Some of you may have seen this billboard around town.

You might not have recognized my mother with her hat and the goofy sun drawn around her face. How did this happen? My neighbor, a photographer,  saw my mother one day and exclaimed to me later that my mother looked like the perfect old lady. She asked me if I thought she would like to be on a billboard.

I had heard once that there are only three reasons a “lady” would ever be in the paper – When she’s born, when she marries, and when she dies. However, my mother was astounded and credulous upon hearing that the neighbor wanted to take her picture for a billboard advertisement for the Houston Food Bank.

“The Food Bank? I’m not starving! Why me?”

I told her that she looked like a nice old lady and they needed a nice old lady.

I don’t know if that was the right thing to say or not.

She was all for it.

Then a few weeks later and completely unrelated, my daughter was eating in her university cafeteria when she was approached by a woman toting a camera who asked if my daughter wanted to be on a billboard that would be going up all around Houston advertising the university. My daughter couldn’t believe it but she posed and snap!

Here is the result –

They even added a little along her sides because she looked too skinny next to the young man sharing the billboard picture with her.

A few weeks later, I kid you not. I was walking Big Boy and a reporter with CBS asked me what I thought of all the political signs in front yards. Of course when you ask me anything I will have an opinion, even if I make it up on the spot. It just seemed surreal for our family to be all over the place.

I didn’t watch the news to see if I was on or not. But a year later when we were renovating the home we now live in, a reporter asked me if I wanted to be in the paper.

Why not?

Here is the result –

And then the second picture with the article.