Foot in mouth
I managed one of the great verbal gaffes of the holidays on Christmas Eve.
We were opening presents with my in-laws. My brother-in-law gave us some new king size pillows, a welcomed gift since we recently bought a couple of sets of bedding without buying anything to put in the new pillow cases or shams.
My wife and I were debating whether to put the new pillows in the cases or shams, and which set. My domestic prowess made my father-in-law chuckle, prompting me to explain:
Until I married your daughter, I didn’t know the meaning of the word “sham”.
Ahem.
That’s a pretty bad (and completely accidental) double entendre, but it pales in comparison to two other blunders I’ve been privy to. For some reason, both are race-related, though not in a Michael Richards/Mel Gibson sort of way. These were just very poorly chosen words.
1) At a party a few summers ago, a friend was telling the group about a great bit of music she had heard that day down at Harborfront. It was performed by an Andean busker, who played panpipes and had brightly-coloured marionettes on a string from his foot, which he moved to make them dance about to the music. But she’d had a few drinks, and what she said to the group was how much she enjoyed “those dancing coloured people.”
2) Friend of a coworker, in South Africa. He’d taken several rolls of film on his trip, and couldn’t wait to get back to Canada to have them developed. Of course, he told the mixed crowd, he wanted to get them developed properly, at a trustworthy photo place. “So you can bet I won’t take them to Black’s!”
Again, these were not racially-motivated – they simply came out wrong. No knock on the poor sods who spoke them (and were both met with deathly, bewildered silence.) Also no knock on Black’s Photography or Andean buskers – I enjoy both. Still, they make me feel less bad about my own “sham”.
So, dare to own up to your own worst-ever gaffes?
Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 12-30-2006 | 12:12 AM
Posted in: Blather
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THAT is a truly disturbing picture.
Back in the day when I was a student at U of T, I took up the Japanese martial art of aikido. Like everyone else in the class, I would wear the traditional white cotton ‘gi’.
One day I was waiting outside my sociology class and a guy walked by and said, “Hey there.” I had no idea who he was so I scowled and didn’t say anything. A second later, it dawned on me that he was a student in the same aikido class. I immediately began to apologise for not acknowledging him. I said, “Oh sorry! I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.” Everyone in the hallway just stopped and gave me the low-down durty stare of death. Of course I meant that I hadn’t recognized him in regular clothes - only ever having seen him in the white ninja suit. My bad.
Great story, Jane! Not a bad pick-up line, either.
Alison, here’s one occasion to be thankful that it’s only Photoshop. Oh, and I was trying to remember the foot-in-mouth story you told me, about the guy at the party… care to remind me?
I can tell the same story as Jayne, except it was a course in springboard diving, and I was met by my instructor, an attractive woman my age in the front of a London city bus. I’d never seen her in anything but a bathing suit, so it took a moment to register who she was before I made the same declaration: “You look different with clothes on!” Of course, she was facing forward at the front of the bus, which meant that I was facing backward, and, of course, the rest of the crowded bus.
The silence was deafening, but I imagine the trip seemed longer to her than to me.
Suddenly I’m feeling inadequate about not being to say that line to anyone.