I was watching I Love Lucy, and Ricky and Fred are ignoring Lucy and Ethel, so Lucy and Ethel decide to leave the apartment and go call and ask for herself. That way Ricky and Fred will see Ethel and Lucy aren’t at home and they’ll get worried and accordig to Ethel, “Start dragging the rivers.” Of course the two ladies are mistaken for robbers with typical hillarious results.
And then on Seinfeld, there was George putting a “mickey” in his bosses drink. And there have a been a lot of shows where someone pays someone to be their escort at a school reunion. Gracie (Allen) pays kids to pretend they are her children and Geroge (Burns) comes home to find he’s a father
My question to you all is have you ever been involved in a real life, silly, caper that you woud call “straight out of a TV sitcom”? If so what was it?
I’ve never invested all my savings into a wacky get-rich-quick scheme that goes hilariously awry and leaves me poorer but wiser.
I’ve never even faked being homosexual for the sake of my landlord nor faked being married for the sake of my parents. Although, now that I think about it, I was secretly married once for a short time. I guess that counts for something.
I rolled the dice with my current work management, a EEOC deal, had a lot of drama for a minute, but as with all financial conglomerates, you well just,…
I threw a surprise party for my wife. I worked very hard with all her friends to keep it a secret and get her out of the house so all the guests could sneak in.
She decided she liked having the evening off so much that she didn’t show up until 3 hours after all the guests arrived. She was also slightly drunk.
Four friends and I once drove for 12 hours to eat at a waffle house (Mid Michigan to Tennessee). We only had one day off each for spring break, and that was our event. We ate one hell of a meal and came home.
My folks threw a surprise party for me on my 19th birthday. My mom took me to get a haircut while my dad and siblings invited people over and decorated the house. When I came home, I was already upset over the crappy haircut I got, and I started to cry because all the people there were relatives and my sisters’ friends, which to me, served only to highlight the fact that I had no actual friends of my own. Not the wacky sitcom result everyone was hoping for. I feel like a shitheel now that I think about it, because of not having appreciated the effort they went to.
We were somewhere Up North, in Michigan, at a gas station in my truck with about 9 people ( two adults the rest ranging in age from 8-14) packed in. We were either on our way up or way down from a ski trip.
For a good ten minutes, every time someone got in the truck, someone would get out to ’ get something’ . Only one person in the group stayed in the truck the entire time, and she said it was hysterical watching one door close and the another door seemingly automatically open and someone had to get out and get something.
I was a part of this wordless comedy on three parts of it myself ( hunting down wayward children.)
Well, back in college, I found myself wading into an icy-cold creek barefoot at midnight, surrounded by the sounds of croaking frogs. We’d gotten it in our heads to get some humongous frogs (rumored to be in the area) to eventually enter in the Calaveras County Jumping Frog Contest later that year. We waded around in the dark for about two hours, freezing our asses (and our feet) off. The result of our efforts: six frogs no longer than an inch, and we got back to campus at about 3:00 AM. Alcohol may have been involved.
The frogs did eventually grow fairly large, but that was after they all escaped and took up permanent residence in a few man-made ponds on our campus.
Not from a sit-com, but straight out of Office Space:
During my performance appraisal this year, I switched around and spent the time giving my supervisor my appraisal of his performance, as well as that of our division in general. Where I thought I’d sealed my fate was the part where we talked about whether my ultimate goal was to aim toward Engineering Fellow or Program Manager, and I said, “You don’t have the position defined yet, but I’m a perfect fit for the “groo’s real name” position.” (I’ll spare you the details, but it sort of goes along the lines of inserting “strategic” product improvements into existing and new programs, but with enough authority to deal with program managers on an equal footing.) This is the perfect thing to do in times of economic uncertainty – point out how I don’t fit into the organization.
Result: the largest raise I’ve ever received, and I’m the “product owner” (a newly-minted term in our org) of the main part of our software architecture. Job description: see above, but over a smaller set of programs. This wasn’t because of my suggestion; it was part of a reorganization already being considered behind the scenes. They hadn’t figured out who could lead the SW architects, because they’re all, to put it mildly, a bit quirky, and I’d just unknowingly volunteered for that position. I hope I don’t sound smug, because I’m terrified, and my company doesn’t have the best track record regarding reorganizations.
The house I grew up in was actually an apartment above what used to be a corner-store. We owned the whole building but by this time it was store part was empty.
One night my friend and I were downstairs running around like maniacs (we were 12ish) with the lights off when some cops came by. They thought we had broken in and didn’t believe me when I said I lived there.
They were trying to force us out of the house while I was yelling for my mom to come downstairs. She didn’t hear me. I had to ring the doorbell for her to come and tell them that I did in fact live there.
I was in college and living alone for the first time and had little to no money. I was lucky enough to be living in an apartment with a dishwasher, but that week I’d run out of detergent and a new box wasn’t in the budget. Without thinking I’d filled the cups up with regular dishsoap and stared in horror as a few minutes later mountains and mountains of foam started pouring out from the bottom and sides of the machine, yes, not unlike an episode of “I Love Lucy.” I didn’t have any dishtowels because, you know, I had a dishwasher, and I didn’t have any paper towels because they were a luxury so I grabbed the nearest thing I could get my hands on which was the massive San Francisco yellow pages and immediatly started ripping pages out and flinging them wildly all over the kitchen: it was like spitting on a forest fire. I tried scooping up armfuls of the suds and tossing them into the sink and they just floated across the room and back onto the floor while more suds churned out. I finally ended up dumping the contents of my laundry hamper on the floor and letting it soak everything up. What a nightmare! When I peeled everything up the ink from the phonebook had run all over the floor - ugh! Nice. That was a rough one to learn the hard way.