When I was very young, I had a favorite pair of slippers that looked like a duck. They had felt eyes, and a wedge of yellow or orange felt glued on for a beak. I barely remember them now, but apparently at the time I was quite attached to them. One tragic morning I came downstairs with a slipper in one hand and the beak in the other, red faced, sniffling, with tears streaming down my face, “My duck’s pecker fell off!” I was too young to know what was so funny so I was furious they were laughing.
A couple of years ago, I was heating up a frozen pizza in the oven for a no-brainer dinner after a busy work day, kids at various practices after school, etc. Everyone was really hungry, so we were watching the clock.
I pulled out the pizza and immediately went “Damnit!” and the kids asked why and I just said “I *broke *the pizza!”
I had inadvertently left it on the cardboard it came in the package with, so it didn’t cook properly and was kinda…embedded…into the cardboard. Not recoverable. I think we ordered something.
The kids thought it was about the funniest thing they had ever seen. So for the past few years, it was “Yeah, but remember when Dad broke the pizza?!”
I was toothpick thin as a child. When I was four and performing in my first ballet recital, my grandmother was in the audience. She watched this scarecrow in a tutu (me) make her three turns, hit one of the floor lights and almost fall off the stage. She commented to my mother, “Well, we know her brains aren’t in her feet.”
From then on anytime someone would trip or fall, in person or on TV, someone in my family was sure to look at me and say that phrase. I even used it myself once or twice. 
This may sound more like a sad or cruel story to some, but my family is known for their “no holds barred” sense of humor. I learned very early to laugh at myself.
That is great.
As for me, I think the likeliest tale would be about the time I secretly took a dump in the cat box. Later, when my brother was scooping it out, he freaked and called for my mother, who also freaked. It was bigger than the cat, you see…
Not so much about me, but my brother. He tells this to people all the time.
I’m almost 5 years older than my brother. When we were kids, we had a red lab X named Dillon. We all loved this dog, and he loved to play with us kids. He’d chase anything we cared to toss. He was also pretty stout - let’s just say he ate well. Anyways, at some point, I thought it would be a good idea to have my little brother ride Dillon. We were farm kids, lotta acreage, not a lot of supervision. Little bro is maybe 4 y/o… and game for riding the dog. So I hefted him up on the dogs back, Dillon’s just standing there like, ‘OK, now what?’ Not very exciting, dog just standing there, little bro hanging on his back…
So I threw the Frisbee.
I think their biggest concern was that you were 35 years old at the time…
Not as old as that, but older than you might think. 
Too late to add: oh, and you already win for best story/username combo!
Interesting idea for a thread. My family members tell lots of stories about me (of course; I’m great!). But the one that gets told more often is quite embarrassing.
I was about 3 or 4 at the time, walking down the street with my mum. When suddenly I saw a black bloke walking towards us. He was completely normal, but with that being 1990s Spain I hadn’t seen many black people before. So my natural reaction was to point at him and yell:
“Look, mum, look. A black guy!”
Luckily the guy took it quite well, pointed at me and said “Look, look, a white kid!”.
Still though, that’s not the kind of story you want people to tell about you 
I think it’s cute, Batistuta.
If we were telling stories on my brother, when he was very small he told us he wanted to grow up to be “a little black fireman.” (He had a picture book with firemen wearing black coats). What with all of us being honkies, he never was able to fulfill his dream.
My mother loves to tell people about my first sentence.
It was in the old Dominion store, that had a large commercial rotisserie. I stared at this for ten minutes in facination, and then solemly announced to the world: “Many chickens go round and round!”
Oh good! If we can tell brother stories, my favorite is when my younger brother was six years old and we were all watching Hunchback of Notre Dame with Charles Laughton. My brother watched Quasimodo intently, never saying a word. Mom said later that she was worried he was frightened by the monster and would have nightmares.
Finally, during a commercial break toward the end of the movie, my brother made his first comment: “If he combed his hair and put on a nice jacket, he wouldn’t look so bad.”
Better than my kid’s reaction to a Muslim lady wearing a black veil - which was to announce, loudly and publicly, “Look daddy - a Ninja!”
When I was a toddler in the crib, my mother had a cookie to give me. But to get that cookie I had to say “please”. Being a stubborn toddler, I didn’t want to play that game – so I said “Can I have cookie please-alua”.
“Not please-alua, Andy, you have to say ‘please’.” she replied. No cookie.
“I want cookie please-alua.”
“You have to say ‘please’, Andy.”
“Please-alua! Please-alua!”
“I guess you don’t want this cookie then, do you, Andy?”
I pause for a moment, thinking. And I sigh, and speak. “Okay mama, can I have cookie please?”
She smiles and gives me the cookie.
“Alua”. I say, and I eat the cookie.
Oh God that made me laugh
Here’s another…
When I was 5 my mom married my stepdad. They took me and my younger stepbrother with them on their honeymoon which was a road trip to meet my stepdad’s parents, then to the Mexican border for some shopping (back when such crossings were easy). Mom had told us to be on our best behavior. She was trying to make a good impression on her new in laws. So the first night at the new grandparent’s house we’re sitting there at the dinner table and I made a statement & my stepbrother said, “Oh bull!”, which was a common phrase in the '70’s. We loved disagreeing with each other. So, naturally taking pleasure in getting my stepbrother in trouble, I said, “Ummmmm, he almost said bullshit!” The whole table just sat there in shock as I realized that I was the one who just said the bad word. My new grandma spoke up first, looked at her son with disapproval and said, “Where did you hear that word from I wonder?” Suddenly I realized she wasn’t mad at me, she was mad at my stepdad. So, not wanting him to be in trouble with his mother I said, “From my mama.”
In reality, everyone knew I lied because my mom was too lady like to speak that way and they all knew my stepdad was a curser, so they laughed, but regardless, my mother was completely mortified and talked about that first dinner every time we visited them.
Heh, my kid practically specialized in humiliating adults by saying stuff loudly and publicly about strangers. No amount of parental guidance on politeness in public could quite cure him of this habit, until he was four or five or so.
Another couple of examples:
My wife had been answering the kid’s questions about pregnancy, by describing how a new baby grew in a mommy’s tummy until it was ready to be born. He was ruminating on this new idea while walking down the street - until he spotted a hugely obese man sitting on a park bench, when he loudly piped up: “Look daddy, he must have at least ten babies in his tummy!” That earned him a talk about politeness in public, and another about sex differences.
I didn’t actually see this, I just heard about it: some time after the ‘fat man incident’, my mother took the kid to the Columbus Centre (an Italian community centre, with a swimming pool). The kid was evidently turning over in his mind the talk about sex differences (while entirely forgetting the talk about politeness) because, while getting changed by granny in the women’s change room, he noticed that some of the ladies had visible facial hair and loudly announced: “How can these be women? They have moustaches!”
Not a real howler, but my family got mileage for years and years out of this story…
I was generally a very well-behaved young lad, so I guess this stood out. My mom’s sister was getting married soon, and I was taken to the rehearsal dinner, which included a practice session for the ceremony in the church’s sanctuary.
I have no memory of this event (I would have probably been a few months shy of three years old), but by all accounts I was a holy terror, constantly crying, carrying on and disrupting the proceedings thoroughly.
My grandmother says that in desperation she called her sister-in-law and literally shoved me out the door and into her arms.
As I was being forcibly removed from the premises, my parting shot was a loud declaration: “And Gene ain’t gonna be my huncle!!”
Too many to tell, but these two will haunt me til the day I die:
It was nearing Easter when I was 4, and time to get new dressy shoes. I wanted white, and my mom wanted black because she knew I’d ruin white in no time flat.
At the shoe store, the saleswoman asked me what I wanted, so I pointed to the white Mary Janes while over my head my mom frantically waved her arms and mouthed “Black! Black!”
And the grand reveal - the boxes are opened…and the shoes are black.
I put my hands on my hips, glared at the shoes, glared at the saleswoman, glared at my mom, and said, “Those aren’t WHITE, those are BLACK. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know!”
We didn’t go back to that store for a good 5 years…and I got my white shoes…
When I was 5, my mom was a room mother for my Kindergarten class. We carpooled with some neighbors, and on the day of the first party that the room mothers were giving (Halloween, probably?) I was riding with the neighbors. On my way out, I told my mom to “Make yourself beautiful before you come to my class!” Then I ducked back in and added, “Or do the best you can.”
Guess what I heard before prom, my wedding…even inscribed in a book about makeup that she got me one Christmas!
My grandfather was married three times. First was my biological grandmother who he divorced when my dad was a kid. Second was a woman he divorced when I was a baby. Third was my favorite off all my grandmas who he married when I was 7. But I had grown up with both of the other grandmas for my entire life, so when I got introduced to grandma 3.0 my response was, “So what do we call this one?” :eek:
My grandfather was horrified. My new grandma? Thought it was the funniest thing she had ever heard and even now, 25 years later, she still tells the story of how I didn’t know what to call my newest grandma.