What's the most "Sit-Com-y" thing to happen to you?

Cafe Society
1

This thread about word and phrases you only hear in the movies made me think of an incident that happened in my real life. Leaving out the details, basically I walked into a room where two people I knew were talking without them noticing and I over heard them bad mouthing me to no end. Rather than announce myself right away, I hid in a nearby a bathroom and just listened. Finally, I had enough and I emerged and made a dramatic entrance that made it clear I heard everything.

Even then, the whole thing just seemed right out of the The Brady Bunch or something. Even more so now, years later. Any incidents happen to you that seemed like they came right out of a TV show or movie?

2

In college I had a class with a very cute girl named Tracy. I had chatted her up, and once gave her a ride home after class. We’d never so much as kissed (although I was sure interested in making that happen).

One day, I was walking by the house and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I heard a TV on, so I knocked louder. The door was ajar, so I nudged it open and called her name a few times.

Finally, I hear a female voice calling “Come in”. I followed the voice into a dark living room - the only light came from the TV. She was on the couch. I apparently had awakened her, and I apologized. She said it was OK, and invited me to sit at the end of the couch next to her feet. We made small talk, and I was pleasantly surprised at how comfortable she was putting her feet on my lap. (I was making progress!)

Suddenly, she got very quiet. I assumed she was too tired to talk, so I excused myself and said I’d see her later and left.

When I saw Tracy a few days later, I apologized for waking her. She seemed puzzled, so I recounted the incident.

She replied, “Oh, that was you!”

It turned out that Tracy had a sister who looked a lot like her, who was dating a guy of a similar build to mine.

So while I mistook a complete stranger for her sister whom I was a casual friend of, she mistook me (in her semi-awake state in the darkened living room) for her boyfriend. Until she realized I wasn’t her boyfriend! At which point she was too embarrassed to say anything, so she just quit talking to me.

Tracy said her sister was very relieved when I politely left.

When I later met the sister, she joked, “I don’t remember the face!”

3

Getting ready for boat ride.

Other person: “I should go get my phone”
Me: “Nah, you’re not gonna need it”

Boat stalls after we’re well away, won’t start again.

4

Don’t know if this is more sitcom or slapstick:

I was repairing an wall outlet in my brother’s home. The old one had been painted over, so I had to work a bit to get it to come loose. I hadn’t noticed that the clock on the wall above the outlet wasn’t mounted especially well, that it was hung via a single, thin brad.

The shaking getting the outlet free caused the clock to come free of the wall, hitting me right square on the top of my head. The Laws of Comedy being as true and immutable as the Laws of Physics, this was a Cuckoo clock, and the force of it hitting my head caused it to chime the hour with a “Cuckoo!”.

My niece was laughing her head off. I couldn’t really blame her though. It became a family explanation for any strange behavior for several years after “He can’t help it. He was hit on the head with a Cuckoo clock.”

5

I’ve mentioned this one before:

Back in the early '70s, my family was having dinner. My brother was dressed up for a date later, and he leaned out over the table to reach something or other. My mother admonished him, “Don’t get your Ascot in your dinner”.

Cue laugh track.

6

Walking into a movie theater to buy tickets for me and my wife, while she waited in the car.

By coincidence, I saw my friend and co-worker in the refreshment line, I was surprised to see him, called out his name and made a bee-line for him, at a brisk pace. He whipped around, upon hearing his name.

I immediately tripped over my shoelace and went sprawwwwling across the well waxed floor, skidding to a painful stop right in front of the guy who rips the tickets to enter the theater corridors.

He’s wheelchair bound.

The entire lobby was looking at me in horror as I rose gingerly and checked to make sure no bones were sticking out of my flesh.

They ticket taker in the wheelchair replies, without missing a beat, “Walk much?”

7

I’m giggling right now. Gold.

btw, you didn’t happen to come up with the idea of the flux capacitor right after, did you?

8

I’d just moved to a new town and only knew a few people at work. It was close to Halloween, so my girlfriend flew out so we could go as Jeff Lebowski and Maude to a costume party thrown by one of my new work friends.

We arrived late but found the house and had a great time. Everyone loved our costumes and my girlfriend split off to converse with a few folks while I went out to the patio for a beer.

It took me twenty minutes to figure out that I was having trouble telling who was who, not because I was so new at work or that the costumes were so good, but because we had walked into a complete stranger’s Halloween party.

“Finish your drink, we’ve got to go!” “Why?” “I’ll explain if we make it out of here.:smack:”

We found the right party - three doors down - and had a blast there, too. Around midnight both Halloween parties merged into one and everyone from the first party kept asking us where we’d disappeared to.

Sounds like something from “How I Met Your Mother.”

9

My 13 year old daughter and I were visiting a friend who also had a similar age daughter - Lila. Friend and I were chatting in the kitchen while the girls occupied themselves elsewhere. Jump to daughter crying, Lila was ‘styling’ her hair with one of those little round brushes full of bristles, and rolled up daughter’s long hair in it right up to the scalp, and it was STUCK. Jump to me, friend, Lila, and a couple of interested neighbors all converged on crying daughter, trying to pick out the rolled up hair from the brush. Called a hair salon, they said try creme rinse or mayonnaise to make it slippery. Big mess. An hour went by with a bit of progress, but finally I said, ‘oh, F this, get me some little scissors, I’m going in.’ So I freed the brush with careful snipping, and unless you looked really carefully the next day, it didn’t look obvious at all.

10

I was in a drive through line at Checkers in my Honda. If you’ve ever been to Checkers, you know they have drive-throughs on both sides, and if you’re on the left side of the building, you have to pay through the passenger’s side window. I usually avoided that, but it was a very busy day and the line was shorter on the left Well, my Prelude was pretty low-slung, so I decided it would be easier to get out of the car and go around it on foot to pay the cashier.
I automatically closed my door when I got out and when I went to get back in…it was locked. With the car running. Blocking the drive-through lane at noon.
I had my cell phone in my pocket, so I called my wife and it took her nearly a half hour to get there with my spare key, and the whole time I was blocking the one drive-through lane, at lunch hour, with a bunch of cars backed up behind me.

11

My friend and I were playing golf for the first time. We were awful - we both wound up with scores near 200! - and my friend kept losing golf balls.

Late in the round, my friend said “Keep an eye on the ball, and let me know where it lands.”

He placed it on the tee. He took a full power drive. He hit the ball, and it went a grand total of two feet forward.

Without missing a beat, I pointed at the ball right in front of him and deadpanned, “There it is.”

12

Just the other day, my DIL had to pick the lock on a gas station bathroom to be able to get in for a bathroom emergency. It was the men’s room (because the ladies’ room was out of order) and she used a toothpick to pick the lock. I could see this being part of a How I Met Your Mother subplot.

13

I’'ve personally re-enacted a classic “Brady Bunch” moment.

A few years after moving out of my parents’ house (and, for further comic impact, after graduating from an Ivy League college…), I got an apartment that had a working dishwasher. For most of my life growing up in my parents’ house, we had a dishwasher that I have no idea if it worked or not, we just used it as a drying rack (see #33 on this list ;)), with yours truly as the Chief Dishwasher for the last 8 years or so of my residence. So I was eager to try this sucker out.

I’d just moved in and unpacked all my needfuls, and examined the dishwasher. It had buttons outside for either short or normal cycle, and heated or cool drying. Being a bachelor in a studio apt., I selected “short” cycle for my 4 plates, a couple of cups and assorted utensils, and “heat dry” (faster! Faster!). Inside the door, I found instructions to “fill with detergent or liquid” into this little box, then to close the door, move a lever to lock it and press “start”.

Hmmm. I didn’t have any detergent, but I did have dishwashing liquid… The Palmolive I’d always used to hand-wash with. So I filled the little compartment up with Palmolive.

Well, about 15 minutes later the dishwasher started overflowing with water. I was flooding my apartment! I turned it off and opened the door to a cascade of soapy water and wall of suds that started oozing out everywhere. Wow what a mess. Apparently “dishwasher liquid” is not the same as “dishwashing liquid”. So shoot me!

And EVERYONE I ever told this to said, “Oh, like Bobby and the washing machine on The Brady Bunch?”

14

Way back in the 70’s when I was about 10 or 11 or so, my Mom took us kids on a trip to Amsterdam. We were checking in at the Sonesta Hotel when, unseen by my mother, four or five black guys with matching satin jackets wandered up. I read the embroidery on their jackets. It was the Temptations! Wow, how cool is that.

aesop: Hey Mom, check this out!
Mom: Not now, aesop, I’m in the middle of something.
aesop: But Mom, you’ve gotta see this!
Mom: Not now, I’m busy.
aesop: But this is really cool!
Mom: I said not now.
aesop: But Mom–
Mom: I said not now! Go wait in the lobby!

Ok. I wandered off into the lobby, and a couple minutes later when my Mom joined us I was able to explain what was going on. Turns out she thought I was upset over the hotel rates (???) and didn’t want me interfering. She felt sheepish, and we ended up getting an autograph. But even at the time it felt like a sit-com scenario.

15

So I walked through the front door at the Department of Tourism, hoping to ask whether a colleague of mine who runs the place would agree to serve as a job-hunt reference. The receptionist behind the front desk looks up with big wide eyes, but I’m in a bit of a hurry and stride down the hall into – an empty office.

“Oh, that’s right,” I think; “Martin Luther King day, government building, et cetera.” I chuckle and, embarrassed, keep walking out the side door.

So the next day I come back and start ruefully telling my story – which elicits a gasp and a “You! You’re the mystery man!” Because a couple of hours after I’d left, someone tried to break in through the back door, setting off alarms; cue the cops; they asked the girl who’d spent her day off catching up on paperwork whether she got a look at the guy; no dice, but she figured it might have been the mysterious stranger who’d burst in through what she’d thought was a locked door hours earlier.

I mean, she’d been too surprised to say anything before he’d left, and thought nothing of it at the time – but, hey, could well be the same guy, right? So cue the description to the police sketch artist and the APB and thus and such…

16

I’ve told this before, I think.

At university, I’d met some friends at a bar and was introduced to their roommate, a very attractive girl. We hit it off, and at the end of the night, we agreed to go out the next night, and I’d meet her at her at their place after her night class.

She showed up an hour and a half late, drunk. With another guy in tow.

17

I avoided one possible sit-com moment in grad school. A somewhat dizzy blonde friend was cat sitting another friend’s cat while he was out of town. As she approached his place, there were some seedy looking people checking her out, so she went in and used the key to lock the door from the inside. It was a lock that needed a key to get in and get out.

After feeding the cat, she went to leave and couldn’t get the key to unlock the door. After trying for several minutes, she called friends to help get her out. I was number 3 on the list and went over. She tosses the keys out the window to me. I unlock the door from the outside and go in. She thanks me and explains that the lock is impossible to open from the inside. “Close the door and lock it, then see if you can open it.”

I just stared at her and blinked a couple of times. Yes, if it had been Friends, Joey would have done it, then they both would have been locked inside. Yes, if I had done it, I would have been locked inside with an attractive blonde that I had a crush on, but it would have been hours of utter frustration. I chose to leave the door open, and demonstrate that I could unlock the door from the inside.

18

On the way home from work, the wife and I stopped at a grocery store about two blocks away from our house. As we left, we forgot we drove there and walked home (we walked to the store from home all the time - just did it again by habit).

The next morning, I walked out front to drive to work and realized the car wasn’t there. Totally forgot that it was at the grocery store. Called the cops to report my car stolen. The cops came and took a report and told me to contact my insurance company. I did that, then told the wife we should drive around just to see if some idiot from nearby stole it for a joyride and left it on a street nearby.

Two minutes later, we drove by it at the grocery store.

“Oh yeah, we left it there last night. What do you know?”

True story.

19

My Dad failed to tell me the location of his 65th birthday party, but upon leaving the train station I saw him go by in a car, so actually had the opportunity to jump in a taxi and say ‘follow that car!’
For a while my front door had a quirk where, if you locked it from the outside, you couldn’t get out from the inside. Front doors here lock automatically upon shutting, but in Germany you have to lock them; one of my flatmates had just returned from living in Germany. I’d just moved in and didn’t have keys to the windows either. Oh, also my intercom wasn’t working so to get into the building someone would have to buzz a neighbour’s flat.

Cue one morning, my other flatmate and I, all suited up for work (she was a lawyer), banging at the windows to try and get a passer-by to come to the building, buzz our neighbours’ intercoms, come in, get our keys through the letterbox and let us out. It took a while to get a passing dog-walker to agree to this.

Then my lawyer flatmate left before me… and locked me in again. Cue me banging on the windows for attention again, to get help from the only passer-by, the same dogwalker again who by that point must have thought we were trying to lure him into the flat for shenanigans or something.
I also once went to the pub, sat down at a table where a friend was sitting, and realised that every woman I’d ever slept with was sitting there with me. Every woman except my then-GF, who arrived about ten minutes later.
When my daughter was 5, she’d just started to dress herself. One day I hadn’t realised that she’d failed to put on any underwear under her quite short school dress. The point at which I realised this was during that afternoon’s school concert, when my daughter was sitting in the top row of a tier of chairs, mouthing along to the words of a song, distractedly swinging her legs apart and together, apart and together.

All the other parents gradually noticed that my daughter was flashing the entire school, nudged each other and pointed it out, and the laughter spread from one person to another until the entire audience was laughing during the children’s sweetly-solemn singing of Amazing Grace.

20

You chose…poorly.