My family has a well-documented ice cream problem. If we feel too happy, someone will suggest ice cream, and if we feel too unhappy, someone will suggest ice cream. As the matriarch of the household, I have to keep everybody at about a seven on the happiness scale so that we will not get ice cream. The other day, though, the kids were too cute, and I magically had dinner on the table when my husband got home, and somehow when he entered the door, I did not bare my teeth at him as an expression of my Stay-At-Home-Mom Rage, which is totally a thing, and we just ended up way too happy. DANGGIT. We went to get ice cream.

Things were going as you’d expect: Adelaide wants chocolate, will be furious if anyone else gets chocolate because she doesn’t understand that there is more than one cup of chocolate ice cream in the universe at any given moment, and Greer wants “blue,” a vague request that is not always possible to obtain, but conveniently, Greer is unclear on the color blue and generally good-natured, so chocolate or vanilla will do in a pinch. We pull up to the drive thru of our favorite place to get ice cream, and it’s there that things get squirrelly.

Before I tell you what went down, I need you to know that people always think my husband is famous. My husband Luke looks exactly like Aaron Rodgers, the football player, who strangely has a brother named Luke who plays basketball with my brother. So Aaron and I have brothers who play basketball together and he and my husband share the same face and a few of those people are named Luke. It’s complicated. Aaron Rodgers’s last girlfriend was a super-babe named Olivia Munn, and my Luke is married to me, and I like t-shirts and forgetting to shower. Life is unfair sometimes.

Anyway, people always think he’s Aaron Rodgers or someone else famous, and Luke lets them think it and sometimes signs autographs. We don’t play cards, so we have to have fun other ways. Also hence the ice cream.

We pull up to the drive thru, and there are two girls there to give us our ice cream and take our payment. One of the girls shouts, violently, “OH MY GOSH I THOUGHT YOU WERE BRAD PITT AND I WAS LIKE ‘WHAT THE FRENCH TOAST!’” Except y'all know she didn't say French toast. No one is sure what to do with this loud, strange proclamation, not my pastor husband Luke with the Brad Pitt face, not my pastor husband’s wife, also known as me, sitting clearly in the passenger seat, and certainly not the girl who scream-curse-flirted with a pastor man in a minivan. She scampers off, wisely, and I am giving myself a pep talk: “You will not laugh, Caroline! You will hold it together!” So I bite my cheek and think about sad puppies, while the remaining girl fumbles to take our card and hand us the receipt. “Will you sin this?” she says. “I mean sign this! Will you sign this?” Luke takes the receipt, and silently sins it, I mean signs it, and we drive off. 

I mean obviously this was the highlight of my week, a story with all the essential elements: profanity, a pastor, ice cream, and me married to a guy that looks like Brad Pitt. I was a happy camper, and so was Luke, because, hello, he’s pumped about his face.

Our ice cream was extra delicious, and the whole way home we chatted about the hilarity of the strange exchange, how much more embarrassing it would have been if they’d realized he was the new pastor in town, how people always feel compelled to censor themselves around pastors but how it was kind of centering to have someone curse-flirt with your husband. Oh, and we really loved the subconscious slip of “sin” verses “sign.” Brilliant.

But it also made me remember that I have lots of things to say about my husband, the pastor. Things I need the world to know. Things I will tell you next time. BAH HA HA I AM FULL OF INTRIGUE. Stay tuned for Part 2. Bye.