The time Phi's sister threw us under the bus for stealing rice -- except there was no throwing -- no actual bus -- and we didn't really steal rice.

Longest post title ever!

As you might guess neither Phi nor I have ever met a stranger.

Much to my children's chagrin by the time I'm done buying a cup of coffee I will not only know the barrista's name, but where he goes for vacation, and his grandmother's favorite type of pie.

It's a gift!

Together Phi and I can get to know a waiter or waitress so well that they may ask us to be God parents to their next child.

I think Phi's much younger and smarter sister, Eta, worries about us.  Probably for good reason.

This past summer the three of us took a drive away from BA31 to the grocery store to get emergency birthday dinner supplies.  (not that the birthday was an emergency, we knew about that ahead of time.)

Phi and I were together in one line harassing interrogating getting to know our lovely cashier Beth (who also worked at the local coffee shop in the mornings and had a birthday last week.) while Eta was two lane's away from us wondering why buying groceries required so much animated conversation.

For some reason the rice we were buying wouldn't scan correctly so we were joking that it was obvious that we should get the rice for free and Beth should come to the birthday party that night to share it with us.

Beth called over her manager Matt who SURPRISINGLY agreed with me, Phi and Beth that mis-scanned rice should definitely go home to BA31 with us for free.  (He may have been afraid of us, but we're not sure.)

We of course immediately invited Matt to the birthday party as well.

We leave Harris Teeter, get in the mini-van and have a discussion about free rice and other perks we've gotten in the past by just chatting with people in retail stores.  Eta is either in awe of us or thinks we're completely bonkers at this point.  It's hard to tell with most people.

In the distance we hear a siren....

We joke about how the rice probably had a tag on it that set off an alarm because we didn't pay for it.

Eta immediately says "I've got my receipt right here! I didn't steal any rice!"

At which point the police should have pulled us over because three beach weary women in a mini-van should not be laughing that hard. 

Oh, Eta, please come visit me.  We'll go to Chipotle, share a free burrito together and talk about this!