I am so sorry for the hijack, but what is the name of this splendiferous poutine joint? No Vancouver poutine has satisfied me since I moved here two years ago! I must have ALL the poutine in the universe.
And to actually (attempt to) add to the thread, though it wasn’t embarrassing or insulting in the funny way… I just got my first job as a cosmetician in a local drugstore, and I was telling a customer that you can use, and I quote: “eyeliner as eyeshadow”. I meant, “eyeshadow as eyeliner”. I am new at it and I was nervous and she corrected me. It was embarrassing in the “Oh crap! Now my incompetence is evident!” kind of way.
In the third grade, the teacher would always call on students to read a page aloud from the story. I liked doing it because I was a good reader, and I was proud of my good reading skills. Anyway, once we read a story that was called something like “Sean’s Red Bike”, and I pronounced “Sean” as “Seen” because I’d never seen “Sean” spelled like that before.
My entire life is embarrassing, so I don’t know why these two are standing out, but hey! And I’m sure I’ve got some funnier ones stuck away in my brain somewhere…
I was home for Christmas break this year and a friend of mine and I ran into a couple we graduated from high school with who recently got married. The bride is in her first year of osteopathic medical school (DO) after applying right out of college. I am in my second round of applying to allopathic medical school (MD).
For those who are unfamiliar, DO schools and MD schools are very similar, and people with a DO can prescribe medicine and do all that other doctor-y stuff. Osteopathic doctors take a slightly different approach to medicine, though, practicing from a more holistic perspective (I’m afraid I can’t describe it much better than that without getting bogged down in the details). The thing is, the not-an-MD-ness of a DO degree has the unfortunate effect of creating a perception of DO’s similar to that stupid joke that dentists are med school dropouts, etc. etc.
We all chatted it up for a couple hours, during which we discussed what we’d each been doing over the last few years. I told them how I didn’t get into med school last year, and what my plans were if this year didn’t work out either. My plan is to apply to a masters program in medical science, which would basically consist of me taking the same classes as first-year med students so I can bolster my academic credentials. Although they’re technically not postbaccalaureate programs, I still refer to them as post-bacs.
I did not put it this way to my friends, however. After describing my predicament after last year, I continued, “yeah, if I don’t get in this year I’ll probably just apply for a DO program or something like that.”
SHIT.
I had meant to say postbac, but instead I made myself sound like an arrogant jackass. Foolishly, I didn’t correct myself and say what I had meant. Instead, I only acknowledged that DO school is a huge committment and a challenge all the same, which probably just came across as covering my fool-ass. I’d like to think I made up for my carelessness, but from their perspective I still inadvertently insulted her rather than having simply misspoken.
I totally use eyeliner as eyeshadow. Just kind of smudge and blend a little and whee, I’m good to go. This is because I am too lazy/cheap to own both a functional eye pencil and a functional eyeshadow. So I wouldn’t have thought you were incompetent!
It’s just that I was actually demonstrating on one of those little makeup chart papers while I was saying this, and I had the eyeshadow on a thin slanted brush and was going around the little cartoon eye… and the customer was sort of confused and said, “Uh… you mean, eyeshadow as eyeliner?” So yeah. Whoops!
When I get nervous, I talk too fast and I mess up words. Once a French-speaking woman asked me if English was my first language because she didn’t understand my English at all. She asked me this in French, which miraculously I also happen to understand. When I responded in French, she thought French was my first language. I have the worst French accent, pronunciation, and grammar in the universe, so I honestly don’t know how anyone could ever believe French was my first language, but it was a nice compliment and a harsh insult all rolled into one!
I don’t remember it, but it’s become sort of a family legend…
I was about 3 or 4 and staying with the babysitter (Mary Janet) while mom was at work. Mary Janet had to go to the bank at some point during the day and we got stuck in what must have seemed to my little mind as the longest line in the world. Mary Janet gently reminded me that patience is a virtue. I responded by yelling at the top of 3 year old lungs that “Patience is NOT A VIRGIN!”
Similar to that, I was reading a page in class once when I got to a word I thought I hadn’t heard spoken before. “…Kwey-you… :smack: I mean, cue (queue.)”
I’ve also on two occasions referred to our collection of tapes as “master Betas” instead of Beta masters. :smack: To my boss. :smack: :smack:
Neither of these were my faux pas, but here they are:
In high school, my rather naive friend walked into chemistry class, sniffed, and said loudly, “It smells like incest in here.”
A few weeks ago, another friend was talking about her uncle who had lots of phobias. “Yeah, he’s afraid of heights and flying. He’s also a necrophiliac.” she told the group matter of factly. I nearly choked on my lunch. She asked, “Was that not the right word?” I replied, “I sure hope not, Amber. And if it is, I wouldn’t be telling everyone about it.” Well, no one else got the joke because they didn’t know what the word meant either. (I am surrounded by idiots!)
Anywho, she looked it up when we got back to her office because I heard her squeal and scream, “Okay, that’s not what I meant!!”
At the hotel, a guest asked me to help her set an appointment to have her hair washed and blown dry. After scheduling the appointment, I called her back and told her that the wash and blow job would cost 30 dollars!
My daughter’s 3rd grade teacher told of an incident when she was teaching middle school, oh yeah, at a Catholic school. She wanted to tell the kids to take out their copies of Huck Finn but instead said “please take out your Fuckin books”. I still laugh. Hee
I’ve probably told this one before, but to this day it makes me chuckle so…
When I was 16, I was in the process of moving out of my mother’s house. It was all very hurried and spur-of-the-moment, and entailed getting a guy I knew to take me to my house to pick up some of my things. Nothing was packed, so everything just got thrown into the back of his station wagon.
When I got to my new place, I realized something was missing, and made a mental note to ask the guy about it the next day.
So, next day, in class, he was seated a few seats in front of me. “Chris!” I whispered loudly, “Chris!” He turned around. “I left my pants in your back seat!”
Oh, the shades of red that I turned. Wasn’t bad enough that it was in class, it was in a double class that combined American History and English Lit, and had twice the number of students that a regular class did. 60 heads snapped around in unison, jaws dropped. It also didn’t help that I was the unpopular kid, he was the one everybody in school loved, and I had a horrendous crush on him.
I moved out of the state a couple weeks later. I like to claim that it was due to the embarassment
My elementary school principal gave a speech in which he stated “it is our mission here to help the parents raise their children until they reach maternity… maturity”. I was too young to know why the teachers were laughing.
Not a misspeak exactly but an odd shirt: my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Gay, had a son on a Little League team called “the lions”. The back of his shirt read “GAY LIONS”. We didn’t know why that was funny, but we sure knew that it was.
My junior high English teacher was a very attractive (think Nichelle Nichols ca. 1968) and very soft spoken lady whose accent had just a trace of a Carribean lilt. One day while she was trying to teach the class somebody in the next room kept banging on the classroom wall, getting her frustrated until she finally yelled in pure and pissed Alabama English “Dang it! Who keep beatin’ on that goddamn wall!” (It turned out she was from the part of the islands that bordered Coosa County, Alabama.)
When I was a bellman an elderly she guest complimented me on my smile and my posture and professionalism by saying, aloud so everyone around could here, “Young man, you are just always so pleasant and so erect.” I liked to have never lived that one down.
I was in the Navy and transferring from my ship to shore duty when a shipmate died onboard. I was assigned to accompany him home and be in the Honor Guard at his burial. Afterward his mother thanked me for my assistance and I unthinkingly replied “My pleasure, Ma’am.” I apologized and she was gracious but it nearly brought me to tears.
When my folks were visiting a business associate in London, they got to meet his wife. Think stuffy, clueless, upper-class folk. They were cat fanciers. In a moment reminiscent of Mrs. Slocomb, the wife proudly tells my mom and dad that her husband is “quite the pussy man.” Yes, he loved pussies of all kinds and colors. Mom told me that she didn’t DARE look over dad and that all they could say while this old woman droned on about her husbands love of all things pussy was, “Oh, really?”
