When I was a teenager I was having a good run on the arcade game Paperboy. Eventually I had to go and I ended up pissing my pants and running home.
I met a friend’s girlfriend for the first time. When he introduced me to her, he said “How do you like her boots, they’re brand new”? Well, I was actually looking at her footwear as he was talking. She had on beautiful spike heeled boots that were made of some exotic leather.
I replied, “They’re absolutely gorgeous, they look so supple, I bet they smell nice”, and they both started laughing, hysterically.
Turns out I misheard what he had said, both because my hearing sucks and because her boots really caught my eye. She had recently had breast augmentation and he said “boobs”, not “boots”.
My girlfriend and I (some 30 or 40 years ago) had just moved in together to a new apartment on the top floor of the building. We finished the exhausting move-in around noon, and took a rest. We had a mattress on the floor, no bed, and no curtains yet. We started to…fool around…and she said “Stop, we’re right by the window! We have no curtains!.”
I said “look out the window! We’re higher than the buildings across the street, and we’re on the floor. Nobody has a high enough window to look down and see us.”
She was persuaded by my logic and we continued and progressed to our natural conclusion. Just as we were reaching that…pinnacle…though, we both heard loud cheers and applause. Looking out the window, we saw a line of at least a dozen construction workers on the roof of the building across the street, enjoying their unobstructed view of our antics.
We scrambled for robes, towels, clothes, blushing furiously. At least they applauded. Boos would have have been worse. We put up curtains that same afternoon.
Not ME, but close.
My GF and I were having a romantic interlude in the living room of her house when the doorbell rang. GF was expecting something from her neighbor, so she jumped up and quickly pulled her summer frock on to answer the door. As the neighbor left, she winked and said, “Now get back to WHATEVER you were doing!” When GF came back to me, I observed to her, “You know you have your dress on backwards and inside out, don’t you?”
I’m LOVING these stories. Here’s another of mine – this time with an epilogue.
Years ago I used to work for a privately owned Italian company. Every so often they would have a talking shop to which delegates from all of the national affiliate companies were invited – I was selected from the UK office, as was my colleague S (also male). Now, several days of free Italian food is an exceptionally nice thing, but not so great weight-wise – we were going to have to do some exercise to compensate. I’m a cyclist and S was a swimmer – and neither of those options was going to work – so we settled on going running, as the hotel we were staying at backed onto a large park. Not that either of us really did running, but needs must.
Cut to the conference, and we found ourselves teamed up with the Austrian delegation – two very pleasant young women – and, chatting over coffee, we just happened to mention our exercise plans. One of the ladies immediately perked up: “Ooh, ooh – can I come running with you?”. Well, yes, I guess - why not?. “Er, yeah, sure,” we said.
IMPORTANT PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: when someone you have never met before asks if they can come running with you, do not respond “Er, yeah, sure.” The proper response is to ask: “Are you by any chance an international athlete?” End Of Announcement.
Austrian taekwondo second team, as you ask. She didn’t tell us until afterwards. M, one of our Italian hosts, also invited himself to join us, and he bailed in distress after one lap of the park. S and I stuck it out for three – thirty-five minutes, she ran us for (non-runners the both of us). I remember at one point of exquisite suffering, she was running backwards chatting to us about how great it all was. For her, maybe.
That evening we stuck with our Austrian pals and ate in a very nice restaurant with them. We took a cab because S and I were in too much pain to walk. S ended the evening in agonising bladder pain as well, as the restaurant toilets were down a flight of stairs, and he just could not go down the steps. (On the way, incredibly, we had to stop off because the girls needed cigarettes.
International athletes, eh?)
Epilogue: Cut to the UK office a few days later, and I have a telecon with my Italian boss, who also happened to be M’s manager – and so, in dead time while we were waiting for other attendees to ring in, I told him the story of how M had bailed after one lap, but we stuck it out for three, and went on (jokingly) to complain that this showed a complete lack of moral fortitude, and therefore M should be fired. Not even polite laughter. Small cough. “Ah, Trep, I think you should know that [the company owner] has decided to sit in on the call……”
j
Back in high school, my wife went on a class trip to a Six Flags amusement park with her friends in senior year, but then as now, refused to take the roller coaster rides. However, that year featured a new one that was featured heavily in TV and radio ads at the time - I no longer remember the name, but it was the first ride in our area that would stop at some point, then go in reverse, stop, and go forward again.
Many of her friends were eager to go on this new ride, so out of curiosity, she asked them when she met up with them later: “So, how was the ride?”
“It was GREAT!”
“What was it like?”
“Well, it went up, way up, then down really fast into a loop, then - brrrt! - it stopped, went backwards through the loop, stopped again, and went forward!”
Well, duh, she thought to herself; I could see that from the ground, and knew that already from the ads.
She got only slight variations on this recounting from the next several people who came off the ride.
Finally, while talking to the member of her friend group who was The Lothario of the bunch as they got back into the bus for the trip back from the amusement park, she lost her patience and cut him off when he started saying the same thing: “…it went through a loop, then stopped, and went backwards --”
“Oh, come ON!” she said, loud enough to carry to the rest of the bus. “I know all the positions by now, all right? I want to know what it FEELS LIKE!”
Yeah, they still throw that at her 30 years later.
I checked out a guest - a regular - who paid in cash. I realized after the fact that I had short-changed him by $80. I notified Accounting, who sent him a check.
A month later he’s checking out and asking me if I had any idea what this mystery check from us for $80 was for. Blushing bright red I admitted I’d accidentally short-changed him last time.
Ahhhh, he said.
I blushed for like 5 more minutes after he left.
As for my own stories of funny self-humiliation, two come to mind. Both times, I took it in my head to test “cartoon physics” in the real world, with immediate results.
The first one, fortunately for me, happened when I was alone, with no witnesses. Assigned to rake stuff in our backyard one Fall, I noticed that the rake I happened to be using was not one of those flexible type rakes, but a hard metal rake. “Hey, let’s see what happens if I step on the rake like happens in Tom and Jerry!” I dropped the rake on the ground, tines pointed up, and stepped on it - rather gingerly, or so I thought. But much, MUCH faster than I expected or could react, WHAM! The pole handle flew right up and hit me in the forehead so hard I literally saw sparks. Hey, just like in Tom and Jerry!
The second one happened in the school cafeteria, at lunchtime. I had just eaten a banana.
“Hey,” I said to the 2 or 3 friends I was hanging out with, “I wonder if a banana peel is really as slippery as they make it out to be in cartoons.”
“Why not find out?”
“Good idea!” So I dropped the banana peel onto the tiled cafeteria floor, splayed out and face down in the classic image, and we waited.
Nobody stepped on it. They all stepped around it.
So, in the name of science, I went over and put my foot on it myself.
IMMEDIATELY my foot shot out from under me, the peel flew into the air and landed a good 15 feet away, and I landed hard on my tailbone while jamming my shoulder slightly trying to catch my fall.
This was apparently very funny to witness.
robardin, I did the rake experiment too (and with the same results). Dang, those lawn implements are fast! :o
A bunch of guys I used to work with in a warehouse setting used to think a funny thing to do was to nonchalantly back a guy into a corner, fart, and then try to keep them pinned in the corner. Funny for the farter, not so much for the receiver.
Anyways, one of these friends “Jim” and I during lunch hour liked to go into Barnes and Noble next door while it was dead and peruse the magazines. Jim had his face in a cycle magazine and I wandered down to the other end of the rack. We were the only ones there. While I had my face in a mag I could sense that Jim had moved back over by me and was behind me in the corner of the magazine stands. I took the opportunity and took a step backwards pinning him and ripped one on him. He didn’t say anything but started to push back on me to escape. I just laughed like a 12 year-old with my back to him blocking his attempts to breakout.
I must have been laughing too loud since another customer leaned over from a nearby aisle to see what was going on. I looked up to give a “sorry” look to that customer when I was confronted by the horror that that customer in the aisle was Jim!
Well, that immediately put a stop to my giggle fits as I meekly looked over my shoulder to face my unintended victim. An elderly woman who had an odd mixed look of terror, anger, and disgust. I mustered a whimper “sorry”, marched directly towards Jim, grabbed him by the collar, said “we gotta get out of here now” and hauled him out of the store.
When I told him outside what had happened he of course died laughing while I angrily blamed him for not being where he was supposed to be, dammit.
Wait, what year and what city was this in? I remember a friend’s mom once told a story about how she was at a bookstore once and “some big retarded guy, an adult man with the brain of an 8 year old” blocked her in, gave her a Dutch Oven, and ran off laughing with his guardian. Said it was the weirdest thing to ever happen to her.
She was like 75-80 (guessing) when she related this and that was 10 years ago…
NO WAY
This story reminds me of an incident in a Pennsylvania restaurant on a spring break road trip with my college roommate. Said roommate, it should be mentioned, had sinus problems and used to get up in the morning, take hot steamy showers, and make all kinds of loud sinus clearing noises that woke up everyone else in the house. I used to give him endless grief about it.
So, roommate and I are having breakfast in this restaurant, and he gets up to go to the bathroom. While he’s sitting in the stall, he hears somebody come in and start blowing their nose very loudly. Thinking that it was me giving him a hard time yet again, he yells out “What the HELL is your PROBLEM!?” Of course, it wasn’t me, as he discovered when he exited the stall.
Something very similar happened to me a long time ago:
The day I got my first motorcycle (Honda 360), I was on my way home when I spotted the neighbor girl I had a crush on walking home with her friend. I wanted to impress her and I thought popping a wheelie would definitely do so.
I never popped a wheelie before; how hard could it be?
Harder than I thought, apparently. I lost total control of the bike and landed on my butt in front of the girl of my dreams. I cracked the crankcase, spilling oil. The girls helped me and my bike up and walked with me to my house. I blamed the accident on a pothole. I don’t think they believed me.
Another bike embarrassment: I was going to school in Cleveland and had 3 roommates. One of them wanted to buy a motorcycle on the other side of Cleveland and asked that I drive it home for him, since this was his first bike (at that time, I had a Kawasaki Z-1 900—a real road rocket back in the day). I said, “sure!”
Well, he took hours negotiating for his bike and it was dark out when the sale was complete. I had my night visor on my helmet and didn’t bother to take it off for the ride home because it was freezing cold.
On the highway back to Cleveland Heights, I wanted to see what his bike could do, so I opened up the throttle. It was fast. My 3 roommates had a hard time keeping up in the car behind me.
When I got to the exit ramp, I didn’t see the construction sign and there was a significant grade level difference on the off-ramp (thanks to my night visor, I didn’t see it). I leaned into the ramp, but the front wheel caught the grade difference and kept going straight. I hit the road hard and the bike and I skidded a long way down the highway, sparks flying all the way. I heard the car behind me (containing my roommates) skid to a halt. Then I heard them running toward me, asking if I was ok.
I did a quick body check and realized I wasn’t hurt at all (thanks to the leathers and helmet I was wearing). But, when my roommate saw that I totaled his brand new bike, I figured he’d kill me. If one thing doesn’t kill you, another thing will. Zero sum game.
So, I had a choice: take the wrath of my roommate like a noble man, or act like I was seriously hurt and garner the sympathy of my 3 roommates.
I did what any red-blooded American would do. I played dead. It worked. After the bike was towed away, I got lots of love on the ride home.
Daytona, FL 98’-99’
Across the street from the Speedway.
Funny to read, too. 
Just a thought: Things like garden hoses, exhaust pipes, gun barrels… If nothing’s coming out, don’t look inside.
Locked myself out of a hotel room naked at 2am once. Had to go down to the front desk buck naked. Apparently I mistook the room entry door for the bathroom door.
Never mix large quantities of alcohol and ambien without first putting a chair or other large object in front of the entry door, kids! :smack:
I took my girlfriend to see “Ishtar” and she laughed out loud a few times, while everyone else was groaning. So mortifying.
In Tasmania for a family wedding. (I’m just an uncle - no-one important - no one important in the wedding party, but, still, it’s a small wedding, so I am noticeable).
Early afternoon wedding - current time is just after lunchtime (1 hour before wedding - the wife had long gone back home for girly preparations, but I’m a bloke and only need half-an-hour to get ready). So I’m killing time walking through the Tourist market. See a shop selling kitchen knives (a subject I know nothing about, but hey, I’m a bloke so I can look learned and pretend to be knowledgeable). I pick up this strange professional-looking cutting tool, and chat with the proprieter. When I go to put it back, I accidentally drop it, but being a bloke and quick on my feet, I catch it before it hits the ground.
Profeesional-looking cutting tool it was. In catching it, I managed to slice my palm. However, by quickly clenching my fist, I can muffle the pain, and stop any bleeding - until the proprieter asks 'Hey, do you know you are bleeding all over my stall?". To cut a long story short, I make my way back to the hotel to inspect situation. Hmm - not good - have left a trail of blood from the market to here. Absolutely flowing from a huge cut. Wife comes out of bathroom (naturally I couldn’t get to bathroom immediately as it was completely blocked by hair care products, moisturisers, makeups, hair straighteners and other magical things I know nothing about). On seeing my situation, wife does 3 things:
- Calls me a very rude word.
- Says ‘Well, I’m not taking you to hospital - it’s too late. We’re going to the wedding’.
- Says ‘And keep away from me - I don’t want any of your blood on this outfit. By the way, do these shoes go with the belt?’.
I go to the wedding. I keep my fist clenched (holding various towels, wadding etc). Get some friendly comments, like ‘Good to see you again, Wallaby. Hey, you’re bleeding’. I mumble some feeble diversionary excuse. I do NOT hug the bride.
13 stitches inserted between wedding and reception. Wife advises ‘Do not tell anyone about this - they don’t need to know you’re a (rude word) (very rude word) moron’. So it remains our little secret - until I get to my second drink at the reception.
I was in high school. I was in the kitchen bugging my sister by making weird sound effects. I can’t remember the purpose of this. She walks into the living room and I’m following her making these stupid sound effects. I go into the living room while making these noises and there was what may be the most popular girl in high school. Apparently she had some business with one of my parents.