Laughing at Myself

Usually I have a hard time laughing at myself, but today Brent and I had a good, hard laugh about a naive mistake I made.

Today when I was walking into Costco, I noticed a woman walking out who had a big black smudge on her forehead.

I thought, "Oh dear. When that poor woman gets home and looks in the mirror, she's going to think, 'Why didn't anyone tell me I had a huge smudge on my face?!"'

But then, as I walked through the store I saw other women with this strange black mark, so I thought, "There must be a booth where they are offering free samples of some strange beauty product.'

As I continued through the store, I saw another woman who didn't have the mark and thought, "Ah, see she didn't get a free sample. When they offer me one, I'm not going to get it either." However, I never saw the booth, checked out, went on with my day, and never thought anything of it. Until Brent came home and I told him the story.

"The weirdest thing happened today," I said, "It was like from a sitcom." And I told him the story. I didn't get  through more than one sentence when he said, "It's Ash Wednesday."

Boy, did we laugh.

How dense can I be? Well let me just say that I don't remember ever in my life seeing someone observe Ash Wednesday. Maybe I have, but not that I remember. Brent says he has only seen people observe it since moving to Houston. I guess my other two Ash Wednesdays in Houston must have been spent at home-- or in stores where the less-devout shop. (Which could be true since today I went to Walmart after Costco, and there was not an ash to be seen. I doubt there's a correlation, but since I didn't see anyone outside of Costco with the mark, it did support my free-sample theory.)

Ah well, it was all worth a good laugh!