Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

This is the story of two separate threads of my week coming together in the most bizarre way.

Yesterday I sent a text to a number I had on my phone, thinking I was contacting Paul's niece.  It led to the following conversation.

Text from me: Is it ok if I know your amazing news?!?! Congratulations!
Text to me: Huh?
Text from me: Huh indeed. Surely you are pregnant and it wasn't a false alarm.
[pause]
Text from me: Oh my word. I think my niece changed her number. Forget everything I said.
Text to me: No problem.

[We note here that my phone is set to automatically sign my name at the end of every text.]

Ok, that was kind of embarrassing.  But also amusing.  So today I posted it on Facebook for all my friends to enjoy and to commiserate about the mis-sent messages of their lives.

Meanwhile.

I've been back and forth via Facebook message with a lady named Elizabeth Witt who works at the Garden Way Retirement Community in Eugene.  I'm scheduled to speak there next month, and she had sent me a tax-related form to fill out.

Elizabeth sent me another message today:

"Hi Dorcas! Have you have a chance to fill put the W-9? Please send back a.s.a.p. so we can get in a request for your check. we are very excited to have you here next month"

I wrote back:

"I just did it yesterday so will mail it today. My husband saw it and said, 'Why are you writing to a retirement center?" I said, "I'm putting our application in. You have to book a place way out ahead.""

She wrote:

"HA! I love it!!!!!!!!!!"

I went off to do something else and then I heard the Blip! of a message popping up. I came back and checked. It was from Elizabeth. She wrote.

"Can you call me right now? 541-111-2222
I have something EXTEMELY funny to tell you about your text"

I called immediately, wondering What in the World?

Elizabeth said, "I had the weirdest thing happen just now."

She had just finished her facebook conversation with me, then decided to read my page and see what was up in my life. She read the post about the mis-sent message and started laughing.

The activities director across the hall wondered what was so funny.

She said, "So I'm laughing hysterically and hollering to the activities director and reading your post out loud, and the maintenance man walks in and says, 'Dorcas?? Did you say Dorcas? I got the strangest text from a Dorcas yesterday, wondering if I was pregnant.'"

Un.be.liev.a.ble.

I had goose bumps up my arms by this point and was shaking my head in complete disbelief.

And I was very curious what sort of guy this was. Probably a grandpa type, in his 60s.

Elizabeth said, "He's a single guy in his 40's, a 'young' 40's, you know--an active kind of guy."

Then she added, "I'll be sure to introduce you when you come next month."

As Dave Barry used to say, "You can't make this stuff up."