Now I'M the Infamous One?

           You know how it’s fun to discover that an ancestor of yours was a notorious bank robber or a gun-slinging madame?

          Well, now I've got to do ALL our genealogy so our kids won’t, because now I’M the one I don’t want them to read about!  Here’s how it happened:

I signed up for a family history webinar and guess who was running it? The granddaughter of (let’s rename her) Ethel Smick! Ethel was on my committee when I was a Relief Society President back in the 1990s. And it just so happened I was on the phone with her when St. Bob (See? This is really HIS fault) called with a very racy, flirtatious phone call. Husbands do this.

I thought I had put Ethel on hold, but no! She was only on conference, so she’d heard the entire thing, finally interrupting with, “Uh, I’m still here. I thought I’d better speak up before this went any further.”

Well, of course I died inside, made a flustered apology, hung up, and vowed to move away in the Witness Protection Program. It is truly one of my most embarrassing moments.

          And now, here was her granddaughter, saying, “My grandmother always shared such amazing stories with me…” at which point Bob, watching along with me, muttered, “There was once this Relief Society President…”

I even included the story (with fake names) in one of my novels. But here it was again, popping up to haunt me. I held my breath, waiting for the granddaughter to relay the story, to show the entertaining sorts of details you might uncover about your ancestors.

Finally, the segment ended without this humiliating detail, and I breathed a sigh of Relief. Not Relief Society, just relief.

You can find my novels and my Youtube Mom videos right here.