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:
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.
We have two soccer teams in Orlando, one male and one female. Friends of mine are season ticket holders for the female team and the team did an around-Orlando scavenger hunt for their season ticket holders and their friends. The grand prize was going into the field at halftime to be recognized and back onto the field after the game to get autographs. The scavenger hunt was super competitive and my team won by a combination of skill and dumb luck. However, it was because of the dumb luck that we beat the number 2 team who was super salty about losing. Keep in mind that Mrs. Cups and I like going to the games and are fans of the team, but don’t have season tickets, so we’re pretty excited to win and meet the players.
Fast forward to the end of the game and the team we beat literally has front-row season tickets right where the players constantly sign autographs…so winning literally would have meant nothing to them. But that didn’t stop them from chirping about how it wasn’t fair we won. Two of the players on our own team walked up and was making some nice small talk with me because they’re nice when this exchange happens:
Salty Loser: You know, she’s on the Australian national team and is really good
Me (annoyed with Salty Loser and trying to save face): Ugh. Yeah. I know.
Player: Ok then…what’s my name?
The only thing I could do was turn to Salty Loser and say “You know, I blame you for this” because I had no idea what to do. What made it even worse (better?) was the player chuckled to herself and say “Hi I’m (name), nice to meet you…what’s yours?” I was so embarrassed and the fact that the player was so damn nice sweet about it made me feel even worse.
My story was SO important I posted it twice
I was maybe 8 years old, and at summer church camp. I walked out of my cabin without any pants on. Later that day, I walked two laps around the fenced-in swimming pool before finding the entrance-- which wasn’t part of the fence; you had to enter through the locker room.
I got “honored” by getting to wear a grass-stained 2XL white T-shirt with the words “BOOB OF THE DAY” on it. I rocked that thing, though. I wore it with pride.
I was maybe 10, in gymnastics class. I had been going to this small dance school since I was three years old. Everyone knew everyone, most kids had grown up together. It was a natural progression that at a certain age you added gymnastics to your list of classes, so we did.
Let me note, my mom has said they wasted so much money trying to make such a klutz into a graceful swan. If I sucked at dancing, with both feet on the mostly on the ground, think of a very tall “sturdy” girl trying to propel herself into the air.
We were to run across the mats, do a roundoff into a back handspring. There were teachers at the end to help with the handspring.
I ran. Did the roundoff. Froze. Stumbled and fell.
Tried it again, listening to the snickers of the moms on the benches.
I ran. Did the roundoff. Tried throwing my body into the back handspring.
I kicked two instructors in the head (one foot per face! I thought that took skill!), fell, twisted my ankle hard… and released the loudest fart upon hitting the ground. In a large room, where everything resonated.
And for no fucking reason I went back for four more years.
It alarms me greatly that I could have written this and basically not changed a word.
When I was 18 I went out to a house party with my girlfriend and got quite inebriated. We stopped at McD’s and filled up on Big Macs and fries before she drives my drunk ass home and as it’s a hot night we sit outside my house for a bit (It should be pointed out I was wearing white satin running shorts and a t-shirt). We also had a Husky at the time. All these things are important.
I start feeling a little queasy, and knowing I’ll never make it to the bathroom I run, not to the relative obscurity of the backyard, Oh No. I run to the front yard and splay onto the welcoming grass, delivering onto it my recently consumed meal and most of a bottle of JD. This is bad. But it’s not the worst part of the story.
As I was spewing the contents of my gut onto the dandelions, my parents arrived home and pull up the driveway; to see a white satiny full Moon undulating in waves upon their front garden whilst our beloved family pet, all 85 lbs of him was cleaning up my face and, simultaneously, all the chunder from the lawn as I lay facedown and prone. Between my GF and my Dad, they got me into bed to sleep off my stupidity. She dated me for another year after that. To this day, I have no idea why.
When I was in high school I was in a large group of students visiting Washington D.C. We had the pleasure of having a visit from Sen. John Glenn in the Capitol Rotunda. He gave a small talk and then opened the floor up for questions.
I golfed a lot in high school and for whatever reason, I got Glenn and Alan Shepard confused. I thought Glenn was the astronaut that hit golf balls on the moon and wanted to ask him about the experience. So, I asked:
“When you were hitting golf balls on the moon…” Glenn interrupted and explained that he never went to the moon but was in the Apollo program. It threw me off my game so I said the single stupidest thing possible:
“Are you sure?”
Glenn started laughing and said rather pleasantly that he was fairly sure he would remember something like going to the moon.
I don’t think I’ve ever had more than 100 people laughing at my expense. I wanted to dig a hole in the marble and never climb out.
ETA: And shit, I did it again! He was in the Mercury program, NOT the Apollo program!!!
I wonder how many times he re-told it