How we got disinvited to a private dinner with Nancy Reagan and Sandra Day O'Connor

Steve works at a law firm where his bosses are pretty (ok, extremely) well-connected. They know everybody. Politicos, big-money, you name it. So it didn't seem that strange to us when Steve came home from work one day with two unusual, hobnobby invitations. The first was to his boss' house for a "little party" for the law firm with special guest Governor Janet Napolitano. That's tonight. We're still invited to that and I'll report back on how it goes.

The second invitation was to celebrate the renaming of ASU's College of Law in honor of Sandra Day O'Connor. Steve's boss has some thick ties to ASU, so we figured he must have gotten all his attorneys invited to this "private dinner" with Mrs. Nancy Reagan, the president of ASU, and Justice O'Connor.

"Oh, that's nice," I said, "but we can't bring a baby to a big affair like that. We'll have to decline."

"Well, let me ask around about it first," Steve said. He asked all his colleagues, and no one else had been invited. Not even the ASU alums nor the girl who is in tight with the law school dean. Hmmm. He thought about asking his boss, but worried that perhaps his boss hadn't even been invited, and how would that look? It was becoming clear that this invitation had arrived with Steve's name on it erroneously. And that made us start to think we really wanted to go! What a great story we could tell! "Did you hear about the time we showed up at an intimate dinner affair with Nancy Reagan and Sandra Day O'Connor--with our baby in tow--and security tried to usher us out, but we said, 'Oh no, we were invited!' and sat down to eat while they stared at us blankly."

Steve called the Dean's Office at ASU and explained that he didn't understand why he received this invitation. They asked, "Didn't you clerk for Justice O'Connor?" "Uh, no, that wasn't me." "Isn't your wife's name Betty?" "Negative." "Ohhhh. We're really sorry, but that invitation was intended for someone else with your same name."

And Steve replied indignantly, "Oh, that's interesting. Well, we'd like to RSVP. We'll have the fish."