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comedy
158. When no more plates fit on your table at a restaurant
Have you ever considered asking the table next to yours if they’re going to use all of the space on the table? No?
Oh.
When I go eat with my parents, its usually for breakfast at a Mexican diner type of thing. My mom enjoys trying different types of food, so she makes sure that we all pick a different type of food, so we can all try each other’s food. I’m used to it by now, people eating out of my plate, and my dog has tried to take advantage of that several times.
But aside from everything coming in enormous portions, they also come with side plates. A plate for your toast, for your pancakes, for your soup, and for any dipping sauces. And since its a Mexican restaurant, your salsa. Now take into consideration that your food will come in large oval plates, and that there is also a ketchup bottle, a napkin thingy, salt and pepper, sugar packets, jam little container things, creamer, and more hot sauce… these guys should really adopt those holder things that make your table a double decker type of thing, have you ever seem the pizza holders? They’re like a metal rack type of thing. So that your plates can go under the darn thing.
Anyway, so it seems like we have a bit of a space issue there.
And then there you are sitting in front of an entire table full of food and think that everyone else is staring at your table. I once had to put the toast next to me on the booth seat. The waitress laughed at me.
The takeaway: either learn to balance food on top of other food, or tell the waitress you need a table for 6 when there are only three of you.
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Speaking of food, I just spent 11 bucks on a chicken sandwich from a Burger King at an airport. How have you been ripped off at airports?
I’m launching my
NEW BLOG
soon.
Get a sneak peek at One Way Ticket, Please to tell me what you think about it, please! The link takes you straight to my about page to find out a little more who I am and what the website is about. Be sure to enter your email on the thingy so we can keep in touch on there!
When a horse gets an erection
I went as a chaperone for a first-grade field trip to a park. I know the field trip sounds pretty lame already but it was a huge park with lots of things to do. It had rides, sandboxes and even a petting zoo.
Children love animals, and they love making noises like “eww” and making gestures that explain how they are feeling at the moment like the whole “someone farted” thing where the kid clamps her nose with her hand and points at me someone.. Even though its totally natural and maybe that person had a lot of green vegetables earlier that day.
We were walking through the stables when I saw a group of kids saying eww, which apparently also attracts a large group of them. One of the kids looks up at me and asks,
“What IS that?”
“What is what?” I asked, looking around waiting to see a cow taking a massive dump or something.
Then I see it.
That, my friends is a picture of “Lil Sebastian” from the television show “Parks and Recreation”, but it clearly explains what I saw. And yes it is blurred.
Kids have no boundaries when it comes to awkwardness. I tried to change the subject to the ostrich eggs but they kept asking about it so I did what any mature individual would do in a situation like that: I started singing Old McDonald had a farm… What? It worked for a little bit.
Yeah…
What would YOU have done?
Oh no, I don't need to see your ID, you're obviously old
How are you guys doing? It has been a while! I got busy, then lazy, then busy again.. but I’m here, and no this is not just an apology post. I’m still alive. Worry if I stop going on Twitter though, If I’m suddenly no longer Tweeting, then either the Y2K is happening, the internet died, or well.. uh, I chopped off all my fingers –who am I kidding.. I’d find a way. Anyway, here we go:
Aaaand cue Ragtime music!
Being carded when entering an age-restricted event, or trying to make a purchase rated more for the adult crowd such as a video game or those CD’s with many curse words in them, can be a little uncomfortable for some. We have the older folk over here, that get to do pretty much anything they want (and yes, that includes pooping in their pants), and the other crowd, those that look too young for their age. Sure, we’ve all felt like we were too young for our ages, especially those of you that are freshmen in high school or college or have just joined the workforce as young professionals.. but this is a whole other level of uncomfortable. That little card proves that you are worthy of what ever it is you’re planning on doing.
Think about this:
- Suppose you’re an older person, and you look your age.. and you’re hanging out with younger people. Everybody around you is getting carded, but when its your turn, when they ask to see your identification, it might be just out of courtesy. Sort of like how you don’t talk about obesity around obese people, or say racist jokes around people you just met. You guys get me? They’re asking you for your card, but they know you’re older than 21. And you know that they know. And they know that you know that they know.
- Imagine that you look a lot younger than your age, like you’re short, you have no facial hair, or you purchase very expensive moisturizer and therefore look really young. Somebody might look at your card and be like “Uh, is this really you?” because you were even younger in your picture and they’re suspicious.
- What if they ask you information about yourself to prove that its you? I don’t know about you guys, but my mind goes blank sometimes when I’m under pressure like that. A police officer once asked me for my name and I hesitated. Now imagine they ask something more complicated like my date of birth or my address? Ahh!
- The card has your picture. Yes, the picture that you wish you could retake at the DMV but they didn’t let you because there were 345,321 people waiting in line after you to take their pictures. Who isn’t embarrassed of their driver’s license picture? Showing anybody that thing is a little awkward.. and it contains private information. Who cares about your date of birth, or driver’s license number! It tells people YOUR WEIGHT! Which I guess doesn’t matter that much since you lied on it anyway. But still, it has your middle name! There.
Do you look your age?
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Raise your hand to speak (or not)
Professors have the coolest job. They get to pass on knowledge to students that will eventually make some huge difference in the world, they get to intimidate people whenever they want, they’re respected (or feared)…
…and they get to make you look pretty dumb in front of everyone. Sometimes even without meaning to.
You raise your hand to ask a question, and the professor doesn’t notice, but everyone else does.. so you’re stuck in this awkward position and must decide how to continue: Will you keep your hand up until he notices? Will you bring it back down?
As awesome as it sounds to say that you would speak up, you usually don’t, admit it. You just sit there with your hand up, and start to wonder how you must look like to everyone else.
I guess it could be worse. Wait a minute, I know it can be worse. Have you ever actually asked something at what you considered to be an appropriate volume, and your professor straight out ignores you? It happened to me over and over with the same professor one semester.
In her defense, she was partially deaf. Everyone kept telling me that she had said that in the beginning, but I guess I didn’t hear her. It got pretty funny sometimes, which left us feeling like the meanest people on the planet.
I feel horrible.
Ok anyway, despite all of those awkward moments in a classroom, the one I still clearly remember to this day is raising my hand to answer something super matter-of-factly and getting it wrong. Way to go me.
113. When it was you who left the bathroom stinky
So you just took care of business, you flush, and you begin to wash your hands. You look around instinctively for something, but can’t find it. You try not to panic.
I’m sure its around here somewhere..
You look around some more, behind the toilet, around it, in the drawers, the cabinet, THEFLOORTHEBATHTUBTHESINK THEWINDOWTHETOWELRACK THATTHINGYWHEREYOU
PUTTHETOILETBRUSH
AHHH!!!
WHERE’S THE AIR FRESHENER?!
Sometimes, you eat something that just happens to be a little more stinky on its way out… eggs, huge steaks, and chili are some of them. Stinking up the bathroom is a daily thing, we’re hardly pay attention to it, we only seem to care about it under certain situations.
Stinkin’ it up at the office- Sometimes you just know when toxic gas levels will reach a maximum, a slight temperature difference back there will give you a sign, as well as the pre-releases of smelly gases. But when you’re at one of those offices with a Single Rider restroom (also boringly known as a ‘one toilet’ restrooms), there is very little you can do to avoid getting one of these, I’d suggest bringing your own air freshener:
At someone else’s house- Pooping at a friend’s house is awkward, because you might leave a stink, there’s pooping noises, etc (click on the link above), but imagine using someone’s bathroom while at a house party. You open the door and whoosh.. a wave of stink comes out and invades the air in a silent but deadly way.
While at a public restroom– You know how grocery stores always have some creepy, hidden-way-the-heck-in-the-back, restroom that you finally reach after going through some type of maze? Those are usually single rider restrooms and since there is only one male and one female restroom, there is usually a line.
If you take a while because it won’t come out, you’ll make people angry. If you use up all the toilet paper, you’ll make people angry, if poop doesn’t quite leave the bowl, you’ll make people angry (hey, it isn’t entirely your fault!). Pshh.. who do they think they are? You just can’t win. Well.. actually I think you can make them pay for it for rushing you..
..By leaving it stinky.
Take that.
Related articles
- Secret essentials for overnight visits and everything else in between (delialicious.wordpress.com)
- Really People Who Think Their Poop Smells Like Rosebuds?? (krissykrabtree.com)
- Toilets Down Under (goldmanstravels.wordpress.com)
112. When your prank ends up making you feel like a jerk
Have your friends ever played a prank on you? How did you react?
Sometimes, a prank just turns out perfect even though most of it is impromptu… you know, one of those times when minds come together magically to embarrass the crap out of someone in perfect harmony, one improvisation after another. It all works out fine, until
- Someone starts crying.
- Something breaks.
- Somebody gets hurt.
But there’s another thing that can completely ruin the mood: When the person you’re playing the prank on does not react the way you were expecting them to and he or she gets mad at you, walks away, and hates you for the next half hour.
A group of us were at an engineering conference in Washington D.C. a while back, and met a friend of a friend who happened to have just seen the first Paranormal Activity movie (it confused people for a while, making us wonder if it was actual footage, or acted out) and we figured it was a good idea to pretend there was a ghost in our hotel room, and scare her.
Someone’s job was to hide in a little storage closet, and open the door suddenly to freak her out. That was it. Another friend decided to hide by the bed near the window and shake the curtains. My job was to freak out with her –hey, it’s a lot easier to get scared when someone is doing it with you.
Nallely walks into the room.
“Hey guys, are we gonna go downstairs later or what?” she asked.
“We’ve been hearing some noises around here… let’s check it out,” I responded.
“No guys, come on, I just watched that movie I was telling you about, it really scared me… like seriously please stop,” she replied.
Another one of us was by the lamp, ready to turn it off on cue (which we didn’t plan out). We still weren’t sure how the thing was going to work out. Suddenly, the lights went off and it was show time. The door opened and closed. We heard screams. Yes, screams… I guess I might have actually freaked out a little. The lights turned back on and I pointed out the curtains which were shaking violently, and watched her step toward the back wall in disbelief.
“Alright, let me check it out… I’m sure someone is hiding in here or something,” I said, walking toward the closet door.
“No don’t! Why would there be anyone in there? Edwin, please,” Nallely said to me.
I walked toward the door and opened it and stepped inside, and it shut behind me! Just kidding, I shut it behind me for dramatic effect, and pretended to not be able to open it; I shook the knob for about five seconds and then stayed dead silent. I heard George, the guy in charge of the lamp, say something about trying to help me out. He stepped toward the closet and opened the door. I ducked down, and he pretended not to see me as I crawled out into the open door of the bathroom to my left (Nallely’s vision blocked by the bed).
“You guys are not gonna believe this. Edwin’s gone!”
“What?” said Crystal, one of the people involved with the prank, “OK guys, we shouldn’t be messing with this, let’s call it off,”
“Where did he go?” Nallely asked, completely ignoring the “call it off” part Crystal had said.
While I was hiding in the bathroom, which had someone else in there (not using the toilet, thankfully) who was also hiding proposed to slam the bathroom door shut. So we did.
We heard screams, and then silence. They had stepped outside. We waited a while, secretly hoping that the prank hadn’t turned on us, until finally they came back in. I ran out, pretending to have no idea of how I ended up in the bathroom. Once outside of our room, I nervously said that I was not going to go back in there, and looked around for reactions. Yeah, things got very confusing.
Nallely’s reaction caught me a little off-guard. She was about to cry.
We called it off, apologized and felt like jerks. How could we do such a thing? Ugh.
But then someone said, “You should’ve seen the look on your face!” and she laughed, and we all cracked up about it and let it become one of the highlights of our trip. Pheew!
That was close.
More awkward:
You got my name wrong, but I'll go along with it
How many times has someone gotten your name wrong, and you felt a little forced to go along with it?
As long as your current partner isn’t calling you by his or her ex’s name, it should be fine right? Sometimes its fun to play along with it. How many of you can really honestly say that you haven’t given a fake name to the barista at Starbucks? My last attempt there: Sancho. And no, I couldn’t pull it off without laughing.
I think I’m used to it. My name is Edwin and I get called Edward, Edgar, Eduardo, Edmund, … the list goes on and on. I don’t typically say “Dude, you got my name wrong!” I just kinda respond to it and let it go. When you can avoid making a moment more awkward than it has to be, do it.
My sister started a new job, and people are barely starting to know her there –by “know her” I mean “know her name”.
“Cecilia here will be helping you out today,” her boss said to a customer. Cecilia? Uh, her name is Jennifer.
So what does my sister, Jennifer, do? She goes along with it to save herself some awkwardness. Of course, she opts to stay away from awkward stuff most of the time, like the majority of us, but sometimes it really follows her around. When she worked at a purple and pink-themed store at the mall where they only sell shiny stuff and poke holes on people’s ears, a younger girl translated something for her mom who had said something in Spanish. My sister is perfectly fluent in Spanish.. but she went along with it and pretended to be confused and decided to wait for the girl’s translation. Now that I think about it, I guess I would’ve done the same thing.
Well come on! What else are we supposed to do?
Hmm, glad I asked. Here are the things to say when someone calls you Cecilia (or any other name that’s not yours):
- “Uh.. yeah, Cecilia will help you out.” *look around suspiciously*
- “Yup, that’s me! Cecilia, Cecilia, Cecilia! How may I help you?” *insert huge fake smile here*
- “Cecilia..!?” and make a dramatic scene. “Oh, so I’m ‘Cecilia’ now?!!!!?!?!?”
- “Cecilia? Yay, I love that name!” And start doing the Macarena dance ( See below. Oh and ignore the dudes in the suits).
Let me know how those ideas work out.
More awkward:
It is awkward..
109. Unintentionally sexual stuff
It is not that immature..
During lecture, our professor was explaining an engineering problem:
“So the tube can slide freely along the rod, therefore there is no force exerted on the z-axis.. do you guys understand? It’s like..”
*This is the part when he made a circle with his thumb and index finger, and started sticking the dry-erase marker in and out of it.*
“It can flow freely because there is no friction. Can you guys see this in the back?”
*In and out.. in and out, over and over again.*
We were all thinking it.. so we did what we had to do: we avoided making eye contact with each other in order to keep ourselves from laughing.
There are so many things out there that sound and look extremely sexual, but in order to act all grown up and mature, we avoid mentioning them. How many times has your teacher drawn out something that looks a lot like a penis? Or have you ever let out a moan or a grunt that sounds a bit sexual? I was reading an article on Huffington Post about the “Funniest Unintentionally-Sexual Books of All Time”, which shows pictures of book covers with some titles that one can easily question if they were meant to sound that way, and it shows what I’m talking about.
Some words have a different meaning now than they did a while back, I’m sure you can think of some (like the word “gay”), but there is one name that has become both a proper noun and a common noun.. and a weird one at that –the name “Dick”.
I want to research HOW that name could have become another word for penis (along with the other word for rooster), but I’m afraid of what I’ll find if I Google such a thing. The book Moby Dick STILL gets some giggles! How come? I’m a little ashamed of the following, but I’ll say it anyway.. a couple of friends and I were introduced to a man named Dick a while ago, and here’s how the conversation went:
“Hello, nice to meet you. My name is Dick,” he said.
*We looked at each other. Followed by an awkward pause*
- “Um, hi Dick.. I’m Richard, this is Edwin and that’s Mark,” Richard replied.
“Hey! You’re a Dick too, that is great!” Dick replied, referring to the fact that his own name was also Richard, but he went by Dick.
“Heyy.. you ARE a Dick!” Mark said to Richard, referring to something completely different (another word for jerk).
..and it just got more uncomfortable..
In the end, Dick did not catch any of those other meanings to the word/name, and I felt a little bad for not explaining it to him.. but maybe I would’ve just made things worse.
Super awkward.
More Awkward: