bit awkward to say the least.
Any others?
--Stanley
…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.