No worries. Happens all the time. As long as you didn’t make a move to wipe it off for them!
So many, so many, where to start?
At my previous company I had some contact with a lovely woman in a different department. We got on well and she’d told me that she had recently gotten married. She was pleasant looking, by which I mean she was neither skinny nor particularly heavy, just, you know, normal.
So I have no explanation for coming in on a Monday morning and greeting her. Putting together her recent wedding and perhaps a trick of the light I asked her when the happy day was going to be, as I’d just had my second child and knew how exiting it was.
That brief moment of confusion in her eyes as she tried to figure out what I was talking about, and I realized the cow pat I had trodden in, is seared into my mind. Oh yes, I lived the cliché, and it still burns.
One time my wife took our son to a birthday party and the invitation said to bring a can of food for the food bank. Well my wife did that. She showed up with ONE can of beans. All the other Mom’s had grocery sacks full.
Talk about looking cheap.
Oh, God this is bad. It’s really really bad. You can tell it is bad by how much I am prefacing it by explaining how bad it was. Also, I am not a bad person. I am a very tolerant and kind person. BUT…
When I was about 10 years old, I attended a UU church. Our kids area was going to be painted, so they gave us paint brushes and told us to paint whatever we wanted before they rolled over it. We weren’t monitored. So I decided to paint something.
At this point, if you’re unaware of what a UU church is, it is a non-denominational church that teaches all world religions and preaches tolerance over all else.
Cut back to me with a paintbrush in my hand. My pre-adolescent brain fighting through a list of ideas trying to figure out which one to select. In the end, I settled on drawing about a half dozen… swastikas.
I don’t really remember doing it or what the repercussions were. I’m assuming that shame is a powerful memory suppressant. My parents were mortified, and I relive the episode through them bringing it up every once in a while. Apparently I had to watch Schindler’s List and write a long report on it.
I don’t think I had any ill intentions. I’ve always been a sarcastic person, so my best guess is I understood a tiny sliver about The Holocaust and thought I’d play a funny joke on the adults. I guess you don’t realize how STUPID you are when you’re that age. I obviously didn’t understand the full implications of what I was doing.
Painting that was akin to the shock value of painting graphic gay sex on the wall of a Baptist church. I have a lot of respect for the congregation, as they moved past it and we spent many years there. They didn’t see me as some miscreant or anything. I think they understood how oblivious I was to what I had done.
But yeah… do I win this thread?
I have an extremely difficult time with a lot of movies from the 80s and previous, when every single actor in the movie is a white, usually blond male. If their personalities are not sharply defined or their clothes are not very different, by the end of the movie I really can’t tell them apart.
I actually recently had this problem with the movie Divergent, too. The young man who is the lead’s friend and the young man who is the lead’s enemy are both average-looking white men with dark hair and they wear uniforms!!! Forget it. I could not tell the difference and by the end one of them has a major plot turn and I was left thinking…which one was it?
As to faux pas, I try not to remember any of mine. I usually remember them when I am in a good mood.
I was visiting my parents when some close family friends came over to joyfully announce that their daughter was to be wed. I said something like “Congratulations, when is the baby due?” . The room fell dead silent. The baby came about 5 months later.
Oops.
After a coworker announced the birth of his third kid in a fairly short period of time, I blurted out, “what, are you catholic?” He said “yes, as a matter of fact I am.” Oops. :smack:
Years ago I took a test ride on a Honda Goldwing GL1500. This was a cushy touring motorcycle, and handled like a land yacht; my girlfriend at the time said its handling reminded her of “the way a fat person dances.” Some years later I retold her assessment word for word, without really thinking about it (until afterwards), to a woman who was maybe 5’5" and 250 pounds. :smack::smack:
I have asked a woman when she was due. She had the baby 6 months prior. Her husband was right there, too. My wife, of course, already knew this and told me 6 months ago but, based on the woman’s appearance, I obviously conflated that information. She and her husband handled my dumb question very graciously.
When I was 12 I was invited to my best friend’s birthday party. It was going to be the first boy/girl either of us had attended. We were pumped. I was so busy getting excited and helping him plan the party that I completely forgot to get a gift. So when gift opening time at the party came about, I slunk in the corner like an idiot. I partly blame my mom for that one. She picked me up and I said, “I didn’t bring a gift!” She felt as embarrassed as I did. Of course, I picked something up later and explained to him that I had just forgotten to bring it. But the truth was plain. If I had forgotten, my mom would have brought it when she picked me up. Oh well. We moved on and nobody every said anything about it, but I felt like a turd for quite a while.
Also, this is a fun thread, zombie or not.
You’re not the only one. My manager’s father passed away just before Christmas. She sent me an email and I sent back my condolences. I came back after two weeks vacation and my first question was a cheery “So, did you do anything fun for the holidays?!” As soon as I asked it, I tried to shove the words back down my throat, but it didn’t work.
I had sold my house to a man and met with him to go over the final arrangements. I commented to him that it was good house to raise the soon to be arriving baby as I nodded at his pregnant wife.
She wasn’t his wife.
She wasn’t pregnant.
She was his daughter.
She was 13.
:smack: