9) A Nice Hug From A Stranger

Our station partnered with The Boys and Girls Club of Tyler to host an event this past weekend called A Day For Kids. I worked our Kid's Cast booth where we allowed kids to act out 30 seconds of a news cast and we recorded it onto a DVD for them to take home. Craig called during the day to ask me which good books I'd recently read because he was at a bookstore and wanted something good to read. I suggested Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted and Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, both of which are interesting and different, and worth reading. He settled on a book called Apathy and Other Small Victories because it was shorter than the others and he wanted to increase his chances of finishing the thing. That is what I call realistic expectations.

While on the phone with Craig a familiar looking woman passed within my view with a young child. She seemed to recognize me and I could not place how I knew her. She approached the booth and began talking to Cory, a young man and a friend of mine, working the booth with the rest of us. As Cory took the child into his arms I realized the woman was his new fiancee, who I know fairly well, and that I had not congratulated her on her recent engagement.

I hung up with Craig and put my arm around Cory's Fiancee and said, "Meredith, I haven't seen you in awhile. Congratulations."
The young girl turned around and said, "I'm not Meredith." When she turned I could see that she was not Meredith, but she looked a lot like Meredith and she had with her Meredith's child, who she brought for Cory. I was confused. I froze.

Before I could think of anything to say or do Adam approached the group with a big smile on his face. Adam is our Operations Manager and close friend to Cory. He pulled the girl into a hug and said, "Man, it's great to see you. How have things been?"

The girl let herself be hugged. She said, "Things have been good. But I'm not Meredith." Adam stepped away and laughed, thinking this was some kind of joke. He took a good look at her and realized it was not Meredith, that it was in fact someone different. However, the girl looked so much like Meredith he did not know what to say. He froze.

The young girl understood the problem and said, "My name is Allison. I am Meredith's twin sister." Adam and I nodded our heads calmly as if that were the obvious answer. Adam said, "I'm sorry I hugged you." She said it was okay, that it was a nice hug from a stranger.