The baked potato incident

So last night my future sister-in-law, "FSIL", who is originally from St. Louis and was in town on business, called and wanted me to go to dinner so I could meet her mom J. J was very nice and, just as my mother would have, gave me a hug upon first meeting. She has a big, beautiful house in a suburb that took some effort to find but after a few calls on the cell I found it, and it's about as far into the woods as you can be in the Metro area. J also has to travel a lot for her job and didn't have any food to cook, so we went to a place called Mimi's Cafe. It's a chain restaurant that reminded me of a more upscale version of IHOP. The food was decent and the portions were huge.

We talked about the wedding and about our families as we would all be in-laws someday. Anyway, so as we were served our meal I was busy putting butter and sour cream on my baked potato just how I like it. I guess I was nervous and got very animated (like I do) while I was telling a story about my family. The next thing I notice is J, who was sitting next to me, is taking a napkin to her shirt. I look down and notice that I'm waving my sour cream-covered fork as I'm telling the story (if you've never met me I tend to talk with my hands a lot). And I realize that I've flung baked potato on to my brother's future mother-in-law. She must have thought that I was raised in a barn! J was cool and shook it off, but I couldn't help thinking that she thought that her daughter was marrying into a bunch of back woods hillbillies.

Despite everything we had a good time getting to know each other. FSIL later said jokingly that we wouldn't tell my brother about the potato flinging incident. I was so embarrassed - I swear you can't take me anywhere!