We had relatives visiting this weekend and they were staying at my Aunt Lily’s house. Everyone was getting together for a birthday party there.
It was a new house I hadn’t been to before so I got a little lost when the Google map wasn’t quite accurate and the house numbers weren’t well marked. But I got to where it should be, and there were a lot of cars on the street so finally I made it.
My other aunt Betty’s car was in the driveway. I went to knock on the door but it was already open so I went in. There was one woman in the foyer sitting. I didn’t really know her but she looked related to my aunt on her side of the family. We exchanged awkward pleasantries and then I headed through the kitchen to get to the dining room where everyone else would be.
It was a skinny kitchen and there was an old man cooking that I didn’t recognize, who gave me a puzzled stare. It was a tight fit past him and the situation was starting to seem kind of weird. So I asked “um… is Lily here?”
“She lives across the street.”
!
Oops. I apologized and scampered out. I had been fooled into a false sense of security by the open door and what I thought was my aunt’s truck in the driveway. It wasn’t her truck, just someone else’s red truck with the same Yankees sticker in the back window. And my aunt Betty hadn’t arrived yet, so there weren’t two similar trucks on the street.
My uncle went to the wrong family reunion once. It was being hosted about half a mile down the road from where our actual family reunion was. He got as far as filling up a plate from the buffet table before noticing that he recognized fewer people than usual for one of these things.
My mom did exactly the same thing once. She was invited to a party at the home of a friend of mine. She’d never been there and she expected that the only people she’d recognize would be me, my husband and my friend.
She got the house number wrong and walked into the house across the street. yes, the front door was standing open so she assumed she was in the right place. When the guy told her she had the wrong house she thought he was joking (because my friend has a history of practical jokes and she assumed he’d put him up to it) and it took a few moments of back and forth before she got it that it was indeed the wrong house and he wasn’t kidding.
She was such a good sport about it. She showed up at the party laughing hysterically as she told us about the conversation with the neighbor.
Hah! That’s one way to meet the new neighbours - just walk on in on them.
I was sitting in my car waiting for someone in a parking lot one day, and a guy opened my passenger door and hopped in. I turned to look at him, he looked at me, and he did the classic double-take, looked shocked, and apologized profusely for getting in the wrong car. I keep all my doors locked when I’m waiting in the car now.
Not quite the same, but when I was a teenager I was in Chicago to see a concert. I and a friend were staying with my older brother’s ex-wife - she said she wouldn’t be home that night but gave us the keys and said to come and go as we please.
After the show, we came back to her place and the keys wouldn’t work. We didn’t know what was going on so we kept trying. After about 10 minutes, it finally worked and we went in. Sat down on the couch and my friend said “Ummm…did Dawn have a computer this afternoon?” I said “No.” He said “Well, there’s one here right now.” It was only then that I realized that, oh crap, wrong apartment! But the key somehow worked.
Turns out we were one floor down so the floor plan was identical. We just happened to get lucky that the guy wasn’t home that night. Our host knew the guy and said that he’d be amused, though I’m not sure I would have been if I had been in his place. Actually, now that I think about it, I was in his place.
One night my husband and I were in our jammies, watching a movie in the family room. We thought we heard the backyard gate on the far side of the house banging, which was odd because no one ever used it. We had seen large raccoons climbing over the fence there (it was by our bedroom window), so not too concerned. Then the back door opened - it led to either the family room or basement stairs. A woman said ‘Oh hi, I’ll just go on down’ and went into our basement. WTF? As we conferred that neither of us knew her, or planned to have anyone over, she came back up confused and kind of angry, saying she was told to go through the gate and in the side door and downstairs. Turns out the neighbors across the street had an illegal apartment in their basement, via the side gate/door. These were both corner houses, and she had the wrong corner.
Story of my brother’s. He and a friend were looking for a friend’s birthday party on Green Lanes in London, which is about six miles long. When they arrived there, they discovered that each one thought the other knew the street number (this was just before cellphones), but they reckoned they’d recognise the party when they found it. After half an hour of walking they saw fireworks coming from the back garden of a house and the sounds of a party in full swing, so they went to the front door to see if it was the party they were looking for.
Here’s where it gets coincidental: my brother’s friend hauled himself up on the door frame to look through the glass above the door. The first person he saw in the hallway was a mutual friend they assumed was going to the party too. So they knocked on the door, their buddy opened it and said “wahey lads, come in!”
There were Happy Birthday banners and balloons around, so they cracked a beer, put the rest of their drinks in the fridge and started to mingle. After a while both of them realised that apart from their mutual buddy, they didn’t know anyone else. And they couldn’t find the birthday boy. But hey, parties can be like that.
But it wasn’t until about thirty minutes in, when they spotted a couple of extremely famous Brit-pop stars, that it began to dawn on them they might be in the wrong place. On enquiry of the mutual friend, it turned out that it was actually one of the pop star’s sister’s party.
They decided to stay regardless, and ended up playing some guitars that were lying around, and that’s how my brother ended up jamming all night with a Very Famous Person.
In my very first apartment, I was laying on the couch trying to take a nap in preparation for the nights festivities when a man I didn’t know opened my door and walked in. I don’t know who was more frightened, me or him.
I’ve done this before. I was going over to a teacher’s house to babysit his kid, and he lived in a two-family house. I didn’t know it was a two-family house. I entered the wrong part of the buiding, and soon realized my mistake. Glad I never had to babysit at that house again. Hadn’t been that embarresed in a while.
This is why I always keep my doors locked. To keep jackdavinci out.
That’s great though. I would’ve said, “Oh! Wrong house! I’m relieved, actually. Can’t stand the lady. So, uh, whatchya cooking?..” while snooping around in his fridge for some beer.
