I like reading blogs, as many people do. And in my current skim through of all the blogs on my Google Reader, I ran across a challenge of sorts from Kristen over at BrandCampBlog.com. She challenged to tell a story to the internet that makes you more human to your readers… something a bit different.
I like this idea, so I figured, why not humiliate myself for sport? My brothers do it to me all the time right? So why can’t I?
So here I go…
I have the tendency to mess up when I talk. I at times can’t find the word that I want to use, so my brain inserts the nearest sounding word to the word I want. The unfortunate part about that is the “near sounding word” usually doesn’t mean ANYTHING near what the word I want means. It ends up for interesting or awkward or hilarious situations…
Example #1…
My friend Sarah and I were walking down the street a couple of years back, when we saw a super skinny girl across the street. I am talking, like you want to take this girl to the nearest junk food shop and shove her mouth full of cookies, she’s so skinny. This wasn’t a “I have a fast matabolism” skinny, this was a “I throw up my lunch everyday” skinny… We were walking along, and I looked at the girl and exclaimed “Oh my god, that girl is soooo emancipated…”
Sarah, turns to me, eyebrows raised with a little smirk on her lips and waits. A good ten seconds later, I respond “emaciated… that’s the word”!
Her response was “I was gonna ask how you could tell she was “free” without ever talking to her”…
You see, I always realize that I said something wrong, it’s just a bit after everyone else realizes it… I have gotten damn good at laughing at myself. Which, I must say, I have to credit my brothers, Caleb and Josh, for that as, they don’t miss it anytime I mess up. They notice and laugh LOUD each and everytime. It makes for a hard shell skin (see… in blogs, usually I can delete my messed up word and pretend it didn’t happen… but for the sake of the story, I will leave it in whenever I mess up
)
Example #2…
This one is a classic in my family….Like I said, I make good fodder for jokes.
Back when I was a sophmore in highschool… so 15? or so… my parents decided to cram us all into their two door black Buick to take a trip from Seattle to Eugene, OR to visit my aunts house for Thanksgiving. For those not in this area, that is probably about a 6-7 hour drive for normal drivers, but with my dad driving it was more of a 7-8 hour drive at least.
Let me paint this picture for you.
Becca= 15 yrs old. Approx 115lbs and 5’7″
Caleb= 17 yrs old. Approx 190lbs and 6’4″
Josh= 19 yrs old. Approx 190lbs and 6’3″
Buick= old, TWO door COMPACT car
Seattle-Eugene with dad driving = 8 hour trip
You can imagine who got the middle seat I am sure.
So, we are driving along, I am crammed between two brothers that like to take up room. I have my headphones on, my discman (remember those?) in my lap and my feet propped up because there was no room to put them down on the floor. It was warm with that many bodies in such a small car (my dad is also 6’3″ and of similar build) and I had sweatpants on. I had shoved up my sweatpant legs to my knees to cool off a bit and my legs were propped up.
I am jamming out to Jewel (I know I know) on the headphones, when Josh reaches down to pick something up off the floor by my legs. I am 15 and about to spend a long weekend with my family, so I hadn’t thought to shave my legs in a little while (and I still hate shaving to this day… it’s lame to be female sometimes). Josh’s arm brushes past my leg and he feels the hair and this is how the conversation goes:
Josh: “Jeez Magilla Gorrila, you’ll need a chainsaw to get all that hair off your legs!!!”
still jamming to Jewel, I reply as if he said something stupid and I am calling him out on it
Becca: “yeah, cuz I have chains on my legs!!”
And I look at him as if he is the stupid one…
a moment of silence and then EVERYONE, read that, EVERYONE in the car busts out laughing at my expense. Including mom and dad, the sweet hearts they are.
Josh and Caleb exchange glances and continue laughing and joking at my expense. They continued through the entire trip to Eugene.
To give you and idea of my torment… we had just passed the Tacoma Dome when I said my witty little comeback. The Tacoma Dome was approximately 30 minutes into our 8 hour drive! So, I heard all about having chains on my legs and needing that precious chainsaw for another 7 hours straight or so.
My mom, the kind heart she is, tells the boys to knock it off when we were about 15 minutes from my aunts house in Eugene. I still think she only told them to stop because her stomach hurt too much from laughing.
Awesome…
To make it even better, my brothers still laugh long and hard everytime chains, chainsaws or hairy legs come up in conversation. And that happened over 11 years ago. Like I said… hard skin
So, there you go internet… now not only will my family be able to laugh at my expense everytime they think of chainsaws, but so can you! I hope I cheered up someone’s Friday
And remember, if I am photographing you one day, and we are talking and I say something that totally doesn’t make any sense… know that I will notice my blunder… eventually
Happy Friday
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