I agree with the cringe-a-licious description of thi thread.
I know I have mentioned this before but, when I first started my current job, there was a woman who worked in my department part time, who was making plans to leave her position. Even though I had heard someone describe her as having “health support needs” that didn’t really mean anything to me—a good number of people who work there have disabilities and this came up in the context of letting me know who had requested support and assistance should we have to evacuate the building.
Anyhow, she was in my office talking to my officemate about her departure. I cheerfully piped up with, “Are you leaving us for bigger and better things?” Her smile got a little stiff and she said, “Sort of…”
Technically, it’s true. She was leaving because she only had a few more weeks before the cancer which doctors had been unable to contain took her life.
I used to have really terrible foot-in-mouth syndrome. It’s gotten better recently. Turns out that living in a foreign country for an extended period of time, when you have to carefully think out everything you say to make sure you’ve got the right verb conjugations and definite articles, helps.
The only one I can think of off the top of my head isn’t anywhere near as bad as I know I’ve done. I think I’ve repressed the others out of shame.
I hate my middle name. It’s from my great-aunt and it sounds really old-fashioned. I’ll say it’s…Myrtle. Anyway, when I was in college, a friend and I were riding the bus and we ran into someone my friend was in a class with, so my friend introduced us. Her name was Myrtle.
Me: “Oh, that’s my middle name. I hate it.”
My friend: “KYLA!”
Me: “Oh…but…it’s a good…um, first name?” Doh.
I went to lots of different schools when I was a kid. I moved between 5th and 6th grade, and ended up in yet another new school. One of my best friends there was a black girl whose name I don’t remember. I don’t remember her name because EVERYONE, black and white students alike, called her Slave Girl. It sounds awful, but she was cool with it–she called HERSELF that. I have no idea how she got the nickname–maybe it was from the bandanas she always wore on her hair. Anyway, clearly the nickname had existed long before my arrival to the school.
Fast forward to 7th grade. I’m in yet another new school, in a new state, and it’s not nearly as ethnically diverse as my last school. There are maybe three black girls in the entire school, and I’m friends with one of them–not great friends, but we all sat together at the same lunch table and joked around and played four-square together at recess. Anyway, she said something to me at lunch one day, and I responded “Shut up, Slave Girl!”
Heh. A woman I know was pregnant last year, about 7-8 months gone, and a friend of a friend one night asked her when she was due. She fixed him with a stony glare and said, ‘I’m not’. I wasn’t there, but just picturing the poor guy’s face always makes me chuckle.
My own - my sister in law at Christmas dinner a few years ago was wearing a sleeveless top with a mohair type shrug over it. She took it off because she was too warm, and some of the hairs had clung to her armpit. Ha, I said, you look like a big wrestler! I meant because of the hair, but of course she was still feeling bad about not having lost her baby weight yet. Well done me
D’oh. Reminds me of when a co-worker mention she had a bad headache and I did my best Kindergarten Cop “Maybe it’s a tumor!” Then I remembered her husband recovered from a brain tumor and followed up with conciliatory words about her having personal experience with that. :smack:
The talk about mistaking pregnant woman reminds me of the Mad About You where Paul and Ira say something to a person on the street about being pregnant. Of course not only were they not pregnant, but they were a man (given the recent story, not transgendered either).
ok…racking my brain here so I can participate. I know this has happened to me…and I HATE it when it does. So, I finally remembered one… but it didn’t involve talking. It was an action. So sue me…its the best I could come up with.
Me, my male friend, and two gal friends. None of us were together, but there was some attraction in the air… oh man…this is painful for me to write about.
So, we are having a fun time… And you see, one of the ladies was very attactive, but very …oh what is the correct way to say it…very much not endowed up top in the chest area. Ok?
We are goofing and laughing…and my friend and I like attack this girl with tickling. My friend is actually holding her arms so she cannot defend herself, while I tickle her…and I think I am tickling her stomach…but for whatever reason…she is rather long and slender…I am just not paying good attention…she is flailing around like crazy as I do it…and after a while she finally says…“uh…i was trying to tell you you were too high…”…So I was like molesting her…without realizing it… It was so embarrassing. The worst part…she was trying to tell me the whole time…“lower” because she wanted to have fun…she like me…oh boy… Anyways…it was really wierd and awkward…because…you know it really reminds everyone present how “unendowed” she is…that I could be doing that and not even realize it…
I’m not sure I understand this one. Since you said picturing the guy’s face makes you chuckle, I’m guessing what you mean by “7-8 months gone” is that she’d already given birth some time ago when the guy asked the question? Cuz my first thought was that she’d lost the baby when she was 7-8 months along, and that wouldn’t be chuckle-worthy
My husband had a corker. We were out for dinner one night and met up with an old friend of mine (husband had only just moved to my town) and I introduced them and they got along well. Husband stands up announcing that he’s going out for a cigarette. Rachael says “Those thing’ll kill you” and husband responds with “So will a Mack truck but they don’t stick warnings all over them” and happily leaves the restaurant. I am horrorfied and so is he when I inform him that Rachel’s husband suicided the year before by driving his car into a Mack truck.
Y’know, I read this whole thread waiting for a turn of phrase that would successfully trigger a long-buried memory. I know for I fact that I have perpetrated this social crime, but either I’ve sucessfully blocked these incidences from my memory or (more likely) I have so many hanging about my cerebellum that they’re taking turns beating each other back in their efforts to escape.
Instead I offer up my cousin Mark as a sacrificial lamb.
When I was stationed down at NSGA Homestead back in the early 1990s my friends and I decided to get tickets to an INXS concert up in Miami at about the same time Mark and his parents headed south to visit mutual relatives (who lived off of Kendall, for you SoFlos who know the area). Since Mark has about six years on me and the mutual relatives have about 90 years on both of us, I figured Mark would jump at the chance for a night away from the old folks so we picked up a spare ticket for him as well.
We all - military and civilian alike - had a great time at the concert, and returned to a military bar down south afterwards. My shipmates made a brilliant effort including Mark into the conversation and a good time was had by all.
I don’t remember the point of the comment and it really doesn’t matter; all I know is that the guy who said it was African American and my dear sweet cousin responded with “I haven’t done that in a coon’s age”.
I don’t think I’ve ever been as embarassed - or as embarassed on another’s behalf - that mch ever before or ever since.
Well, I just witnessed one last night. Backstory is, my friend C had two daughters and one of them died last year of the MRSA bug. We did memorial quilts and all this is well-known among the group. She is pregnant again and we were having her shower at our quilt guild meeting last night.
So C and S were talking about their life insurance and how C and her husband have 30-year term life policies. She was saying how even though the rate will go up exponentially after 30 years, she figures they won’t need it then because of savings and the kids being on their own…
S: <doubting they’ll be able to save enough> “Let me tell you…you have kids? They’re with you FOREVER!!”
Look, can we just ban Gatopescado for not sharing his/her (?) story with us. I think this is in violation of the ‘don’t be a jerk’ rule.
(I’ll sign up for a PM if I still can, though:) )
Ah no, soz. She was 7-8 months’ pregnant, and the guy asked her when she was due. When she said ‘I’m not (ie, not due/pregnant)’, he thought for that awful split second that she was just very fat and that he’d just insulted her.
Long, long ago I worked in a relatively small law firm. One paralegal there was morbidly obese, and in an office full of skinnies she must have felt very self-conscious. Anyway, one day she comes into my cubicle and asks if I have a three-ring binder I can give her. “Sure!” I chirp helpfully, “I’ve got a bunch! But what size do you need? – one of the little skinny ones, or a big fat wide one?”
I didn’t even realize what I had said until I looked up and found her staring at me with a why-don’t-you-die-and-go-straight-to-hell expression in her eyes. And I did want to die, for a minute there.
I think I’ve written this here somewhere, but I can’t recall.
At any rate, I spent a summer working in a Home Depot-type store, with a gentleman who’d lost a leg in a car accident several years before. One day, after a particularly busy rush, he, small talkingly, asked me “Busy day, huh?” To which I replied: "No kidding! I’m busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest…
He pretended not to notice, but we never got past the “cordial, just-met co-worker” thing after that.
High school. I was generally friendly with my teachers, including the homeroom teacher (whose brother I did theater with). She was wearing all black one morning and I said, “what, did someone die?”
HAW HAW HAW.
Ten minutes later on the morning announcements on the PA, “And some sad news for the school community…”
I was doing the walking and talking thing with a friend at work at one point, and we’d been talking about his upcoming wedding and some other weddings in general. And he was telling me about this Jack & Jill party which was basically a fundraiser under the guise of being a bachelor/bachelorette party. I was only sort of hearing parts of it, because we were walking down narrow halls and I kept ending up behind him, so after he finished telling me about what I thought had been a friend’s party, I declared it ‘Kinda tacky, I mean asking all your friends for money like that.’
I used to work in the same academic department a as a neuropsychologist at a rural college. We shared an interest in the local fauna and would chat about what I had seen on my last walk in the woods. One spring I came across a whole bunch of baby snakes on some kind of migration and was telling him about it. At one point I said something about how “a lot of them didn’t make it across the road.” Immediately after this left my mouth I recalled that his 11 year old daugher had died a few months before after being hit by a truck when she was out riding her bike.
