Not sure how old I was, but for the longest time I always thought Yosemite Sam was pronounced Yose mite instead of yo sem i tee. Somehow I had never heard it said and thought it was pronounced as spelled.
So when I was telling my parents about a cartoon with him in it they didn’t know who I meant at first.
By the way, I just remembered what was probably one of my most embarassing mis-speaks, as chronicled in this thread.
One of my best friends’ brothers had a splendid little faux pas. The family was over an aunt’s house, when she was passing out those candies with the bubble gum in the middle, “Blow Pops”. Well, my buddy’s brother comes up with “Aunt Carolyn, I’d like a Blow Job…er…Pop! Blow Pop!”
I imagine he turned all SORTS of red.
Once in high school German class I mixed up schiessen (to shoot) and scheissen (to shit). Oops. The teacher was a prim older German lady, and she turned red as a beet.
As a teacher, I get to do this sort of fun and embarassing thing all the time.
One of the first I can remember was during my first year of teaching. I had asked the students to solve this problem 1 + 2/3. Tough one. They all sat there with blank stares. So I say “What is one plus two-thirds?” They all just sit there. I’m getting frustrated because of the ease of this problem. This all happens again. I then say, “Come on people. You should definitely know that one plus two-thirds is one and two turds!”. No more blank stares or silence after that…
During a geometry lesson, I handed out manipulatives called geo-strips. The geostrips are all different colors and sizes, made of plastic, and can be used to create different geometric shapes (we were creating triangles). One of the most enjoyable things to do with a geostrip is wave it around in the air or bend it a little. This leads to much damage however, so I have to strictly prohibit any sort of action.
So I’m teaching my triangle lesson, and a couple of boys in the back of the room keep waving their strips around. I say “Stop playing with your strips please.” 5 minutes later, same scenario. I say “Stop playing with your strips or there will be consequences”. At this point, some other students see the enormous amount of fun involved in playing with their strips, and before I know it–geostrip euphoria is spreading across the room like the plague. So, in my best teacher voice, I say “All of you better stop playing with your strippers!”.
We had 30 minutes of class left. 30 minutes of great embarassment for me, and great fun for the students. That was 6 years ago, and students still ask me about it to this day.
At a recent conference, the first I’d gone to in some time, I gave the last talk of the session. Since we had the time, there was a lot of lively discussion with the audience afterward. A recurring theme was how folks from different sub-disciplines needed to put their heads together more so as to come up with fresh perspectives on the problem we were talking about. I agreed wholeheartedly, and made a point of saying that without such cross-discussions the same small groups of people would continue on with the same limited viewpoints that only reinforced themselves.
Only that’s not quite how I phrased it. I don’t recall the exact words, but I said something to the effect that without more discussion, we’d just end up with one big circle jerk. :o Oops. So much for academic decorum.
What was really embarrassing/funny in retrospect was the audience reaction.
People around my age were :eek: :eek:
The grad students present were all 
And a couple of the elder scientists - actually, really well-known folks, leading figures in their fields - made a point of telling me afterward that they found my candor refreshing. 
But you can be sure that with the next talk I gave, I was a lot more conscious of my language!
Not me, but one of my co-workers was having a frazzled day on the visa line and asked a woman “Cuantos anos tiene su hija?” She apparently didn’t hear or understand, so Jeff kept asking louder and louder until I leaned over and said “Dude, pronounce your tilde (the squiggly bit over the ñ) or she’ll just keep answering one…”
(In Spanish, año= year, pronouced ah-NYO, ano=anus or bunghole)
One of the great misspeaks I ever witnessed was at a hotel I worked at in Montgomery, AL. The hotel was designed by people who I’m not sure had ever even stayed in a hotel before, let alone worked in it- it was horribly inconveniently designed (especially food service areas, but that’s not relevant to this). The PBX (i.e. switchboard) was located in a side office from the front desk and contained the PA system for the hotel. This was no problem when we had a PBX operator on duty, but the hotel tried to save pennies by cutting staff hours and there were times when the front desk clerk had to answer the switchboard, meaning that they had to leave the desk, walk about 10 yards to the side room and use it. We also had to page for bellmen or other employees when needed from the same room.
Technically, maids and other employees were not allowed to answer the phone or use the PA system, but when it was busy we simply weren’t able to leave the desk and tend to the damned thing, so I and a couple of other desk clerks trained some of the housekeepers and maintenance men to use the PA so that they could just say “We need a bellman to the front dex” if needed. Unfortunately some of the housekeepers trained other housekeepers in how to use it, and some of them had voices and accents and vocabularies that just weren’t greatly suited to electronic public speaking.
One day Aunt Cunni (that’s not her real name, but the real name was worse- she was called Aunt due to her age and by her request) came to the desk to tell us a guest who had just checked out couldn’t start his car and wanted to know if the bellman could give him a jump start from the hotel van. The desk was busy and there was a line and the hotel was saving that precious $4.50/hour a PBX operator would have cost so I told her “Sorry, I can’t go make the page right now”.
“I know how to use that thang, I’ll do it” and she waddled into the sideroom. “Fine”, I thought, I was glad for the break.
If you’ve seen the movie Titanic you may remember the scene after the iceberg collision when ship’s officers and engineers come running from all corners with blueprints and looks of grave concern. It was a lot like that, with only Aunt Cunni’s supervisor (a super cool housekeeping manager named Parthenetta) having a smile on her face. You could hear people bursting out laughing (some employees, some guests, some diners) and others turning red and even “Well I never…” type comments and expressions, but the punchline of the whole event though was from an old man in line to be checked out:
That’s when I lost it.
We hoped that the incident would demonstrate to management that saving the $4.50/hour for a switchboard employee wasn’t really a good investment. It sort of did- they issued a memo that “effective immediately only desk employees are to use the PBX or PA system. Any exception will result in disciplinary action.” Cheap stupid bastards.
A side story about Aunt Cunni that isn’t relevant to the thread but still a great story: I’m not sure how old she was but I know she had teenaged grandchildren, but she chainsmoked and drank like a fish and looked ancient except for her jet black wigs, but she swore like a sailor. She also drank at work from a Sprite bottle that everybody knew was spiked.
Once we had a woman check without a reservation. She checked in during midafternoon and was obviously very well to do (platinum card, rings that would pay any employees salary for two years, etc.). She waited in her room all through that day, all through the night, all through the next morning, and then, about two minutes before the maids came in, she overdosed on sleeping pills. Aunt Cunni of course found her and screamed bloody murder and the paramedics came and she was immediately given an emetic and all was well. It was sooo obviously an attention getting thing- the paramedics later told us that the amount of pills she’d taken wouldn’t have done anymore than made her sleep for 16 hours.
We found out that she was in the process of a divorce from a prominent politician, and conveniently she later used the “I was so upset I attempted suicide” thing in her divorce proceedings (she cleaned him out). When Aunt Cunni learned this she was livid- not that it was a staged thing, but that any woman would kill herself due to a bad marriage.
Sorry for the hijack (but the OP was mine so…)
I didn’t do this one, but it’s the most recent example I can think of, and I did make a fool of myself laughing so hard I was squeaking trying to catch my breath.
My boss manages people in several cities, so most of his meetings are conducted by conference calls. We got a new HR person, and he sat in on a call to be introduced to us all. He got to the last one, and… “And this is C., who manages accounts in one of our largest titties…”
Thank god for the mute button.
Kermit Schaefer (father of Bloopers anthologies) recorded some great ones:
BBC broadcaster: “The queen and her entourage were seen pissing over London Bridge today… or passing, rather…”
Ralph Edwards: “This refrigerator is more than big enough to seat all the nudes of your family… suit all the needs of your family…”
Harry von Zell: “Ladies and gentlemen, President Hoobert Heever…”
I remember seeing Jimmy Carter make his famous introduction of Hubert Humphrey as “Hubert Horatio Hornblower”.
I also remember one from the early days of the Opray Winfrey Show. The topic was Forsythe County, the only all white county in Georgia, and the near race war that was being threatened by blacks wanting to move there or get compensation for the property they or their families had lost many years before after a Rosewood type incident that resulted in the blacks leaving. In the (obviously) all white audience filmed on location in Forsythe County, a woman is trying to make a point about the “N” word and how it’s not really racist:
Oprah’s expression was priceless- at first shock, then irritation, and finally just doubled over with laughter at the earnest idiot’s stupidity. (Incidentally that’s an argument you’ll hear sometimes… for the record, I’ve lived in the south for the vast majority of my life and I have never heard the word used except as a racial slur- it may occasionally be applied to white people, but when it is it’s comparing them to black people.)
That’s freaking hilarious – and it reminds me tangentially* of a lesser (but still worth a grin) anecdote:
I used to have a boss (awesome guy) who had Engish as a second language.
He used to frequently kludge the words “shorthanded” and “understaffed” together. It was amusing to hear him try to handle impatient clients by explaining that we were underhanded.
*And that reminds me of the unfortunate way I used to pronounce “tangential,” which was evocative of naturalist beach resorts.
Ha! I wondered why all those nice British ladies in my playgroup as a child in England looked at my mom funny when she threatened to spank my fanny!
Seriously, they looked horrified. But they were very polite about defining it for her.
I once had a boss from India. VERY nice guy, we got along very well and used to kid each other quite a bit.
On week we had in our office the senior officers from NY to give them a dog and pony show on the new systems we were installing.
Boss asks me when a particular unit will come on line and I tell him we’re in the middle of scheduling the final software release but there’s some delay due to resource conflicts (we only have so many programmers to go around).
He jokingly looks at me and says….
Boss: You know what your problem is? You need to get your balls in the air!
Well now all of the senior officers are turning blue……
Me: Ummm, Boss I’m not quite sure I understand………
**Boss (making up and down open palm motions): You know, the guy keeps all of the balls in the air?
Me: JUGGLING! Boss it’s called juggling!**
A British acquaintance of mine did this at a Staples in Boston.
She just couldn’t understand why she had to go across the street to the Wallgreens to get rubbers…shouldn’t they have rubbers at Staples? “I just want to buy some rubbers!”
Uh-oh. The teens I know just use it to mean “idiot, fool”, like a milder version of “dick”.
Yep, here (and I see the Vietnamese ones too 
):
- dink
Local slang in Vermont. A stupid person, a jerk, an a-hole. A general putdown of one’s abilities:
You are such a dink.
Man, Sampiro, you do know how to host a thread! The Aunt Cunni story is wonderful.
When I was a tot, my birthday party was held at my grandmother’s house, lots of relatives; the birthday cake was brought out, and the birthday song sung; “Happy Birthday tooooooo Yooooouuuu!!!”
Housekeeper Umparo, recently moved to CA from Mexico, pulled my Mom aside and said, “I don’t understand this song” Mom, who is fluent in Spanish, asks why.
Umparo, en Espanol: “Well, I don’t understand what celery has to do with a birthday party…”
Mom, who had to think a minute, then cracked up laughing: “Apio verde” means “Green Celery”, and Umparo heard the song as “Apio Verde to You…”
Forgot to add; this delighted my family so much that we sang “Apio Verde” instead of the regular birthday song for years. Some nice celery-themed cakes as well.
While potty training my niece, I got into the habit of referring to urination as “te te” (pronounced T T). Subsequently used it a few times at work instead of pee or piss. “I got to go te te” just doesn’t sound right from a big burly guy.
Heh.
“Ich bin heiß” == I am (sexually) hot (aka horny)
“Mir ist heiß” == It (the temperature) is hot to me.
Same thing with kalt (cold). “Ich bin kalt” == I am sexually frigid while “Mir ist kalt” means “it’s cold to me”.