Monday, April 5, 2010

Come again?

Quote of the blog:

One of our directors answered a call at work. We heard, “Do we serve Jews? Of course we serve Jews! Students of all religious affiliations attend our programs.” He was quiet for a moment as he listened and then exclaimed, “Oh! Juice! Yes, yes we have juice on the programs.”
****

I have a habit of tweaking words just a bit, or speaking in accents, or weird voices or whatever. [Don’t judge]. One of my occasional word-tweaks is to add “sies” on to the end of words. Time for foodsies, bedsies, whatever(sies).

My coworker Mario was in our office at one of the computers. I work in open office with four other people. Mario was lamenting to us all that he had to get blood-work done the next day and couldn’t eat for the rest of the day.

I nodded sympathetically and asked, “For testies?”

Everyone looked up, shocked and laughing.
I tried to recant, “For testing! Testing!!”
Mario couldn’t stop laughing, “Brook, you’re blushing.”
Yes, yes I was (and I rarely blush).

Another similar, ridiculous, situation happened when I had some friends over to watch Sleeping Beauty. I love Sleeping Beauty (is there a better villain that Maleficent?) I hadn’t seen it for years and when Disney rereleased SB two years ago my friend bought me a copy and we had a movie night. I noticed the styling and the music - a chorus enters many of the songs throughout the movie. When Briar Rose starts singing with the prince the chorus joins in. I said, “And enter chorus.” Everyone kind of looked at me and I looked back like, “What? What did I say?” After a few seconds Jeff said, “Did you just say ‘intercourse’?”

Two weekends ago I was at a party where one of the men admitted to getting the words Smooch and Mooch mixed up – even in his teens. I would have loved to see that in action. He would say things like, “He totally smooches off his parents.” And, “Stop being a total smooch.” I like to imagine what that looked like on the flipside when talking about a girl.

That came up because another man there said how excited he was when the zequel to some movie came out (I don’t remember which one). He noticed our faces when he said, zequel and explained that he had said zequel instead of sequel his whole life and no one had said anything to him until just a couple years ago. I think by that time he just decided to own it. I could sympathize – I never realized that I say magneNts instead of magnets until last year when my friend Jason asked me about it. That’s right. A life full of magneNts and I never realized. I know how to spell it, just (apparently) not say it!

There are so many moments of misunderstanding or misspeaking that happen. They provide endless amusement. Like my friend Carly who thought Rihanna’s song “Disturbia” was “Squirmy Love” and even had a little dance to go with it.

There was the time when I worked at UVU and my coworkers and I were commiserating about an office assistant who had keys to our offices and would go through our things when we weren’t there. One coworker said, “He moved my pictures around and left his stuff on my bookcase.” I remembered coming in one morning and he told me that he had unlocked my office and used some things he found in looking through my desk. Another coworker vented something else and I said loudly, “Yes! And he’s been in my drawers!” They stopped complaining, looked at me, and then burst out laughing. That would be another time I blushed. A lot.

One morning my coworker Justin looked at another coworker who had a heaping plate of food. Justin sniffed, “What are you eating?” Pei responded, “Gross stuff.”

Justin’s nose crinkled in disgust, “And that is why I’m going out for my breakfast sammich.” (He likes to call sandwiches sammiches).

Pei asked, “What do you have against gross stuff?”

Justin, “Really? What do I have against gross stuff? For breakfast?”

Pei turned, “I said ROAST DUCK!”

4 comments:

  1. "Is there a better villian than Maleficent?"

    HIV/Aids.

    See what I did there? I just blew your mind....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Funny stuff! The other day I was in a car on the way to go grocery shopping with some friends. We were talking about radio stations, and my friend complained about how her parents always listen to KSL or "Costo 89." I was a little confused. So I asked what kind of things they play, and she said, "News, weather and traffic." And then it clicked: Classical 89. I could barely contain my hysterical laughter when I told her what I actually heard. She laughed, and then I said, "Costco 89, where they play music in bulk."

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hilarious! One of my pet peeves is people who say expescially instead of especially. There's no X in that word! And patri-article instead of patriarchal. Love it!

    ReplyDelete
  4. You need a whole post of the ridiculous things that "that co-worker" did. Seriously, Tic-Tac was...umm...well, he was the kind of person you just can't make up...just like your posts! BTW, I laugh really hard EVERY time I read your blog!

    ReplyDelete