Ever have someone react badly to your amusing anecdotes?

Case 1: All through my childhood I had a small dog, about the size of a cat. When I was in high school, we didn’t let him in the house. He usually slept in a box in the garage. One day, a cat showed up. Our dog and the cat fought like, well, cats and dogs. But the cat kept coming around and eventually sort of adopted us. The dog and cat got along so well that they’d curl up next to each other in the box and sleep together.

The reaction: “They slept together? That’s SICK!” Uh, I said slept, not had sex. Moron.

Case 2: (From maybe 15-20 years ago) There’s some diaper company that has two kinds of diapers, one for boys and one for girls.

The reaction: “That’s sexist! They’re totally discriminating against girls!” Oh, looks like somebody needs an anatomy lesson.

Case 3: When I worked in a video store a woman came in with her son who was maybe 4 or 5. They decided to rent Lady and the Tramp. It was the son’s favorite movie. When they were checking it out, the son asked to hold it. The mother said “OK, but be really careful with it. If you drop it and break it, mommy will be very sad.” The son replied “Yeah, and um, when they’re eating the spaghetti? They might choke.”

The reaction: “Oh, I would smack that kid so hard! What a little shit!” I think someone didn’t quite hear the story right. Sadly, she was a mom herself.

I can state with almost 100% certainty that this is the first time I have been able to respond to a thread which did not already have at least 20 replies.

I once had a dream in which I went to Heaven (odd, since I’m agnostic), only to find that the only language spoken there was French. So I had to struggle with my high school French; more challenging given that it is 30 years since I left high school.

When I awoke I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I was so proud of my subconscious to come up with such a great farcical situation.

I went to work the next day and told it to a colleague who I knew was a really hard core Christian, thinking she would appreciate the absurdity of my dream. Unfortunately she was totally offended, saying something like, “That is ridiculous. Heaven transcends language. God would never put up barriers like that.”

I still think it’s my favourite dream ever.

People who react badly to my amusing anecdotes? Only when I post them on a message board!

I used to put stray change I found in the bottom of the washing machine into a jar . Mr. Sali noted this, and I said (ha-ha! joke ahead) “that’s my retirement fund”. Mr. Sali said totally serious, “Sali, we have an IRA and pension…” I was making a JOKE, dumbass!

If falling asleep, starting a conversation with someone else before I have finished talking or running out of the room count, then yes, I have seen some bad reactions.

My then-girlfriend and I were out shopping for cars and an Arabic or Indian salesman was helping us. He opened the trunk of a Ford Taurus that we were looking at and I remarked “Boy you could fit 4 or 5 bodies in there!” GF laughed, salesman just had a neutral expression on his face. Don’t know if he thought I was serious or if I’m really not as funny as I think I am…

Thanks for the laughs, Wile E. Another bad one is when someone waits until your story is over and then says “Are you done?”

Or laughs with a faraway look on their face, then says, “I’m sorry, I was thinking about something else. What were you saying?”

We’ve had really crappy weather all through October…cold, rainy, gloomy, nothing like the red-fall-leaves-against-a-brilliant-blue-sky October we normally have. Today I ran into an elderly acquaintance, and she remarked that she wasn’t liking this weather at all. I said, “I know. It’s been the longest November I’ve ever seen.” O.k., not exactly a thigh-slapper. Maybe not even really technically amusing at all. (And also not an anecdote, but work with me here.) But there was no reason for her to look so concerned and lean towards me and whisper, “It’s October.”

I don’t blame her… I can’t figure out what the “longest November” joke is either. :confused: I guess now you got a “bad” reaction to an amusing anecdote, heh.

When I was an aid worker in Baghdad we had two guys with the same name. One of them was later killed. After that, we who worked with him would refer to the two as Joe and Dead Joe. It was a little sick in-joke among those of us in Iraq who weren’t killed. I have to know someone very, very well before I tell them that (or I have to be hiding behind a user name).

Some friends of mine were on tour with their band in Europe and their record company had hired a local driver and a few local roadies to help them out. I heard this story over and over again:

Singer: (carrying in a box of t-shirts) Man, we’ve got like, a million shirts tonight.

Roadie: No, I think we only have 50 or so.

I don’t know if that was just cultural, though…

Mostly what I get is either blank expressions or grossed-out reactions to what I refer to as “family verbal shorthand.”

My immediate family (Mom, brother, sister, me, the kids, maybe a couple of close cousins) refer to the bread/bakery outlet store as the “used bread store.” By extension, the dented can food outlet is known immediately as the “used food store.” Oddly, some people find that weird/gross/inexplicable.

And you know those nights when you clean out the fridge for dinner? Reheat a couple of servings of everything left over during the week? That night, dinner is referred to as “garbage soup.” Isn’t garbage, usually isn’t even soup, but it’s still garbage soup in my family.

American cheese or Velveeta-ish products are always “government cheese.” And the act of changing conversational subjects is always prefaced by the phrase “speaking of peanut butter.” (I could explain the reasoning behind the last, but it’s a long story. Still, it lives in the family lexicon…)

Why, thank you :slight_smile:

Can you explain for me? I don’t get it either.

I presume it’s cos it feels like November’s arrived early (and thus will last 8 weeks not 4)?

I’m going with cultural here. I spent a semester of college in the south of Sweden a few years ago. While in the local “rock bar” I had the following exchange with a local guy:

ME: Man, Motorhead have put out like a thousand albums in the last ten years.
SWEDE (with a straight face and gravid tone): No, that would be impossible. I think it’s more like eight albums.
ME: :smack:

You have to understand the Swedish sense of humor.

You also have to understand Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the invisible dragon in my garage.

At one of my old jobs I once told a mildly off-color joke that Italians tell about their own policemen (told to me by someone who lives in Italy). I was just trying to contribute some international flavor. Next thing I knew, I had a reputation that I hated Italians (!?) Thank goodness nobody made a complaint to the higher-ups.

My best example of this is from a couple of days ago when the person with the bad reaction was me! To my own story! Partway through my story, it stopped being funny.

I needed a real-life head slapping smilie.

I have a less morbid version of this, although it’s about my sister and her friend instead of me.

My sister “Rachel” had a good friend in high school who was also named “Rachel”. The friend had red hair so people in their social circle sometimes called her “Red-haired Rachel” to distinguish her from my sister. This morphed into the nickname “Red Rachel”. My sister, who dyed her hair black at the time, became “Black Rachel”.

The two Rachels went to different colleges. My sister is quite the character, so Red Rachel had many stories about her to share with her new friends in college. But after hearing “Black Rachel this” and “Black Rachel that” many times, one of Red Rachel’s college friends said “Look, we all know your friend is black. You don’t have to keep making a big deal about it. And you really should be saying ‘African-American’ anyway.”

I’m sure Red Rachel was embarrassed at the time, but the very pale, white Black Rachel thought this was hilarious when she heard the story later.

Gawd, I bet he was a riot to hang out with.