Or
Conversational blunders you narrowly avoided by the skin of your teeth. This one happened to me a few years ago.
Conversation in the corner at a party…
Her: So Rambo was pretty hard core right? He slept rough in the outdoors, camping by roadsides, going without regular meals etc on his travels. Today’s guys are pretty soft by comparison, don’t you think?
Me (thinking to myself): [Well, yeah, that’s pretty much the point of the movie. He’s a real badass, hardcore, MF. This chick has a funny accent. I don’t know if I’m really in to this conversation, but I’ll go along]
Me (out loud): He was certainly tough, but I don’t know for sure that we can make direct comparisons to other guys today. After all, most guys aren’t driven to the extremes that Rambo was. Rambo was kind of a force of nature.
Her: That’s so true! To have completed so many works in so short a time and then suddenly stopped just seems to suggest he had, I don’t know, spent his storm? Right?
Me: (thinking to myself): [How many movies were there? Four, I think, but the last one was fairly recent, so they span like… over 2 decades… that’s not that short. She really likes Rambo! What’s up with,… oh shit… she’s talking about Rimbaud. Rimbaud. :eek: :smack: Have I said anything stupid yet? No. :D]
Me: That is sooooo true. Care for another drink? [I got away with it! ]
Many many times lately I have caught myself almost saying “That’s very interesting. Someone was telling me about that the other day. I can’t remember who, though.” Before the words came out, I realized that it may very well have been the person right in front of me.
Just the other night, I was out for the evening and my wife sent me a text message…
Her: You’ve been out 4 nights in a row, leaving me to deal with all this family stuff alone. NOT COOL!
Me: I’m sorry, honey. You’re right, it’s not cool. I’ll try to make it up to you. I love you.
I called in sick to work the next day to help out with some of our family stuff. I’d actually planned on calling in sick that day anyways to get some time in on my side job, but she didn’t need to know that.
I said to a coworker that everyone with the same job title should share in all the job duties and not cherrypick only the good ones (in reference to another coworker with a “I don’t do windows” attitude). He went and told the boss what I said in some paraphrased form, and the boss slashed my hours to the point I’m practically unemployed. The coworker started cherrypicking duties himself and basically got promoted with better hours. The other coworker took over my hours.
I was helping my father in law buy a house. It was a sweetheart deal without realtors for the seller’s mortgage payoff amount. The inspection came back with about 50 issues but they were mostly all just $5 fixes. The big deal was that the roof was on it’s last legs. I took him over to meet with the seller to discuss the inspection and he wanted to move back the closing date a few days to save a month’s rent. He told me he wasn’t very good at negotiating and he’d take the place as is without a concession, but he’d really like if I could help him out and get him $2,500.
I let the seller do almost all the talking and let a lot of long awkward silences hang in the air with a pensive look on my face. We got the earlier closing date and she bid herself up to a $5,000 concession.
As I was leaving for school at the beginning of this semester my daughter said “You should start the first day with a funny foreign accent. They won’t know you’re American.”
So I started my first class vit theeck rooshin’ ack-cent:
“Ha, Ameddican youths so lazy. Back in old country are students knowing hard work. You spec wrong font, is off to gulag!”
Well, fun was had by all, so I planned to start off the next class with the Prof. Boris Badenov voice. But I noticed a couple of students that I’d had before, so I scrapped that idea. And started with introductions.
The first was a very shy, quiet girl who managed to squeak out “My name… is Maryushka… I am from Moscow…”
I came within a whisker of asking my sister-in-law if she was pregnant, but something at the last milli-second held me back. My relief must have been palpable as nothing was ever said about an pregnancy. She had just developed a larger abdomen after two pregnancies already.
ETA: no such thing as an impending pregnancy for someone already pregnant, I guess.
That’s so true! To have completed so many works in so short a time and then suddenly stopped just seems to suggest he had, I don’t know, spent his storm? Right?
]
