My family went out for lunch at a new restaurant in town. It was Mother’s Day and the place was packed. We all treated ourselves to margaritas and were having a lovely time. But that’s when it happened. My dad (bless him) has a naturally loud voice, and when he has a drink it tends to get a bit louder. He started telling us a funny story from work where a woman said something quite shocking and awkward.   It was much more awkward when my dad practically yelled the punchline, having to do with the FEMALE ANATOMY, of all things, to us.  I do not exaggerate – the entire restaurant fell silent and people started turning around in their seats to stare at us. The place was full of little old ladies, young mothers and small children! My dad seemed to notice. He leaned forward and “whispered” to me, “Was I talking too loud?”  Happy Mother’s Day!

Andrea – CA

The results are in. They’ve been in awhile. We’ve been waiting and waiting, hoping for more votes that would put us victims of mistaken identity in the majority. It was close, but more of you have not had your gender confused, which kind of makes the rest of us feel even worse about being mistaken for the opposite sex.

Years ago my husband’s grandmother died suddenly. We drove the eight hours from Texas to Florida where the funeral would be held with Micah’s brother and his wife. To save on money we all decided to spend the two nights with “Patricia,” a nice woman who was related to them somehow.  We arrived at the house late at night. It was very big and in a posh neighborhood. The first thing I noticed was the enormous Christmas tree, fully decorated, in the living room. It was the end of April. Patricia greeted us and seemed a little out of sorts. Not unusual, I thought, after somebody close had just passed away.

She took us on a tour of the home, showing us the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, all that. She showed us the “Martis Gras” room, a sort of party room with a full bar. All four walls were entirely made up of windows and no curtains, so even the wall connected to the Christmas-tree-living-room was “exposed.” There were party decorations from a month prior all over the floor. Empty cups, busted balloons, confetti, masks, etc.  She told us it was the room where the dogs usually slept. There was dog food spilled over on the floor next to a love seat. “That’s weird,” I thought to myself. “Her house is so grand, why is she showing us a messy room?” She showed us the library next.  Another enormous Christmas tree was there among the bookshelves, half-decorated. It was in the process of being taken down, but whoever started had given up long ago.  ”That is really weird,” I thought.  There was a sheetless twin sized blow up mattress on the floor.  Huh.  And then there was a pretty little couch chair off to the side WITH A HUGE CHANDELIER SITTING ON IT. “Am I in a horror film? This isn’t right.” 

And then she showed us upstairs where the bathroom was, the bedrooms, and then she said goodnight and went to her room.  Umm… What? We were confused. Where were we supposed to sleep? And then it dawned on us… “I think we’re supposed to sleep in the crazy rooms,” one of us said. There was a single-person blow up mattress. A chair with a chandelier on it. A love seat in the window-room. No blankets, no sheets, no pillows, goodnight! Completely weirded out and exhausted from the day’s drive we each picked a room and tried to make it work. My brother-in-law and his wife got the library. We got the Martis Gras room. Micah slept on the floor on little decorative pillows and I slept on the love seat. I had brought a blanket with us “just in case” and if I hadn’t I don’t know what we would have done. We woke up the next morning and Patricia never acted like anything was weird about the arrangement. All the other guests, however, were mortified when they heard about it. Oh, and it was my birthday. Very memorable.

Beth the Other Admin

I am a video editor and my job sometime requires me to work on location.  A few weeks back, I was working on site at a country club in Palm Desert, CA.  It had been a long day, and I was preparing to wrap things up so I could head home.  I made a quick stop into the men’s restroom which was connected to the Country Club’s locker room.  When I swung the door open, I was shocked to see a semi-short, pot bellied man in his late 50s standing in the middle of the room completely naked! I told myself, “Hey, it’s a locker room, it’s normal” and I proceded to walk towards the toilet stalls. As I passed him, I for some reason felt the need to be polite and said hello.  Big mistake!

The guy took my greeting as an invitation that I wanted to talk. (I didn’t)  He proceeded to tell me stories about back in the day when he was a driver in Hollywood. (I didn’t really care) He told me how he made great money back then, but you can’t make money like that any more… all the while, he was moving closer and closer to me until he was a couple of feet away from me, and all the while he was completely naked (well, not completely… I’m pretty sure he was wearing sox and tennis shoes for some reason).

Needless to say, it was really awkward!

Michael – CA

My sister had just gone through a traumatic experience and recently come home after being away for a few months. My husband and I wanted to spend some quality time with her. Talk things over, tell her we loved her, stuff like that. We invited only two of our closest friends to join us. We all met at my parents house so we wouldn’t run the risk of running into our other friends and offending them by not having invited them.  Well, one of our not-so-close friends, “Lydia,” must have heard my sister was in town and dropped by to see her. She wasn’t someone we saw regularly, and although we liked her just fine, I  groaned and wondered how the heck we were going to avoid a tag-a-long. We kept quiet about our lunch date, but Lydia asked my sister what we were up to and there it went. Lydia excitedly invited herself (or rather pushed my sister to invite her) to come with us.  ”Well, OK,” I thought. “A lot of effort for nothing, but it’s better not to hurt her feelings.” And we really were broke back then, so we couldn’t afford to do another lunch date for awhile.  Oh well. So we go out to eat, the six of us now, not able to have the heart-to-heart we wanted to have.

Then the waitress comes back with the check.  ”Will that be separate checks?” We were paying for my sister and one of the two close friends. That was already understood before we left.  Lydia looks at us helplessly.  ”Don’t you have money” someone asks. “Yes. I have money.” Good. “Ok, so not a problem.” Wrong. “I only have a debit card.” Uh… “So you do have money in your account, right?” Did she want a freebie or what? I had no idea. “Yeah,” she replies, with a tone of exasperation. “But I only have a debit card!” This went back and forth for a little while, till we were all so uncomfortable that my husband finally decided it would be easiest if he paid for her and avoided ever going out to eat with her again. She had a full-time job, no rent, no car insurance or other bills to worry about. We were broke.  So weird. And awkward. Ugh.

This happened one more time, but not to us. But we were there. Still awkward.

Beth the Other Admin

This happened years ago, and writing about it now I feel as weird as I did then. So… we bought several pairs of shorts that were on sale for my husband. Micah didn’t really need all of them so he gave one pair to a friend. They were exactly the same height and build so it was great. For them. Not me. I’ll tell you why. Micah had a weird work schedule, working random days and third shift, so he rarely got to hang out with our group of friends. One night while we’re all hanging out I see my sweetie’s shorts walk past me. Without thinking twice my hand swoops in for a spank. HOLY CRAP! THAT’S NOT MY HUSBAND! Somehow my brain got the message to my hand just before spanking my guy friend. I screamed really loud at the realization and blurted out “I ALMOST GRABBED YOUR BUTT! I ALMOST GRABBED YOUR BUTT!” I was so mortified by what I had almost done that I was jumping up and down screaming. I felt pretty awkward about it, but I imagine it was a little higher up on the “that was uncomfortable” scale for my single guy friend.

Beth the Other Admin

(And SO many times I have almost hugged my brother-in-law, who is my husband’s clone. But I usually have the presence of mind to not scream and jump up and down)

I was on my way to work and my usual custom was to pray on my way. I was pretty into it as it was a good 20 minute drive to my workplace. On a whim I decided to get a cup of coffee at McDonalds drive thru when I sped up to the microphone to order, I said,”Father” totally still in prayer mode.

Jan – NM

About four or five years ago my sister asked me to go swimming with her and my nephew, I wasn’t that keen I’m not big on swimming pools and I had no costume but he was so excited and he was only about one or two at the time so I agreed, I was thinking, ok I’ll get a costume the day before. Typical to form I didn’t get a costume and the next morning she came round, I thought I could make excuses and get out of it but she was adamant that I go with her, so we started hoking through my drawers and she pulled out this white patterned string bikini that I had bought for holiday and never worn, I was like NO WAY! but in the house, standing in my clothes somehow it seemed like it would be ok so I packed it up and we set off, it wasn’t until I actually got into the changing room, put it on and went out to the swimming pool that I actually realised how awful it was. Everyone else was in swimsuits and bodysuits and I was standing there ghostly white with a white string bikini on, like I mean across the cleavage was just two triangles so you could see all around each bosom and it was tied around the back with a string and the bottoms were just two small triangles tied at the hips with string….I actually could not have felt worse if I was nude, I mean this is ok if you live in Miami but this is Northern Ireland, people just don’t go to swimming pools in bikinis, but there was nothing to do so I just quickly got in the water, I’m not being paranoid when I say that people were staring, a couple were even embarassedly sniggering and I kept bobbing under the water trying to hide, eventually I was like, I have to get out of here, so I took a deep breath and started climbing out of the water, I had to walk the whole way round the pool to get back to the changing rooms covering my modesty because the bikini had gone a translucent grey colour in the water……to make it the ultimate cringefest there was a man there taking swimming lessons who was a regular in the coffee shop I worked in, he came in EVERY day, the next day I was working he sat at the bench beside my section and I all I could think about was….Oh my, this guy has practically seen me nude….cringe, CRINGE, CRINGE!!!!!

Tanya – Belfast

The first Valentines my boyfriend and I had togther we were working in the same place. He was my manager. I had spent the whole day banging on about how comercialised it was etc. etc. so he didn’t get me anything until that afternoon when the other girls in work cajoled him into going to the chemist across the road and getting me some gifts. So he came back with a box of make up that I use but in the wrong colour. The next day I go to the chemist to change the makeup, it has a makeup section and there’s a queue of women behind me when I get to the till. I tell the woman at the counter I need to change the colour of the foundation and so on…..she takes the box and with a big smile says loudly, “Oh, yes lovely, I remember that man coming in yesterday….and didn’t he get you perfume as well?”
I gave a frozen smile and was like, “um no actually, he didn’t.” She went bright red and became really flustered and quickly changed the foundation while stammering about how she must have it wrong and how busy it was the day before. Embarrassed enough I try to leave when another woman working there shouts from the other counter “Oh Mandy, *chuckle, chuckle* are you getting people in trouble again?!” and has a good laugh with the women in the queue. By this point my anger has reached epic proportions, and I’m storming over to work to confront my poor boyfriend who had to spend a whole day convinceing me he didn’t buy perfume for anyone else with reciept proof and an offer to ring all the numbers in his phone….I felt awful – but it just goes to show how easily you can get someone in trouble with an innocent remark!

Tanya – Belfast

When I was about eight or nine I went to a birthday party at a friends house, we did all the birthday stuff and then her mum announced it was movie time, we all piled into the lounge room and she put on Home Alone, I’d watched it already with my parents and we all had a great laugh at it(it was a really funny movie at the time!) so we all sit watching the movie and her mum is in the room watching it with us(while she’s doing her ironing?!) the bit comes to when Macauley has rigged up all the traps and the criminals are getting slapped all over the place, so I start laughing at the guy who has an iron fall on his face(it’s a comedy!!) and suddenly my friends mum goes crazy, she starts shouting at me..’Do you think that’s funny? Do you?? DO YOU!???! You think someone getting an iron smashed in their face is funny?? What sort of a child are you, I don’t know how your parents raised you but laughing at something like that, it’s disgusting, I can’t believe it’…all the other kids are staring at me like I’m the devil, I feel like him as my face is so hot and red from embarassment and THEN we all have to continue watching the movie in silence, she doesn’t turn it off or anything or express resentment at the movie makers…just me. DEVIL CHILD! O_o

Tanya –  Belfast