My mouth keeps me in trouble. As I mentioned in an earlier post, sometimes words fail to come out in any kind of useful or intelligible manner.
Other times, words come out of my mouth with mortifying clarity. To wit:
My step-mom has cordless phones in various parts of her house so she can easily pick up without having to make a mad dash when the phone rings. One day, some of the phones went dead, and I discovered one of her incoming lines had malfunctioned. I solved the problem temporarily by redistributing the base units and extra handsets to maintain coverage until the repairman arrived. The conversation went as follows:
Me: “I’m just going to move your master base unit…”
Her: *Silence*
Me: “Please tell me I didn’t just say ‘masturbate’…”
But it doesn’t end there. At the pub a few months ago, I loudly and clearly informed the gang that “I take it from both ends”.
My friends do not have my step-mom’s restraint. A chorus of whoops, guffaws, and snorts greeted my announcement, and I was forced to wrap myself in the pitiful shreds of my dignity to explain that I was talking about getting ice cream out of a 2-litre carton as efficiently as possible: open one end, scoop it out to the halfway point, and then open the other end to finish it off.
Sadly, the effectiveness of the explanation was spoiled by the fact that nobody was listening anymore; they were too busy holding their sides and laughing.
My unfortunate affliction isn’t limited to verbal gaffes. I’ve left the house carrying a grocery list that specified “booze & pot”. No, not “pot” as in “cannabis”. I was getting ready for a party, and I needed to pick up some wine and a large pot for boiling lobster. I shredded that list, just in case somebody got the wrong idea.
Other readers of my lists might erroneously assume I’m a stage performer. One of my more recent scraps of paper read “taps & hat”. I don’t know how to tap-dance. And if I did, you wouldn’t want to see it. I meant “taps for the kitchen sink”, and the hat was a gift for my step-mom.
Most recently, I distinguished myself in conversation with a group of people I’d only known a short time. We were sitting around the kitchen table enjoying a quiet beer when I discovered one of the guys collected coins. Something was said about his coin collection, and I turned to him and innocently asked, “Oh, do you have a big one?”
Did I mention I didn’t know these people very well at the time?
Most people would have wisely shut up at that point, and let the innate good manners of the others force them to bite their tongues and pretend nothing untoward had been said.
Unfortunately, dignity and propriety have never been my strong suit. I burst out laughing and added, “Let me rephrase that…”
I guess they know me a little better now. Whether they wanted to or not.
Anybody else have an obstreperous tongue? Or do I just have the world’s dirtiest mind? Or both?
Author Diane Henders 
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Next time, just tell your MIL “All your master base are belong to me.” Then double over laughing as she looks at you with bewilderment. XD I wouldn’t care if she didn’t get the joke, because it would be funny to me. Then again, I’m not as tactful as civilized people.
Obstreperous? Among friends, I usually go in for the kill instead of double entendre-ing. With my old crowd, I was a shameless embarrassment. One time my girlfriend and I were having drinks with a couple of other friends of ours. They happened to be brothers who were very tall, with very large hands and feet. Hint, hint. Wink, wink. My girlfriend and I started joking about “sizes” and how the sizes of some things are comparable to the sizes of other things. (She had already seen one of the brothers “nekkid.” Not at the table, but some time earlier. But that’s a WHOLE other story.) At the table she said, in her experience, the “size test” was accurate. The formerly nekkid brother said he didn’t believe the test was accurate. So I said, “Just how many c*cks have *you* seen in your life? ‘Cause my girlfriend’s seen *a lot*.” In my defense, she *had* seen a lot in her life, and wasn’t shy about the fact. We got a big laugh from the looks on the brothers’ faces.
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LOL! The only time I go in for the kill is if somebody asks me something inappropriate in a way that’s clearly meant to embarrass me.
Then I dump a completely straight-faced overload of “too much information” right in the face of my rude questioner. (Kinda like a ‘fecal shield’ in entomology.) I include details. Descriptions. Sound effects. I’ve been known to clear a room in 30 seconds or less. It’s great fun to watch adults run screaming with their hands clamped over their ears. The real tough ones stand their ground and turn slowly green, which, frankly, is almost more fun for me.
I wonder why my friends are always busy when I call them up to go for drinks…
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HA! If I’m ever in your neighborhood, drinks are on me! 😉
And now I have the term “fecal shield” to contend with. It’s gonna be one of those terms that will orbit my brain until I use it in conversation. So I actually went to dictionary.com and trying looking it up:
“No results found for fecal shield:
Did you mean flashlight?”
Now I know what to say right after I use it in conversation: “Gotta warn you, the restroom is so dimly lit I needed a fecal shield . . I mean ‘flashlight’! I needed a flashlight.”
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“Flashlight” – snork! 🙂
Try an internet search for “fecal shield entomology”. But that’d take the fun out of it. “Flashlight” is… er… brilliant. *ducks and runs, snickering*
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And of course, I just had to look up “fecal shield entomology.” So it’s a physical defense behavior. Seem like it would be pretty effective. I’ll add it to my hypothetical Survival Kit.
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Good grief – also, I can’t spell to save my life. Impropriety. Entendre. Et cetera. Excuse me!
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It’s okay. Sometimes the fingers get in on the conspiracy, too. 🙂
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I am so often the one leading my friends to the edge of impropriaty that they’re largely immune to anything I say – they’ll assume I meant it to be a filthy double entandre whether I did or not. One of my proudest moments recent moments was having a friend in a group say something that could be taken both ways, as it were, and getting the crowd to laugh by raising an eyebrow – I didn’t even have to say it. 😉
So, you’re not alone! Revel in it!
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Oh, nicely done! I admit, I’m the one our group looks to whenever any double entendre is remotely possible. Usually I oblige, but every now and then I completely mess them up by not saying or doing anything. Wouldn’t want to be predictable.
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Obviously, your internal editor is not running the show, Diane, which may be one reason you’re such a good writer.
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Thanks, Charles! 🙂
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I was lecturing one time and innocently said after stating a historical fact, “But, and it’s a big but …” My students went wild. I calmed them down and then made it worse by saying, “All buts aside…” Sometimes we just have days like that. HF
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So true. Conversations including buts tend to lower the general tone of the discussion, don’t you think? 🙂
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Only every day. My personal favorite, though, because it was so complicated, was my husband complaining about how Mark Eaton, the Utah Jazz center, was too big and was making our TrailBlazers too timid, and he yelled “THEY NEED TO COME RIGHT UP THE MIDDLE AND GET EATON OUT!” I didn’t disagree.
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Wow, what a setup! And no, I wouldn’t have disagreed either…
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Ah, but it is the dirty mind that is responsible for the future of the human race. Don’t worry about it too much.
And here’s some food for thought: Who’s asking the other people to think the wrong things? Moral of the story is that ‘Dirty minds think alike’.
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Right! So I’m innocent… kind of. 😉
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LOL! Good thing you don’t live in the UK, practically everything is turned into a euphemism over there. There’s even a game where you get perfectly ordinary, but suggestive words that you have to assemble into a sentence, a clean sentence, and I’m a miserable failure at the game. 😦
Cheers!
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A clean sentence? I’d never have a chance. It sounds like it’d be great fun to try, though!
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I love the master base unit one. That is kind of an easy trap to fall into!
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Yep. Guess I should get one of those signs I saw at the fishing store: “Master Baiter”.
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Ha! That’s good.
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LOL! I love your posts. 🙂
I once, during a family game of Clue (you know, the mystery board game where you move your piece around to the various rooms of the mansion and try to guess whodunnit with what weapon), I, in my excitement over my impending victory, loudly proclaimed “Miss Scarlett did it in the library with Professor Plum!”
(No, they haven’t let me forget it.)
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Well, it’s still less disturbing than if she did it with a candlestick. Those things have sharp edges. Owie.
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