Mine was when I was about 14. I was playing a game of chess with my mom’s boss’s husband, who is black. He reneged on a move and I jokingly said something. A few minutes later my mom came in and asked who was winning. I responded, “At the moment, it’s the reneger.” Which sounded very much like I said “re-nggr.” My mom and he took it in stride but I flipped and apologized roughlt 17 million times over the next four minutes.
So who else has an embarrassing verbal gaffe to share?
I work at a library and I try to make small talk with people as they check things out.
One time, this young Indian girl was checking out with her Father at the checkout next to me. Somehow, I and the two patrons got to talking about school beginning again. She said she wasn’t looking forward to waking up early.
I said, “What you don’t wake up early during the summer?”
She says, “No.”
I said(to her and her father), “Ah, you got get her up earlier, you know, to feed the chickens and milk the cows.”
She looks at me and says, “We don’t have cows.”
Ouch. They were Indian, perhaps Hindu. This was a major screw up. I felt like an idiot.
The scene: Late at night, in the Whatsit bedroom. I’m sitting up in bed reading.
MrWhatsit comes in and starts taking his pants off at the foot of the bed. Somehow he manages to get his feet tangled in his pants legs, and after a comical series of hops across the floor, falls over into the closet. I hear thuds and muffled swearing.
Concerned and alarmed, I want to ask him if he’s OK, but what comes out of my mouth is:
“WHERE ARE YOU??”
Silence.
His reply, dripping with as much sarcasm as he can manage under the circumstances: “Uh, the closet?”
Being the temp receptionist you aren’t exactly in on the office people (worked for them three days a week) and the gossip stuff.
One day, the woman that calls up a lot for the main boss and introduces herself all the time as Ms. MainBoss calls. Mr. MainBoss wasn’t in his office so I announced over the entire office speaker system “Micheal, your wife is on line two.” (Micheal is not his real name)
This was about oh, 10:30 in the morning and I noticed whispers and giggles. When the ranks went to lunch I noticed a strange feeling from them all.
Well, later that day when the relief woman came up to let me take a break she asked me if I knew that Micheal was gay.
Talk about making assumptions, I felt like the biggest fool. That and I had a crush on the guy too! I was mortified.
I kept saying to myself “I didn’t know, I didn’t know, no one told me. This woman claimed to me Mrs. MainBoss, it never entered my mind that it would be his MOTHER!”
Thankfully I had a day off from the job to let the goofy feeling I had settle.
Oh and I apologized to Mr. MainBoss for my assumption, but my face was redder than a beet.
I will NEVER forget that. But the nice thing is, he was a great boss and I can still use him as a reference if I decide to go back into the regular workforce.
My cousins are both adopted. At my grandmothers funeral we were making fun of my cousin because he’s starting to lose his hair. I yell “Why are you losing your hair, your dad has a full head of hair.” Opps!
I have a lot of family in Kentucky and I often playfully tease my uncles, aunts, cousins, etc about being hillbillies or rednecks.
Once, while my cousin Chris was visiting me in St. Louis, we were joking around and I gave a goofy sounding “a-hyuck” kind of laugh. Meaning to tease Chris about being from Kentucky I said, “Damn, did you hear that laugh? ‘A-hyuck’ that sounds like one of your relatives, Chris.”
Father-in-law has quadruple bypass. He is barely likely to live through the night. Mrs. D18 and I drive from London (ON) to Toronto to see him. I walk in the room. I walk over to my father-in-law and say the stupidest thing I’ve ever said: “Hello George, how are you?”
Something that happened to me about ten years ago…The scene: the St. Louis Zoo, in front of the gorilla cage. To my left, my brother. To my right, a random black guy. My sisters and I used to tease my brother by calling him a monkey* (no particular reason for that, really), so I pointed to the gorilla and exclaimed to my brother: “Hey, he looks just like you!” The possible racial implications of this statement escaped me until later that evening when my parents were telling the story to some other relatives and pointed out that I might have really, really offended said random guy (and that if I’m going to say such things, I ought to have made it clear that I was talking to my brother, after which someone pointed out that with my luck, the guy probably had the same name). I wanted to crawl under the table and die…
All that said – I’ll never know if the guy even heard me.
[sub]*I’m well aware that gorillas are, in fact, apes, not monkeys.[/sub]
I had an assistant principal (former coach) that thought the music teacher (me) was a patented idiot. Ok, I was 23 and a natural blonde, but VERY VERY sincere.
After one very trying and long day of teaching, I ran into him at the mailboxes in the main office. Now, his name was Richard something-or-other, and we all called him Dick (sort of appropriate.)
What I MEANT to say was, “How’s your day, Dick?”
But what came out was,“How’s your dick, Dick?”
Being mature and responsible, I then laughed so hard that I fell on the floor.
I was about 7 years old. I wanted to go out and play.
Mom said: “You’re not going anywhere until you clean your room!”
It was out of my mouth before it formulated in my brain, I swear: “Fuck it.”
She smacked me so hard I saw stars.
It was many years before I cursed in front of my mother again. And never at her. Ever.
But my favorite story isn’t about me, it’s about my late great aunt. Keep in mind that she was a rather nervous type and very strait-laced. This happened in the 1940’s. She was stepping off an elevator as a handsome, well-dressed gentleman was stepping on, and she bumped into him. She tried to say “Oh, pardon me” or “Oh, excuse me.”
But she got tongue-tied.
What came out was…
.
.
.
.
.
“Oh, pursue me!”
I was in health class in seventh grade, and we were learning about digestion. As an experiment, we each had a peice of bread which we were supposed to leave in our mouth until all of the starch had gone away (why? I forget), or something like that. So, everyone else was done eating their bread, except for a boy named Cody.
We wanted to get on to the next fun experiment, so i shouted to him, in the dead silence of the class…
“Cody, SUCK IT!!!”
Of course, being seventh graders, order was not restored for a while.
Back in my early days as a counselor for the disabled, I would get really nervous when it would be time to take someone back to my office. One day, I walk to our reception area to get a client. Walking into my office I said what I always said, “Please have a seat.”
I heard him say, “Ummmmmm, I think I already did.”
D’OH!
He was in a wheelchair. I knew it too, but my nervious brain didn’t connect to my mouth.
Another stupid thing I said back in those old days was “See what I mean?” to blind people.