So I was out with my friend (let’s call him E for brevity sake) and were just killing time at a shopping mall while waiting for a movie. There’s a shop that sells replicas of swords from different movies (Lord of the Rings, Highlander and etc.) and we went in to take a look.
As we were looking at some swords in a display case, a bunch of teenagers wander in and begin to gawk at them too. They went “oohs” and “ah” over the swords and they then exit, save for one kid.
He wasn’t paying any attention. Still looking at a gigantic two-handed sword, he put his arms around E’s shoulders and said, “Would you get a sword for me? Please? I would love you forever.”
I was standing behind the kid and E and my brain hang for a moment. Who is that kid? Does E knows him? Pro…processing information…does not compute…
Of course, the kid got the wrong guy.
E furtively tried to say, “you got the wrong guy” while the kid went on saying, while clinging to his shoulder, “Come on, buy me the sword and I would love you forever”
Then suddenly the kid heard what my friend was saying. He took one look at E, balked with his face turning a bright red and rushed out of the shop at light-speed as his friends outside burst into hilarious laughter that might well have lasted for more than 5. minutes.
So any funny stories of person mis-identification?
In a video store a woman briefly put her arm around my waist, apparently confusing me with her boyfriend/husband a few feet away. It wasn’t until i turned my head to face her (and she turned her head to fully face me at about the same time) that she realized her mistake and apologized profusely.
I was about 15 and my father and I went to the department store to buy a gift for his sister’s birthday. She had been sick and we were going to get her a nice bathrobe. We were in the ladies’ lingerie/sleepwear department. A woman shopper came up to him and started fawning all over him, telling him how much she enjoyed his work and asking whatever was he doing shopping in a mall in suburban Akron, Ohio? He was totally mystified until she called him “Mr. Matthau.” :eek:
He was totally chagrined . . . On the way home he told me he used to be mistaken for Robert Taylor. And in looking at some of his old pictures – he was right!
My brother, Jake, had an uncanny double in the kid down the street (Jeff). They both had red hair and the “Alfred E. Neuman” look. Jeff was slightly older and started school a year earlier than Jake.
One day Jeff ran away from kindergarten and the teacher’s aide got in her car to comb the town for him. She drove through Jeff’s neighborhood and, a few houses down from his address, espied Jake playing in our front yard. Long story short, Jake got kidnapped to school and ended up getting returned by the principal after determination that he was not Jeff.
The Real Jeff was found playing in the field next to the school. Jake was gone for about an hour and my mother didn’t even know until he was returned and brought to the door with an apology.
*This was the early 1970s in a small town; kid disappearances were treated with far, far less panic than they would be today. You either went to school or got out of the house to play after 9am and weren’t expected (nor wanted) back until the afternoon.
Heh…tdn’s story just reminded me – a few months ago we were at the supermarket when a little girl came up and put her hand in mine. As the father of a little girl, I just instinctively took her hand, but when I looked down, it wasn’t my daughter. I didn’t know who she was, but she started chattering on about how she wanted to get this kind of cereal this week because she didn’t like the kind they got last week and how this kind looked like the best ever and how she just had to have it and could she please have it and please please please daddy I just need to get this cereal and WOAH, waitaminute you’re not my daddy!
Once explanations were made, both families got a good chuckle out of it.
I once walked up to a guy who was bent over looking at something on the bottom shelf at the supermarket, and very heartily grabbed his ass, thinking it was my boyfriend. (Really, the gluteal resemblance was remarkable, I must say.) It wasn’t. He was good-humored about it, but I was pretty much wishing for death. And my actual boyfriend wasn’t especially amused.
A number of years ago I was standing around in a crafts market in Delhi when a 3-year old Indian kid came up to me, put his arms around my knees, and said “Mama.”
It might help to know that I am neither Indian nor female.
And, oh yeah, in Hindi ‘maama’ refers to your mother’s brother.
When my Boss drove a black van, people kept coming up to her and calling her Diamond. Finally one day she spotted a woman walking up to a black van and walked up to her. The woman took one look at her and said “You must be Dianne.”
Both of them had been getting mixed up with the other for months.
They are still good friends to this day.
NOTE: Names have been changed, but they did have very similar names and looks. And they were both in real estate.
I had a friend back in high school named Corey Black. I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize one day and asked who it was. The reply was “Corey”, so I asked “Corey Black?”, to which the guy on the phone responded, “yea… I guess…” at which point I immediately recognized the voice. It was a different kid in my class named Corey, who happened to be black.
A bunch of guys I used to work with in a warehouse setting used to find it funny to back a guy into a corner, fart, and then try to keep them pinned in the corner. One of these friends “Jim” and I during lunch hour liked to go into Barnes and Noble while it was dead and read magazines. Jim had his face in a cycle magazine and I wandered down to the other end of the rack. I was startled by some comotion and when I looked up Jim was apologizing profusely to an older woman who was walking away with a disgusted look on her face. He then approached me quickly with a beet red face, grabbed my arm, and said “we have to leave now”. Upon getting outside Jim said he thought I was still next to him and decided to do the “guy joke” thing and walk backwards into me, backing me into a corner, and then farting on me. He said he was terrified when in mid chuckle he looked up and saw me at the other end of the rack.
Freshman year of college: At an Orientation party I Thought I saw a girl I had met earlier that week. I went over and said ‘Hey Libby!’ She said, “Beth.” ‘No, Libby.’ ‘Beth.’ Finally she convinced me that she went by Beth and she wasn’t Libby (This was the day BEFORE I turned 18 and started to drink, so I don’t even have that excuse…)
Anyway, I called my friend over because I thought she looked so much like Libby. He came over and went , ‘Libby!’
My colleague tells the story of how he was dragged to a work event of his wife’s – she was in real estate and every year they have a deadly boring company party. He was joking with her that she was going to owe him all sorts of inventive and acrobatic sex for putting him through this, and she was riposting in kind.
So they’re at the event, mingling, and he sidles over to her and says sotto voce, “OK, I just spent ten minutes listening to some guy explain how he made an extra quarter point on commissions. That’s a ten minute deep throat BJ you owe me.”
At which point he hears, “Excuse me?”
And it’s someone who looked like his wife, but manifestly wasn’t. And was not apparently amused at the offer. Much embarrassed apologizing ensued. And it seems that incident wiped out all the acrobatic sex credits he had earned, too.
My boyfriend once grabbed some woman’s ass, thinking it was mine. Apparently, we were ass doubles.
Apparently plus two, it was MY fault this happened. We were meeting in the park. I was sitting next to the dog run with a book, so I told him “Meet me next to the puppies!” He was standing near the Adopt-a-Dog people. How was I to know there were so many puppies that day?
This one isn’t terribly funny, but perhaps instructive
My daughter was about two or three and at the grocery store with grandma.
When you are three - everyone in tan pants looks the same. She followed someone else out into the parking lot before that someone else realized she had a tagalong - my mother realized she was missing a child - and my daughter realized “You’re not MY Grandma!”
My brother was picking up semi-famous guitarist Phil Keaggy from their airport. As they were loading his stuff (including guitar case) into the car, a guy came up to Phil and told him how much he loved his work and what a great guitarist he was. Phil’s a humble dude, so he took the compliments gracefully and said bye to the fan. The fan walked away and said “thanks, Mr. Frampton!” (as in Peter Frampton, the much more famous guitarist).
I can see the resemblance - as they’re both about the same age and have the same hairstyle and facial hair. But you’d have thought the fan would notice Phil’s lack of British accent!
I didn’t actually witness this one, but I heard about it.
A friend was walking out of the grocery store on her way home when she spied my wife sitting in the parking lot in her car. So the friend snuck up to the car and blew a huge surprise raspberry on the windshield.
Only to realize it wasn’t my wife. It was some random stranger who’s hairstyle & car were similar.
Understanding that discretion is often the best route out of a prank gone horribly wrong, said friend gave a wink & smile to the unknown person & beat a hasty retreat. I wonder what that woman told her friends about it.
