Another one that I think horrified my wife, I am sure, however, that my father took it in stride.
My father had a heart attack last year and was diagnosed with diabetes. Shortly after he got out of the hospital we were all sitting around having Sunday dinner trying to cheer him up. The subject of the SDMB death pool came up and we were discussing my picks for this year. He asked how I decided on Wilford Brimley and BB King. I just blurted out, “They do diabetes commercials, they can’t have long left now. That disease is a killer.”
This was meant as a flip joke, but I don’t think it went very far towards cheering him up.
Given my knack for this kind of stuff, I’m sure I should have a bunch of these stories to tell, but for some reason the only one I can think of actually happened to a friend of mine in college. He was an avid bowler from a family of bowlers, and one night while he was out watching his dad’s team bowl, he was introduced to the daughter of one of his dad’s teammates, who had Down’s syndrome. When he was told that she really enjoyed bowling also, his response was “Cool! What’s your handicap?”
Senior Prom, sitting in a French restaurant with seven other people. Conversation was going full steam, except for one boy, who was looking a little dejected. He says “No one’s talking to me. I guess I will just go out to the limo and suck some carbon monoxide.”
Right out of my mouth pops “Promises, promises. We want results, man!”
Ok, so he was a whiny baby, but I didn’t really need to say that, either.
I met the sister of my high-school wrestling coach (F). I was telling her how much I had always liked F, and I mentioned I had recently seen F on the public access TV station discussing local election results. I was telling her how interesting F was on the program, but then I made some sort of joke about how I just wished that F would have stopped coughing into the microphone. Her eyes seemed to immediately well up, and she walked away from me.
I didn’t make much of it, but of course, I learned a few days later that F had just been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
I had a friend whose father was diagnosed with cancer a few months earlier. I was under the impression that he had quite some time to go and was treatable at the time of this occurrence…
Anyway, I walk into my place of employment, where he’s standing, and he asks me how I’m doing. I was in a pissy mood, but I’m thinking, his dad is sick… but this doesn’t register fast enough for me to curb my tonge …and out blurts “Probably better than you.” Which said in a different tone may have been less awful… He kind of laughs and says “You’re right, my father passed away last night.”
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
I was absolutely mortified, but he thought it was hilarious. Well, Woody, if it brightens your day, I’ll embarass myself any time.
… So I’m in high school and I go to visit my girlfriend at band camp, and we’re talking about a really really cute friend of hers (whom we will call A.) who had just started going out with this kinda dorky guy we both knew. Now, I liked said guy… I also appreciated A.'s good looks so I said and I quote “Really? J. Is going out with her? I hope he get’s some of that!” No sooner had the words crossed my lips do I see my girlfriend’s horrified expression and I hear an “Ahem” from behind me. My girlfriend then says “Lokij I’d like you to meet A.'s mom…”
I was standing outside a grocery store waiting for my friend to get off the payphone. Out of the store walks a woman pulling a cart with a teenage girl (I presume is her daughter) pushing the cart. The daughter has down’s syndrone and is continually cocking her head side to side. They make their way to their car. I then cock my head side to side in order to crack my neck. The mother looks at me just at that moment. I felt awful.
Several minutes later my friend is off the phone and comes over to me. Thinking the woman and her daughter had left by now I tell the story to my friend. Just as I show her the side to side head motion I look over and see the woman still in the parking lot once again looking at me.
Oh, how I wanted to tell that woman the story so that she would realize that I wasn’t mocking her daughter.
Not me but my father.
My father was a gruff, abrasive sort who loved giving my boyfriends a hard time.
It’s amazing anyone ever went out with me more than once, after meeting daddy dearest.
He had been out of town quite a bit and hadn’t been introduced to my current flame who had contracted polio as a child and walked with a pronounced limp.
BF and I come into the living room, dad turns around and says “Hey, you’re limping kid. What she do-kick you at the movie?”
BF smiles politely and replies 'No sir, I had polio as a kid and I always walk like this."
Dad turned crimson, muttered something and left the room.
When I was married to my ex we lived in a house that he owned before I met him. There were always problems with the house (i.e. bad windows and doors, cracks in the walls, bad plaster jobs etc.) I made a comment while we were visiting at his parents home that I thought that whoever he bought
the house from must have maintained it with cardboard and scotch tape. I learned later that he had purchased the house from his sister :eek: :smack:
And her solution was to stop talking to her daughter? Gee, what a wonderful mother! It’s great that she can just cast off her own daughter as one of “them”. After all, there’s no reason to talk to tweakers. They’re not human like us, right?
Uh, isn’t it possible that the reason that “they didn’t talk much because she was on speed” is because maybe, just maybe, the daughter became flaky and impossible to get in touch with? Maybe the daughter imposed the communication blocks? I mean, it is entirely possible that you’re right, but I’m pretty sure we have absolutely not enough information to start jumping down some unseen women’s throat for circumstances about which we know nothing.
Actually, I have another bad one. (This happened in #straightdope, actually.) Someone said that she was annoyed at her boyfriend for looking at porn, to which I replied, “If you want a relationship with someone who doesn’t look at porn, I’m afraid you might be looking at the wrong gender.”
Well, she was a rape victim, and pornography was a part of the rape(s?) and thus was permanently associated with traumas in her memory. :eek: I guess that was the first good reason I’d heard for someone to make their bf stop looking at porn… (he had promised to, as well, it turns out; so regardless he shouldn’t have broken his promise). I probably haven’t lived that one down yet.
I was at my very first adult cocktail party, a christmas party given by my older sisters company. I was about 16.
For some reason, nerves I guess, I got into a joke telling mood and went into this really, really bad joke that was going around at the time about a retarded child waiting for the school bus. It involved much slurring and flailing (I know, I know, its not PC, but nobody was politically correct back then) and by the time I was about half way through I had quite the crowd around me.
I get all the way to the end of the joke, pull out the punchline, and the guy I’m telling the joke to, my sister’s boss by the way, looks at me completely deadpan, takes a sip of his martini, and says “My daughter is mentally handicapped”.
I have never felt comfortable at cocktail parties after that. I’m afraid I’m going to do it again! :smack:
Recently, a friend and I paid a visit to a lady who had terminal cancer. She had been through months and months of radiation treatments. Her time was getting short and we wanted to see her and her family together one last time. When it came time for us to leave, my friend said “Well, I guess we should be getting out of your hair now!”. The radiation had left her completely bald. I cast a horrified glance at her and her family but they took the comment in stride. My buddy didn’t even realize what he’d said. When I later mentioned his choice of words he turned 13 shades of red.
When I was about 19, some close friends of our family were visiting at my parents house. They joyously announced that their only daughter, who is a couple of years younger than me, was getting married. I piped up with “Cool! When’s the baby due”? Dead silence. The baby came about 5 months later.
