I recently starting seeing an acquaintance at a social event I go to weekly, after not seeing him for a while. His speech was kind of slurred (not something that was audible the last time we spoke), so I thought he’d gone to the dentist. That was eliminated when it was still there the following week.
I didn’t ask about it. Then I find out through other channels that, unbeknownst to me in our entire acquaintanceship, that he has ALS, and now I’m REALLY glad I didn’t ask, if only because it would’ve made me feel really bad (like the time I wished a pharmacist speedy healing on what I thought was a sprained ankle, only to hear that it was polio that he got as a kid in China).
I was in a foreign country (forgive me for not specifying which.) The circumstances were very weird.
I got introduced to a nice lady. I thought about asking who she was, what she does, and so on – just the usual small talk we make when meeting someone. But I was shy and so didn’t really engage her.
Turns out she was one of the country’s leading show-biz celebrities. Not knowing who she was would have been a bit insulting. So I’m very glad I just smiled and uttered platitudes.
My boss once called a group of business reporters “a bunch of whores” only to be informed that our brand new client had just come to the company after being one of those business reporters.
At my last job a new supervisor looked to be about five months pregnant, but I didn’t ask her when she was due. Good thing - she continued to look the same for the next two years before slimming down.
At a poker table someone complained about Obama and then said “yeah, you know, YOUR guy!” and pointed at the only black man at the table. Later when the pointee shifted a bit I could see he was wearing an Obama cap.
I had a boss who was just bad in a number of ways. I’d make suggestions to stop his mistakes and he would just disregard them. A few times he even blamed his errors on me.
One day he was going to screw up royal and I was covered. It didn’t put anyone in physical harm. So I didn’t speak up and let him take the fall. Sweet.
I shoulda kept my mouth shut last weekend. We were on the South-side, leaving the Rex Theater after seeing Reverend Peyton and his Big Dam Band. Across the street we saw an altercation beginning between two small groups of guys. A half block away I saw cops walking bristly toward the scene.
So, of course, I screamed, “FIVE-O”. Like magic, the fighters ran in all directions. The cops sprinted toward them, except for one officer who walked over toward us with an angry look on his face. We blended into the crowd and split.
I had an extremely awkward friend from law school. Over the course of the three years, he found a girl who was fairly similar, and while their relationship was somewhat dysfunctional, apparently it worked for them, to the point where they moved in together before we graduated.
While taking the 3-day Bar, he stayed in a hotel room close to the testing site. When he got home, it was discovered that she’d moved out and taken not only all of her things, but a few things of his as well, claiming it was joint property (including their cat).
He was devastated and over the course of the next few weeks, in an attempt to help him get over it, a bunch of friends started voicing their true opinions of the girl - stating that they held their tongues before so as not to hurt his feelings.
Of course, less than a month later, they got back together. This is revealed when he brings her to a big party that one of the main “badmouthers” was throwing. He’d told her everything, and while she seemed to be fine with it, she made comments referencing things that friends had said about her. He ended a lot of friendships that day.
I was walking on the ground floor of our hospital last week when I encountered a nice, but overwhelmed-looking old lady who timidly asked me if there was a hospital exit she could use.
I was heavily tempted to tell her “Nope, there’s no way out. I’m afraid you’re here for good.”
(I did point her toward a nearby exit)
In another thread long ago I mentioned being at a local restaurant and going to use the men’s room. Pacing outside the men’s room door was a woman who gave me a suspicious look and seemed like she wanted to block me from going in (but didn’t). As I entered, she called out “Bobby, I’m right here!”. When I got inside I saw the approximately 7-year-old child she apparently was guarding against Men’s Room Molesters. I almost called back “It’s OK, ma’am, we’ll take good care of him.” (if I had, she no doubt would have barged in to rescue little Bobby).
Times you were REALLY glad you kept your mouth shut?
Not me, but my landlord was once arrested in front of me (and there is a SDBM thread somewhere), and as he was being marched out of the house, he yelled over his shoulder “I’ll call you”.
I thought that was doubtful, and indeed never received a call.
When he finally returned home, he mentioned something like “I thought I could talk him [the cop] out of arresting me!” :smack:
All this guy did in retrospect was give the cops facts they may not have already have had.
When my son was seven or eight he cracked me up one day. I was driving, maybe a little above the speed limit and my son alerted me to a speed trap by yelling, “PoPo!” It was a new term to me that my son learned via music (he was into rap and reggae at the time).
It became a thing between us to always alert the other. I used 5-0 once and made his day.
Sex Ed (sixth grade): The teacher was telling us that the sperm from the man meets the egg from the woman. I nearly raised my hand and asked the teacher “Um, how does the sperm get from the man to the woman?”
I don’t think I would’ve ever lived down the teasing had I publicly exposed that gap in my knowledge.
Social Studies (junior high): The teacher was reading some diatribe written in the Old South complaining about freeing the slaves. You know, the standard: they’d be lazy and shiftless, prone to crime, and destroy our cities if allowed to run free. I almost commented, innocently enough, isn’t that what’s happening now in the ghettos?
I lived near Washington DC in the 80s, and thought it was a legitimate observation. Had I asked that nowadays, I probably would’ve gotten expelled.
I recall having that gap in my knowledge when I was way young, too. For some reason the books I read where far more detailed when describing the “sperm meets egg” part than the “how the sperm gets into the general neighbourhood of the egg” part. I assumed that the couple had surgery to transplant the sperm from one to the other.
In high school orchestra, I almost made a snide comment to another violinist about how he really should take that dangly bracelet off because it might result in a buzzing sound against the violin, and hadn’t his teacher ever told him not to wear jewelry while playing? But I decided that made me sound like an interfering busybody, so I kept my mouth shut. I later found out it was a Medic Alert tag and he had severe hemophilia. Very glad I didn’t say anything.
Feels awesome, doesn’t it? Once, I was in a big meeting with a bad boss and some other bosses. My (bad) boss was trying to make some point about the topic at hand, but she was conflating two projects, making no sense, and everyone in the room looked at her like she was an idiot. I saw the mistake she was making, and I could have politely cleared up the confusion in five seconds. This I did not do.