I have never been to Barcelona!

But my husband has. 

In fact, my husband was in Barcelona all last week. And tomorrow we are camping in Big Sur, and thus I've been inspired to relate a classic (and personally embarrassing) bit of Moeller family history.

My sister, Amberlyn (Happy Belated Anniversay, by the way) got married when I was 7 months pregnant. After her wedding, Dave and I headed down to the beach house in Pacific Grove (I say "the" beach house, because we have no ownership, but I've been there more times than I can count--thank you, Ann).  We had lovely dinners on Cannery Row and drove down to Big Sur and hiked around.

A few weeks later we were back in Houston for the summer (don't recommend it). I had turned in my film (yes, 35mm) at Walgreens to get developed and I was really excited to see all my pics of Big Sur and Amber's wedding.

At this point, I was 8 months pregnant.

After I went in and picked up my pics, I went out to my air-conditioned car to look at the pics. Very wierd.

They were all double-exposed--these weird combinations of pictures. 

There was a pic of the beach in Carmel exposed over a shot I recognized as the American Cemetery in Normandy with waves crashing on the white-cross grave markers.

There was a pic of these gorgeous flower "towers" at the wedding, but in the flowers you could see the creepy faces of these strange marionettes.

There was a pic of my sister and her husband in my parent's backyard, and above them was a banner that said, "Bienvenidos a Barcelona."

I ran back into the store, livid (and hormonal).

I cornered the manager of the photo center and told him that they had messed up on the development of my film and somehow double exposed it. He looked at the photos and told me that they had developed them correctly, but the problem was with the film. There was no way to fix the photos. 

I accused him again that there was nothing wrong with my film. With third-trimester tears running down my face (and creating a wet puddle on the top of my belly), I basically screamed while showing him the "Bienvenidos" pic, "BUT I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO BARCELONA!!!!"

Grasping at straws and trying to appease me, he said, "Maybe somebody stole your camera with the film in it and traveled to Europe."

I replied incredulously, "AND THEN RETURNED THE CAMERA BACK TO ME WITH THE EVIDENCE INSIDE???!!"

Desperate to get me out of the store at this point, he made me a gift certificate for 2 rolls of film to be developed for free.

I straightened my back, looked around and said in a VERY loud voice, "Well, thanks a lot. I don't think I would ever TRUST anyone in this establishment to touch my photos again." And I huffed out to my car.

Out in my car, I tried to get a hold of someone with whom I could hare this travesty. Dave didn't pick up. My mom listened dutifully to the whole scene and withheld her laughter and sympathized. "I have never been to Barcelona!"

I get ahold of Dave later and while I am ramping up to relay the screaming portion of the story, Dave calmly states, "Well,  I have been to Barcelona."

I start describing all the weird pictures and he recognizes every one of them from a trip he took to Europe with a friend 1.5 years earlier.

In one and half years, he had never developed the film. In all that time (being jostled about on a few moves) that little lead portion of the film had come back out of the canister and so I assumed it was new film.

And the REAL tragedy is. . . I can't find the pictures anywhere.

And no, I never used the gift certificate at Walgreens.