She was waiting for more than five minutes and she was growing impatient. Where could her daughter be? Her mind began to play through different situations, wondering where her daughter could possibly be. She thought about sending a text or giving her a call, but then she thought of something different. She didn’t do it very often, so she figured it would be fun if she did it this time. She was correct, but not for the right reason.
Deanna Pilling never would have thought things would play out the way they did. She just wanted to do something nice for her daughter. 18-year-old McKenna had just finished her first semester at Utah State University and her mom was excited to welcome her home. Before McKenna could come home, though, she had to pack up her belongings at the dorm. That’s when Deanna got an idea, she was planning a surprise for McKenna.
Deanna had an amazing relationship with her daughter McKenna. Deanna was a laid-back, fun mom and McKenna felt comfortable talking to her about her life. Even though she was happy that McKenna was away at college, she missed her quite a bit. So when McKenna told her mom that she needed to clean her dorm and pack her things, Deanna didn’t think twice. She decided to surprise McKenna by planning a visit.
Deanna wanted to be able to help McKenna with the move, but she wanted to surprise her. Without telling her daughter, she boarded a cross-country flight. She just knew McKenna would be excited to see her at her school. As soon as she landed in Logan, Utah, Deanna headed to the campus. When she arrived at the dorms, she looked for McKenna’s room. Even though she had been there when they visited last fall, everything seemed different this time.
Since there was so much commotion with the students moving out of their dorms, the buildings looked completely different. Deanna was excited to see her daughter, so she headed to McKenna’s dorm. As she was going to the room, Deanna recognized some of McKenna’s friends, so she said hello. As she knocked on McKenna’s door, she pictured the surprised look her daughter would have. Surprisingly, no one answered.
Deanna waited a few minutes to see if anyone would answer. No one did, so she decided to see if the door was unlocked. It was, so she decided to wait inside, which would make the surprise even more exciting for McKenna. She noticed that most of the room was already packed up. “I was just standing there thinking wow, she really cleaned up a lot,” recalled Deanna. Then Deanna realized how tired she was.
Deanna was exhausted from her flight, so she decided to rest on McKenna’s bed until she arrived back to her dorm. Luckily for Deanna, McKenna hadn’t packed up her bedding and pillows yet. She had only laid down for five minutes when she began to fall asleep. If McKenna walked in and Deanna was sleeping on her bed, the surprise would be ruined. So Deanna did something else.
Deanna decided that she could text McKenna to ask her where she was, but she figured doing that would only ruin the surprise. So she chose to do something she didn’t do often: snap a selfie. She figured that if she sent McKenna a selfie of her lying in McKenna’s dorm room, it would be funny and surprising. So that’s exactly what she did, but she had no idea what would happen.
“Look where I am! Where are you?” wrote Deanna in the text underneath the photo of Deanna laying down on the bed in the dorm room. Her phone pinged a few moments later. It was McKenna, but her reply wasn’t something that Deanna was expecting. “Where’s that??” she said. “I’m in my dorm. Please tell me you’re not in someone else’s dorm.” Deanna began to feel confused, but that was when it all started to come together.
“I just started laughing and I ran out of my room and went and found her in my building,” said McKenna. Luckily, Deanna wasn’t too far off. She had mistaken her daughter’s dorm room for another one down the hall. What makes it even better is that the person who actually lived in that dorm room probably wouldn’t even care about what had happened.
“I am in the wrong dorm omg,” Deanna texted back to McKenna. She realized what she had done and started panicking. She couldn’t believe that she had done something so embarrassing. “I felt sick to my stomach because I’ve already said hi to several people in the dorm and they probably have no idea who I was,” she said.” “I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I didn’t even look at the name of the building. I could be in the wrong building.’” McKenna rushed out of her dorm to help her mom.
“It was a friend in my building; it was just down the hall so it wasn’t too bad but it was pretty funny,” explained McKenna. “She didn’t find out until today, actually. She commented on it [the picture] and was like, ‘Is that my pillow?’” Deanna was completely embarrassed, but her daughter thought it was funny and decided to post about it on her Twitter. But she was definitely not expecting the response it received.
“Momma Pilling at it again,” wrote McKenna underneath the tweet of the screenshot of the exchange between McKenna and Deanna, followed by laughing emojis. The photo blew up, receiving more than 16,000 retweets in only a few days. Deanna and McKenna were shocked. “We weren’t expecting anything of it,” said McKenna. “I just thought friends and family would see it but now it’s completely gone everywhere.” McKenna believes this won’t be the only time her mom gets some fame from the Internet.
“She’s full of surprises so I’m sure there will be more,” McKenna said about Deanna. “I don’t know if they’ll get as big as this one did but she’s always got surprises up her sleeves.” Even though there was no harm done, Deanna felt a little regret about the whole thing.
McKenna was asked what Deanna thought about all of the attention. “Every time I refresh my feed more retweets/favorites pop up, and now all my mom has to say is, ‘I wish I would’ve taken a better picture,'” said McKenna. We think Deanna looks awesome, and it’s obvious that the Internet does too.