Great Scott!

Ever have one of those morning epiphanies, where you wake up with a thought that’s brilliant or—in this case—mortifying?

Maybe it’s just me.

Sometimes there’ll be a song running through my head on repeat. By the time I’m out of the (hey, we’re all adults here) bathroom, I’ll have figured out what trivial part of the day before had made my brain select that tune.

One morning I awoke to the theme to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” I used to sing it—“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”—when I was a kid myself in the 1970s.

On that recent morning, I sang aloud what was in my head, as I do.

By the time I realized my brain’s song choice was weird for me, my husband pointed out that I’d slept through a thunderstorm. No surprise there; I’m heavily medicated at bedtime.

I’m not sure why I thought that was relevant to this blog post, but now back to my main story, already in progress:

This morning, I sat bolt-upright in bed, threw off the covers (sorry for the clichés, folks; at least I didn’t say it was a “dark and stormy night”) and called out to my husband in the kitchen:

“Hey, Amy’s husband isn’t named Ted, is he?”

“No, it’s Scott,” replied my husband, Ted, who was drinking coffee before catching the train to work.

Humiliations galore. (We’re big “Princess Bride” fans, obv.)

Let me ‘splain. No time. Let me summarize:

I did not think my friend’s husband was my own husband and vice versa. It’s just that I know another woman in the club, Ruth, who’s married to a Ted, which is not a common name.

Two nights before was our running club’s first Pizza Night of the season. My husband and I had volunteered to coordinate the ordering of however many pies would be needed from a local pizza parlor and deliver said pies to our club’s favorite brewpub.

All went well, considering the pub had just changed ownership, wires got crossed and it seemed for a time that the pub wasn’t expecting our large, boisterous group.

Members were complimenting us on a great gathering. (“Us,” ha! All I did was manage not to mess things up.)

At one point, I joined a conversation among club president Amy: her husband, whose name I could’ve sworn was Ted; and my own Ted. Both men are devoted NY Mets fans, so maybe that’s where my brain misfired.

Anyway, along comes my new friend Jeremy, and here’s where I went wrong.

I thought I’d be hilarious (half a beer will do that to me). I made boisterous introductions: “Jeremy, Amy. (They’d already met.) Ted, Jeremy. Ted, Jeremy,” … and on and on.

Nobody corrected me.

Sorry, Scott.