The Price of Fame

Weirdness abounds today.

Much more than the average Monday, I tell you.

It all started off with a call I made to a fellow school-based professional whom I've never met.  In the course of our conversation, he asked me to spell my last name.  When I did, he exclaimed, "Oh!  You're the Chicken Lady!"  Turns out, his kids beg to come over and feed the chickens when they are on walks through the neighborhood, and they just love visiting The Chicken Lady's House.  He even said it in this momentous tone of awe.

Leave it at that, and you think: Huh, small world.

Later, I was ordering a sandwich for lunch at a sub shop in a town located over an hour away from here, and got to talking to the girl cramming vegetables on the bread, about chickens (of course).  She just got a couple hens and is in love with them, and I of course had to go on and talk about my flock, and mentioned all the pink everywhere.  She stopped dead, looked at me, and screeched: "Holey crap!  You're The Chicken Lady!!!" 

She reads my blog.  She's a lurker, and we just randomly met over a sandwich in the middle of freakin' nowhere.

If you think that was coincidence, let me tell you about Incident #3.

My across-the-street-catty-corner neighbor came over with her two little boys, who love to visit the chickens and to get some more eggs (thank god).  She told me how her oldest boy, now in Kindergarten, had wanted to take one of the turquoise eggs laid by Pearl to school for Show and Tell last week.  Apparently, when he started telling his little friends about living next door to the Chicken Lady, they all chimed in about how they, too, know all about the Chicken Lady and her pink house and her chickens and Halloween candy and her gardens and her barking but nice dogs.  The teacher wound up having to flip the lights on and off to get them back under control, they were so excited to talk about their visit to the Chicken Lady's house, they wouldn't shut up and share time went dangerously long and they nearly missed snack break. (You never miss snack break in Kindergarten.  Lord knows what would happen.)  Luckily, the teacher was very amused by the imminent chicken-related mayhem and shared it with my neighbor for a good "ha ha, what cute things your kid said today" moment.

After his mom told me this story, I looked at her son and said, "Really?  You talked about me at Show and Tell?!?"

He looked at me very solemnly, and pronounced with all seriousness:

"Yep.  You're famous, Chicken Lady."

Out of the mouth of babes.