harmless things that people made people mad at you

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Story of my life. Let’s see.

My brother is going to a movie with a friend and my father is driving them. He asks if he should call dad to doublecheck the show time before calling the friend. A say it woudn’t be a bad idea. Our (fairly new) step-mother says she knows for sure the show time is six. My brother looks at me and I nod and say somthing along the lines of “Go ahead and call him.” I get yelled at for at least 10 minutes by my step-mother who missed or ignored the nod and didn’t bother to ask who “him” was supposed to mean before deciding I was trying to undermine her and tell my brotehr to and call our dad. Trying to explain only made it worse because I was “changing my story”.

I’m at a gaming tournement. I make a (legal, but slightly complicated) play and I call a judge to help explain it to my opponent. I explain the move and the judge rules it illegal. I say (in a pretty casual tone by all accounts) “I don’t agree but it’s your tournement so I’ll play by your ruling.” I nearly get kicked out for “arguing” with him.

I parked in a parking space. My car was, at worst, an inch or two off center. When I got back I had a note on my windshield telling me to “learn to park” and that I was a “fucking asshole”.

When I was a kid, I got beaten up on a school bus. Once I’ve picked myself up off the floor of the bus, the bus driver screams at me about how he’s “had it with all this bullshit” (I’d never been involved in or seen any other trouble on this bus) and drags me to the principal’s office.

I asked the people in the dorm room next to me to turn down their music. At 2 AM. When I had to be at work at 8 in the morning. Apparently, I was the jerk in this scenario too.

EDIT:
Another! I asked the manager who was firing me without explanation on my first day of work at his restaurant why I was fired. I was told not to bring “that kind of bullshit” into his business and to get out before he called the police.

42

I haven’t been subject to much violence by adults I did not know, and all of them did not lead to injuries.

But one time in grade school, school had let out and I was walking to the bus. For some reason, there was a throng of children where the sidewalk from school joined the sidewalk where the busses were. I looked for the reason for the crowd, but not having seen any, proceeded to walk past it and toward my bus…but as soon as I got past the crowd, a woman whom I did not know came out of nowhere and shoved me forcefully back. And then asked why I was proceeding when she had told everyone to stop (except me, because she hadn’t told me.) I still don’t know why she was holding everyone back, it wasn’t too early to board the busses or anything.

43

I just encouraged mine to try*, after a dozen or so attempts “No, flap harder!” he figured it out on his own. Then I told him the story of Icarus.

“Did he get hurt when he fell?”
“Oh yeah… he needed a really big Band Aid.”

*From the couch, not a window. Windows are for testing Superman capes.

44

Kids are always great. Whynot, I think, tells a funny one about a little girl and bananas. NO I WANTED THE BANANA YOU JUST CUT, UNCUT. NO, I DON’T WANT A NEW BANANA. WAAAAAA!

45

My son was about 5 or 6 and I rented ET for him to watch.
He sobbed uncontrollably at the end, he didn’t want ET to go home. He wanted him to live with US!. Mom, go get him, get ET he can live in MY closet.

It was an hour and a half of crying before he fell asleep, all hot and exhausted.

On the other hand, today I was the person driving slow, through a residential neighbourhood with the circle things at the intersections. I was slowing down for dogs, children etc. A lady in a Range Rover started honking at me. When she could pull along side me she asked me to learn to drive, I could kill someone like that, and denied there were any children around, much less dogs. Ummm, its noon, we passed two schools in the last four blocks and there are numerous warnings about school zones, slow down.

But the most annoying thing I seem to do is use my knife in my right hand and my fork in my left. For all uses. I don’t switch hands or anything. I am left handed and just learned to cut food the way my family does, but I see no need to swap hands. It drives some people nuts.

46

Yeah, we had our ET moment too… I’ve posted the following before and it’s one of my favorite movie-watching-with-the-kid moments:

[spoiler]Open spoilers ahead about ** ET**. You have been warned.

We (the family) were driving to see Momma’s family up in New Jersey one Thanksgiving. Our six year-old was in the back with a little DVD video player, so Daddy fired up a couple of favorites from when he was younger.

The first was Roger Rabbit. Oops! There’s a lot of innuendo in this one… might be a while before we pull it off the shelf again.

Well, the next was ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, which she adored from the get-go. She was all happy and “look, momma” and excited about ET. Momma was sitting beside her.

So we’re driving up I-81 through Harrisburg and I hear GASP! “What’s wrong with ET? Oh no!” “He’s going to be OK, isn’t he?” “No!” … comments like that throughout the sickness/army scene.

Then ET dies. My little girl is highly upset, her hands clenched around the DVD player, holding it tightly (she has it in her lap this entire time). “This is a bad movie! This is a BAD movie!”

“Sophie, do you want to stop?”

“No!”

So ET comes back to life. And she is thrilled, her emotional high as deep and meaningful as her low of 2 minutes earlier. And it’s back to the “Look, momma”'s and “Awwwwwww!”'s, and Sophie is happy, cheering Eliot and ET on as they escaped the “astronaut guys”, flying up in the air on their bikes, landing in front of the spaceship.

“Momma? What’s happening? ET isn’t leaving is he? I don’t want him to go!” And she was upset again, but not nearly as upset as earlier.

I’ll… be… right… here.

The spaceship flies off, the music swells, and the credits start to roll. Sophie does two things:

  1. Refuses to turn off the credits, watching them the whole way through.
  2. When they are done, and the DVD is at the menu, she looks up…

“Can I see it again?”

So she did, but after a long talk about the movie and what she saw, and What It All Meant. We pulled into a hotel and hooked the DVD player up to the TV so she could see it “big screen”.

ET was the movie for the next two weeks.[/spoiler]

47

I can tell you from very personal experience, that could be dangerous. I jumped off the garage roof when I was 5, with a dishtowel around my neck. I put a pillow about 10 feet from the garage to land on. I was quite puzzled as to why I didn’t fly to the pillow. Instead, I landed about 6 inches from the garage wall.

(I’m still not completely convinced I can’t fly. I just haven’t found the right dishtowel.)

48

First meeting of the girlfriends parents, St. Patrick’s day dinner, we were just talking and
having a good time… Anyways the talk came around to wallet size and I made an offhand comment about man purses and satchels.

If looks could kill, I would have been dead.

Apparently the GF’s dad was a satchel man, WOOPS, I felt like an ass.

Ended up being rather funny as her Dad proceeded to march up and down the
dining room modeling all of his different satchels for me. He had quite the collection
from all over the world.

I miss that guy.

49

When I watched ET as a five-year old, my parents fast-forwarded through the hospital scene, much to my chagrin. Your story about your daughter’s extreme reaction makes me forgive my parents for doing that, so thanks.

50

When I was about 4 years old I had a babysitter who for some unknown reason didn’t like me. She had two little girls of her own. One day I was sitting on her couch watching TV quietly minding my own business when I started picking my nose. Little kids pick their noses, no big deal. I was trying to be surreptitious about it - she was vacuuming and I’d pick when she was around a corner or something. Well this woman ended up seeing me and FLIPPED OUT. She grabbed me and carried me upstairs to the bathroom and ranted and raved for what seemed like ages. I was a very quiet, shy, mousy child so this was super terrifying and I knew I hadn’t done anything to deserve getting yelled at like this.

Geez lady, it’s just snot. Get a grip.

51

This is very similar to what others have posted with kids.

Getting out of the car at our house at the end of the day…

Me: What do you want to do before dinner tonight?
Her: I want to go to the moon, Dada!
Me: You want to play make believe and be astronauts?
Her: No! points at the moon I want to go to the moon! Right now!

Screaming fit ensues.

52

Two occasions spring to mind:

A coworker was describing a documentary he’d seen about how body cells look like miniature universes and how that was apparently a Big Deal. I asked, “Did they mention red blood cells?” He said that they still counted. When I pointed out that I was asking because they don’t have a nucleus, purely to discuss the implications of the documentary, he acted like I was attacking his life’s work, baby daughter and genitals, rather than asking him to clarify what some documentary I hadn’t seen was trying to posit.

The second was only a few days ago, when I proclaimed Flexitarianism a bullshit term (strong words, but I was amongst friends), and it turns out that the most humourless member of the group was, surprise surprise, a flexitarian.

Turns out I should just keep my opinions to myself.

53

Apparently, asking my direct supervisor via email only to her, if we are actually going to get a key to the oxygen tank storage room, as she said in November that we would, is a direct challenge to her authority.

I promise not to do it again. Perhaps it IS better that I send my only care aide running around the building begging for a tank of oxygen while my patient is turning blue.

54

Surprise 40 birthday party for my husband, I was putting away the left over sliced cheeses and meats. They were on leaf lettuce, that was all soggy and wilted. Started throwing it away. MIL started screaming at me that she wanted to save it. Screaming in front of my SIL and all the remaining guests. Husband walks in she changes like there was no problem. I left the kitchen. The lettuce leaves were saved and eventually thrown out because she forgot about them.

55

I’m right handed so when I eat something that needs cut with a knife, I switch hands. My knife goes into my right hand while I cut and then the fork gets switched back to the right hand. My stepmother apparently saw this as a personal attack because she would scream at me like she was being stabbed with said knife.

In 4th(?) grade, I was asked to come up to the chalkboard. As a shy, awkward child, this was a painful experience on the best of days. The teacher asked me to draw a house. I drew the typical house; square building, inverted V roof and crooked chimney. My building consisted of one line drawn up, one line drawn over, one line drawn down and the final line drawn over. The teacher proceeds to FLIP OUT because, didn’t I know, you NEVER EVER EVER draw a line up. All lines are to be drawn down or across, but never up.

This was the same teacher who, during a high school health class, tells all the boys to only date thin girls. Any girl who is a couple pounds overweight in high school will balloon up and become ugly as she gets older. I’m pretty sure he still teaches there.

56

I apparently walk much too quietly and swiftly. I regularly freak people out when just walking around the office, like I’m some sort of wizard or something, just appearing and disappearing.

57

Some of our halls at work are fairly narrow. People almost run into each other regularly. When I hear someone approaching around a corner, I will go slower to avoid a collision, which will of course make the other person go even faster because they now can’t hear anyone. They don’t get annoyed at me though, thankfully.

58

More than ten years ago now, I was talking with my parents after dinner. I related a story from a classmate who said he didn’t realize he was American until he joined the army and filled in all the paperwork. His parents were from Mexico, and he grew up defining himself as Mexican. He just didn’t understand the difference between one’s cultural identity and one’s citizenship.

My dad got this outraged look on his face and stormed away from the dinner table, into his bedroom, and slammed the door. My mom and I exchanged a look of WTF? and continued talking. A few minutes later, Dad comes out and tells me that if I hold such views I cannot live under his roof anymore.

There were about five minutes while I sat, too shocked to speak, and my mom demanded to know what the hell he was on about, and under no circumstances was he to even think something like that. Ten minutes after that, he came back and said that he’d misheard what I’d said, so everything was fine.

He even ended up apologizing to me.

Eight years later.

My mom and I agree that this was probably a very early sign of his Alzheimer’s.

59

I was taking my 2 year old out to dinner - we were meeting my parents. So, I’d told her that we were going to a restaurant. She was pretty excited until we actually got there. Then this happened:

Confused look. “Where’s astronaut?”

“Astronaut? Oh, no, not ‘astronaut.’ I said ‘restaurant.’ Like, where you get food.”

She was inconsolable. I totally understand. I would’ve been disappointed, too.

60

When I was in Romania with my family a few years ago, my Dad took a photo of some pig carcasses in a truck (Don’t ask me why. He takes photos of everything). Before you know it, the guy who owns the pigs starts to very aggressively state that the pigs are his and that my dad has no right to take photo’s. He kept shouting at my Dad for a few minutes before we walked away.

Another time when we were walking through the town, my dad took a few photos of some guys putting insulation on a house when insulation guys started shouting at my him to delete the photos or they would call the police.