This may come as a surprise, but I have an internal censor. Really, I do! I often manage to not say the first stupid thing that comes into my head. Working as a telemarketer I find it best to follow my script, though. No point in asking for trouble.
Lately I’ve been calling businesses in the Greater Washington DC Area, while at lunch I’ve been reading a book about events around the Battle of Antietam, in the US Civil War, all happening in the same area. Having always been a little unstuck in time, I’m used to functioning with part of my brain being in 2015 and part in 1862.
For some idiotic reason the leads have been missing address information, which I need to fill in. For this I need to go off-script, and small talk is not something I’m comfortable with. So, I get that the business is in Newport News, VA and is located on Nat Turner Boulevard. “Oh, I see folks got over THAT,” slipped from my lips. I winced, the admin said, “Yeah,” and I prayed that the woman was not offended. After all, Virginia still has plenty of stuff named after heroes of the Confederacy, and though I assume feelings don’t run as strong as when I left fifty years ago, things can still be sore points for some.
So, what are some of your examples of saying stuff you knew immediately you should not have said. Preferably cases where you knew it was wrong while you said it, not after the other person’s negative reaction.
I’ve always had a bit of a pet peeve when people refer to fetuses as being inside the mother’s “stomach”. It’s…inaccurate.
So one early summer evening I’m sitting around the campfire, a couple of glasses of mead in *my *stomach, relaxing in the company of a friend who was about 7 months gone. Suddenly an unattended minor - probably about 3 or 4, blond hair, big blue eyes, you’ve seen the horror movies - appears in the circle of firelight and just stands there, staring at us. Me, then her, then me, then her.
“Hi,” I finally offer. “Where’s your mom or dad, kiddo?”
Silence.
“Hi,” my friend tries. “My name’s Megan. What’s your name?”
Silence. More staring. Then she catches sight of Megan’s prodigious abdomen. Megan seizes the opportunity to bond. “There’s a baby in my stomach, you know.”
“That’s because,” don’tsayitdon’tsayitdon’tsayit, “…that’s because she *ate *it,” I said slowly. Or maybe the mead said.
:smack:
The big blue eyes got even bigger, and the kid bolted back to her own camp, and suddenly I was picking up a 7 month pregnant woman out of the dust because she fell out of her camp chair laughing.
Misuse of “stomach” can lead to some very entertaining sentences.
I bet you don’t see it often!
Sorry, I’m mean. But I thought it was an interesting illustration of how these types of errors are often not caused by ignorance, but by an unthinking desire to use high status words (such as Latinate “stomach”) over low status ones (such as plain old Anglo-Saxon “belly”), and therefore also shows up in the speech and writing of people who do know better.
By the way, since I took the time to try to embarrass you, I thought I should also take the time to mention that the reason I knew to go looking for that post is that I have long found your posts interesting, informative and wise, and that consequently that post stuck in my mind as “something WhyNot posted” rather than “something generic poster 42365 posted”.
