Do you have a knack for saying or doing the absolute wrong thing at the absolute wrong time? I always end up making the wrong joke or bring up the wrong topic. Do you have the ability to stop a room with a question as simple as "How was that Knicks game, huh?" and then someone will nudge you and go, "Her father was killed by a basketball, you idiot."

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2000

Answers

Oh, Pamie, very close to that...

My junior year of college, commuting to school, many commuters hung out between classes at one particular lounge across from the main snack bar. This one girl had not been around for a week or so and when I next saw her I asked where she had been, making a big joke out of how she had probably been pretending to have a cold or something just to miss class. She said "My father died."

Oh.

Yes, felt like lower than low, an idiot, a total jerk...

Jim

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2000

Yoinks; mine was no where near as eek! as that one. I quote from an ancient journal entry...

Matthew Broderick was in Toronto, shooting The Freshman with Marlon Brando. He was staying at the Prince Hotel, which is a couple of blocks away from the store where I worked. Matthew Broderick had a Nintendo video game system with him at the hotel, and one sunny day walked into our store to rent some new titles to while away the off hours. One of the clerks came into the office area, where I was doing some number crunching, and said "You gotta come out here, and tell us if you recognise this customer." I walked out behind the counter and immediately knew who it was. The staff did some whispering amongst themselves - "Matthew Broderick." "No way! Really?" "Yah, it's him." "Cool." and so forth.

Queue Ron's gaffe: Our sales clerk is chatting Matthew Broderick up, while yours truly is standing nearby. Mr. Broderick says something about being in Toronto with the movie and just doing some shopping. Seeing that he is wearing glasses I brilliantly say "So that's why you're wearing glasses, so no one will recognise you?" (not realising that what one sees on screen is necessarily true to life.) He replies "No, I wear them so I can see."

Ron hurredly crawls back under his rock and scurries back into the office, embarrased by such a stupid thing to say - more so because I was wearing my glasses when I made my brilliantine statement.

If you ever read this, Matthew Broderick, that was one of the dumbest things I have ever said to anyone. I forgot quite easily at the time that actors are normal everyday people and suffered a severe cranial cramp.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2000

Back in high school, I was involved with winterguard (which, for those who aren't "in the know" is basically the colorguard from a band without the band and turned into a more dance and theatrical type thing). We were in a competition at a school one time and they had rigged up the tv monitors in the classrooms to broadcast the show that was going on in the gym. The first guard came on and started to perform and we just went off (in the privacy of our room) on how completely HORRIBLE they were. No sense of timing, everyone was all over the place, the equipment was insanely simple. We were just shocked at how inept they were. And then, right as they finished, the announcer says:

"LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE MAYFIELD ARC WINTERGUARD!"

Oh dear lord. Horrible evil bad us. We were sitting there making fun of a bunch of kids from the ARC who were probably performing their little rear ends off. We attempted to make up for our transgressions by going to their room afterwards and congratulating them, but I STILL feel awful about the whole thing.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2000

My first big reporting thing was when I was in college during the Oklahoma City Bombing, which happened just 20 miles from where I was living. I was there for about 10 days, doing news coverage for different newspapers.

By the second or third day, Geraldo Rivera and CNN and Connie Chung were all there in a little area we started calling "Press Town."

One day, I see the big CNN truck and they're just kind of hanging around, and I see one of the anchors I recognized setting up. It was Gordon Graham from CNN. I was totally like, "wow, Gordon Graham!" So I go up to him, notepad in hand, and I say, "Gordon Graham! Hi! I really admire your work."

Without missing a beat, he says, "Hi, I'm Bernard Shaw." I about slinked into a little hole in the floor and cried. It was one of the most embarassing things EVER. I suck.

O.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2000

Stef--Are we supposed to know what ARC stands for? Well maybe everyone else does, but I don't! Clue me in!

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2000

Association of Retarded Citizens

Ooh. That's a painful story.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2000

Oh man, I totally forgot about this story until I read the forum today. I'm still horribly embarrassed about it. I felt like a jerk.

So anyway, there was this guy named Paul in my high school, who was two grades up from me. He was sort of swishy and had a high-pitched voice and stuff, so people were always calling him gay. Anyway, in high school, contributing to the problem, he became the drum major for the marching band.

So my friend Kim and I went to watch one of the football games, and we're sitting there in the stands totally ripping on Paul, calling him "Paula" and making all kinds of gay jokes -- did I mention how embarrassed I am by this? I can't even believe I'm telling this story -- and generally making asses of ourselves, except that we thought it was funny at the time. Kim kept saying "Oh, Paaaaula?" in a singsong voice and I'd double over laughing.

So then after the game everyone is getting up to leave, and we hear the two people in front of us say, "Did you get good pictures? We'll have to put this in Paul's scrapbook."

Yes. His parents. Were sitting. Right in front of us.

I'm spending extra time in Purgatory for that one, you better believe it.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2000

I was someone else's awkward moment... in 8th grade, our drama group did several short musicals all performed in one night. I was in Sleeping Beauty as the mother of the prince, played by one of my best friends. We had a long scene together and he sang me a song. After the show, my friend's mother came up and gave him a huge hug, then turned to me and said, 'Hi Heather! I didn't see you in any of the plays, were you in one, dear?" and I had to say, "Um, yeah, I had a scene with your son." She turned beet red and I felt so, so awful for her. I probably shouldn't have corrected her, but it caught me so off-guard. Ouch.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2000

The worst tongue-in-cheek comment that I can remember happened when I was a senior in high school, visiting colleges. I was staying overnight at the place that I *really* wanted to go to, and I was hanging out at a small party with some really nice, down-to-earth, genuinely cool people. At one point, I got into a conversation with a few people I didn't know, and I was trying really hard to make a good impression, because I thought they were neat and I wanted them to think I was mature and to like me. Well, anyways, we were talking about something that we all thought was stupid, and so I made a comment like, "such-and-such is *so* gay!". One of the girls I was trying to impress gave me a funny look and said, "so, by saying that something is gay, you're implying that it's worthless or stupid." Now, I should have picked up on it then, right, but instead I guess I just assumed she hadn't heard the slang, and said "yeah, that's right." She didn't really talk to me for the rest of the night, and I found out later that she was the president of the Gay/Lesbian Association on campus. Oops. In hindsight, I think it might have been slightly snooty of her to totally disregard me for using a relatively common (though admittedly disrespectful) slang term, but I was still really ashamed and embarassed.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2000

This one didn't actually happen to me, but to a sales rep from work called Mark. He just started this job last month and doesn't really know most of his customers too well yet. Last week he went into a hotel and asked at the front desk for Mr Smith, the contact name he had been given by our office. The woman at the front desk told Mark he wasn't there. Mark asked when he would be back. The woman said he wouldn't, he was dead. At this point she started CRYING. She was his wife! It had been less than a month since the man had died. Mark was bright red just telling us the story. Can you imagine?

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2000

i was at the party for the closing of our mainstage show two weekends ago, and i was teasing my friend shaughn about how bitter he had become working on this show. as one song on the dance floor ended, i said loudly, "don't let your david bitterness make you unattractive to women, shaughn!" with his ex of only a few days and david, our heinously demanding director, standing five feet away chatting with each other.

neither noticed, i don't think. but shaughn got to tease me for the rest of the night.

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

A bunch of us freaks were out to dinner one Sunday night, and I'm sitting next to my gorgeously gorgeous friend S, and we're facing a group of seven or eight fellow freaks. The subject of weight loss/gain/maintenance comes up, and I spend a good three to four minutes talking about how much I enjoy being thin, how I eat anything I want any old time, etc.

S is bulemic... and I didn't know it. My dear Lord, what have I done?

I didn't find this out until after she'd returned from the bathroom.

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

When I was in second year at college, I was at a BBS meet and I was happily chatting up the fellow next to me. Boy: What are you taking at school? Me: Computer Science for business applications. Boy: Oh, is Denis [lastname] your instructor? Me: Oh, you know him? Isn't he an ASS? He doesn't know SHIT about computers and he's always going on about his son in class. I mean, who CARES? Boy: He's my father.

D'ohhhh. Seven years later, I'm still cringing.

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

Oh yeah, lots of cases of mistaken identity or not realizing the person is right there. Just too numerous to mention.

The most recent incident was at a show last weekend. I was in the hall between the bar and the bathrooms trying to explain to some of my troupe-mates about a porno featuring a dwarf that somes friends had shown me during my recent trip to LA (I know, but it truly was hilarious). There I am imitating the little dance he did (again, I know- but hilarious), and someone asks if he was a midget or a dwarf. So I go off on the whole differences between the two and as I am explaining what the guy looked like, complete with holding my hand at about chest level to show how tall he was, in walks a man whose head practically grazes my palm. Then he gave me this look- it's hard to describe except to say that he looked betrayed somehow- and hurried to the bathroom. My friends and I just looked at each other with that eye-bulging, "Oh my God! I know! I don't believe that just happened either, but whatever you do don't laugh!" look.

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

I read Pamie's entry and thought, "Gee, didn't I watch this in Wayne's World 2?"

Here's one: I went to a good friend's wedding in Arizona. I wanted to help out, so they asked me to amuse a 6-year-old stepson of the bride. I do, but the kid is hyper and plays rough, so I play a little rough with him back, pushing him over and stuff, and of course the kid is loving it. Finally he leaves me alone, and some friends come by, and I mutter in a not-very-low-voice something like, "Quite a hyper son of a bitch, isn't he?" My friend bug-eyes me and whispers, "Sssh, Jason, his parents are right over there!" Sure enough, his parents were in the same room! They didn't act like they heard...but you bet I let that kid beat me up all weekend, and meanwhile his parents were giving me unfriendly looks.

I'm sure I have other incidents like these--I'm always shooting my mouth off--but I'm blocking their memories. Here's a story about me that I didn't witness firsthand. In my high school drama class, I once tried to work with a guy I'll call "P" on a short two-person skit. This guy was a lazy SOB, though, and he kept insisting that we didn't need to practice, we could just "improvise". After a few days of trying to change his mind, I gave up and told P. I was going to do a monologue instead....A few months later, I heard from friends that P. decided to loudly bad-mouth me in a classroom just before class started, calling me "nerd" and "loser", etc. Little did poor P. know (though most of the other students did) that his class was taught by my mother! (This was an easy mistake to make, since Mom and I don't share the same last name.) I heard that Mom gave him quite a chewing-out....

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

This couldn't be any more inappropriate or insensitive. Two nights ago, my boyfriend and I are trading mock-insults.

him: why don't you just shut the hell up? me: why don't you just go die? him: why don't you just kiss my ass? me: why don't you go fuck your mother?

his mother died last year! god, how could I SAY that?!

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

I'm glad I'm not the only person who can open mouth and insert foot.

Reading down the list here remined me of another incident... which happened during my junior year of college, the same as the faux pas I contributed at the top of this thread (makes me wonder if I was a total jerk at twenty-one)

Had recently started a part time job in the hardware dept of a big discount store. Four of us -- two other students plus another employee, Dave, who was in his early thirties -- had just finished unloading a truckload of merchandise and were hanging out by the loading dock for a minute, catching our breath (and smoking cigarettes -- yes, a contradiction). I had just heard a very funny and very dirty joke at school that afternoon and decided to share it.

Nobody laughed. Just a dead silence. This was a very funny joke, gross and obscene but funny, people had laughed at school, but no response here.

As we were going back inside one of my friends took me aside: "You idiot, don't you know that Dave is a Baptist minister!"

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

generica, Same thing happened to me, but in reverse. My mother is the teacher in question, and when I asked this guy I just met (who was a student at her school) if he knew of her, he replied: "Oh, that fat bitch?!" Me: "Well, *I* call her 'Mom' most of the time, but..."

I had completely forgotten that story until I read yours, so you can stop cringing. It didn't really bother me that much (my mom *is* overweight, and she was a strict teacher...I'm sure the son realizes his father's flaws, as well).

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

When was a cashier in high school, when one of the married women cashiers got pregnant, I would pretend that I caught them sneaking stuff out of the store. Hey, are you sneaking turkeys out of the store? Hey, are you trying to slip out with a watermelon under your shirt? Hey, I think she's stealing a ham! (One of the reasons people find me so weird is because I'm not very hard to entertain.)

Fast forward a couple of years later, when I'm working at a Burger King, and one of my co-workers is showing photos of herself when she was pregnant. I let slip out Hey, are you stealing a waterm... Then I realized: right physical condition, wrong ethnicity. I had never worked with a black pregnant lady before. This was right before I quit and joined the military.

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

I know that I have more 'bad timing' stories than I can count, but at the moment, none are coming to mind for some reason. Actually, I simply wanted to post and congratulate Ron for making me bust out laughing in the computer lab in our library over his Matthew Broderick story. It completely sounded like something I would have done. Thanks!

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

I've got a friend who's left-handed and feels like he's got this kinship with all the lefthanders of the world or something. He'll say "hey, lefty!" and wave when he see's someone doing something typically left-handed. Well, we walked into a Wal-Mart together. There at the counter was a man with his back mostly to us. He was bent over, writing with his left hand. As he looked up, my friend started to say, "hey, lefty!"...only to discover the man's right arm was amputated. He pretty well caught himself in time, but that was very nearly the biggest open-mouth-insert-foot that I've ever witnessed.

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

This wasn't totally humiliating, but I felt pretty stupid...

I'm currently a junior in high school, and thoroughly enjoy being in our school choir. Well, last Christmas, one of our songs was an up-beat one, with happy sounding harmonies. The girl standing next to me happenned to be the best singer in our school, President of her Senior class, etc.. (she's obviously very popular)

So anyway, I turn to her and say, "Wow, this sounds like a Beach Boys song." She sorta chuckled in amusement and said, "Um, thats because it IS a beach boys song." The title of the song we were singing was "Little St. Nick" by **drumroll** The Beach Boys. I just laughed and said, "Oh..so THATS why!" She laughed along with me, so I didn't feel like a total ass. Thank god she's a very sweet person, and didn't totally mock me out.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 2000

Hmmmm...where to start?

There was the time I was watching a team of my friends play softball, against a team that we didn't know. It took 3 innings of close watching to realize that their 'male' pitcher was actually a female. Now, I don't have a problem with people being gay, but I have never understood why some women who don't like men in a sexual way will try so hard to look like a man. It seems to be a contradiction - if you like women, and think women are sexy, wouldn't you want the woman to look like a woman, and wouldn't you want to look like a woman so the women who like women too will like you? I mean, it just makes no sense to me. So, my friend and I were pondering this, at length, while we sat next to a very sweet girl that we didn't know, but had come to like quickly through brief conversations up to that point. While we discussed the pitcher and the Million Dollar Question, she continued to smile, but said nothing. The teams took a break and we saw our new friend go out to meet up with the pitcher, and give her a kiss. Doh!

When the game resumed and the girl came back, I tried lamely to make up for our faux pas by talking endlessly about how much I enjoyed Melissa Etheridge and The Indigo Girls' music. Yeah, I'm sure that made me look like less of a moron...NOT!

And of course there was the time that we were at dinner with a group of people my husband works with, and their spouses. Many of these people I was meeting for the first time, and didn't know much about them. It was a round table, and there were many conversations going on at once, so sometimes I would miss the beginning of a conversation, but try and jump in if one of the people speaking made eye-contact with me.

As it happens, this was during a time when a friend of mine who was a flight attendant had told me about a hundred stories of the flight attendants and pilots she has worked with and their numerous infidelities. It seemed as if that line of work not only was condusive to everyone having affairs, but it was nearly mandatory. After hearing the tales, I was pretty appalled, and very glad I wasn't married to a pilot. I'm not saying everyone who works for an airline cheats, I'm just saying there were A LOT of stories, and the were still fresh in my mind.

Okay, so back to the dinner. I catch one of the wives saying something about how she "didn't want her husband to be around all those flight attendants, because everyone knows what bimbos they are, right?" It so happened that she locked eyes with me when she said that, and I felt obligated to respond. So, I opened my big cakehole and said, "I know what you mean, a friend of mine who works for Air Tran has told me all kinds of horror stories about flight attendants and pilots having affairs. It's almost as if the altitude does some kind of damage to their brains and they suddenly think it's okay to cheat on their husbands and wives!" What do you think she had to say?

"Uh, I'm a flight attendant. I was kidding about being bimbos because so often people stereotype us that way."

Well, alrighty then. I dug into my food pretty hard then, and didn't say much else. In fact, I concentrated so hard on eating that I ate the whole skin from my baked potato, and may have even consumed the napkin. Anything just so I didn't have to look up and talk.

-- Anonymous, March 06, 2000

Well, this one isn't mine, but it's my fault. My friend Trey (www.porch.org) recently underwent a bone marrow transplant. At some point earlier in the process, perhaps even before he left, we were all sitting around drinking. Trey took a swig from the bottle of Wild Turkey, and passed it on. Nick took it from him and made as if to drink from it also. I immediately piped up, "No! Don't do it!"

Everyone looked at me, including Nick and Trey. I said, "Don't drink after him! You'll get Leukemia!"

We all rolled on the floor, but then our sense of humor is often questionable. Trey's mom was truly appalled when she heard about it later, but that's not the worst part.

The worst part was Becky. She used basically the same line in basically the same situation soon afterward in school. The girl who was the point of the joke did have cancer, and she was /totally/ unimpressed. I don't think they ever believed poor Becky was really trying to be funny.

Wow, to

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2000