Close Encounters of a Duggar Kind
I worked at an Arkansas Sam's Club. I ran into the female members of the Duggar family often. (Because grocery shopping is women's work, I guess? Also cause there's no shot they could afford not to shop in bulk?)
I have lived in AR my whole life, but I'm not a reality show fan so I had no idea what they looked like and had only vaguely heard of them at all.
The first time I saw the Duggar women, I saw one of the older girls outside the bathrooms and Michelle if I remember correctly (this would have been in 2012 or 2013).
I walked right up to the daughter and I said, "Excuse me miss, I have a rule that if you think something nice about someone you should tell them, so I just wanted to tell you that you have really beautiful hair." The daughter seemed surprised I'd even talked to her at all, and then seemed very flattered.
I am a cancer survivor, at the time my hair was still very short.
Someone in their group replied to me with something like "yours could be too if you grow it out." or "why don't you grow yours?" and I thought that was pretty rude, but I was at work in my work clothes so I said, "I'm working on growing it, unfortunately cancer and the treatment made me go bald."
It definitely got awkward from there.
I broke the silence with, "Thanks for talking with me, and I hope you have a great day."
They replied with something like "We will pray to God that your future is full of blessings"
I'd started to leave at that point. I turned back around to face the group (which I noticed had increased by several similarly dressed girls), and said, "I don't personally believe in God but I appreciate the sentiment." a genuine smile, and then I left. (This was only supposed to be a bathroom break for me after all, still on the clock and such.)
One of my team members looked at me quizzically when I returned to my place in the cafe area, and I said "That girl has really beautiful hair and I thought it would be nice to tell her I thought so." to which my coworker replied "Yeah, all the Duggars do."
I was like "What!?!"
This is the story of how a pixie haired, pants wearing, LGBTQIA+ card holding, liberal 18 year old girl accidently looked Michelle Duggar in the face, in front of SEVERAL daughters, in the middle of a Sam's Club straight up said "I don't believe in God..."
Arkansas is a wild place. I have absolutely zero doubt that if the authorities tug on the Josh Duggar thread enough we will see local government seats come open rapidly. Possibly even a Senate seat.
