At one point in my Army career, my company commander was a woman, CPT White. She was single and started dating another captain from a nearby installation. He was CPT Dick. He would call occasionally, and we’d get a bit of a chuckle. Then one day, we got a surprise; CPT Dick got promoted. He would then reply “This is Major Dick” when we’d answer the phone. I don’t know how many hernias were narrowly avoided by people answering the phones when he called. But wait, it got better. Our commander and Major Dick eventually got married. Even worse, her first name was Sandra. You got it: Sandy White Dick. But wait, there’s more. Major Dick was white; CPT White-Dick was black. Not so much an accidental joke as much as a strange joke of fate.
[sub]I know this sounds apocryphal, but I swear as God is my witness that all the above is true.[/sub]
Heee, mine’s not quite as bad (good? ech, you know what I mean) as sewalk’s, but when a friend of mine got married she and her fiance also decided they would hyphenate their surnames.
She could have been C. Ryder-Hunt. But no, they decided to go with the other option, and she didn’t even realise until she received her new checkbook with her married name on a month later . .
Yes we had all noticed. No we didn’t tell them, it was way too entertaining waiting for the penny to drop.
While on the phone with my son’s insurance company trying to get his short term disability started, I abbreviated. Yep, I sure hope he gets his S.T.D. :eek:
I can’t take credit for this one. Several years ago, I was a TA for an Intro. to American Government course. On the final exam, students were asked to explain why there was a move to replace the Articles of Confederation with the constitution. Correctly remembering that there was a substantially problem of weak currency at the time, one student wrote a sentence I will never forget.
“The paper money was being devalued, and the people wanted change.”
I never found out if the student realized what they had written.
A friend of mine is notorious for her strange comments, that often come out wrong. When she was going out with a particular guy, she was mercilessly teased about her and him ‘doing it’ (we’re in grade nine, it was just jokes :)). So, a couple of her lines. They don’t really change much in context, so eh.
I was having an argument with my flatmate. She shouted at me
“You disagree with everything I say”.
B fore I could think it through I replied “No I don’t”.
We both ended up laughing and this ended the fight.
For many years, my dad had a picture of a Chinese laundry in San Francisco with a group of smiling women coming out the door. Every time we came across it in the photo album, he and mom would laugh their asses off. And they would never tell me what was so funny.
When I was about 16 or so, I looked at that photo for an hour or so before I noticed the small print in the front window that read “Proprietor: Hung Far Low”.
My running partnerand I were taking a long bike ride when I got a flat. She was holding the wheel as I pumped up the tire when she said “I can feel it getting hard”. Looked up to see some major blushing.
Watching the Peter Seller’s movie “The Party” with my friend and her brother. There is a hilarious scene where Seller’s has to use the bathroom, and both are occupied (one with a couple making love, one with a group smoking joints). Seller is running around, and notices a cat in its litter box. I say “Oh no” and my friend says, totally innocently, “He wouldn’t stoop so low.” Her brother and I totally lost it.
It’s not unintentional, but out in Eastern Massachusetts somewhere there is a liquor store called “Bunghole Liquors.” Best name for a business ever, I say.
Back in the early/mid 90s, my company went thru the whole Total Quality Management thing. (In case you missed it, it was just a big scheme by consultuants to bilk inefficient companies out of their money in exchange for teaching them how to run a business just like the Japanese do.)
Anyway, part of the whole TQM organization thing was to have departmental meetings where the employees brainstormed ideas and analyzed problems so that they could be ignored by upper management, who never bought into the TQM idea and continued to micromanage, make arbitrary decisions, and assume that every employee was principally motivated by a compulsive desire to screw the company.
These meetings were called Quality Improvement Meetings. Officially acronymized as QUIMs. Yes… pronounced “qwims” Apparently none of the managers had grown up on the East Coast, where this word is a common slang term for the vagina. When the announcement was made to the employees that we “would be attending weekly QUIMs” there must have been 6 spit takes from people drinking coffee at the moment…
I went to HR and warned them that some people would consider QUIM an offensive, sexually explicit term, and explained the slang definition. I was thanked and invited to leave. Nothing changed. Many departments held QUIMs for years. Nine years later, only one does, and it has devolved into nothing more than a weekly status meeting.
I have two.
The gold medal winner of one of the women’s olympic swimming relays was named Misty Hyman. Yes, the broadcasters were having all sorts of fun with this. ( “Misty Hyman seems very excited to be here.” " Misty Hyman took her licks but came through in the clinch.")
Also from way back in Rev. Jesse Jackson’s career when faced with questions on allegations of criminal activity.
“I not only deny the allegations, I deny the alligator.”
This one was so sudden and unexpected it caused several people to literally gasp, (although it’s not dirty in the least…sorry!) and then burst out laughing.
It was my daughter’s fourth birthday party. We had a relatively large gathering, including relatives with their children and a few of her friends from daycare, as well.
It had been a long day for her. Too much cake, too much excitement, and no afternoon nap. She was really wound up, and became fussy and ill-tempered.
At one point she started yanking her bows out of her ponytail, and generally just behaving horribly. One of the older kids came over, her brother, I believe, and made the mistake of playing with one of her new toys. She sat down in the middle of the kitchen and began wailing at the top of her lungs.
I said, “Janie, don’t act like that! Why are you crying?” or words to that effect.
She looked at me, tears streaming down her face and hollered,
"It’s my party and I’ll cry if I WANT to!!"
It was many minutes before the laughter finally stopped.
