Many years ago in high school, I got stranded after tennis practice. A super friendly Indian teammate offered me a ride home but mentioned, “just a heads up our car smells like dog.”

Coming from a sheltered and pretty racist household, I cluelessly replied, “It’s okay! I don’t mind the smell of Indian food!”

He gave me a look of quiet disappointment and said, “I meant our dog. She sheds a lot.”

The ride home was painfully silent. I still cringe thinking about it.

I’ll offer a near miss.

Chat amongst colleagues over a coffee, the topic was something very normal and mundane: how lazy are we about cooking.

My colleague Carol said, “sometimes I just throw some chicken nuggets in the toaster because I don’t care or have the energy”

My response I intercepted between the brain and mouth: “living the bachelor lifestyle, carol?”

Carol’s husband had died quite suddenly 6 months prior. I didn’t fuck up, but I almost did and it haunts me still over a decade later.

Years ago, in college, I was heading to a dinner with my GF’s grandparents, and her father was driving w/ her sitting passenger and myself in the back seat.

The trip was ~1hr each way, and after 20-30 mins of their front-seat banter, it felt like a great chance to chime in (had spent a total of a few hours around her dad, felt it was a great opportunity to engage & build that relationship), so I began focusing on context cues to gauge my conversational entry point & topic — ya know, like ya do.

Mind you, the stereo was on (weighted to the rear speakers, as usual) and the road noise certainly played a part (windows up, thankfully) but I was able to catch a few clues and decided on opening with a tangential quip, so I loaded a few solutions and fired from the hip.

“Did someone say ‘Florida’? That mythical place that old, white folks go to die?”

/prolonged, increasingly discomfiting silence

/GF’s father quickly changes the subject w/o mention of Florida topic nor implying my inclusion

Days later, GF asks “WTF were you thinking? The whole dinner was for my dad to discuss their decision to move to Florida.”, and certain details of the entire dinner & its conversational scenes began to make sense. 🫣🤦🏼‍♂️

Saying goodbye to the bereaved at the end of the funeral.

“Thank you, I had a lovely time”

Not me, but a friend. We were at an LGBTQ+ friendly ice cream shop in Seattle trying to figure out what to order, so he’s trying samples. Out of nowhere he says “man, this ice cream is so good! It’s like you have a bunch of fairies working back there” and he clueless licks the spoon as most of the room stares at him in disbelief “or elves or something! Something magical at least. Can I try the lavender?”

Not that serious but I let out a giggle because I thought my teacher was struggling to get out a sneeze. Turns out she was sniffling because her grandma died and her boyfriend broke up with her over the weekend. I got a lot of shit from my classmates at lunch for that one lmao

A few weeks before graduating university, I was talking to a wheelchair bound classmate about finals and graduation. Some people don’t attend graduation and those that do call it “walking” as in walking across the stage to get your degree cert. anyway I asked him if he was “walking” at graduation. I immediately knew I had fucked up. He just laughed it off and said yes, he’d be rolling.

It wasn’t as bad as some - no one was offended AFAIK - but recently a friend’s wife asked if I was close with my in-laws. I had recently moved geographically much closer to them, so I described the distance between us, about four miles.

I didn’t even realize I had misunderstood until her husband clarified later in the conversation.

Talking about conveyance of noodley things in an engineering context, I said “as I always tell my wife, you can’t push a rope”. Whoops, now everyone thinks my junk doesn’t work.

I do say that to her but it is in the context of her stealing the covers.