For me, it was the time that I found a tampon applicator in my mom’s bathroom trash can and took it out to play with it. I think I was 4 or 5 and just thought it was cool, like playing with TO or paper towel rolls. I had no idea why my mom was so horrified.
With my son, it was when I heard this weird sound from upstairs, and came up to see my son playing with my vibrator on the lap table in my bed. He liked the rattling noise and watching it skitter around on the table surface :eek:
There’s one I remember very clearly. I think I was about eight years old at the time.
OK, background info first. My parents often used to attend dinner parties held by our neighbours, Sheena and Kingsley. Every time, my father would come home afterwards and mention to my mother that Kingsley talked non-stop about his job all night long, and that he was probably one of the most boring people he’d ever met. Naturally, I overheard this and retained it for later. That’s what kids do, after all.
Fast forward a few weeks, when my mother and I were at home by ourselves. Sheena pops round for a coffee and a chat, and the conversation turns to her husband. All of a sudden, my ears prick up and the words start coming out…
“My dad says Kingsley is the most boring man he’s ever met!”
The flustered look on my mum’s face as she quickly changed the subject is something that has always stayed with me. Later, she gently told me that I shouldn’t repeat things I’ve overheard. We still don’t know to this day whether or not my comments were heard by our guest, which makes it all the more cringeworthy to think about.
I was about seven or eight when my mom took me along with her to the library at the school where she worked. She was working on her Master’s at the time and needed to do some research. She told me that if I was very good and very quiet, she’d buy me a coke.
Indeed I was good and quiet, so we headed over to the dorms where the coke machine lived and stood in line. When it was our turn, I got to put in the quarters and hit the button. Out popped the coke, and in front of a bunch of students - many of whom had my mother as a teacher - I asked, “Mom, does the coke can come out of the coke machine’s vagina?”
She never did answer me.
For me it’s not one incident, but several.
When I was about twelve I took to the notion that the “fart” was the only thing that could be funny. Everything in my humor inventory revolved around gas.
So for about six months, whenever my parents and I were shopping and at the register, I would bust ass. Not just any old ass, either, no this was terror of the plague ass. It was loud, it was noxious, and I’m sure I killed all of the bugs and small life in the area. After launching this “bombing”, I would evacuate the area as soon as possible. This would leave my parents standing in front of a cashier who thought they had blatantly busted ass.
My mother eventually gave me a stern speech about those “incidents” and I gave up my practice.
When I was five, I found a few (unused) tampons in the bathroom and, noting the resemblance to artillery shells, colored them gray-blue with a marker pen, and taped them like bombs to one of those oblong party balloons, upon which I drew the appropriate windows, propellers, serial numbers, etc. to make it a proper model Zeppelin.
As I recall, my parents actually thought it was pretty funny.
Once my mom and I were at the grocery store, and I was probably a year old or something. She was wearing a tube top or something and I yanked it down. My mom told me later that the bagger boy was quite shocked.
I suppose this should have been embarrassing, but I thought it was pretty funny. My Perfect Child[sup]TM[/sup] went to an Episcopal Day School for pre-K. At the end of the year, they had a “graduation” ceremony for the Kindergarten kids, and the Pre-K’s also attended. This ceremony was held in the adjacent church.
My kid’s class was in the front pew on the right-hand side. I was running late and slipped in at the back on the left side. She saw me and raised her little hand in the air, middle finger extended. Yes, it appeared that my baby was flipping me off! :eek:
In reality, she was showing me the bandage on her finger - she had a boo-boo. Still cracks me up the remember my golden-haired babe giving me the bird in Grace Episcopal Church.
Maybe I’m secretly a twelve year old boy, but that’s one of the funniest things I’ve read all day, Meatros.
My nephew was riding the bus with his mother and grandmother one day in Minneapolis. This particularly large black lady with very dark skin and a very broad nose sat down in the seat behind them. My nephew was only maybe 2 years old and his eyes grew wide and he said, “Look, mama! A gorilla!”. My sister and mother wanted to just melt into the floor. That has to be the most embarassing thing ever.
StG
This doesn’t count as “unintentionally” though 
StGermain, that reminds me of a similar incident in which a friend’s child loudly mistook a Middle Eastern woman (in the full-on, face-covered Hijab) for a ninja.
I think your story is a little more embarrassing, though, given the prevalent stereotypes…
I recently swore off the practice of teasing my children with intentional mispronunciations. (They just love correcting Daddy, you see …) I was talking to them about which of our video tapes we’d watch when we got home, you see. “How about Bugs Boony?” “No, daddy, it’s BUNNY!” “Oh yeah. Well, how about Woody Woodpacker?” “No, daddy, it’s PECKER!”
That got some attention from the other people in the grocery store, believe you me! 
this is a funny thread
Just yesterday as I was walking my daughter to kindergarten she greeted a passing man with, “Hey! I know you–you’re Zachary’s grandfather.” “Actually, I’m Zachary’s father. I just look old,” he says.
As we are walking away, my daughter my daughter mumbles, quite audibly, “I didn’t know daddies could be so wrinkly.”
Phouka, I am still laughing - hilarious.
I keep waiting for my kids to embarrass the heck out of me - they have done so many other things…
I remember mortifying my mother when I was about three years old. We were at the grocery store and I saw a mannequin which I ran up to and whacked on the ass…
…at three years old, you don’t realise that grocery stores don’t have mannequins. And if they do, they don’t turn around and look at you.
I always have to be careful when play-racing down store aisles with my older son (now 5).
He tends to yell, “DON’T BEAT ME!” when it looks like I might win.
:eek:
Fortunately I’d actually been prepared for this issue by reading about this happening to someone else. I always reply as loud as he, “You have to run faster if you want to win!” (or some such)…
But probably the worst embarassment was about a year ago, when he would lecture me when I broke my own rules.
In public.
Loudly, and thoroughly.
If I so much as muttered about a line being slow, he would LOUDLY reprimand me, telling me that it wasn’t the clerks fault that other people got there first, and everybody deserved the same attention as I expected, and it wasn’t nice to use bad words just because I was upset. “Calm down, mommy, take some deep breaths.”
:eek: :o :eek:
Always made me want to say, “I taught him that! No, really, I DID!”
A friend’s kid (3-4 years old) once announced to the world in general, “My daddy has a penis and my mommy has a string.”
The family (extended family, about 9 brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles) was gathered around the television, watching a football game. I was about 8 or 9. A player was running down the field, when a few from the opposing team caught up to him and tackled him. My step-dad said “Ahh, he just ran out of gas.” And I said “Yeah, he shot his wad.” I only knew that this meant he had used up whatever energy he had to run, not that it had anything to do with sex. My sister (15 years old at the time) screamed, said “eeew.” It dawned on me that it must have meant something other than what I thought. I kept quiet the rest of the game.
My husband, my son and I were at a restaurant. Dominic was about 5. Across from us was a table with two college-aged girls who had finished eating and were talking and having drinks. Dominic wanted go to say hi, so we let him.
Before I could stop him, he went up behind the chair of one of them and reached around to tickle her. Except that what he ended up doing was reaching around and grabbing a big handful of boobie in each hand! And then wiggling his hands around (“tickling”).
The look on her face was pure shock, while her friend leapt out of her chair and almost hyperventilated she was laughing so hard.
I apologized profusely and explained that he was trying to tickle her, and that he still didn’t realize that tickling strangers wasn’t ok. They said not to worry about it–they thought it was funny as hell. They spent the next 10-15 minutes talking to Dominic. He colored them a few pictures and then asked them for their phone number. Again, I about died. They actually gave him their email addresses though. He gave them his phone number (we said it was ok).
When we were leaving, they were up at the front with some other friends and they said “Oh look! You have to meet my new boyfriend, Dominic!” and then we heard them saying “we got the digits!” after we walked away.