It Had to Happen - Embarrassing...but funny!

Palomar · 2003-05-22 08:19:03

*What's the funniest thing that has ever happened to you AND the funniest thing you ever saw happen to another person/people?

As regards other people: I was maybe 9 years old, waiting in the car for my mother, who'd made a quick trip into the grocery store. I looked up when the store's automatic door opened, thinking it was her, when this young woman came out, her arms filled with grocery bags. She couldn't see well where she was going, and bumped into the support pole in front of the 2 doors. She began this profuse, rather animated apology...then, I guess when no reply was coming to her, peeked higher over the bags and saw the pole. I'll never forget the look on her face when she saw it was a pole she was apologizing to! She hurried away, face flushed.

But THE funniest thing involving other people: About 7 years ago I was driving down a residential road when, off to my left, I heard this crying and yapping and commotion. I automatically slowed down, wondering what the heck was going on. A man had been walking with his little dog and 2 small children. The youngest child was up on his shoulders, the older child was clinging to his lower back and rump, bawling their heads off, and the little dog (Chihuahua?) was on top of the man's head, yapping and barking, squirming around, trying not to fall off the man's head while still nervously squirming and trying to get at the other man facing The Human Totem Pole of Chaos. Apparently the other man's dog had gotten out of the yard which the man, his kids and and dog had been walking past. I felt sorry for the kids, but WHAT A SIGHT! I laughed so hard I had a difficult time driving home. I've never seen something like that!

Funniest thing that ever happened to me? About 20 years ago. Went through McD's drive-thru for a soft-serve cone. The front seat of my car was adjusted for closest to the steering wheel. I was about to hand a dollar bill to the drive-thru guy when the wind whipped the bill out of my hand, and under my car. Opened the car door (which was very close to the restaurant wall), saw the dollar bill down there, scrunched down to get it...and got my rib cage caught between my car's door and floorboard, and my hips caught between the seat and the steering wheel! And I'm slim! I could NOT get up or out of that position. I heard the guy calling, "Did you get it?" And I yelled back, "I'm stuck!" I tried not to panic, but there I was -- stuck in 2 places, it was horrible. I could not get free. I called out again that I was stuck. I kept squirming (I was getting scared), and finally got free somehow. When I sat up, the drive-thru guy's face was red, his shoulders were trembling and he was trying so hard not to laugh. God, how embarrassing! I didn't want that damned ice cream cone after that! I told a friend about it, who laughed and said she could just see the paramedics racing down to McDonald's with "The Jaws of Life," to get me out.

Oh brother.

Okay...let's hear yours. I need a good laugh; I've already laughed at myself.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2003-05-22 15:40:25

*It occurred to me a few hours ago (hectic day, lots of glitches in the transcription system) that this will probably be a "lone thread" because most members of a certain gender (ahem) are probably very disinclined to sharing anything of an embarrassing nature.

Oh well (prove me wrong, guys!).

I hope my little stories gave some of you a little chuckle or two.

--Cindy

Shaun Barrett · 2003-05-23 01:04:27

Cindy writes:-

I hope my little stories gave some of you a little chuckle or two.

Well, they did!
I found your predicament at the drive-thru the most amusing. I can just see the whole situation from the employee's point of view - I think I would have been helpless with laughter watching you wrestling with your inanimate captor!!
That's something I'd love to have seen first hand! :laugh:

clark · 2003-05-23 09:07:32

Here you go Cindy:

I think I was twelve. I could have been fourteen though, sufficed to say I was in the throws of puberty. So there I was, somewhere, sometime, up in the High Sierra's of California, hormones unbalanced, off on an exciting adventure into the wilderness! Okay, so it was one of those park and camp things where parents set their children free like some rehabilitated wood-chuck while they sit on red and blue plastic coolers over beer.

My friend, who shall remain nameless, found me throwing rocks into a nearby stream. Don't ask me why I was throwing rocks, it's just something you do when you have a rock and are confronted with a stream. Maybe it's because the sight of running water outside of a pipe is a foreign experience for a city boy, or the fact that I really hate fish. I don't know. Anyway, back to the point, my friend.

My friend was a bit older than I, and a bit better traveled in life's experiences. Of course I didn't really care about most of his life experiences, after all, I'm in puberty, so my thoughts tended to be focused in a way they never were when I was in grade school, and were greatly unfocused on the rest of what life had to offer.

To my surprise he didn't come over to harangue me for disturbing the fish- he's an avid trout fisherman- he wanted me to follow him. Now generally, when another man asks a boy to follow him into the woods, it's one of those moments where you go run for help screaming 'molester' or 'stranger' or something, but he tempted me with the type of candy even diabetics would find hard to resist. He said he found a GIRL!

Now few probably know this, but to the initiated, we all know to well that a camping trip with the parents is like celibacy for a monk trapped up in the Himalayas. So you can well imagine my reaction to this news, and it went without saying when he told me to keep it quiet and follow him. You see, there were other families, and other boys on this trip as well, and like jackals, boys will tear each other apart to get at the quarry. Of course, my friend telling me this news is a bit troubling, since I am part of the same pack which he is telling me not to tell. He tells me that she is too young for him, (he was old then, I think 19 or even 20) gotta throw her back, but, she might be just right for you!

Not wanting to waste anymore time, I follow him as he leads me through gullies and ravines. After rounding a small bend, we came upon yet another stream. Before I could even contemplate picking up a rock, the stream was just asking for it, I saw her.

She was beautiful. She was soft. She was 14, maybe even 15. She was perfect. She was standing... next to her dad... and they were both fishing.

I look to my friend, and he nods that this was where we wanted to be. So, being new to this world, and not to mention confused by the unspoken rules that somehow everyone but me knows, I ask him what we do now. He says I have to talk to her. I say how. He says start a conversation. I say on what. He says, try fishing.

FISHING! Of course. She's fishing, so if I'm fishing, we'll be fishing together, and then we'll have something in common! I think about it for a moment and tell him I don't like fishing, and I'm not even very good at it. He says, better hurry, the dad's eyeing us.

I turn around and notice that the father is realizing that there are two young men near his blossoming young and impressionable daughter. So with gusto I grab a fishing pole that my friend had left earlier (he found the father and daughter while fishing) and get to setting the hook and tossing it into the stream. It's never as satisfying as a rock.

So I go through the motions of what I hope approximates an avid fisherman. I lean my pole back and try to toss the line out like the movies. Of course it's never like the movies. Well, i t is, but I was trying more for the drama/action as opposed to the comedy/tragedy that would soon befall me.

I stood out there for a good hour. An hour of pretending to fish. An hour of slowly approaching the GIRL, pretending to look for a better fishing spot, and work up the nerve to actually say something. And as I near, as I prepare to say my first words to this ravishing beauty who has stolen my heart and soul, who should round the corner of the bend?! The jackals!

In a pack of three they descend. Yelling and shouting, they tell my friend and I that they found a dead squirrel. Great. Hundreds of miles of wilderness and they find a dead squirrel to tell us about, right now. Of course the jackals size up the situation, as all good jackals will do, and decide that they will return with their own fishing poles to join us. They say it looks like fun, as they eye the girl, whose father eyes us all.

Off around the corner the jackals run. The father, having been a fourteen year old boy no doubt, decides that he and his daughter have done enough fishing, and tells her it's time to pack up and go. Defeat!

Dejected, I turn to my friend and shrug. He says we might as well go too. So I place all of the fishing paraphernalia into the tackle box. It's this small green box held together with plastic clasps. Light, rugged, durable- the perfect solution for any camping or hiking situation. We didn't have much, so it didn't take us long to gather our things. The father and daughter were still putting their fishing tackle away as we started to walk past them.

I remember walking, tackle box in hand, past the girl. She looked up for a moment, and gave me this timid smile that seemed to glow like the sun. And it was at this point, this single moment forever trapped in my mind, that I fell head over heels.

No, seriously, my foot slipped on one of those smooth river stones, you know, the ones perfect for throwing, and I literally fell head over feet in front of this girl. My bruised ego lay prostrate in front of her as she tried desperately not to laugh. Her father had no such reservations.

So I dust myself off as I rise. Pick up my fishing pole in one hand, and the tackle box in the other. As I stand up, the tackle box explodes, dozens of items within all spilling out onto the rocks and into the stream. With that, my fair princess could contain herself no longer, and she burst out laughing.

I stick to throwing rocks now.

Palomar · 2003-05-23 11:07:13

I remember walking, tackle box in hand, past the girl. She looked up for a moment, and gave me this timid smile that seemed to glow like the sun. And it was at this point, this single moment forever trapped in my mind, that I fell head over heels.
No, seriously, my foot slipped on one of those smooth river stones, you know, the ones perfect for throwing, and I literally fell head over feet in front of this girl. My bruised ego lay prostrate in front of her as she tried desperately not to laugh. Her father had no such reservations.
So I dust myself off as I rise. Pick up my fishing pole in one hand, and the tackle box in the other. As I stand up, the tackle box explodes, dozens of items within all spilling out onto the rocks and into the stream. With that, my fair princess could contain herself no longer, and she burst out laughing.
I stick to throwing rocks now.

Shaun: "...watching you wrestling with your inanimate captor!!..."

*That's a humorous way of putting it!

Aw, Clark, that's got to be the worst...when you're trying to impress someone and goofy things happen! I think most people can relate. It did give me a giggle. I wonder if that girl would've laughed at you if her father hadn't, or if she'd been sitting there alone.

I recall a few goofy things happening to me, when I was in my early 20s and trying to impress this really handsome doctor in a clinic I worked for...and he wore "Polo" cologne too, ay! ay! I think our subconscious mind sometimes plays nasty pranks on us by "making us do things" involuntarily, to keep us humble or something...{sigh}.

--Cindy

clark · 2003-05-23 11:37:52

. I wonder if that girl would've laughed at you if her father hadn't, or if she'd been sitting there alone.

Yes, she would have. I laugh about it... now.

"All the world is a stage, and god likes a good farce."

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#1 2003-05-22 08:19:03

Re: It Had to Happen - Embarrassing...but funny!

#2 2003-05-22 15:40:25

Re: It Had to Happen - Embarrassing...but funny!

#3 2003-05-23 01:04:27

Re: It Had to Happen - Embarrassing...but funny!

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Re: It Had to Happen - Embarrassing...but funny!

#5 2003-05-23 11:07:13

Re: It Had to Happen - Embarrassing...but funny!

#6 2003-05-23 11:37:52

Re: It Had to Happen - Embarrassing...but funny!

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