Horrifying the pastor's wife

The last evening I was there the nieces' home economics class was giving their end of the year banquet. This year the four girls made recipes sent to them from each of the 12 missionary families the church supports. They cooked their favorites for us. There was a soup from Singapore, a curry, Swedish meatballs, a thing with corn pancakes and cheese, a sort of fruit pastry, and... a few other things. They were not finished in any particular order. The diners included Sis, Mom, and I, parents of the other two girls, the pastor, his wife and mother, and a couple of other people whose relationship to the girls I didn't figure out.

Before we left I lost one of my sister's earrings. I really need to just stop wearing jewelry, especially earrings. She pointed out the little plastic things to put on the back of them so they don't fall out. I fully intended to use them, but got distracted. Anyway, my sister went from heartbroken, to telling me they were just things, to finally laughing about having something to hold over me for the rest of my life, so it was okay. Looking for them however did make us a bit late. We got there and I know that my sister was nervous about her judgmental church friends and so I apologized to them all and said that I had lost an earring and made everyone late. While we were waiting one of the men said to my sister, "I found something you want" and I blurted out, "The earring I lost?!" He stopped and sort of stared at me. There was total silence and someone said, "Oh my. They're like two peas in a pod."

The silence continued for a few seconds until the man continued to tell Sis about the poster frame he had seen in Target.

All through the evening people commented that we look alike (which we do only in a sisterly way) but they seemed really stunned that we had the same totally inappropriate wise-cracking humor. I told someone that we got it from our father, which is true.

At the end of the night my sister indicated to me that my fly was open. It was truly horrible in this church where women aren't supposed to wear pants anyway. I said, "Oh, maybe that's what happened to the earring!" She laughed and pastor's wife who was standing there trying to be nice to me was speechless with horror. Now most of the women I know who are married to pastors have a part of them that completely rebels against the sort of proper behavior that is often expected of them. Some of them know the best dirty jokes I have ever heard. This woman however is one of the other sort. I think she is prim and proper right down to her DNA. In a hopeless attempt to fix the situation I said, "There is no embarrassing situation that I can't make worse with a really tasteless joke."

She looked at me like I was everything she had come to church to escape, everything she wanted to rid the world, or at least my sister, of.

I was Sis's evil twin, and she thought my sister was the naughty one.

Sis started laughing uncontrollably and took me by the arm and led me out.

Fortunately it was time to leave anyway.

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Later I tried to tell Niece1 about it. She did not think it was funny AT ALL. In fact she looked horrified herself.