I realize this topic is a couple of months old, but I just saw it today, and had to share my story. I had just gotten back to my then girlfriend’s apartment (gf and her oldest daughter were with me), and had just stepped outside of my car, when a strong odor in the air hit me. With my head down, I mentioned it smelled like pigs. I then looked up, and saw the cop car, with two cops standing next to it, that I had completely failed to notice before. The cops looked over, and I thought for sure I was going to jail. I was mortified. Fortunately, they chose not to make a big deal out of it.
I didn’t see this thread teh first time around, bit this is one of my favourite stories. I’m not sure how well it’ll translate to text, but… we’ll see.
So it’s my 17th birthday party. My friend hosted it at her place when her parents were away, and it was a total blast. Everyone drank too much (not me) and we all stayed up late, those uf us who didn’t stay up until 7am fell asleep where they lay.
A girl I knew ended up making out with this guy from a different group of friends. In the middle of the floor. They fell asleep with her hand through his fly, up onto his chest.
Later in the morning. I was sitting atop a staircase with two friends of mine who were being quiet, while two other friends stood on the stairs joking around. They mention the couple who made out on the floor and start joking around. I start gesturing to my side, but they take no notice, and keep talking. One of the guys says “I can’t believe they made out right there on the floor!” The other replies: “Made out? He fell ASLEEP on her FACE!” My gesturing is getting more frantic, and guy #1 finally notices who’s sitting next to me - obviously, the girl in question. I see realization dawn on guy #1’s face, and he just turns and runs down the stairs, leaving guy #2 still talking and joking. At this point I’m about to dislocate my neck with my gesturing. Guy #2 looks at me, looks at her, opens his mouth and closes it, and then in mid sentence turns and runs down the stairs.
I almost died laughing. The postscript to this story is that the two guys ran outside and told everyone the story, laughing like mad, while the guy (who fell asleep on her face) came up to the group and asked what was so funny.
I’ve been dating Guy #2 for almost 5 years now, and I’ve still never seen him speechless other than that occasion.
As for me, I’ve found it wise to heed Dave Barry’s advice about NEVER asking a woman if she’s pregnant unless you actually SEE a baby emerging from between her legs.
Because I’ve made that mistake TWICE. :o
I’ve had too many foot in mouth episodes to count, but here’s one I haven’t repressed yet…
My school has elevators, although students aren’t supposed to use them unless they have a broken leg or something. However, most of the people who work at the school won’t make a big deal out of it if they catch you in them.
One day, I decided I’d rather take the elevator up to class because I felt too lazy to use the stairs. But before the doors closed, one of the french teachers walked up and stood in the doorway, demanding to see a note from the nurse that said i needed to use the elevator. I got really angry, since she was going to take the elevator when she clearly didn’t need to either. When I realized she wasn’t going to let the doors close, I called her a bitch and stormed off. It took me about 10 seconds to realize that calling a teacher a bitch? not such a good idea. :smack:
Especially since I was headed up to the floor where the all of the language classrooms/offices were. :smack: :smack:
I find it curious that you were alive to make the mistake a second time.
A few years ago I was riding the city bus. After I got on and sat down, I smelled the most horrific smell ever. My eyes started watering and I almost started gagging. I turn to the woman behind me and say “Oh my god! Do you smell that? What is that SMELL??”
She meekly says “That’s me. I have a skin condition.” Then she begins to apologize profusely.
:smack:
Ain’t it the truth? Actually, though, the first time I did it was not because she had any belly. She was wearing a shirt that looked like maternity wear and I asked her where she got maternity clothes, as I had had so much trouble finding any myself in that town when I’d been pregnant. I mean the shirt was full and had that little gather under the breastbone area. She was actually quite slim, but the shirt fooled me!
The second time, the woman just had that “look.” Turned out that she’d been trying and thought she might be, and was just excited–guess it showed. It was just unfortunate that she wasn’t at THAT time! (She did get pregnant some months later though!)
Are you talking about “When someday the spark of youth surrenders”? Because if you are, saying “I hate it” is like the best thing you can say about it.
A few days into my 12th grade calculus class, the teacher (who most of the class had already had in 11th grade) was doing some reviewing. She got up in front of the room, and intended to say “We’re going to start functions today.” What actually came out was “We’re going to start fucking today!”
The entire class erupted in laughter, and I, trying to be a wiseass, piped up with a comment of my own.
What I intended to say was “Now we know how you talk about us when we’re not around!” What came out was “Now we know what you do when we’re not around!”
All the other laughter in the classroom stopped, and heads rapidly swiveled to look at me. It took a second for what I just said to register, but when it did, all I could let out was a low, pained groan: “That’s not what I meant to say…”
The worst (or perhaps best) part, though, was that the teacher (who was rather young), instead of reprimanding me, immediately turned bright red and turned away from the class.
My wife and myself volunteered at a local animal shelter. On Saturdays, we’d go in and do cat adoptions, administer medications, etc. There were a couple of teenage girls who did the same thing, including a 16-year old named Erica, who was smart, witty, and had a tongue as sharp as a razor.
I had dropped my wife off and found parking, and when I went in went to the office; there I saw all the gals standing around Erica, who had an odd look on her face - - something was wrong. “Oh, what’s the matter, Erica?” I said. “Boyfriend break up with you?”
She burst into tears, and the eye-mounted laser beams of all the other women in the room burned through my skull.
Later, I apologized. “You must think I’m a real asshole.”
“No,” she replied, tartly. “I’ve been thinking that for months; today, I know it!”
Ouch! :wally
For a news story I was interviewing a bunch of young girls and their parents. One very tiny child appeared to be about 3 years old. When I was done interviewing I said goodbye to everyone, looked at her, and said: “You’re so CUTE! You’re just a LITTLE thing!” She looked up and said, “I’m 10.”
Yikes. She must have had some kind of growth disorder.
Years ago when I was doing a lot of bike riding, I went with a chum to a “Bike to Work Day” organizational meeting. The idea was for a number of folks to meet at one point and then ride to work down one of the big Atlanta streets together. You know, fewer cars on the road, raise awareness, blahblahblah.
Part of what came up was the issue of visibility in traffic. Some folks were talking about using those frame-mounted orange flags or something like that. I brightly piped up to suggest that we could have an escort car!
Escort. Car. At a Bike-to-Work-to-encourage-people-to-drive-less Rally.
There was a moment of pained silence during which I realized what I’d just said.
Then the discussion moved on, and I didn’t open my mouth for the rest of the meeting.
I still cringe when I think about it. But it doesn’t compare to the midget or uncle-fucking stories.
I used to work as a waitress.
One Saturday night, attempting to flirt for bigger tips, I sauntered up to a table of four men, poured their water, and simpered, “What are four handsome men like you doing out on a Saturday night without dates?”
Their answer?
“What makes you think we’re here without dates?”
:o
I turned six shades of red, and I never tried to flirt with a table again.
IIRC, they did leave me a good tip though.
When my friend Cindy was getting married, she wanted to have the big wedding her family expected, but couldn’t afford it. She therefore became quite ingenious at finding bargains.
Her ex-boss, Lisa, had a husband (we’ll call him Ken) who likes to bake as a hobby. Ken offered to do their wedding cake as their gift to the couple. He then promptly proceeded to avoid Cindy thereafter. He wouldn’t return her phone calls. He ignored her emails. Then, one day when she went over to his house to drop off the cake pans, she saw him through a window, but he refused to answer the door!
She was sweating bullets right up until the day of the wedding, when the wedding cake was delivered to the reception hall by Lisa shortly before the reception began. Ken never showed up to the wedding, though he’d said he would be there.
I, however, had never seen Ken or Lisa before in my life. At the reception dinner, I entertained my friends Sonia and Jeff with the story of Ken, and how he was a total jerk about Cindy’s cake. I even threw in the silly speculation that, though he was married, Cindy was convinced Ken was really gay.
At which point, the woman next to me (whom I’d just assumed was some random stranger), turned to me and snapped, “I’m Lisa and Ken is my husband!” She was furious. I felt terrible (and still do when I think about it)!
Pretty much all of my foot-in-mouth moments come in already awkward situations as I try to find something to say that will make things better.
For my birthday, I got an awesome digital camera from my parents, the one in that Sony commercial with whatshisface the ex-rocker.
My girlfriend-at-the-time was there when I got it, and she said, “I wish my parents would buy me a camera.” It was an awkward moment, and I said, “Didn’t your parents buy you Havana Nights?”, to which she replied “Nope, that was my aunt.” I kept listing the presents she had gotten, all of which I had thought were from her parents, only to stand corrected. “My parents just bought me a backpack,” she said. So what did I say to make everything better?
“Well, maybe you can hold your backpack like this [demonstrating] and pretend it’s a camera.”
Silence all around.
Needless to say, I didn’t get much play that night.
Oh, just remembered another one–
Same GF, pretty soon after we started going out. I was in her room and picked up a stack of senior pictures off her desk and thumbed through them, picked out one and said “Wow, I really like this one.”
Only to hear in reply, “That’s my older sister.” 
I was in the doghouse for a little while for that one, until I explained that I really, really, no, seriously, really liked the other ones, too, and that her sister looked just exactly like her (she did, except a little tiny bit slimmer–I left out that part) and I honest-to-god couldn’t tell the difference (I couldn’t). She understood and eventually we got over it.
I can think of a couple others with her that are a little too mundane to post her. Man, looking back on it, that wasn’t much of a relationship.
I was working writing proposals for a company. A Mean guy called and was ordering me around. I got off the phone, and said to my co-worker, “What a DICK!”
Yep. That was his name.
Last Halloween, I was a flapper. I had a red minidress with fringe, a red cloche, long beaded necklaces, the whole deal. I even had my hair in a flapper style bob.
I was so excited about my costume, because it was awesome. I was telling everyone about all about it. Except, instead of “flapper,” I kept saying “stripper.”
Oops.
I have too many foot-in-mouth tales from my youth to ever recount, but one of the earlier posts reminded me of this one.
When I was in college, some friends and I went to a public lecture on “Evacuation Day” (a Boston holiday that ostensibly celebrates an event from the Revolutionary War, but was really just an excuse to give Boston city workers St. Patrick’s Day off – a holdover from an era when Boston and its City Hall were far more heavily Irish). When we arrived, we noticed that PBS was hosting a public reception with some interesting guest speakers, in the same room, about half en hour after our lecture ended.
We stuck around in the empty room, After about ten minutes, a group of middle-aged people arrived, talking loudly (as if we, being maybe 19, didn’t even exist) and animatedly about, of all things, “The New Zoo Review” [a children’s Tv show from the 70s]. After a few minutes, they retreated to the back of the room, giggling and cackling, My friends rolled their eyes. “What was that all about?” (They had never seen the show) I very tempted to do launch into a comedy schtick – my little sister had watched it regularly in Atlanta, and as a dutiful big brother, I’d learned to mimic the voices and gestures of all the upholstered characters. My Henrietta Hippo, in particular, is not to be missed.
But miraculously I stopped myself. For all I knew those people had been involved in making the show, and were seeing each other again for the first time.
That sounds uncharacteristically level headed, doesn’t it? O how little you know me!
The urge to parody, once activated, can only build steam. I recalled that I was actually responsible for my sister getting hooked on the show. I’d been watching some somber technical documentary on the past and future of the space program when a guy in a jester’s suit, who I’d never seen before or since, literally leaped on the screen, jangling his bells and finger symbols, “This is Brother Blue booobidy-doo booobidy-doo Comin’ right at you…”
I guess I must have gone to the bathroom, and mist the last few minutes of my special, but this took me completely by surprise. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen, especially by contrast to the tone of the show I’d been watching. I yelled for my my sister to come see, and we were both rolling on the floor. This grown-up was coming completely unglued for no comprehensible reason on broadcast TV! And he just kept going and going… it must have been 15 minutes. Only when he was gone were we able to figure out that he’d been trying to introduce a new ‘experiment’ in Children’s TV - the aforementioned “New Zoo Revue” probably seemed avant-garde to PBS, but to our jaded kiddie eyes, it was just a low-rent HR Pufinstuf preaching lessons in how to get along with others.
Needless to say, I found myself capering and launching into extempraneous verse in a desperate attempt to convey the full “Brother Blue” experience to my friends, exaggerating wildly to make them understand exactly how badly our kiddie minds had been blown by this Prancing rhyming black man, who appeared in our lives and was never seen again. I sometimes suspect my sister only watched TNZR in the hopes that something equallly outrageous would happen again.
You’ve guessed the rest, haven’t you?
Brother Blue turned out to be a highly regarded artist and children’s advocate. The host took the stage and proceeded to rattle off his rather impressive biography. You see, he [listed under his real name, not “Brother Blue”] was the first speaker – a tall elegant black man in a three piece suit who had, along with the other speakers, quietly taken the second row seats immediately behind us. We’d unwittingly co-opted the choice front row center seats usually saved for speakers.
He’d watched the entire travesty. I’d mocked the man’s life’s work in front of a crowd assembled, in part, to see him get an award.
I did try to approach him at the end of the event, to apologize, but for whatever reason, he didn’t seem very interested in talking to me. I’m 90% certain that he looked me dead in the eye, with an indecipherable expressionlessness, as I fought through the crowd toward him. Then he turned and disappeared out the door drawing his fellow speakers and their entourage behind him.
Me, while trying on the remains of my weeks-dead-of-AIDS cousin - “I look like such a fag!”
In front of my aunt, his mother.
Oh GOD! That SHOULD have read "while trying on the remains of my weeks-dead-of-AIDS cousin**'s Wardrobe.**