Making A Fool of Yourself When Making Friends

We have probably all experienced an instance when we thought we said the daftest thing a person could say to someone. You were probably talking to someone who wasn’t a close friend, maybe someone we didn’t know very well at all, or a complete stranger.

And then you opened your mouth to say something clever, and something totally insane spilled out. I have done this a number of times. If you’re like me, you probably remember anxious instances where you said something stupid, realized it too late, and couldn’t take it back, and now you lie awake at night thinking of something that happened 10 years ago that only you remember anyway.

Mixing Up Names

I have an undiagnosed issue remembering faces. I don’t seem to be able to recognize people unless I have seen them a minimum of five times in my life. And even then, I can sometimes mix things up.

I few years ago when I lived in Chicago, I was part of a Mardi Gras krewe. I was the youngest krewe member, which was disappointing. Everyone else was either retired or old enough to retire. Some of the krewe members looked alike (or maybe to me all boomers look alike), and I really only saw these people once a year when we were getting our Mardi Gras celebration prepared because the meetings were usually too far away for me to attend. So, I subsequently forgot people’s names or their faces.

During one event where we were getting our annual party ready, I was talking with a retired man who was telling a story about being in the hospital. The story had to do with being naked or exposing his rear end in the hospital gown or something like that. I am glad to say I don’t remember that now. I made a joke about his wife in relation to the exposure of naughty bits, but I pointed to a woman sitting with us who was not his wife. His wife was elsewhere. This woman was married to a different man who looked similar.

I realized my mistake as soon as I saw something change in the wrong wife’s eyes, but I didn’t say anything, and neither did they. I had been in this group for like three years and should have known these people’s names and faces, but in the flash of trying to be social and funny and not a loser, I messed up. No one freaked out at me.

Stating conversations with strangers

When I was out at a street festival recently, I saw someone wearing a rainbow patterned shirt and…