The camera

I was the guest speaker at a book club last week. A lovely group of women purchased my book and I was invited to discuss it with them.

This would be a first time for me so I planned accordingly, dressing to perfection and arriving before schedule. The home of the hostess was lovely with a table set with china and silver for 15 ladies. She made a centerpiece of a road map, 2 little mustangs, a hat (as she knows I love to wear them) and a little figure of a black man, all done with great thought and fun.

Naturally, I brought my camera, but oops the batteries were dead.

I asked if she happened to have any and she said, she would call her husband to find out where he keeps them. Mind you the guests would be arriving in minutes. We went to her office but the batteries she found must have been old as they did not work and when we tried the second set, they did not work either.

On the table was a TV control and I suggested I borrow the batteries and return them to the TV controller at the end of the evening and it gave us difficulty in pulling them out, but they did not work either.Now we were both frustrated as the lovely hostess was being put through the mill as her guests were approaching.So I said, l"et us forget it," and she said, "Don't worrry, I will take pictures."

Things calmed down, the guests began to arrive and she took one photo of me and the evening went on. And then a bit later, she said," did you see where I put my camera? I can't seem to find it!." So I went back to the office opening up strange drawers looking for the camera but it could not be found. As we mingled we looked in each corner and table amongst all of her lovely things to see if her brand new camera, bought for the occasion, was in site. But to no avail. The hostess kept searching discretely, turning pillows over, looking under each, as she served her delicious dinner, but no camera. Finally she said," I have another one," and went and got it and started shooting, but she could not get it out of her head remarking throughout the evening, "where can my camera be?"
It truly was a divine evening in every other way but I did know that her well planned evening was disrupted with the nuisance of my batteries and the loss in her own home of the camera.

As we were leaving, she slipped her hand between the crack of the pillows of her sofa and lo and behold, her camera. Voila.

Question. Do you think I was out of order by asking for batteries and removing them from her remote?
Carol Sue Gershman