Do You Have Foot-In-Mouth Disease? - Page 2

Yeah.

Back during my fast food days, closing one night, and we're all telling jokes. As I have a fondness for tasteless stupid jokes, I proceed to tell the one about the guy who loses his legs in an accident and tries to get a lawyer, but the lawyer turns him down, because he doesn't have a leg to stand on. The room goes awkwardly quiet. My manager takes me aside and informs me that the cute little girl that runs drive thru, well her dad was involved in a horrible accident and lost both his legs. Just a few months before. I don't think she ever talked to me again.

To a friend in need, holding a razorblade which she recently cut her wrists (across the street, not down the road), who is sobbing hysterically, threatening suicide - "Things could be worse! You could be dead! . . . um, OR WOUNDED!"

This one time, I knifed a hobo in an alley. Turned out he'd already died of exposure during the night. Boy, was my face red.

Picturing Ripoll in that situation is giving me laughter convulsions. I am going to Hell.

Last Friday, one of my coworkers was complaining about having to stay late at work because her church was doing one of those charity events where you pay money to smash the shit out of a car. This woman can best be described as "Jesus! Family! America! Fuck Yeah!", so I said to her, without thinking:

"Oh, is that like when high schools write the name of a rival team on a car, except you guys write the name of other religions on it before smashing it?"

...She's still not speaking to me.

one of my friends might as well be from a bad 80s movie. these are short, but in my mind oh so sweet.

a few friends and i were walking through a quaint little downtown area of our hometown, when a bicycle cop comes charging by. he stops quickly.

cop: have you guys seen a kid with a beanie and a backpack come through here?
awkward friend: why, are you looking for someone?
cop: *shakes head, pedals away*

at a dinner party at a friend's parents house, my friend and i were approached by another friend's father, a known pediatrician. after a few minutes of small talk, my friend comes up with this gem.

awkward friend: so, you still doing kids? ...you know, for work?
doctor: *quizzical look*

as we're sitting in our friend's room playing video games, his mom walks in and starts telling a story about when she was first married to her husband.

awkward friend: yeah, and then you crapped out this guy (her son) and your whole life went to hell, right?
...terribly awkward silence.
mom leaves the room.

and then, the fear of every semi-racist whiteboy, the ultimate foot-in-mouth moment.

we playing in the pep band at a school football game, getting our asses kicked i might add, when one of their safties gets a pick off our qb. as he's weaving between our players and making his way to the endzone...

awkward friend: HIT THAT NIGGER!

sure enough, the one black guy in our pep band is sitting right in front of us.

what a character.

huh?

i got another racist story. this sounds made up, written from the punchline backwards. it is not. i was there.

i was visiting my awkward friend (not the perpetrator this time) and another friend up at their undergrad school, csu chico in california for those that know it. anyways, we were on my friend's porch one night getting ready to hit the bars when my friend spotted some raccoons shuffling by on the other side of the street.

friend: whoa, man, check out all those coons over there!

as the worlds slipped out, five black guys crossed in front of his porch. no one said a word, they just stared.

(Does double-take and inspects bottle currently drinking from)

I don't understand why I've been ignoring this thread for so long...

I think we could make that phrase like the joke "The Aristocrats".

While with your friends or family (Christmas or Easter works best), just start telling an odd story and keep taking it down a strange path, without every really being crude. Then, find a way to finish the story (by the way - the longer you stretch out a meaningless story, the better) with the phrase "pack of niggers".

I'm telling you, this would just kill.

That he dropped the N-Bomb in the situation he did was enough. Too much actually. That he made it sound as if they were animals who traveled in packs... my jaw is still dropping.

That said, I was in the bathroom taking a bit of man business reading a novel and I heard it from in there. Then all I heard was silence.

Awesome. Even better is that I imagine it being said with that little "Aristocrats" flourish that every comedian uses: "The... ARISTOCRATS!" *slight jazz hands*

I was going to post this in the Alcoholism thread since I was hammered at the time, but this is actually a more appropriate place.

Yesterday I was out drinking with my roommate and some of his friends. At some point we had enough drinks that this 23 year-old woman who I've known for less than a day decides to tell us that she just found her clitoris last Tuesday, and it totally blew her mind. I thought this was odd, and told her that if it was true, I thought it qualified as criminal neglect, and the State should take away her vagina and put it in a foster crotch.

It wasn't until late last night that I found out she has some kind of ovarian cancer, and will probably be having her uterus removed in the near future. Oopsie.

I do it all the time.

But when I lived in Georgia as an exchange student I almost got killed in a Six Flags in when I kept using the term "black pigs" while standing in line at an attraction. I was telling another exchange student a story from the night before where we drank a bottle of something called "Black pigs" (directly translated from my language but in no way meant as racist).

Apparantly that phrase kind of stood out and at some point a riot almost broke out when people started yelling at me. I had to run away and it took a long time before I realized what I had said.

About 10 years ago working on this car with this guy in his late thirties. And we were listening to the radio. He said something about how great a song that was. I said, "You know you're getting old when they play your favorite music on the classic radio station."


I thought it was funny, he didn't.

A few weeks ago at work I thought I was alone, and extended my arms like wings and made whooshing engine noises. Just to amuse myself.

Then I looked behind me and saw a co-worker watching me. There were no smiles or laughter.

We have not mentioned it since.

Oh, I win this thread. Seriously. My worst foot in mouth moment happened in front of a celebrity.

From 1987 to 1989, I worked at Suncoast Pictures at a big mall outside of Atlantic City. We had a fair amount of celebrities who'd come in to see the store while they were in town playing the casinos. Remember, back in 1987, buying videos for yourself was almost unheard of - everyone was still renting them. Additionally, we had all the fun movie memorabilia to go with it, so it was a pretty busy store at that time because it was new and unique, and no one had ever seen anything like it.

So one day, these two men come into the store and begin shopping around. I'll tell you right off the bat who one of them was - it was Teller, from Penn and Teller. Let me just defend myself by saying that it's not like Robin Williams or Penn Gillette walked into the store. Teller is positively the most normal, average looking guy in the world when not accompanied by Penn Gillette. So I didn't recognize him right away. I actually never recognized him till I stuck my big fat foot in my mouth.

He picks out a VHS to buy - I think it was The Producers - and he and the other guy bring it to the register. He hands me the video and asks me, "Do you carry Penn and Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends?", which really, should have been my first clue. I said, "No, sir, I'm sorry. We don't have it in stock. We can special order it for you if you like." He said, "No, that's okay. I don't live around here." Hint #2! So I begin to ring up his purchase. While I'm doing that, he says, "So, just out of curiosity, why don't you carry that Penn and Teller video?"

I said, "Well, as you can see, we're only a small store, and we just don't have room to stock every thing that's out there on video. We mostly keep the old classics like Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz in stock, and whatever the hot new releases are," (at that time, it was Dirty Dancing) "and anything we can't fit on the shelves, we special order."

He seemed satisfied with that. He was fine with that. And I could have left it there, which would have been the smart thing to do. But no. I had to open my big fucking mouth one more time and tell him, "And really, since no one's exactly been beating a path to our door for the Penn and Teller video, we don't keep it in stock." Good one, huh? And I still don't realize it's him!

He smiled very politely, and said, "Okay", and handed me his American Express card. Just a regular green Amex card, just like you or I would have. The name on the card? "Teller". No first name, either - just "Teller". When I tell you the room started to spin, I'm not kidding - now it dawns on me who he is! I was praying for a giant hole in the floor to swallow me up. Oh, good, Lisa - NOW the fucking guy looks familiar! I literally gasped for breath, and I stuttered to him - "Oh... oh... you're, you're HIM, aren't you?" He smiled and said, "Yeah I am."

At that point, I started babbling, "Oh, my God, Mr. Teller, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry about what I said..." He could not have been nicer, which made it worse. He held his hand up and said, "No, no please, don't apologize. You're just being honest, you'd be bursting at the seams if you tried to keep everything stocked in here, it's okay." So I rang him up, apologized again, and he smiled, thanked me and left. I honestly wanted to crawl under a rock.

One of my friends enjoys that story so much that whenever he introduces me to someone new, he makes me tell it. "Lisa, this is my neighbor Kathy. Kathy, this is my friend Lisa from NY. Lisa, tell Kathy about the time you met Teller from Penn & Teller."

Lisa wins!

My weak-ass tale: When I was in high school, I was big on role-playing and tabletop strategy games (AD&D, Traveller, etc.) I'd gotten a couple of friends and their friends together, and we played a round of Marvel Super Heroes. A question came up about the character Longshot - "Why is he a member of the X-Men? He's not a mutant!"

I said something along the lines of "well, he's only got three-fingers on each hand. I guess that makes him a mutant."

Then a guest of one of my friends, who had joined in the game, said "Uh, excuse me?" and raised his hand.

His three-fingered hand. With opposable thumb.

Certainly cast a pall over the rest of the night, let me tell ya. Kicker was I shook his hand earlier and never noticed.

Lisa, I'm just particularly shocked to find out that Teller can speak.

And Timothy, no lie, I came in here to tell a similar story (only mine's more career-destroying potentially):

I was participating in a role-playing exercise in a Design Workshop at work (video game developer), and our assignment was to brainstorm a Willy Wonka game for the PC. Well, we were goofing around and cracking jokes ,discussing our demographic audience when I stated "Well, we won't have to worry about targeting the Umpa Lumpa crowd, because midgets have stubby fingers. They can't even reach the keyboard... they... prefer... the Wii.. get it?" As I was finishing off my terrible joke, I notice everyone looking at our team leader for his reaction. He's an individual that's known as "T-Rex" in hushed tones (normal sized dude with arms that hang down to his ribcage or so with stubby, malformed fingers). It was REAL quiet for a few seconds before someone cut through the silence and kept the session going. The shitty thing... this guy's fairly influential in my company and I've been schmoozing with him to position myself in a better situation at work.

Well, that was the other thing that just makes me sound even dumber - looking back on it, it's not like I expected him to mime what he wanted or anything, but who the hell is going to expect Teller to talk? It's kind of like the Edgar Frog line, "It's not our fault, they pulled a mind scramble on us. They opened their eyes and talked!" I mean - okay, this sounds so ridiculous, but in addition to him being so ordinary looking that you wouldn't really notice him? It's not like I'd ever seen him moving his mouth and talking, which just makes him even less recognizable, if that makes any sense - it threw me off even more. 20 years later, and I still just feel so dumb.

A few weeks ago at work we hired a new guy, Nick, he's a pretty nice guy and everyone likes him. We were all standing around one day sort of kind of making fun of another co-worker that no body likes, and happens to not be all that attractive. We're saying some pretty ridiculous stuff just to get a rise out of the next person, and about fifteen minutes later when it dies down and we have that "Haha.... ahhhh" moment, Nick says "Yeah, Lindsay's my best friend. She got me the job here."

Yes, generally around women. Hence, I'm single.

This just cracked me up for some reason. That "Haha...ahhhh" moment is perfectly described.

One that is a bit more horrifying, given what would have happened had the events leading up to it actually occurred.

Joking around with an ex-girlfriend and a bunch of people, naturally, the conversation devolves into a joke-fest. Now, I don't have a set of ready-made jokes, I usually riff on the current situation. However, I do carry a potent supply of dead-baby jokes that are always ready to go. So, I blurt one out (the Ferrari one), some people chuckle, but my ex...she's none too pleased. She has that cold, death stare that unnerved me to no end during the 3 1/4 years we were together.

As it turns out, guess what? She had actually gotten pregnant and had a miscarriage shortly thereafter. I was embarrassed by the situation and upset she never told me (which, as it turns out, she didn't know until it happened, either).

Yeah...awkward...not something we can go "well, we'll look back on this and laugh!"

LisaNewYork: Teller was totally hitting on you, and YOU BLEW IT. Do you think he would've playfully asked a male employee for Penn and Teller videos in an adorable attempt to charm him with his fame? NO! Enjoy the rest of your miserable Teller-free life!

My turn:

INT. HOUSE - FAMILY GATHERING

Room full of family. We are watching TV. Someone comes on it called Simon.

Me: "Simon is such a dumb name. Who'd call their kid Simon?"

Distant Auntie: "My son is called Simon."

Loooong silence.

FIN.

I don't even know why I said that. It's a pretty average name, all told.

(*sadness...*)
Not only that, but it implies that you're also making fun of Simon LeBon, which could also imply that you'd make fun of Duran Duran as a whole given half the chance. And for that, you and I must duel.

Here's my worst one ever. Naturally, it took place in high school. The short version:

"You what? You're not going to Homecoming with Darlene? I asked Margaret, her best friend, to that dance specifically to help you out, and now you're leaving me hanging with fucking Margaret, of all people? Fuck you. No, really: fuck you!"

"Oh, hi Margaret."

The kicker? Her father was the town barber. Not good.

I love how there is no need for any backstory or buildup, it just is what it is.

I'm guessing you guys both stayed home and played video games that night, huh?

AND they had a bad hair month.

I got a good one...

I was in high school and I dated this girl (let's call her Kelly) when I was a junior. I liked her because she had this sick sense of humor (example: faked a seizure in front of an eplileptic chick one time) and was cute. She moved during the summer after that year and I lost contact with her. But then she moved back home during my sophmore year in college. Right before I leave for Christmas Break, she calls me at school and tells me about this big Christmas Party she was throwing and wanted me to come. I said I would but didn't call her again to confirm until the day before the party. That is how that conversation went:

Me: "Hey Kelly, your party still going down tomorrow?"
Her: (holding back tears) "No Matt, I...I had to cancel it."
Me: "Why? Everything OK?" (thinking she's putting me on)
Her: "My dad died yesterday"
Me: "HAHAHAHA! Shut the fuck up!"

(brief silence, she begins to cry hysterically)

Me: "Wait...really?"
Her: "Yeah...he had...had a heart attack while he was shoveling snow in our driveway."
Me: "Oh, uh, wow, that's uh...damn, sad? Uh...call me. Merry Christmas!"

I, for one, think I looked quite fetching in my 1/8" crew cut.

Y'know, now that I think about it, the class move would have been to show her the night of her life. But I was 16 - what did I know about class? I worked an extra shift that night and used that as my (lame) excuse to stand her up.

Somewhere out there, I just know she's still plotting her revenge.

So last night a friend is over, my wife was talking to her while I did some writing on the laptop. Was working on two more kid kills for tomorrow when I get Uncle Murda's Bullet Bullet in my head, (that might be a hint...)

I start yelling "BULLET! BULLET!" and blasting the video, acting like a fool for laughs.

And then I remembered that she was over the house because she was distraught over her best friend, who just got shot and killed last week.

Yeaah...

A friend of mine lost his dad a few weeks ago. I went to the funeral, spent a few nights keeping him company, talked about it a lot.

2 days ago, we go out for pizza. I hadn't seen him in like a week. First thing i ask "So, how are your parents doing?" I don't even finish the sentence and i blurted out so many words to try to cover that up.

I tend to do that A LOT.

How'd she take it?

Got a similar story: A few months back my girlfriend and I were taking a road trip down to the coast with a couple of other friends. This was around the time that Christian Bale was being held in custody for slapping his mother or whatever the hell he did. Anyway, in passing my girlfriend asks me "How do you think he's reacting so jail?" so jokingly I answer "Haven't you heard? He hanged himself with his shoelaces last night"

My girlfriend's brother had committed suicide just the previous week. Hanged himself.

She refused to talk to me for the rest of the drive.

I guess you could say mines not /that/ bad. A few of my friends went out to a local fair one night. I was told my buddies then girlfriend was a recovering alcoholic so of course I forget that about halfway through the night and recommend we go drinking. Of course I remember the alcoholic part right after the last words left my mouth.

I had a "foot-in-mouth" moment with the last woman with whom I had contemplated entering a serious relationship. First, the backstory.

We were floormates in university and--after meeting each other--we were inseparable. A month into knowing each other, my mom nearly died and the circumstances of that event brought up the fact that cancer ran in our family, I had had eight rounds of chemotherapy, and was not capable of having kids. At this point, things were moving really, really fast, I had already met her parents and we had talked about things like going to grad school together. I was kind of worried about how the revelation that I couldn't have kids would affect our relationship. Her response: "Don't worry, I can't have them either. I had to have a surgery a few years ago because something caused... a lot of damage. It's for the best anyway, in a natural world, neither of us would be alive. At least we can't pollute the gene pool."

12 months later, we were still together and it was about a week prior to our respective graduations. The thing I haven't mentioned about this girl is she could drink and we were both really, really into drinking. So, I have about five shots and two pitchers me and she starts launching in to a tirade about how much she hates kids and I blurt out "Well, you can't have them anyway..." and then I remember that two of her friends are sitting at the other end of the table. She looks at me like I just hit her and quietly leaves the bar.

So, yeah, that's my story.

Since I seem to have blocked out every memory I have of putting my foot in my mouth (and I know I've done it plenty of times), I'm gonna approach this topic from the other side:

I work in an office where, at the age of 33, I'm one of the youngest employees. Most of my co-workers are in their mid-forties to late sixties. And quite often, they like to give me free (and sometimes unwanted) advice on life experiences that I am going through that they have all had years ago. For example, when my wife and I bought our first house earlier this year, I got bombarded with advice and tips on what I need to do. Sometimes it gets annoying, especially when I assert that I'm doing things a certain way that doesn't coincide with their advice. They then start talking to me in a slight, condescending tone like I'm a dumb kid.

But there has been one thing that I get them on every time. And it ends with one of them putting a foot into his or her mouth. It's when the subject of kids comes up.

My wife and I don't have any children. Unfortunately, my wife is unable to. For the most part, I keep that private. But sometimes, one of my coworkers will come up to me and say "So, when are you and the missus gonna have some kids?" I usually mutter out a standard answer of "Not any time soon."

Of course, my coworkers can't leave enough alone, so they come back with "Yeaaah... you think that now, but just you wait. You'll get one when you least expect it. Trust me, you'll have one sooner than you think."

The first couple of times it happened I would just continue to politely disagree. But after awhile it started to get annoying, so at one point I just said (still in a polite tone), "Well, unless the surprise is that we find a baby on the front doorstep, I don't see how it will happen. My wife can't have children."

Yeah, they shut up rather quickly. I know how it feels to put my foot in my mouth. It's a horrible feeling. But I have to admit, on the other side it's sometimes fun to take the piss out of their bravado.

I told my actress to ask her dad for one of his old coats, as a costume. Her dad is dead. OD'd in front of her eyes. I was sitting in the chair he died in.

That belongs in a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.

One morning around six years ago, I was walking into the office behind a middle-aged female engineer. I had a stack of books in my arms, and since we have badge swipes on all of our entrances, I was getting ready to shuffle them under my arm so I could get my badge ready. The lady was carrying a really big binder, so I said, "No, I'll get it, hold on," to which she responded, "No, don't worry, I've got it," and we did the 'shuffle around the door' dance. She managed to swipe her badge first, and politely held the door open for me. Regrettably, I grinned like an affable idiot and said "Hey, Women's Lib!" as I walked through the door.

Naturally, I tend to block out the moments where I have my foot in my mouth, but I can tell an instance in high school where a classmate of mine certainly feasted on his:

It was in theatre class, and in the classroom all the students sat at tables with 3 or 4 students each. My table had my buddy Jon, a douchebag named Erik(the perpetrater of this story), and this girl named Devanie.

Devanie really liked Erik and she flirted openly with him. One day, out of sheer boredom I guess, he was rummaging through her purse and was looking at her Driver's licesnse and stuff. Then he pulled out a business cared that said:

"Odessa Rape Crisis Center"

Erik: "Odessa Rape Crisis Center? What, were you like...raped or something?" then giggled like a preening brat.

She had the most sorrowful face that just begged to be accompanied by that "Wuah wuah" noise.

My friend Jon and I just hung our heads down and took it after seeing the moment just register in Erik's face when he realized he just fucked up.

I went on a college sponsored trip once during my Junior or Senior year. My friend who'd dragged me along with him bailed on me and I was stuck alone on a bus with a bunch of strangers I had to make friends with.

I casually struck up a conversation and became the life of the bus party; so much so that eventually a gorgeous Michelle Pfieffer looking graduate student came and sat next to me and we proceeded to bond over the next trip.

I have no idea what it was but it was like every ounce of "game" I had in me just poured out and me and her were just hitting it off. I made her laugh, the flirting, the touching, everything was going great and we were all but about to reach our destination with beaches and secluded rooms. The trip was looking up.

Anyway, 2 hours later she's still sitting next to me and we're still talking, but suddenly I started shifting uncomfortably and I just can't resume the proper conversation. I had one of the worst feelings in my life, to the point where I just couldn't even focus on anything resembling flirting. She asked me what was wrong and I said "nothing". An hour or so later it just got worse, and she kept nagging me to find out till I just exploded "I have the biggest damn wedgie, bigger than any wedgie I've ever had in my life".

She politely laughed and for the rest of the trip she'd try to reassure me that we're almost there.

We never spoke again.

Ok so let me preface this with the fact that I work for Child Protective Services. With that said... Friday night I had to take two kids from a mother for a couple of reasons both of which I can't discuss by state law. Well as I'm filling out her paper work I'm explaining the process and how things will work. I get to the part where I have to take the original birth certificates if she has them and I tell her..... "The state has to take the original birth certificates, but IF you get your kids back we will return the originals."

She looks at me and says "You're really making this shit a lot easier you know."

I shrugged. I mean, seriously, I'm not the piece of shit who can't take care of his/her kids. Foot in mouth moment because they ask us to be polite at all times, but do I feel bad about it? Fuuuuuuuuck no.

In high school I was in Math League, top spot, but I'm not going to brag. During each meet, we need to have at least two sophomores on the 1st team, and all we had was one dumb chick and two Indian kids.

So we did the whole sha-bang and after the meet we were talking about the problems. With the whole team there, I started talking to one of the Indian kids about the problem I saw him working on.

Turns out he wasn't on the first team that time, the other Indian kid was.

Your gamertag just took on a whole new meaning.

True, funny, and sad all at the same time. Some of these kids love their CPS caseworkers more than their real "parents." At least the kids are safe now.

I have genetic azospermia and my wife and I used a donor to conceive. We're pretty open about it to friends and family and to anyone who asks but sometimes there's no way of bringing it up before some idiot sticks his foot in his mouth. My wife's cousin congratulated us by saying "It's good to know the boys swim well, huh?"

I replied, "Well, hell, they better, we paid enough for them!"