Mom's Surprise for Daughter at College Goes Hilariously Wrong

Deanna Pilling's selfie in the wrong dorm bed has gone viral.

ByABC News
May 10, 2016, 9:22 AM

— -- A well-meaning mother embarrassed herself after flying cross-country to surprise her daughter at college only to end up in the wrong dorm room, lying in the wrong bed.

“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,” Deanna Pilling said today on “Good Morning America.” “I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I didn’t even look at the name of the building. I could be in the wrong building.’”

Pilling was in the right dorm building at Utah State University in Logan, but when she sent a selfie of her lying in what she thought was her daughter's dorm bed, she got an unexpected reply from daughter McKenna.

“I actually was laying in my own bed, just recovering from finals and all of a sudden I get this picture from my mom, which she hardly ever sends selfies but she’s trying to be cool, and when she sent me a selfie from someone else’s bed I was like, ‘Oh, crap,’” McKenna, 18, said today on “GMA.” “I was just in panic.”

McKenna tweeted the funny text exchange with her mom May 5 and it quickly went viral, garnering more than 16,000 retweets.

The mistaken dorm bed actually belonged to a friend of McKenna's who noticed the familiar linens in Pilling's photo.

"She’s like, ‘Wait, is that my pillowcase?'" Pilling said of the friend.

McKenna took her mom's mistake in stride and said she is on the lookout for more surprises.

"She’s full of surprises so I’m sure there will be more," she said. "I don’t know if they’ll get as big as this one did but she’s always got surprises up her sleeves."