I once said, "It's like I'm a cancer patient!" about all my vitamins in front of a woman whose husband had died of colon cancer.
It was my mother-in-law.
"You remind me of my grandpa", to one of the partners I worked for as a "marketing professional" at a hot shot law firm. He never let me live that down. I wonder if he'll add that experience to his retirement speech.
"Um, I didn't really mean to call you a slut, per-se. See, it was a joke! No one would EVER believe you to be a slut, it's was so-far-fetched, it was funny. Get it? No?"
A couple of hours after my second child was born, a nurse brought him to me for my first up-close inspection. His sister had been a beauty from the get-go, but this little one looked like he'd been through the wars; his head was lopsided, his nose was squished flat and his skin was flaking off like the world's worst case of body dandruff.
The woman sharing the room with me had delivered her first child some time before and was interested, so I held my son up and said, "I'll love him to bits, but he is just about the ugliest baby I have ever seen."
She tried to protest, arguing that all babies are beautiful, but eventually gave up and admitted he had some way to go before ugly fit.
As we were agreeing that he would most likely grow up to be a hunky babe, the nurse entered.
"I'm sorry, Sandra," she said. "I think I've given you the wrong baby."
Initially relieved, I was suddenly horrified when it became clear that the poor little thing actually belonged to that woman in the next bed.
NO WAY!
Are you freaking kidding me? I mean, I am all about "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story" but I have to know. Is this really true!?!
This is the total and complete truth with no embellishment whatsoever. I used to tell it at baby showers in Sacramento, and before I left the country it actually came back around at one and someone was telling it to me! Not as their own, but one they'd heard somewhere. They were pretty stunned to me the person who'd wanted the earth to open up in a maternity ward.