A blessing and a curse

Today as we always do on Wednesdays we get together with my family, but today we celebrated Spencer's 6th Birthday. He is so smart and funny too. We got him a cool puzzle with the Nick cartoons on it, the book How to Eat Fried Worms, and a t-shirt that says "I'm probably not listening to you."
Anyway, that is not the point to this blog... My sister comes in and says that no one in our family can leave a short voicemail. Also that in those voicemails we tend to repeat the information multiple times. LOL, it is so very true and I admit I am completely guilt of it. I think it is one of our family curses. Another is the real topic of this blog...
Have you ever been in a crowded store and suddenly some complete stranger starts talking to you like they have known you their entire life? No? I have... many, many, many times. It is great if you are some place where you want to get to know people, like church (although, in our ward have the people can't seem to remember that we have had some of these conversations before). But if you are in the middle of a busy McDonald's minding your own business and some lady starts telling you about her kids and their love for teletubbies, you might tend to get a little weirded out... like I did.
I will give you some examples:
This past weekend my mom and I (it seems to be stronger when there is more than one of the women in my family together) had to run some errands. We stopped at Cingular, got a new sim card for my phone... no big. Then to the hardware store to make some duplicate keys... Here the fun starts. There is one older gentleman here and he starts talking to us about this and that when another employee comes up and also starts talking to us. Finally we get to the register and the cashier talks to us about how no one carries cash any more and things of this nature. We get out the door and it is off to Papa Murphy's Take and Bake Pizza. When we get the I called Chris for him to preheat the oven. As soon as I am done the woman behind me starts talking to us about how she set the oven for the wrong temp and will have to call her husband and walk him through how to set the oven. Okay, so you are thinking this is normal, but do they tell you the exact kind of oven they have and what her husband does for a living? I didn't think so.
Okay, now here is a prime example:
Chris and I were in the mall one Saturday and we split up and we were going to meet by the pet store. I saw Chris heading there and started to walk after him. In order to get to the pet store we had to walk through a group of people surveying people for this or that. Chris walks right through them not a single person asks him. As I walk through FOUR people stop and ask me. It was plain and clear after the first guy asked that I didn't want to take the survey, but still three more asked.

Oh well, such is life. I could list you hundreds of time things like this have happened to me and the other women in my family... my mom and I got asked to help pick out an outfit for someone's daughter's first day of school... when my mom went back to the hardware store because one of the keys didn't work another employee told her that he was moving to Florida because he had invented something and the company that bought it was paying for him to move and have a condo out there... every time we go into a store some one will ask me if I am finding every thing okay, but won't ask Chris... the list goes on and on.

I have come to take this as a blessing and a curse. Blessing because I can get to know most people fairly easy and I feel that others seem to find me as some one they can talk to. A curse because if I'm in a hurry that is when it usually hits the most. :)