Last week at work, I embarrassed myself in front of a new hire by commenting on a box of documents sitting at reception, observing that they had to have been left by a certain staff member. (Let’s call her “Amber.”) The thing was, these dull old documents were sitting in a repurposed box from Diamond Comics. (A pretty big box, too.)
What I’d intended to say was, “One thing you should know about Amber is that she is a sublime nerd.”
What actually came out of my mouth was “One thing you should know about Amber is that is a sublime nude.” It just hung there in the air for an eternity while all the blood rushed to my head and I struggled to hold onto consciousness in light of the transparent outing of one of the most pointless offices crushes ever.
Please tell me about similar slips of your own tongue, in order to make me feel better.
I don’t know if it’ll make you feel any better, but one time when a doctor that I worked for said he was leaving for the weekend now, I meant to say either, “Okay”, or “Have a good weekend”. But what came out was, “Oh, good.” :smack:
I once had a phone call with someone who was incredibly rude. I hung up the phone, turned to my cube-mate and said, ‘What a dick!’ Guess what my cube-mate’s name was…
I was having a meal in a restaurant, flirting a bit with the food server, and asked her to bring me a glass of milk. Later she asked, “So how was that milk?”
When I was in college we had a little convenience-store-type setup in all the residence halls, usually in the basement. I was the assistant manager of one of them and also worked a few shifts per week. Anyway, one night this really cute girl came down and got some candy bars. Originally she wanted some peanut butter cups but changed her order to Reeses’ pieces. My subconscious didn’t quite get rid of the peanut butter cups, so my readback went like:
“Okay, so that’s one Swedish Fish, one Reese’s [p…3…n…!..$…]… (facepalm as I realize what I had just done)…”
Something very similar to this was presented by Tony Randall to either Johnny Carson or David Letterman on one of the late night shows some time ago. Tony made it sound like it had been his own faux pas, but the only version I could locate online goes:
One morning on my way into work I ran into a coworker. My brain was half awake and I wasn’t feeling well. I wanted to say hello to some one on my way in, my brain for some reason mixed up salut =hello with allo = also hello but came out salop, which is french for nasty, dirty. I quickly apologized. I would of taken calling her nude any day.
I was at my bridal shower thrown by my husband-to-be’s family. We arehave at athe nice restaurant. Elderly aunts, cousins I had never met. I was wearing pink (I hate pink) and a corsage and trying to be all sweet and demure and stuff. So it’s time to hand out door prizes, which were the floral centerpieces. What I MEANT to say was “We are going to raffle off the centerpieces now.” What I DID sat, to tbis day no idea why, was “We are going to raffle off the centerfolds now.” Hilarity ensued
I was about 16, at an event at another school. There were a lot of kids from a lot of schools there, but I was outside with a friend getting something from our bus & wasn’t expecting anyone else to be in the parking lot.
I spotted a little red MG convertible. I squeal out to my friend. “Look a Midget! I LOVE Midgets!!”
so of course, right then, someone walks out from behind a bus. Yup.
I was so close to them I could see the repulsion in their eyes & too mortified to even say “I’m sorry”, much less explain I was talking about a car.
One night, there was a terrible odor in the air, and I said that it smelled like pigs. Guess who was about a thousand feet away from me when I made the comment…that’s right, the friendly neighborhood police officer. I felt like crawling into a hole.
Not me, but happened recently at work. An attorney was on the record, talking about how his client, accused of neglecting her children, was doing well and had an upcoming appointment to get the kids necessary dental work, for which they’d have to be anesthetized. Only he said euthanized.
I think this qualifies as a slip of the tongue (it was more like a plain old mistake, but I was mortified so I’ll post it here) - we were at a family event this weekend (my mom’s 70th birthday), and one of my cousins came in with her parents. I think I’ve only seen her once as an adult, and she was born quite a bit after the rest of us, so I didn’t know her well as a kid, and I walked up and introduced myself to her! I though she was one of my aunt and uncle’s grandkids! Maybe I can blame her for looking way too young for someone in her thirties.
In late high school my best mate was a guy of Indian extraction. His girlfriend was also Indian. Naturally she had a name that was Indian in extraction, and his dog likewise. The names were quite similar. Indeed, you hardly needed to do more than spoonerise the last couple of consonants and one name turned into the other. You know what’s coming, right?
I did it three times. The first time I referred to his girlfriend using the name of his dog and he just laughed. The second time I referred to his dog using the name of his girlfriend and his laugh was, shall we say, somewhat forced. The third time I got a well deserved swearing at. Sigh. We remained friends.
I have made a couple of doozies in front of my classes. Once while teaching about patriotism–I was explaining that patriotism is not merely devotion to an ideal, like freedom, because what if you discover that a country other than your own embodies that ideal better? I said, “Imagine I am an American, but I discover the Netherlands embodies freedom better–they have euthanasia, pot, prostitution–suppose I decide to become…” and here I meant to say “a Dutch patriot”, but what came out of my mouth was “Dutch prostitute”. My students, of course, loved this.
Another time (same class, for some reason), I meant to praise my students for being dutiful (doing their reading, working hard), but the word that came out of my mouth was “doucheful”. Some of my students still tell me they are being extra doucheful when they have worked diligently on something.
