Many years ago I planned to go out to lunch with some colleagues. I volunteered to drive. Went out to the parking lot. No car. Looked all around. No car. IT"S BEEN STOLEN, thinks me, and not too unhappily (car was a piece of junk). Report this to the security guard who offers to look around for it further. Go out in friend’s car for lunch. Halfway through burger, realize I didn’t drive to work that day, I carpooled, and my “stolen” car is in a park-and-ride 15 miles away.
:smack:
Then there was our honeymoon. We rented a house at the beach. As we were loading up the car on our last day, I noticed that the windows were messy and really needed to be cleaned. So I grabbed the bottle of Windex and roll of paper towels from inside the hatchback, set my keys down, and closed the hatch so I could clean the back window.
Those were the only keys we had with us. And the car was locked. And we had no phone. I had to walk a half-mile to the nearest public phone, and call AAA to rescue us. We still believe that AAA saved our marriage!
My working hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. One day I was sick and feverish and left about 2 p.m. Went home and went to bed. Woke up and saw that it was 9 o’clock. Frantically called work, since being late is a big crime. The night shift person answered the phone.
“Why are you still there?” I asked. “Huh?” she says.
“I overslept! I’ll be in as soon as I can get dressed. Oh god, I hope I’m not in too much trouble.”
“Laina,” the night person says, “you do know that it’s 9 p.m., not 9 a.m.?”
Not really a brain fart, more like collective family stupidity:
One weekend my parents rented a more reliable car than the one we owned in order to drive to Wonderland (Toronto-area’s Disney World). We left our hometown really early, and arrived at the theme park early enough that we were able to park only a five minute walk form the gates. Remember, theme park lots are immense, but it was early enough that the lot was fairly empty, only a few hundred cars.
When it was time to go home, the lot was full. Cars as far as the eye could see. My dad reached in his pocket and pulled out the keys to the rental.
He looked at my mom, then looked at me, and said:
“So… does anyone remember what the car looks like?”
I said I thought it was red. My mom thought it just might be beige.
OMG. racinchikki’s recounting of her Halloween tribulations brought tears to my eyes. That was great, probably the highlight of this thread so far.
I did the same thing as laina_f when I had a 12-hour digital bedside clock. I went home from labs and went for a nap, and woke up, looked at my bedside clock: 10:30. I knew that the following day I had an important meeting with my supervisor at 10:00, so I leapt out of bed yelling a strange swear-word mixture I don’t think I’d ever seen before or used since. Pulling clothes on as fast as I could. Only when I was ready did I notice…it’s dark outside…and it finally clicked where I had gone wrong. I went down to the college bar instead–making sure to switch my clock back to 24-hour mode first!
I have so many! I also forget to breathe sometimes. I’ll just be sitting there and suddenly ‘gasp!’ as my body recognises the oxygen deprivation. I don’t even bother to pretend now, just admit - if anyone asks - that I forgot to breathe again.
I regularly look at words and think ‘that can’t be right!’. Some mentioned in here, like ‘doing’, and ‘of’ are regular culprits, but I’ve also had big trouble with ‘going’ and ‘who’, among others.
I think the trouble with ‘doing’ and ‘going’ is they look onamatopaeic, much like ‘boing’.
One from my husband: we’ve been friends with a guy called ‘Tom’ for years now. One day, out of the blue, hubby says to me, “Hey, ‘Tom’ - that’d be short for something, right?”. I look across at him and say, “Probably.”, thinking to myself that it might be short for Thomas or it might just be ‘Tom’, as-is.
With a look of deep concentration, he clearly ponders the possibilities, before saying hesitantly, “… Tomothy?”.
Oh! That reminds me of my single biggest-ever brain fart.
When I was growing up, money was pretty scarce and mum would buy things in bulk whenever possible to save money. She’d bought a big tin of Nescafe coffee on sale. This was a big thing for us at the time.
We’re talking in the kitchen and the kettle boils, so I make the coffee… by pouring the entire contents of the kettle into the 3/4 full tin of coffee.
Worst part is, halfway through the exercise my brain works out there’s a problem with this scenario, and I look at my mother in horror, and she looks at me in equal horror… and all the while I continue to pour the water until the jug is empty, neither of us apparently able to interrupt the process.
I put the empty jug down and look at her in dumbfounded silence, she looks at me, and then we both crack up laughing and she tells me to go find some jars - we’re gonna be making our coffee from a liquid base for a while.
My mother is queen of these kinds of things. Once, my mother, some friends of the family and I were sitting around a campfire. Suddenly, lightning streaked accross the sky. My mother pointed up and exclaimed, “Look! Mustard!”
Another time, I was walking my dog with look!ninjas and my daughter. It was nighttime and very dark. My dog saw something moving in several feet away, and got really curious, so I took her over to investigate. As we got closer, I saw something black, white and furry in the grass start to scamper away. My brain switched into panic mode. Those black, white and furry things can spray you and make you stink! So I turned around and took off running away from the thing screaming, “It’s a snake! It’s a snake!!!” Suddenly my brain realized what I was saying, and I tried to save face by correcting myself. “It’s a skunk,” I said. Too late, the damage was done, and look!ninjas and my daughter were already cracking up.
I frequently forget my name. What most call my “real” name, and I refer to as my “legal” name. It’s gotten to the point where I call myself something other than my name in my head. Behold the power of surrounding yourself with people who call you by your nickname.
I also cannot for the life of me remember my cell number. I never call myself, so how would it be ingrained in my memory?
There’s also me going into BK, getting my burger and fries, getting my drink and going up to the counter:
Me “Can I get some…”
them “…”
me “Some…stuff…y’know, that you…put…things…in?”
them “A bag?”
me with bag in hand “No! The stuff! The tangy stuff!”
them “Sweet and sour sauce”
me “Sauce! Yeah, sauce! No! Wait…tangy…tangy…zesty sauce! Go me!”
them handing me sauce “Here y’go, have a nice day.”
By the way, the above was written in Nebraska accent…y’know.
Also, happening during D&D, “Listen, can you smell that?”
We have thunderstorms predicted tonight, so I’m going to be thinking “Look! Mustard!” all evening.
When I was in high school I helped my mom make a cake for some event. She was off taking care of something else, and I decided it would be a good time to frost the cake. So I dutifully did each layer, making everything nice and pretty. She came back into the kitchen and pointed out that I had frosted the cake on the cooling rack. She was a little miffed, but I didn’t see why–the solution was easy. I took a long, skinny knife, slid it under the cake and carried it across the kitchen to the plate she had gotten out for it. I think she was a little mad that the cake didn’t break in half and splatter all over the floor.
I was just preparing some pasta, and I lifted the pot up and poured it through the spatula… directly onto the floor. Oh, yes, you drain things into the sink! I forgot.
Literally my first thought (after “Oh my God, how stupid”) was “This’ll be perfect for the brain fart thread.”
[Obligatory Simpsons quote]
Homer: Marge, where’s that… metal deely… you use to… dig… food…
Marge: You mean, a spoon?
Homer: Yeah, yeah!
[/OSQ]
I’ve had tons of brainfarts lately. Just this morning I answered the phone at work and couldn’t remember the name of the company I’m working at. The person on the other end had to go “Hello… ??” twice before I just answered with my name (and left the company name off). Thank Og I didn’t forget my name as well.
