Your worst faux pas

[Callistemon]

It's usually funny to talk about it afterwards!

Here's a memorable faux pas from my life. In 2002 I was living in a rural town in Victoria for a while. I was single and didn't like being in huge houses designed for families, but also didn't like those apartment complexes that remind me of horse stables, with noisy neighbours and shared walls. So I rented a small park cabin someone had put on a suburban block, which was just the right size for me (but uninsulated, so it was like living in a glorified tent!).

One night there was a knock on my door at 9pm. I thought that was a bit late for people to turn up at your doorstep unannounced and asked who it was. "We're doing a survey," said a male voice. I told them that this was no time of night to be conducting a survey and I wouldn't be participating.

Anyone who's a single female will know that there's a bit of caution about letting strangers into your house when you're on your own. I tried to check out if the people doing the survey were knocking on other doors in the street, but couldn't really see - it was dark already. So after a while, seeing that my neighbours still had their lights on, I went to ask if they'd had a visit from the survey people as well.

These neighbours seemed really nice - they were always waving to me if they saw me leave or return and happened to be in the garden, and we had little chats over the garden fence. It was good to have them next door.

They told me they'd not had a visit, and invited me in, saying they were just having a cup of tea and would make one for me if I wanted to join them. So I had tea with them, and we chatted about the mystery door-knockers. We started speculating who it might have been, apart from survey people - you know, using a ruse to try to get you to open your door. Was it an axe murderer? A Tupperware salesperson? Various ideas were thrown around, and soon we were all laughing. "Maybe it was Jehovah's Witnesses," I suggested.

Sudden dead silence.

Oops, could it be...oh no. Oh yes!

It genuinely embarrassed me that this had happened with these friendly neighbours, so I then, for the only time in my life, voluntarily sat through about an hour of Jehovah's Witnesses telling me what they believed, without making impolite remarks or finding excuses to go home. They were just such nice people, and I hadn't wanted to offend them. We parted on good terms that evening, but without my accepting any of their leaflets etc. We stayed on good terms, for the rest of my time in that town, and continued to be friendly neighbours to each other.

I will always remember that moment of dead silence though!

...your turn!

 

[Luca]

Wow, I have to think really hard about this because I have had a lot of these. Lol.

I think one of the worst things I did was actually pretty recent. I was in an argument with someone (texting) about how they had been a really bad friend to me and weren't putting any effort into the friendship and it was becoming really one-sided.
I used another friend as an example and said "[Friend] doesn't really do much for me either but at least he's respectful."
I screenshotted the entire conversation and sent it to that friend, because I was mad, and he offered to give me advice.
So he ended up seeing a screenshot of me saying he doesn't do much for me. Oops.
He didn't talk to me for a while after that and things are still kind of awkward between us.

Another thing was when I was in high school, and there were some condoms on the ground outside the school. I didn't know what a condom was. I told the teacher that someone had littered a bunch of "balloons." Lol.

 

[Callistemon]

Another thing was when I was in high school, and there were some condoms on the ground outside the school. I didn't know what a condom was. I told the teacher that someone had littered a bunch of "balloons." Lol.

Easy mistake to make, especially if you blow them up!

When I was about 6, I went to get a parent a glass of mineral water from the fridge because I was up and active and asked if they wanted anything from the kitchen, so that was the request. I accidentally poured from a bottle of clear liquid that was actually the Italian neighbour's moonshine grappa - you know that aniseed-flavoured stuff? My parents used to use it to start the fire. It looked like water to me and was in the fridge. I couldn't work out why my father was spluttering after taking a gulp from the glass.

 

[Gerontius]

The Roman Catholic bishop of a large Texas diocese wades through a crowd at some gala. Spotting a young man in a slightly ill-fitting black suit and assuming this is one of the seminarians in training he goes over to introduce himself--in the event these guys end up as priests, better to be on friendly terms with the Roman hierarchy. Texans have no real genuine accent, btw.

"Good-morning."
"Good-morning, Your Grace."
"Why, you have a rather pronounced accent. Southern. Where are you from?"
Think fast, think fast--And somewhere out of the back of my mind, since I had no pre-made social script for speaking to archbishops about my (at that time very, very strongly Southern) accent and other dumb stuff, I remembered a quote --
not from the saints
not from the bible
but from Vernon Dalhart who made the first million-selling country record in 1924--

"I am from South Carolina--we all talk like Negroes there."

That has to be my absolute worst social faux pas, ever. Nobody was terribly offended, it was passed off as a joke by other people, but, coming from a pretty isolated background, I didn't know that in the 21st century the preferred terms are black folks & white folks. I'd been thinking that the South Carolina accent (in the county I was from) was heavily influenced by an African-American accent, some trace of Gullah/Geechee off the Lowcountry mingling with the white folks' dialect of the Pee Dee region...Just, terminology has changed.

Definitely not my proudest moment. Parents, be careful homeschooling your kids; kids, remember that what passed in 1890 does not pass in the 2010s or later.

Incidentally while I was studying with these folks in Texas that's when they figured out I was on the spectrum. Gosh, found that out that quickly?

 

[Raggamuffin]

@crewlucaa_ I frequently feel like I want to confront friends on how one sided the conversations are. But I just had an argument this morning with an ex. More fool me for adding ex's when I was feeling lonely, and thinking they'd changed. If I'd listened to my gut - alarm bells were ringing within the first 10 minutes of our conversation.

I can't think of any specific examples of faux pas right now, except when I get caught stimming I suppose. That's happened a fair bit. But I'm hypervigilant to noise these days, so I stop stimming when I hear someone is close by. Doesn't always work though.

Ed

 

[Luca]

The Roman Catholic bishop of a large Texas diocese wades through a crowd at some gala. Spotting a young man in a slightly ill-fitting black suit and assuming this is one of the seminarians in training he goes over to introduce himself--in the event these guys end up as priests, better to be on friendly terms with the Roman hierarchy. Texans have no real genuine accent, btw.

"Good-morning."
"Good-morning, Your Grace."
"Why, you have a rather pronounced accent. Southern. Where are you from?"
Think fast, think fast--And somewhere out of the back of my mind, since I had no pre-made social script for speaking to archbishops about my (at that time very, very strongly Southern) accent and other dumb stuff, I remembered a quote --
not from the saints
not from the bible
but from Vernon Dalhart who made the first million-selling country record in 1924--

"I am from South Carolina--we all talk like Negroes there."

That has to be my absolute worst social faux pas, ever. Nobody was terribly offended, it was passed off as a joke by other people, but, coming from a pretty isolated background, I didn't know that in the 21st century the preferred terms are black folks & white folks. I'd been thinking that the South Carolina accent (in the county I was from) was heavily influenced by an African-American accent, some trace of Gullah/Geechee off the Lowcountry mingling with the white folks' dialect of the Pee Dee region...Just, terminology has changed.

Definitely not my proudest moment. Parents, be careful homeschooling your kids; kids, remember that what passed in 1890 does not pass in the 2010s or later.

Incidentally while I was studying with these folks in Texas that's when they figured out I was on the spectrum. Gosh, found that out that quickly?

I already told you about my similar faux pas but it’s probably unprintable lol.

Let’s just say I used a term to describe a specific group of people that I thought was the appropriate term, because I had heard it in a movie or something or maybe from a racist family member and didn’t know better
It was a word to describe Middle Eastern people. I feel very bad about it now and it was definitely a major autistic moment.
I would never intentionally say something like that!

 

[Luca]

@crewlucaa_ I frequently feel like I want to confront friends on how one sided the conversations are. But I just had an argument this morning with an ex. More fool me for adding ex's when I was feeling lonely, and thinking they'd changed. If I'd listened to my gut - alarm bells were ringing within the first 10 minutes of our conversation.

I can't think of any specific examples of faux pas right now, except when I get caught stimming I suppose. That's happened a fair bit. But I'm hypervigilant to noise these days, so I stop stimming when I hear someone is close by. Doesn't always work though.

Ed

I’m sorry that happened, Ed
Sometimes people who have hurt us in the past don’t change, unfortunately :/

 

[Raggamuffin]

Oh racist humour - yeah that's a huge faux pas. Problem is, I find offensive humour to be hilarious. All my favourite stand up comedians are the kind of people who, if you repeated one of their jokes - you could easily lose your job.

Especially in this day and age where people seem more vocal about being offended etc.

I find most humour to be quite dull, so much so that it offends me, allbeit silently.

I think when you encounter a faux pas, you often adjust your behaviour to ensure you don't create a similar atmosphere again. Mind you, with being impulsive and quite reckless - sometimes that doesn't always happen.

Ed

 

[Raggamuffin]

I worked at a factory 20 years ago. Made one huge mistake that completely wrecked a big and very complicated piece of equipment, some big metal pieces ended up in the wrong place and caused mayhem. Shut the factory down for two days, caused a major power blackout in the area and it cost roughly $150 000 to fix it... It was a rough wednesday.

Wow that's quite spicy. I wouldn't want to be in charge of big expensive things. Probably why I should never own a sports car. I'd probably end up in a ditch a few miles away from the show room.

Ed

 

[Luca]

Oh racist humour - yeah that's a huge faux pas. Problem is, I find offensive humour to be hilarious. All my favourite stand up comedians are the kind of people who, if you repeated one of their jokes - you could easily lose your job.

Especially in this day and age where people seem more vocal about being offended etc.

I find most humour to be quite dull, so much so that it offends me, allbeit silently.

I think when you encounter a faux pas, you often adjust your behaviour to ensure you don't create a similar atmosphere again. Mind you, with being impulsive and quite reckless - sometimes that doesn't always happen.

Ed

I have some hilarious unprintable jokes (not racist, but highly inappropriate) that I can send you in my next PM to you lol!

 

[Callistemon]

The Roman Catholic bishop of a large Texas diocese wades through a crowd at some gala.

It's funny you know, this already has similar qualities to starting a joke with, "A horse walked into a bar."

To someone who's never been to America, it seems oddly incongruent that there should be Roman Catholics in Texas. That never gets any press so it's not in the overseas imagination - that's full of skyscrapers, Dallas the terrible old TV series, longhorn cattle, George Bush, big hats, Texan ties, etc etc. I guess like a lot of US people, when thinking of Australia, think, "Kangaroos, spiders, Crocodile Dundee, Sydney Harbour Bridge, koalas, beer."

Of course, it's logical that there are Roman Catholics in Texas, but I had never thought about it before!

 

[Raggamuffin]

I've never done it, but I do think a hilarious faux pas is when people streak across football stadiums etc.

See how far they can get before a group of security guards tackle them to the ground.

Run free.

Ed

 

[Magna]

I don't think it's my worst, but it's one that comes to mind: Peeing on the hot rocks of a sauna in a YWCA when I was maybe 8 years old because I was alone in there at the time and I wanted to see what would happen. Terrible mistake. The smell was terrible and ended up wafting all over the swimming pool, locker room area of the building.

Another one. I'll make it PG-13: "Treating my body like an amusement park" (Seinfeld reference) behind the garage one summer day when I was probably 13 and having one of my dad's friends come around the corner facing me head on; he was looking for my dad and thought maybe my dad was outside in our yard somewhere. Not only a major faux pas, but one of the most embarrassing things ever.

 

[Gerontius]

I don't think it's my worst, but it's one that comes to mind: Peeing on the hot rocks of a sauna in a YWCA when I was maybe 8 years old because I was alone in there at the time and I wanted to see what would happen. Terrible mistake. The smell was terrible and ended up wafting all over the swimming pool, locker room area of the building.

Don't use the thundermug in the laundry-room and then get embarrassed to empty it out on a hot day in July. I might as well have used the microwave.

What is it about being 8 or 9 and being too busy to bother with the flush toilet. I remember going outside into the front yard & peeing on stuff to keep the neighbors' dogs away; after they ate our family's cat I figured they needed to know there was a taller dog in the area.

 

[Gerontius]

Of course, it's logical that there are Roman Catholics in Texas, but I had never thought about it before!

Neither have some Texans.

In South Carolina I was mistaken for, on various occasions: a Baptist, a Pentecostal, an Amish guy, and a very gay Hindu. Now there is a walks-into-a-bar joke. And I'm not even that religious; people just had very specific ideas about what was Us and what was Them.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I guess I regret the times when very lonely and feeling constantly rejected, I would unconsciously reject a girl/woman who was trying to make a connection with me, sometimes too bluntly. The worst is when I let my fears get in the way of enjoying making a connection. Either way I am ashamed of my actions.

Small potatoes as faux pas, but that was me . . . . pretty clueless.

 

[Raggamuffin]

How about a goth phase? Anyone do that? I did.

Mind you, with all my piercings and tattoos I guess my existence is a faux pas judging by the looks on many strangers faces when they see me walk past.

Ed

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

As a little kid, I would actually walk up to total strangers I saw in stores and start asking questions. I never gave out any personal information other than my first name (I didn’t know or understand a thing about last names until I was in first grade). I also asked a teacher once if she was pregnant (she wasn’t).

 

[Tom]

I was living in a small military dorm complex in Germany, and one Saturday morning a military friend who was a volunteer youth worker came by and asked if they could borrow a jacket or something for a coach at the soccer field who was freezing. So I gave them a insulated red hoody zippered sweatshirt. A few hours later I walked to the soccer field on the post and I saw my friend with two women on the sideline. It was a young girls soccer team and as I came up to them they all started laughing hysterically. To my quizical looks one of the ladies pulled out a opened (but unused) condom and waved it back and forth and said something like 'Is this for me?" I turned red as the sweatshirt. I'd been out with my girlfriend the night before and forgot that was in the pocket. But they weren't mad or insulted. Ask a young single dorm rat for something and who knows what you will get I guess. At least I was practicing safe.

 

[Crossbreed]

I went to a church where the pastor went by the nickname Pastor Buddy.

One day, I was talking about the meanings of names (a special interest) and mentioned how not all names have flattering meanings.
"Dennis" means "drunkard," for example.
And "James" means "heel-catcher," or in the modern vernacular, "underhanded."

When I said this, the pastor's wife informed me that "Buddy's" real name was James Dennis.
And their son was JD, jr...!