Tuesday, September 30, 2008

My Wife Got Picked Up at the Playground

One of the challenges of being a new stay-at-home mother is meeting people to hang out with. For several months, my wife struggled to meet other mothers with kids our son's age.
 
Recently, though, she's been a little more suave.
 
<warning bell #1: how convenient the brochure>
 
On Sunday, we took our kid to our neighborhood park, the local hangout and meet market for young families and dog owners. We met a woman at the park who had two sons, two and three years old, who had moved here weeks ago from L.A. They struck up a conversation while my kid shovelled gravel on me. My wife and this woman exchanged phone numbers and email addresses. Her contact info was on a brochure she just happened to have on her. <ring! ring!>
 
As we walked home from the park, my wife was proud of herself for "picking up" a new friend. "Look at me!", she beamed. We read the brochure. It was a relatively benign piece of "collateral" from Primerica. Some financial planner/life insurance thing. <warning bell #2>
 
Ring! Ring! The woman called tonight to see if my wife wanted to meet her at the park one day... and also if she and her husband could come over to our place to discuss their financial planning business. <warning bell #3: sales call, anyone?> My wife tried hard to get out of it and managed to relocate our "financial planning meeting" to the park.
 
Suspicious, my wife hopped on all-knowing Google. First, she found the woman's husband. His high school alumni bio (who has a high school alumni bio?) mentions that they met while attending Brigham Young, where she majored in fashion design. <warning bell #3: from Mormon fashion design to financial planner?>. His bio mentioned that his wife owns a modeling agency. <warning bell #4 !!!>
 
Naturally, my wife followed the lead. We'll be damned if those models, billed as being "very reliable", don't look like call girls. <warning klaxon: uh WOOOO gah! A Morman fashion-designing financial planner and madam?>
 
Next, my wife Googled the woman's name. The result? She's a stripper! YouTube? Check - she's on there. Stripping. So now we've both seen entirely too much of our new neighbor and future financial planner. And it's not like this was youthful indiscretion: the photos and videos were dated "2007".
 
The moral of the story: be careful who you pick up at the playground.
 
So tell me in the comments: what do we do? Do we call and bail? Do we just not show up? Do we go and see how long we can keep a straight face?

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