Man. Don't you just love it when TV and reality come together?

I mean, seriously... how cool is that?! Turning on the television and seeing your life played out right on screen?! In front of God and everybody?! And you're all, "What the freak?!" And jumping up and down with excitement? But also feeling a little scared? Like Twighlight Zone scared? Because of the freakiness? But still totally excited?

Good times.

Last week, thanks to my mad TiFauxing abilities, I watched How I Met Your Mother for the first time (because... Willow?!) and experienced just such an extraordinary melding together of life and entertainment.

Okay, so I saw an episode in which Lily (Willow!) goes to her fiance Marshall's hometown of St. Cloud to meet her future in-laws and it turns out he has five or six brothers and they are practically giants! With the tallness? And the aggressiveness? And the eating of fat-laden food in mass quantities? Seriously. The family consists of several huge men who eat seven-layer salad full of gummi bears, potato chips, sixteen cups of mayo, and funyons, and who play bas-ice-ball, a dangerous combination of basketball and hockey. ("What are the rules?" "There are no rules! We just wale on each other!") Honestly. Lily looks like a Hobbit person next to these people. And of course everyone in town seems to know "those Erickson boys."

Okay, creepy. I about peed my pants laughing, I kid you not, because that? Yeah, that would Aaron's family. Exactly. Well, except the seven-layer salad thing for which I am thankful because there is just not enough ew. Biscuits with sausage gravy would be Aaron's family's poison.

To illustrate:

Live in a small, close-knit town? Check.

Eat mass quantities of fat-laden food, slapping like a red-headed stepchild anyone who dares get in the way? Check.

There are, like, a gazillion of them? Check!

Everyone in their home town knows them AND gets all up in their (and my) bidness? O. M. G. There is not enough check.

Shoot each other with paintball guns at point-blank range causing huge welts and bloody wounds, wrestle around on the floor until someone screams like a girly-girl begging for mercy, and play vicious games of tackle football on the front lawn? Ch-ch-ch-check.

Dwarf me like a little Hobbit person, even the girls? You better believe it. And check.

Just look at 'em, all big and stuff:



Keep in mind that Aaron (see his hair, in back there?) is 6'1"... and a half. Also keep in mind my youngest sister-in-law is scrunching down in front. Yeah. (I have no idea who the kid in front is. Probably a cousin who will one day be huge.)

And that is not even all of the boys! There are seven total. Yes, SEVEN.

At least my mother-in-law is not so much with the largeness. I don't feel so alone. So very, very alone... you know, what with the shortness and all? Okay, fine, in my in-laws' defense I should disclose that I am only 5'3", but still! Giants. All of them.



However, since it is apparent to me even now that in a few years my Mack and TD are going to look almost exactly like the cuties in the pictures below, I suppose I can forgive Aaron's family their freaky bigness.



(Did you know that in small towns you can carry around large shotguns while wearing an excess of camouflage-- which pretty much flatters any figure, by the way-- without anyone looking twice? It's true! I am so serious.)



PRETTY.

But I digress. The show ended with Willow-- I mean LILY-- getting arrested for public urination after going to the store to buy a pregnancy test. Honestly. How surreal is that?! Oh, not that I've ever been arrested for public urination, but it could have happened! You don't know!

I'm totally watching again this week, I tell you what, just to see if anything else resembles my life. Ooh! Maybe someone will be arrested after she finds a hotel room key (while drying off with a towel she found on a deck chair after being thrown into a fancy shmancy hotel pool fully clothed), decides to take just a quick little peek at one of the fancy rooms, gets caught "breaking and entering" by the Chief of Police whose key she happened to swipe and whose room she happened to take a peek at while he was innocently chillin' in the jacuzzi (even though he was totally drunk off his butt and confused, and she didn't even go into his room at all, and she certainly didn't steal his keg because, I mean, where would she have PUT it, right?!), then subsequently gets cuffed, escorted through a lobby of curious onlookers, and hauled off to jail! Hoo! FUH-NEE!

Not that I've ever done that either. As if.