Friday, January 22

Open mouth...

... insert feet. Not foot, FEET!

I've had a gaff-tastic couple days.
Yesterday, in the grocery store, a guy passes by, we make eye contact, say hello, and move on. The guy was my next door neighbor. Ends up we are checking out at the same time in lines next to each other. We chat while we are waiting our turn. I say: "So, the neighbors said that Leah's car broke down. Did you end up getting a new one?" He looks confused and says, "Who's car?" I say, "Your wife, Leah." He says, "What are you talking ab --. You don't know who I am, do you?" Then it dawns on me that this is not next door neighbor. This is guy from the kids school. HU. MIL. I. ATED. So I fumble around and ramble on and on about how he looks so much like my neighbor and once I registered neighbor in my head.....

Every time I thought of it yesterday, I cracked up while at the same time feeling that embarrassed, helpless feeling. The more I played the scene over in my head, the more I think I looked like a complete lunatic. So awesome. The worse part of all is that the guy is a black man. You know how they say that white people think all "person's of color" (I think that is the new politically correct term) look alike. I swear I don't. I don't even focus on color. Really, truly. But, boy, I sure looked like I proved that in the grocery store. So embarrassing. And I'm going to have to go through years running into this guy at school events and stuff. Years!

I'll get over it.

So today (here's the other foot), my friend calls to ask the name of my living room paint color so they can get it. I tell her I will call her back because I have to go in the garage and dig and I need two hands to do that. Friend says, "Hey, don't be making excuses about needing two hands!" Crap. Friend was born without one hand.

She is a good sport. I then yelled at her for making jokes like that and she said "Hey, if you can't laugh about it, you cry." Good girl.

I am so awesome. I'm giving Joe "Gaffe" Biden a run for his money.

On the other hand, when I'm on, I'm good. For example:

A while back, Eric asked me to take him to get some jeans. We went into American Eagle. An employee greeted us as we walked in and asked if we needed help. Eric said we were looking for some jeans. The guy said there are several styles, what are we looking for. I said; "The kind that are real baggy and hang down so that everyone can see your underwear."

The guy looked a little like a dear in the headlights combined with an I'm-so-glad-that-is-not-my-mom look. Eric turned a few shades of red. That was one of my better one's as of late.



Oh hush! Eric is a good sport (or at least used to this stuff) and the store was mostly empty with no one around us.

Are you so glad that you aren't around me that much -- or one of my children? I ROCK!

3 comments:

day dreamer said...

you rock! I want to go shopping with you...if nothing more than I can have a good laugh..

Denise said...

ooh, loads of white guilt on this one. And the one-hand thing made me cringe in sympathy.

Please tell me you've seen the "pants on the ground" phenomenon from American Idol. Just reading about your shopping excursion made me break into song.

Lauren in GA said...

Well, at least the fact that you said you needed two hands proves that you never think about the fact that your friend was only born with one.

You are so funny...we all do things like this...My foot is permanently crammed down my throat. It is fully impacted.

I LOVE what you said in front of Eric at American Eagle. You do totally rock!