A few days before Christmas, my mom and I went to Indianapolis to go gift shopping together. One of our favorite stores is Nordstrom so we made sure to stop by there first. We had gotten distracted by some cute clothes before we went to the men’s department to look for sweaters for my dad. After finding a couple of sweaters we liked, my mom and I scanned the store for a man that was roughly the size of my dad so we could hold the clothes up to him to see what the length would end up being.

She and I spotted a gentleman who was standing by a clothing rack but not looking at anything in particular. My mom asked him how tall he was and when he told us that he’s 5’1 I said, “Perfect! That’s my dad’s height!” before rushing over to him to hold a sweater up to his torso. I noticed that he had a clear wire in his ear, kind of like the ones typically worn by security guards but I brushed it off thinking it was probably a hearing aid. As I was holding the sweater up to this man, my mom was explaining that we wanted to know what the length would look like on my dad, predominately focusing on the hip area. She told him, “I’m not trying to get all up in your private area, I just want to know where it’s going to fall on his hips.” Upon hearing this, the man blushed and let out an awkward chuckle. We decided the sweater would look good on my dad and thanked him for helping us out. He wished us a happy holidays and when he walked away, my mom noticed what looked like a state pin on his shirt.

Later, we walked over to the jewelry counter and spoke to the woman working with the watches. My mom shared our funny encounter with her and she informed us that there was, in fact, heightened security in the store that day. Why was there heightened security? Because Mike Pence was in Nordstrom shopping with his wife, which is evidently something that he does quite often. Once we heard this, my mom and I went silent because the security guard that we interacted with seemed to be more vigilant than just Nordstrom security at Christmastime. We connected the dots that we very well may have gotten up close and personal with a security guard for the future Vice President of the United States, and started giggling because only she and I would have such a wild story to tell.

Was he actually Mike Pence’s security guard? I’m not sure. Could he have been? Quite possibly. Is it a funny story either way? Absolutely.