The one that sticks out for me happened during an all too brief period I went out with a beatiful and multi-talented Chinese woman. She was a lawyer and we had been been introduced through mutual friends, one of whom was an Irish lawyer who worked with her.
Things were going swimmingly on our first date - we’d just returned from seeing ‘My life as a dog’ at the cinema - and she had just cooked dinner. As we chatted, she told me that her friend thought I was ‘a bit wally’. She obviously didn’t have a clue what this bit of slang meant; in fact, she seemed to think it was a sort of compliment.
Momentarily nonplussed, I thought the best way to handle the situation was an impromptu English lesson: “Actually, it should be bit of a wally.”
Anyone else learned the truth about themselves in an equally bizarre way?
I taught at the college level for a few years, several incarnations ago. One semester, I was teaching three sections of Intro to Religion, one of which met for three hours, once a week. We’d take a ten- or fifteen-minute break in the middle of class. I was chatting to some of my students during the break one night, and one of them told me that her roommate, who was in one of the other sections I taught, did an impression of me.
Hmmmm.
Naturally, I asked the roommate about it the next time I saw her – she said, “Yeah, my impression is that you’re a nice person.” Disingenuous minx.
Damn close to 20 years later, I still wonder what the impression was like…
One of my students left a notebook behind after discussion section one day. I flipped through it to see if I could find a name, and came across a series of notes written back and forth between her and her friend. About, ya know, me. Not particularly complimentary, but the worst part was “I feel sorry for her.”
It destroyed my self-esteem for a good week, until I was finally able to say, “Screw you, you ignorant, no-clue-havin’, sorority-belongin’, ugly-ass-sweatpants-wearin’, passin’-notes-instead-of-listenin’, dumbass-algebra-mistake-makin’ little hosebag. You got no reason to feel sorry for me, I’ll tell you that!”
I didn’t say it to her face, obviously. I said it in my head.
The moral of the story, kiddies, is don’t look through other people’s stuff. Your nose has got no business being in somebody else’s notebook without their permission, 'cause there’s nothing there you really want to see.
Just last night my wife and I were watching TV, and something with Ted Danson came on. My wife goes, “Some moron tried to tell me a couple of weeks ago that he’s with Whoopi Goldberg now, and has been divorced from Mary Steenburgen for quite a while.” (For those who don’t know, it’s the opposite.)
I was like, “Oh really? Huh. Yeah, that’s stupid. Who told you that?”
“I don’t know, I can’t remember.”
“Uh huh. Yeah that’s really funny because IT WAS ME, YOU WHORE!”
And then I tackled her and wouldn’t let her go as she started to recall the entire conversation. She was like, “Oh… yeah! Whoa… Love you!”
The ironic thing is that I’m usually the one who forgets things like that.
*For the record, obviously the insults were good-natured. We have a very good relationship that way. But you can be sure that DooWahDiddy didn’t have to work very hard in bed that night.
With the telephone system at work, if you are on the phone with someone you can easily conference in a 3rd person. However, if the 3rd person isn’t there and you get their voicemail, it’s sometimes hard to disengage from the voicemail. The best practice there is to hang up and start over. But one of my coworkers didn’t know that, and I overheard some not very team-player-like conversation once. Always good to know when there’s a snake in the grass.
Once I popped in on a chat room I didn’t usually visit, using a name I didn’t usually use. The person who had invited me there knew who I was, certainly, but other people in the room didn’t know (and half of them were idle anyway). My (usual) name came up, and one of the guys, somebody I’d known for years and thought well of, suddenly said, “Oh, her? <rag rag rag rag> and she never talks about anything but her kids. I really hate her.”
The irony is that, like most folks on chat rooms, he had little enough to talk about but his job and his pets…but somehow, those were acceptable subjects, and kids (which are something of a job and a pet in one) were not.
At University we had sign in sheets on which we wrote our names. these were pinned up on notice boards iin hallways. One day I noticed someone had written an insult and a line pointing to my name. I can’t remember what the insult was but it had me puzzled, as, at uni I didn’t interact with more than one person. I was thinking it may have therefore been written by that person, who I was good friends with.
Once when I was little I invited all my friends over for a sleepover. I can’t believe this worked, but I lay down (it was late at night) and pretended to go to sleep.
And they started talking about me! It wasn’t bad, but it can’t have been too interesting because I can’t remember a word of it! Oh well, it was 11 or so years ago.
In doing so, I found this very amusing British-American dictionary: