The Truth

Well, I'm surprised how few people guessed the truth, especially since my parents both came on gave the correct answer.

1. As for The Apprentice, I never auditioned but I did think about it. I'm sure I wouldn't have made it to the third round of auditions though. But it's fun to think about. What I really wanted to be on was Survivor…until I had kids…and a life. I've even downloaded the application and started filling it out.

3. I can play the piano well, the guitar and the flute semi-pathetically, but can make no music with my navel. If you count making percussion sounds on various hard surfaces in my home, it may come close to eight, but not ten. Yes Maki, I was a band girl and am currently teaching piano.

4. When I lose weight, it definitely comes off the "top" first. My feet are only affected by pregnancy. I made up the little "ham feet" thing as a tribute to Magoo, whose feet look like little puff pastries with grapes for toes.

5. Also, I have used an umbrella…a couple of times…when we first moved here…and were basically tourists. Real Seattleites don't mind a little "moisture."

So it looks like Lauren and may parents (duh! They were living with me at the time) are the only three who succeeded at our little guessing game.

When I was 17 years old, I went to the DPS in Houston to renew my driver's license. I entered the office wearing my National Honor Society t-shirt, carrying my Franklin planner and I believe my hair was in pigtails.

They took my license behind the counter and ran it through a scanner, at which point the dot-matrix printer went nuts, spitting out a page that labeled my license as "red-hot." "Hmmm," I asked, "what does that mean?"

"It means there is a warrant out for your arrest. Please stay where you are."

"What is it for?" I asked, amused. I had never so much as been pulled over for spitting out my car window.

The computer wouldn't say why I was supposedly "red-hot" but I had a warrant out for my arrest for unknown reasons. They explained that I was not being arrested, but instead "forcibly detained."

They sat me in a back room with a police officer at a desk and a young teenager who was handcuffed to his chair. I found the whole thing incredibly exciting. I chatted to the "prisoner" who was unwilling to engage in banter. I spoke with the police officer.

"Does this happen a lot? Do lots of people have warrants out for their arrest by mistake? Are you going to handcuff me? Could you take my picture? No one will BELIEVE this happened to me. No, seriously, do you have a camera? How long have you worked here? This is so weird. I've never even had a ticket….."

Eventually I think I annoyed them into letting me go. The officer looked at me with his most stern expression and said, "It looks like this may have been a computer malfunction. We'll look into it but if the warrant is legit, we WILL find you."

"Okay."

So there you have it. A warrant out for my arrest in the state of Texas. And they never were able to find me. My youth group toured a police station later and I asked our tour guide to look up my criminal record in the database. He said that my record showed that something was there but had been erased. Hm.