Sometimes another word gets in the way and you just can’t get past it. The other day someone asked a question to which the answer was ‘Prometheus’. Unfortunately, I didn’t get it, because all I could think of was ‘Icarus’. About 6 hours later, I suddenly thought “ah… that’d be Prometheus”.
My mom used to have a boss who had these mental lapses all the time. He was one of those frantic guys who would come bursting out of his office, door slamming the wall, and demand stuff. One day he came storming out, asking frantically, “What do you call those little brown things in chocolate chip cookies??!!!”
“Uuuuh, chocolate chips?”
Another time he came screaming out, “Quick, does anyone have any three-by-five cards??!!”
“Yeah, here you go.”
“NO!!! I mean the BIG three-by-five cards!!!”
My latest happened the other day. I was playing Scrabble with some friends. One of them used the word “drug”. I corrected her, saying that that’s not a word, and that it would be “dragged”. :smack:
I also have to mention that many of these stories have had me laughing so hard that I’m crying. I could only read half the thread yesterday because my husband was going to be home soon and I didn’t want him to see me all puffy-eyed and red-faced, or else he would think I’d been sitting around sobbing my eyes out.
I’ve got one more although it’s not one of my own brain farts. My sister and her boyfriend (well, ex-boyfriend now) were having a rather heated discussion and my sister had locked him out of her apartment. He was demanding to be let in to get some of his belongings but she was so mad at him she wouldn’t unlock the door.
He whipped out his cellphone and yells through the door: “Fine! I’m gonna call the police and tell them you won’t let me in!” Short pause “What’s the number for 911?”
The fact that my sister burst out laughing and laughed for the next 10 minutes ended the argument pretty quickly, although he wasn’t nearly as amused as she was.
Oh… holy… sweet… OG.
I’m going to go over here now.
(actually it was a sieve. but still, jeez.)
Heh, matt, I thought that was a weird Canadian thing. You know, we use colanders, you use spatulas…
I don’t know if this is a brainfart on my part, or on the other drivers. I was coming home from school one Friday afternoon–clear driving conditions, light traffic, a road I’ve driven twice a day every day for the past four years. I come up on an intersection and I will swear until my grave that the light was green. The left-turn-only light turned red, but my light was green. I was driving eastbound.
My assertion would hold more water if the traffic traveling northbound and making a left hand turn didn’t suddenly enter the intersection. Fortunately I avoided that car and made it across safely and there were no officers present.
But I know that light was green. But it couldn’t have been, otherwise, why would the other car enter the intersection after being stopped?
My friend had made a reservation for our group for Indian Night at a local restaurant. Despite my husband’s prediction that we would be late, ‘as always’, we made it at the agreed-on time. One day earlier. :smack:
You see, I *thought * she said Friday, but she really said Saturday.
This brain fart brought to you by the makers of Senility™. It’s not just for seniors anymore!
Driving home with my mother years ago, we had driven in silence… no radio… obviousy both lost in thoughts. Probably 20 minutes of silence broken by my mother suddenly saying, “HI! We’re Home!” LOL… she had been thinking about what she was gonna say when we got home and spontaniously blurted it out.
Then there was the time I was trying to describe a particular southern candy to my sister. Pralenes… easy enough, however, for some reason the only word I could think of for them was Apricots… which is obviously wrong. Probably 5 times I thought about what they were called before it suddenly dawned on me “Apricots!” no WAIT! Thats wrong AGAIN!!.. 10 minutes of abject silence and I suddenly bolted upright with one hand projecting triumphantly into the air and yelled, “APRICOTS!”
I have locked myself out of my car so many times I now:
Can get into most any car I’ve ever driven, with nothing more than a coat hanger.
Carry at LEAST two copies of the car key with me, whereever I go. On two seperate key chains.
It helps. Some
I think my weirdest brain fart was in boot camp. I had to take remedial marching. I literally could NOT swing my arms the way that most people do, and trying to do it would cause me to, as others have mentioned, wipe out whatever subroutine actually handled walking.
When marching, or walking, most people (Look at someone else, don’t think of this while you’re walking: I don’t want to be responsible for making you trip.) will swing the arm opposite the leg they’re moving forward more or less in synch. So, left leg, and right arm would move forward. Frankly, from the standpoint of balance this makes sense, and is much easier than how I used to do it: I’d swing my left arm with my left leg…
And it took me weeks to figure out how to march right. And tripping in formation, because you’d had to stop and think about marching was a baaaad thing.
I had a similar problem in JROTC colorguard. I could do normal marching perfectly, but I couldn’t get the hang of swinging my arms when I was carrying a rifle. My diificulty turned out better than yours, though: the instructors decided it looked better that way, and that’s how they’ve taught it ever since. 
Fitting for this thread: I always do that, doubling the letter before the one that’s supposed to be doubled.
Two days ago. We’re driving around. I’m bored, so I throw up a random question:
Me: Why is it that cars roll backwards when the clutch pedal is in?
Friend1: It’s on a slant.
Friend2: Yep.
Me: No it’s not…
Friend1&2: Yes, it is, that’s why.
Me: But the car isn’t slanted back!
Friend1: It is!
Me: But the engine is in the front, it should be heavier than the back.
Friend2: omg…
Friend1: Look we’ll show you…
finds an intersection that is on flat ground
car does NOT roll in any direction
Friend1: see? Here the ground is flat.
Me: Ohhhh… the ground… I knew that… I thought you were talking about the car itself being tilted.
pause
Me: Which is why I said it wasn’t slanted…
Me: You shoulda said it was the road not the car!!
:smack:
Today I had a massive brain failure all day long. I would say one word when I meant another, or I’d have two similar words in mind and sort of say both at the same time, like the first half of one and the last half of another. Of course I can’t think of any examples right now. The worst was when we were driving home from a restaurant. I got on the freeway going south, missed the junction, got off to turn around, then got utterly confused about whether to go north or south. available light had to tell me to go north back to the junction, then which way to go from there. This is especially funny because normally she’s the one who gets lost and I’m the one with a map and a compass in my head.
Now here is my strangest mind fart. We have bought a new fridge in our place. Before we buy this fridge, we used to stick a piece of wood in the air conditioner and put our stuff on it to cool them. Yesterday, I bought two sodas and looked for that piece to stick it in the air conditioner and put the sodas on it. I couldn’t find that piece. Then I thought for seconds and figured out that my friend Naif may had thrown it away after we bought the fridge. The strange part in the story is that I continued looking for another piece to stick in the conditioner till I found one. When my friend came in I told him to bring the sodas from above that piece. He asked me why I didn’t put them in the fridge; that is when I laughed as I had never done in my life.
Finally, I hope you would correct the grammatical mistakes in my post.
A friend of mine used to go through phases like that. So processes like “screen printing” ended up being called “scrinting”.
Strangely, everyone always understood what she meant so it gave her a very economical way of commuicating in verbal shorthand.
First hand (but not first-person) story …
We’re playing Scrabble with another couple. She spells out P-E-N-I-S. Her hubby, looking at the board inverted, says “Pennis! [sub](rhymes with tennis)[/sub], there’s no such word as pennis! You’re cheating.” She, with wicked grin, says “Are you sure?”. He, a Greek scholar and would-be word geek says “Heck yeah I’m sure, let’s get the dictionary”.
So she sloowly turns the board around facing his way. Boy did he turn red. I nearly peed my pants (with my pennis of course) laughing so hard.
Sheesh. What a dick. 
Quite some while back I was playing “Inverse Trivial Pursuit” - you look at the answer side of the card and try to come up with the questions. One answer was “Testicles”. My mind somehow gave this a greek pronunciation and I started to ponder “Hmmm - playwright? philosopher? I can’t quite recall.”
I couldn’t come up with anything, so I turned the card over and read the question: “What does a stallion have that a gelding doesn’t?”
Today I was making a grilled cheese sandwich. I unwrapped the slice of cheese and carefully threw it right in the trash can, centering the empty wrapper nicely on the slice of bread. :smack:
One of my favorite words came about this way. I was trying to say “I don’t have the slightest idea” but midstream, changed to “Foggiest” so it came out “sloggiest”. Ever since, I’ve used it as if it’s the right word.
9AM. No alarm going off, but I wake up, see the clock, and panic. Call the boss, leave a message saying I’m on my way in ASAP. Hop in the shower, and then realize… it’s Saturday… Since I work M-F, Saturday is a day off. With no way to erase the message, there it sat on the voice mail untill the department meeting on Monday AM, when the boss kindly played it for us all.
Great fun, I went right back to bed after that.