Once the family was visiting my grandmother. I was in the living room reading a newspaper, while my parents were talking with my grandmother in the kitchen.
I wasn’t paying too close attention to the conversation, but apparantly it centered on me. Suddenly I start paying attention, and I hear my 80 year old grandmother say “If Tim ever marries a black girl, I hope it’s after I die!”
I wanted to walk in there, look at my watch, and say “Well, I think I can wait… You’re 80 for Christ’s sake!”
I’m always saying things like this. The bad part is sometimes I don’t even realize how awful some of the things I say are. To me it’s just, well, obvious.
Like the Amy Fischer, Joey Buttfuck thingy. “My husband didn’t do anything. I love him and he would never cheat on me.” MaryJo said repeatedly in public. And I said, “Someone please remove the bullet from that woman’s head, it is interfering with normal brain function.”
Or the woman who recently had 9 kids at once or something like that. The couple said “This is God’s doing.” and I said “What terrible thing did they do that God sent them 9 children at once?”
I was in high school when Shindles List came out and I loved the movie and saw it twice in the theater. The second time we went to a Sunday matinee and ended up being like the only two people under 60 in the whole house. The tension was palpable in there. But we had that sense that we had already seen it and werereally watching it more for its cinematic value this time than its staggering emitional impact.
Anyway it comes to the scene where Oskar is kinda chattin' up the jewish maid a little bit, and I lean over to my friend and whisper "looks like she's on... (porno guitar riff from my mouth) shindler's OTHER list." much laughter ensued. Much annoyance from the senior crowd. And in retrospect probably deservedly so, but it was high school.
Sometime last year, a good friend of my mother’s lost her brother Kenny in a car accident. The friend was understandably devestated. We all felt terrible for her. But every time someone new was informed of Kenny’s death, the first thing they’d think was, “Oh my God, they killed Kenny!”
And I know this is what we all thought, because a couple people were flat out relieved when I said it first. They’d respond with something like, “That’s exactly what I was thinking, only I didn’t want to say it!”
I’m sure I’ll think of more instances the moment this thread dies, but of course right now I’m drawing a blank. Except for this one, inspired by Sua’s Tumbleweed story: when I was a little kid, my mom and grandma would take me to lunch at the local department store and I’d often get a small toy. One day they got me this tiny little doll, sort of pixie-ish, but possessing abnormally short limbs. I’m sure they didn’t mean for me to hear them but they promptly dubbed it a thalidomide baby. It was actually the first time I heard the word!
At a BBQ last weekend a (kinda) friend brought in his reasonably ugly girlfriend. While sitting down the guy’s, whose house we were at, dog started sniffing at friends crotch. He said something like “I don’t like dog’s around my crotch”. I had to physically restrain myself from saying “that doesn’t seem to worry you” [in reference to his girlfriend]. Oh well, at least I’m still alive.
One day a bunch of co-workers and I were standing outside on a break. A girl that no one likes from the office next door walked by in a dress cut right up to her ass. An extremely outspoken one in our bunch says “God, could she do something about that slit?? It couldn’t BE any bigger!” and I agreed. “Yeah- and she could put a stich or two in that skirt, too.”
The bug-eyed looks from the rest of the gang were priceless.
Zette
Queen of the “I can’t BELIEVE you just SAID that!” lines.
Guilty. I saw this same girl, and after watching her get into her car and buckle up, I couldn’t help but say, “well a hellavula good that will do, she will just flip right over the belt!” Of course, I then had to do the visual, laughing like a maniac the entire time. My daughter was NOT amused.
My mom: “It turns out that one of my (female) coworkers has Anorexia… I was so shocked… you could have knocked me over with a feather”
Me: “Yeah, you probably could have knocked her over with a feather, too”
A slightly related category of comment… when the news of the Columbine massacre first broke, one of my coworkers told us about it, using the phrase “some students have taken over a high school”. I interpreted this in a “non-violently occupied the principal’s office and made demands to the media” kind of way, so my response was “cooool”. Ever since, I’ve wondered if he thought I was a total sicko.
I’ve got a relative who’s a quadraplegic and also gay. One day at a party among other members of the family, I invented a drink in his supposed honor called a “flaming cripple.”
I am quite well known in my family for saying things of this nature, too. Sometimes it’s like, Oh crap…did I say that out loud? when people turn in frozen silence to glare at me.
Like when my husband’s father died. I simply could not STAND that man. With good reason. He had not only been married 7 or 8 times, but had 9 children (actually 11, but 2 of them were born out of wedlock so nobody really knew them) and after each marriage ended, so did any relationship he’d had with his kids from that marriage. He was also physically abusive to all of his wives, and basically just a general shitass. Anyway, he ended up being diagnosed with oat-cell carcinoma (brain cancer) and my husband was just distraught. (Distraught about a man who hadn’t given him the time of day since he was 6 years old, I might add.)
When I was told of this, the first sentence out of my mouth was, “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”
My mother-in-law laughed her head off. My husband was not amused.
But probably the most horrid thing I ever THOUGHT (but didn’t say, although I did later admit it) was when my very best friend was killed. She was on her way back from Gulf Shores, and before she’d gone, she had gotten my “order” to for an ounce of some primo smoke, like she did every time she visited there.
When I heard she’d been killed, the first thing that popped into my head was, Well there goes my dope.
I really hated myself for that thought…because I loved that girl more than I have loved any friend before or since. I really didn’t give a damn about the smoke…but my mind went into its usual cynical mode, and kept the shock at bay for about 15 seconds.
I have quite a few more of them, but those 2 are probably the worst.
In LA Confidential there’s a scene in a morgue with the naked corpse of a girl who had been murdered lying out on the slab being looked over by the detectives.
me: “nice tits.”
The friends I was watching it with thought that was disgusting. But it’s a movie… she was an actress pretending to be dead, and she did have nice tits…
My mother is a master of the shocking offhand remark.
When a woman locally renowned for her beautiful singing temporarily lost her vocal ability following childbirth, Mom said “Maybe she burped it.”
My late father was a short guy with a barrel chest who had managed to eat his way out of going to Vietnam. Even after starting jogging to get in shape he weighed in at about 220 lbs or so.
After his death my mother decided on cremation, so when my family arrived at the cemetery for the interment the urn sitting next to the grave was the size and shape of a toaster. Mom’s observation: “This is the first time that Daddy wasn’t an extra-large.”
Not so long ago a girl was fried in MacDonalds in Belfast when one of those automatic stainless steel sinks they have was electrified. My sisters and their friends knew her fairly well and they were watching the news when it came on and a reporter said “the girl was studying marketing at Queens university,” and for some reason I couldn’t keep it in and blurted out “well so much for her career.”
Yesterday around 2:15 I was telling one of the development guys we lost the Seattle node. He said “We lost it? That wasn’t even a 7. Cheap shit!” (Bear in mind, we didn’t know a death.injury toll yet, running on preliminary data.)
Got beat up on by 2 girls in a movie once. Double date, seeing Dr. Zhivago on campus. The scene where he sees Lara again after all those years, runs toward her and has a heart attack on the street.....I sang, real low, "Smile, Though Your Heart Is Breaking"...God, did those two whale on me...
I think it was the year 1986, when the “Live Aid” campaign was in full swing.
We had a dinner meeting - 15 guys all high school seniors - where everbody could eat as much pizza as he could for a certain fixed price!
After hogging down more than one large pizza each, and a night of quite obnoxious fun at the dinner table, we called the waiter to ask for the check…
And someone at our table mentioned the starving guys in Africa.
So I just said: “Send the check to the starving guys in Africa”
Does that sound sick enough?
This is actually representative of the sense of humro I and a few close friends of mine have, so some other friends of ours are quite alarmed when we - of this kind of sense of humor - get together in their presence.
Speaking of human bondage…I think I’ll buy some!!!
Actually that was about the time I started to heal over my father’s death. My dad had a great sense of humor and that may have been the first joke I cracked in two years.
These jokes are not sick. In fact they are quite the opposite. They are the best defense against a cruel and heartless world.
But I still want the prize!
