We'd like to buy a vowel (or a moment of silence)

Last Thursday we flew from Birmingham to Orlando on Southwest, proud of ourselves for having found a ticket for under $100 that happened to fly from Bham (where we were visiting Caldwell and Co.) to Orlando (where our family was vacationing). As we waited to board the plane, we glanced around at the folks in the terminal and made mental notes of which people we wouldn't mind chatting with for the next 2 hours and which people we would definitely avoid buckling up with. Southwest has an open seating policy, first come first serve, so by the time we boarded the plane the only seats remaining were in the back, right next to several people that we had just minutes before noted we should NOT sit next to. Mission failed.

Our seat partners for the trip were two young girls, Mary Jane (as we'll call her - not her real name) who was 9 and her sister (who's name escapes me - we'll call her Delilah) who was 7. They had very strong southern accents. Their mother sat in the row in front of us. The rest of their group were three rows in front of us. We had seen their group in the terminal - they were a bunch of frantic mothers who could not keep up with their kids, very talkative and had never learned the meaning of "inside voices" (which in turn their children had failed to learn as well).

Shortly after take off, we heard Mary Jane's mother asking the people around her why they were flying to Orlando. The businessman next to her seemed as perturbed as we were, so we popped in our Ipod earphones and didn't wait to hear the answer. The inflight drinks arrived minutes later, however, and we were forced to shut off the Ipod for a few seconds. That was all Mary Jane needed. Sounding just like her mother, she asked us why we were going to Orlando. We explained. No sooner had we finished than Mary Jane began to tell us why THEY were going to Orlando, which we realized was the point of her question all along.

Turns out her mom had been on Wheel of Fortune a few weeks before, and had won a significant amount of money, along with a trip to Disney World. Mary Jane's sister leaned over and informed us that it was $16,500 that her mother had won, and that Vanna White is very pretty. Delilah didn't talk much, we discovered, but when she did it was always worth hearing. Mary Jane continued - her mom had made it all the way to the bonus round, but the word was a hobby that her mother had never heard of, so she failed to get the bonus cash. "Plus the only letter they gave her was G." We're curious what the hobby was.

Teasing, we told Mary Jane we didn't belive her. Mistake. In a flash she leaned over the seat in front of us, whispered something to her mom, and within seconds produced a newspaper clipping with a picture of her mother and a short paragraph detailing her recent Wheel of Fortune win. The newspaper was the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Mary Jane's sister leaned forward - "She is in 4 other newspapers too, would you like to see those?" Apparently they were prepared for doubters like us.

We asked if they were from Birmingham. They were not. They were from Cookeville, TN. Ah, Cookeville. We had just driven through their a week before with our sister. Mary Jane was suprised.

"You've heard of Cookeville?"

"Yeah, but we just drove through it."

"So did you stop at Restaurant Row?"

We had never heard of restaurant row. We could only imagine what it was. Mary Jane didn't wait for us to guess. She began to list for us all of the restaurants that were located in Cookeville. The number of restaurants reached around 35, and we returned to our Ipod.

For the rest of the flight, ever 5 minutes or so Mary Jane would yank the earphone out of our right ear and tell us the 2 or 3 more restaurants she had remembered were on Restaurant Row. We think the final count totaled around 200. This was one heckuva long Row. Our favorite restaurant was Toots, where apparently you can dine in old Southwest airplane seats and if you order a pound of hot dogs and fries, your kids eat free. Mary Jane tried to explain how Toots had to change their name because of problems with Hooters, but we got lost in that story and we're fairly sure she was making it up anyway.

At this point Mary Jane's sister nudged her and said "You sure do talk a lot." We couldn't have agreed more.

The flight attendant passed by and asked the girls if they needed anything else, maybe some more Dr. Pepper? Delilah's eyes got huge, and she nodded, then turned to us and excitedly whispered "This place has free refills!!"

In front of us, we saw the girls' mom opening a Bible and showing the man next to her. We heard her explain that this was a special Bible because the words of Jesus were written in red. The man seemed interested, and asked how she knew those where actually the words of Jesus. "Because they are in red," she responded. Of course.

Mary Jane asked us if we flew much. We told her we had, and listed all of the countries we had visited. She was impressed, and told us that she too was a world traveler. In fact, her daddy was a preacher man, and he traveled all over the place and often took here with him. We asked her where a preacher man from Cookeville, TN traveled, and she said she had been all over the world to places like Memphis, Graceland, Gatlinburg and Dollywood. It was our turn to be impressed.

The plane landed. Mary Jane and her friends 3 rows up chattered back and forth about Disney World as we waited to deboard the plane. Most of the passengers looked annoyed, and Mary Jane's mom finally tried to quiet the girls down. Somwhere between the newspaper clipping and the red letter Bible, however, the businessman in front of us had seen the light, so he quickly responded to Mary Jane's mother and said "Ah hell, let the kids talk. None of the adults on this plane are talking because they don't have anything intelligent to say, but these kids are just excited because they're going to see Mickey."

As we left the plane, Mary Jane shouted to us that there was also a Baskin Robbins on Restuarant row, but she wasn't sure if that counted as a restaurant.

Make that 201 restaurants.

It's a small world, after all

You just never know who you might run into these days.

For instance, on Saturday Murray and the Sleuth went to the grocery store. We were waiting in line at the deli counter, stuck behind a family with two parents, three shopping carts and about 4 or 5 kids (depending on who had taken off to find something new in teh store that they hoped mom and dad would buy). They finally finished, and the deli lady looked at us to assist us in our sandwich meat shopping. As we began to place our order, we noticed that the family that was in front of us had left one of their more important items - a kid. As we completed our request for honey maple turkey and simultaneously wondered what to do with the lost little boy, a woman came running over from behind the fresh bread, yelling at us and the deli lady that it was in fact her turn in line. We disagreed, and so informed her. Apparently, the little boy did NOT belong to the family in front of us, but was in fact this lady's own boy, who she had left as a "deposit" in line to secure her place in the deli meat queue. We thought that was lame. She thought we had cut in line. Deli lady thought we should get some cheese with our meat.

We were in line again today, this time at Office Depot. After about 10 minutes of waiting, the copy center was ready for us, and we for it. As we stepped up to get our copies, a woman who had been in line behind us scooted around and began to order in front of us. The Office Depot lady look helplessly at us, hoping we might intervene and assert our Constitutionally guaranteed "line rights". We were about to put our foot down when Murray realized that the lady who had just cut in front of us was the same lady from the deli line at the grocery store the other day. The boy was nowhere to be seen. She probably had him saving a place in a line somewhere else.

Some call that karma. We call it two times in 4 days that that lady was a jerk.

We tell you that story of strange meetings as a preface to this one. We met this guy at church last weekend named James Poole. He was a nice fella, and we enjoyed talking to him. We discussed the usual - hometown, current jobs, where we went to school, etc. When we mentioned Covenant we noticed in his eyes that something registered. "You just graduated recently?" he asked.

"A couple years ago - 2004."

"Ohh. You didn't happen to know Tricia Williams did you?"

We couldn't believe it! Yeah, we knew Tricia. She was only like one of our good friends and one of our sister's closest friends.

"How do you know Tricia?"

He seemed a little sheepish, but he responded anyway, "Uhh, we dated a little in high school.'

"Really?"

"Yeah, sort of. We met at a Young Life camp and kept in contact for a long time. Saw each other on ocassion at different Young Life events. You know, the summer camp fling kinda dating relationship thing."

"uhhuh."

"We had it pretty bad for each other. She sure was a firecracker. But I guess we were young and a little wild."

"Yeah, Tricia is pretty wild. So you were really diggin her chili, huh?"

"Pretty much. We called each other boyfriend and girlfriend for a while, but then after a year in college things kinda ended on a sour note."

We couldn't believe this! First, we didn't even know that in a Former Life Tricia had lived the Risqu'e Life with a Young Life fling. Second, the chances of us meeting him were about as slim as getting cut in line twice by the same person in one week at two different stores. We were a bit dubious of the whole story, and told James so, but James convinced us it was true, and as proof, the next day he sent us a link to his Flickr account.

Sure enough, there is Tricia. Underneath her picture are the words "My Ex." A little creepy, we must admit. But hey, we met a friend of Tricia!

Just goes to show you never know who you might run in to.