I was visiting a friend I’d known since childhood, but hadn’t seen for a couple of years since he’d gotten married. I’d never met his wife yet. I knocked on his door, ready for immediate smile and bro-hug and the like, having reunited after so long.
His wife opened the door, clearly pregnant, but also statiscally possibly in that indeterminate zone of maybe just being overweight with a bit of a belly…
My Brain: “That must be his wife! Say hello, be friendly!”
My Mouth: “Hi! I’m—”
Brain: “Woah, hey! She’s pregnant! Their having a baby!”
Mouth: “—Woah, hey! Congra—”
Brain: “Emergency stop! It could be just overweight! Stop! If she’s not pregnant that’s the worst thing you could possibly say! Improvise while I investigate further…”
Mouth: “—rrrghthkkghppphhhh…ummm…achhhgh…ummm…”
Brain: “Working on it…you’re doing great…”
Mouth: “Umm…uhhh…aaghhhghthh…” (starts hyperventilating)
After what felt like 30 seconds of me making random gargling noises, she turned around and shouted “Michael?..I think your friend is here?..”
Years later of being able to communicate completely normal, I still think she views me as a bit “special”.
A friend of mine informed me of a job opportunity in an IT department of an organization he works for. He also constantly complained about their IT support and said they need someone like me working for them because they don’t know what they’re doing. I applied and got an interview. For some reason during the job interview I mentioned that my friend said they didn’t know what they were doing. Still kicking myself for that.
That’s funny. Stephen Colbert asked Sir Patrick Stewart the same thing. Unless her presentation was about virgin sacrifice or something, you’re probably good.
I was at a 4H type fair and a crowd of parents and kids were standing around a litter of cute little piglets. Me, with the “this little piggy” nursery rhyme in my head, walked up and loudly say “So, which one is headed to market?”.
I was met with silent looks of horror.
I work from home and have met maybe a handful of my coworkers…most reside in different states across Australia. We can keep in contact via a chat function that is an integral part of the software we use to do our jobs.
Of late, I’ve noticed more and more data-entry issues that are only explained by operator errors. Some can be attributed , anto simple errors, but MANY are just stupid and can only be explained by sheer stupidity.
Last week I’d had a gutful, and said on chat, “Geez, sometimes I feel like I’m working in a sheltered workshop”.
Of course someone complained about my total crassness and I copped a formal warning for my comment.
A couple years ago I taught a MAT 115 class at a local college, and was using MS Excel (with projector) to show the students how to perform simple statistics on sampled data sets. Stuff like average, standard deviation, etc. The class consists of six women and one man.
I started the exercise by showing a set of data in cells B4 through B23. The first thing I did was have Excel count the number of data points (N) in the sample:
=COUNT(B4:B23)
But I didn’t type that. I screwed up and typed
=CUNT(B4:B23)
:smack: :smack: :smack:
The students erupted in laughter, and I about died. :o One student asked, “So what does that function give you?”
I used to be a program director for Meals on Wheels. As such, I’d get particularly close to the clients who came in for lunch daily. One such little, elderly lady was of decent current health, but she’d had a stroke in the past that had rendered her almost mute. However, she was sweet as pie and we grew terribly fond of each other. Even exchanging gifts on special occasions and keeping up with one another via cards and such.
Well, fast forward to my husband getting sick and me having to quit. I’d still see her once in a while if I had time to visit the senior center, and when we moved away, her daughter made sure to sometimes call to offer updates on her life. Then, the frequency slowed down until one day, I got the dreaded information that she’d died. The most disconcerting fact about this in general, was that it happened within another week of my other favorite client from there passing away too. So…
I was incredibly distraught by the time I talked to her daughter. We chatted for a long time and cried and related stories about how wonderful she was. I started to wrap things up by promising her I’d try to make the funeral, then doing the most inane thing I’ve ever done, I concluded our conversation by declaring, “And you have a good night too, hon.”
Must have been city folks because all the 4H kids know all of them except the champion usually end up at the market.
I’m too shy to have very many foot in mouth moments. But I had one aimed at me: my youngest was about 7 months old, he was at his Nana’s and I ran into an old friend who enthusiastically asked me when the baby was due “7 months ago”.
I’d have imagined that as regards that rhyme, everybody was like myself as a kid: with a mental picture of the going-to-market piggy going into town, doing the rounds of the market, buying assorted nice stuff there, and returning home…
On thinking about this matter: as everyone knows, every tribe / community / nationality on earth, runs the whole gamut between “saints and shits”: every one includes people who are just rotten, or can behave rottenly. There are people who are Jewish, who can in interpersonal interaction, behave with great nastiness.
The thing is – I’d reckon – that in altercations with such folk: Nazi / Holocaust references (however tempting) are “not on”, because of the implication of wishing what happened there: not only on one’s immediate personal enemy, but on all Jewry. Similarly, the way that it’s bad form to wish on a hated person, that they may die in a plane crash: because that implies the deaths of lots of other people who would be innocent and un-involved.
Continuing with the Jewish theme, I’ve always liked the imprecation from that culture (don’t know the Yiddish, have it only in English): to a person with whom one is quarrelling, “May a cholera take you !” With careful emphasis on the indefinite article – an extremely discriminating cholera epidemic with just one victim, i.e. the person with whom the speaker is pissed-off.
I’m at a work function. One of my co-workers, Adam, had just announced earlier that week that his wife is pregnant. At the function, I see him chatting with a pretty blonde woman. I go up, say hi to Adam, and say to her, “And congratulations on the baby!”
Turns out, that wasn’t his wife he was talking to.
I met a friend of a friend – both writers – at a café. My friend and I have a long tradition of making fun of badly-written and badly-translated menus. When her friend laughed at one particularly atrocious sentence in the menu, I blurted out “oh, another grammar Nazi!”
Judging by her expression, even as the last letter was coming out of my mouth, I surmised that the German friend of my English-speaking Jewish friend was not familiar with that expression.
(For real, that’s how I always pictured that piggy. With a little straw basket getting groceries and whatnot. I just learned otherwise in this thread. :()
Many years ago I had a male roommate (I’m female) and we were strictly platonic. Even sat on separate couches. Absolutely no hanky-panky could be implied. At one point I was going through a bad break-up and was on the phone to my friend. She said “Why don’t you date <roommate>, he seems like a nice guy.” I said “What? Ew no, he’s like my brother.” Roommate was in the room and kind of looked at me funny but didn’t say or do anything. Years later he admitted that he had been secretly very in love with me the entire time we were friends.
The most disconcerting fact about this in general, was that it happened within another week of my other favorite client from there passing away too. So…
Does such a thing even exist, with anyone?