Stupid, stupid, STUPID! (a faux pas thread)

Pretty much assuring nothing mouth-watering for you.

 

I once walked to my car and said, "Excuse me, sir." Then this broad-shouldered woman turned around. (Whoops.)

I remember telling someone a crass quip about AIDS. When she didn't laugh, I figured I touched a nerve. Turns out a cousin of hers died of AIDS a few years prior. (Fuck.)

 

Oh, shit. And this one, too.

While leaving our dorm in college, three friends and I were joking around, and I made an off-color joke about the Jewish people in my outside voice. This kid is walking toward us, and my friends know him and start laughing. I didn't think about it much until the kid says, "Hey, my name's Jonathan. I'm Jewish."

He's a pretty good friend of mine now, five years later, so everything worked out well. But it was the last time I made an offensive joke without looking around first.

 

You can tell if someone's Jewish by looking at them?

 

I once was talking to a guy in a wheelchair and I said, "Well, you look mighty comfortable."

Wait.

That was someone else.

 

Not a specific one, but a few times, I have been saying stuff about someone to somebody else, and that someone comes walking by. Yikes!

 

Because two SportsJournalists.commers were there when I did this and one of them will inevitably post this story, I might as well do it myself.

The week of the wedding, doc and I took mertwindu to a movie because he was the only one in town for the wedding that night (no one else was arriving until the next morning). So we're at the popcorn counter and someone asks if I've been helped and I point to the person who is getting me my drink and say "yeah.. she's got it" and the kid starts laughing...a lot. I can't figure out why until he pulls the other kid over and says "say that again" and then I realize I've just called a pre-pubescent boy with shaggy hair a girl.

Every time I came out of the theater to do anything, the kid starts laughing at his friend and I felt like a horrible person. So Doc and MertWindu spent the whole night telling me that the kid was going to kill himself because I thought he was a girl.

 

God, Mert's another one of those who haven't been around much lately.

 

My standard response to anyone who asks how I'm doing?

"Terrible, how are you?"

They inevitably bust into laughter.

 

Good question. Still looking for that answer.

 

Well, yeah. But they knew him and knew he was Jewish. They were just waiting for him to drop the hammer on me.

And now his name in my cell phone is "Jew."

 

Doc tells me my bad ankle needs to be seen by an orthopedist.

What I should have said: Yes, a specialist could be helpful.

What I said: Sure, might as well try someone who knows what he's doing.