I was fourteen years old and babysitting a toddler for a couple hours at his parents’ cabin. We had a wonderful time playing games and eating animal crackers. Right before his parents were due to return, he filled up his cloth diaper. I started to change him when I ran into a little problem: what to do with all the poop? You see, all the babies I’d previously sat for had disposable diapers. All I’d had to do was wad up the dirty diapers and toss them in the trash. I knew I couldn’t toss the cloth diaper, but I didn’t think I should put all that poop in the clothes hamper, either.
I knew the answer was right in front of me, but I had a major brain cramp. Where…did…the…poop…go? My mind froze and I panicked. The child’s parents would be arriving home any second. They must never, never know I didn’t understand this basic thing about child care, or they would laugh at me and never hire me again. After a few minutes of frantically racking my brain while the toddler ran around the kitchen, sans pants, I decided to try to think it through from another angle. “Where do we put food that we don’t want anymore?” I asked myself. “Aha! The garbage disposal!”
Feeling vaguely that it was wrong, but not knowing any other options, I emptied the diaper’s contents into the sink and, with a spoon, scooted the poop toward the drain. Feeling relieved that my ordeal was almost over, I hunted around for the garbage disposal switch. There wasn’t one; I had just clogged the drainpipe. At that instant, I had an epiphany: “The toddler’s poop goes in the toilet, you IDIOT! The same place YOUR poop goes!”
Crimson with shame at the extent of my spaciness, and mortified at what I had done, I hastily poured half a can of AJAX down the drain, and ran the water. I kept one eye on the clock, and one eye on the child as I frantically mashed down the remnants of poop that kept bobbing back up. I had just washed the spoon and scrubbed the sink for the hundredth time when the parents came home. I guiltily accepted their money and told them about our afternoon, omitting, of course, the diaper drama.
Apparently they never had any problems with their sink, because they asked me to babysit many times after that. I gladly did, being very careful from that point on to put human excrement in it’s proper receptacle.
The End.
Rachel – NH
A couple years ago, I worked at a group home for the severely mentally ill. It was a great job, but I had to juggle so many duties that I sometimes forgot little things, like where I left the company car.
My shift was three days and two nights. On the second evening, I drove the car to a nearby pharmacy to pick up meds for a patient. I remembered the meds, but unfortunately I forgot the car. I walked the two blocks back to the group home, in a romance-induced haze as I talked to my boyfriend on my cellphone.
The next morning, I woke up and noticed that there were no cars in the driveway. Was the car stolen in the night? I called my boss in a panic. She, in turn, called her boss, who called the police. A few hours passed, in which we all felt terrible about being robbed. Then one of my coworkers happened to drive past the pharmacy and saw the car in the parking lot, right where I’d left it. She called my boss, who called me. She was so relieved that we’d found the vehicle. In the middle of our conversation, I suddenly realized that I was the one who left it there, and blurted it out!
Fortunately, very fortunately, she had a sense of humor, and I was only mildly chastised for my spaciness.
I saw a little girl in a store once who looked a lot like my sister, Kate, did at age five. Without even thinking about it, I patted her on the top of her head and said: “Hi, Katie!”. I nearly yelled when she turned around and wasn’t my sister. To make things even weirder, my sister hadn’t been five in quite some time, say, ten years! The little girl was perfectly fine with the case of mistaken identity. Her mother, on the other hand, looked at me rather askance, especially when I tried to explain that I’d mistaken her daughter for my little sister who was now fifteen!
My sister and I were walking through town one day and we bumped into our cousin, we don’t see her often and hadn’t seen for a few months so we were all ‘Hi! Hi! How are you?? What’s happening??’ ….she lives a bit away and is married with two kids, she says to us ‘Oh I’m pregnant again’….in a disastrous split second analysation of the situation, based on her tone of voice & body language somehow, SOMEHOW, I conclude that this is not a good thing and before my lovely sister can say congratulations….I go ‘Oh no, poor you’ with this real unfortunate face and then watch myself in an out of body experience, reach forward and rub her arm sympathetically!!!!!! Ah…hahaha….oh dear SO embarrassing, she sort of went with it and was like ‘Yeah, I know’ but what the hell…she was NOT unhappy about being pregnant or having her baby! I should not be allowed near people. O_O
Tanya – Belfast
I was on my way to work and my usual custom was to pray on my way. I was pretty into it as it was a good 20 minute drive to my workplace. On a whim I decided to get a cup of coffee at McDonalds drive thru when I sped up to the microphone to order, I said,”Father” totally still in prayer mode. :)
Jan – NM
I was living in a dorm, sharing a room with several other girls. Some of them would come in late at night and leave things strewn about that I would trip over on my way to the bathroom, so I bought a small lamp to light my way. One night when I woke up and switched the lamp on, one of the girls sleepily complained that it was too bright. Thinking I’d be back in a jiffy, I hastily dimmed the light by sticking it under my pillow. That way I could still see, but wouldn’t offend anybody.
I went to the bathroom, but instead of going back to my room, I dozed off on the toilet seat! I awoke to the sound of a fire alarm and the smell of burning polyester fiberfill. I ran back to my room, from which smoke was pouring. My roommates were wide awake and very angry, my pillow had a hole burnt through it, and my lamp was, of course, ruined.
A couple of months ago I was took my little nephew to his swimming class(he’s 5), we did the hour swimming and then came out to the changing rooms, when I was getting him dried and dressed I noticed a quite long scratch on his shin, of course the changing room was full being the weekend and I made the mistake of asking him what happened….he said quite loudly ‘You did it’ in a really matter of fact voice, feeling a little embarassed I said ‘No I didn’t sweetie’ ….he must have been having a bad day because all of a sudden he stands up on the slatted bench and says REALLY loudly….’YES YOU DID! DON’T LIE, YOU DID IT FRUFRU(his petname for me) AND GOD KNOWS WHEN YOU’RE LYING SO DON’T LIE!!!’ ….EVERYONE in the changing rooms is just, kind of blankly staring at me like I’m the worst in the world and he’s sitting with his little ams folded and lip sticking out swinging his legs, I was positive it wasn’t me but I was so mortified I was just like…oh right ok, sorry, lets go…..it turns out that I had been wearing a pearl ring in the pool and the pearl had fallen off so the clasp had scratched his leg by accident, I felt so bad but totally worse with the berating he gave me!
I work as a nurse at a hospital and was required to take a class on some new equipment we were going to start using to move immobile patients. Part of the class involved us as a class using the equipment on each other. One of the machines was something we use to lift patients off the floor if they happen to fall, or to lift them off a bed and put them in a chair or another bed when needed. It has several different sizes of slings that you strap someone in and then hook to the machine which then lifts them. A somewhat plump woman was our fake patient, and we were using the sling we thought most appropriate for her size to lift her off the ground with. It ended up being kind of snug on her, and I said (loudly, of course), “If that’s the biggest sling we have, we’re in trouble!” Approximately 5.32 seconds later, I heard my words echoing in the empty cavern that is my head. Somehow, I had thought I was complementing her before I said it, because you see, we get tons of patients who are bigger than her, and if that was the largest size….we are indeed in trouble. But, that’s not how it sounded when I mindlessly spat the words out. I tried to cover it up later by saying….”So many of our patients are so big, and that sling won’t be big enough……” Yeah. Nice try, numb skull.
Amanda – SC
Late one afternoon a young guy and girl came in for their appointment, he was getting his leg done under her command with roman numerals, MASSIVE roman numerals circling right around the top of his calf. She was sitting chatting away with her friend and he was in the middle of his tattoo when I dandered over. She’d just told a story about how they met, and that the roman numerals were the date of when they first started going out, suddenly I worked out that the roman numeral date was ONLY about five months prior to the day we were on. With no mission to stop my mouth before engaging it I blurted out, “Wow! Five months – you didn’t waste anytime getting him branded…..” She just looked at me. There was nothing, just an icy stare. I was like, “I mean, ummm, that’s …..like, so sweet….that you guys are like ummm….so sure of yourselves that you’re getting that ….tattooed, so huge, right around his leg, really big……nice.” :D
When I was about 19 I had just seen what I thought was a funny movie “Office Space.” A few months later I offered to bring a funny movie to watch at my former youth pastor’s house. So we all sit in the living room ready to watch the movie I’m sitting on the floor with someone else and the movie begins. Immediately I realize that I have forgotten that there is some questionable content in the movie and one scene in particular that made me want to melt into the floor, but does he turn it off and berate me for bringing this trash into his house…no….it continues playing and I am mortified I just wanted to disapear into the floor boards on which I was sitting. When the movie was over I apologized and made my hasty escape.
Leah – Somewhere
wait. no you didn’t.
I worked in a drug rehab center for teenagers. I was new and only 21 years old, so it was a constant battle in the beginning to establish myself as someone to be obeyed. I had begun cracking down on bad behavior. One of our policies was that the patients could not have caffeinated coffee. I saw a girl at the coffee machine, and I knew she was getting the real stuff. I had finally caught her! She was a constant nuisance to me and the rest of the staff, and she was very sneaky. I, Micah, had caught her in the act. I yelled across the cafeteria, “Elaine! Put that back! I saw you get the regular coffee!” “I didn’t…” she began, but I cut her off. “Yes, you did. I watched you. Now, put it back!” “It’s decaf.” Then I remembered. The orange one was decaf, and I was an idiot who had just lost more authority in those sneaky little teenage minds.
micah the admin
Here I was, getting back into the van, ready to put my head down, when all of a sudden, a huge surge of gas rushed down into my lower intestine. I tensed up, and saved myself from obvious embarrassment. Seconds later, round two of gas surged into my gut. Then quickly came number three, and then number four. My lower intestine was imitating a balloon. I was getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
A few minutes later, somewhere between surge number eight and ten, I let loose a small amount of gas. Quicker than I could think, “I wonder if anyone noticed?” the guy sitting in the seat in front of me cried out, “Oh man! Who farted?!?” I had to humbly admit that it was me. It contaminated the whole van. Everyone got a whiff. So, I had to “put a cork” in it.
I was just about exploding when the van stopped to switch drivers. I had not rested at all. When we stopped, I ran for the nearest toilet. After expulsing two sonic booms, I immediately heard someone in the stall next to me get up, put on his pants, flush, and leave his stall in less than 5 seconds. Relieved, I walked slowly back to the van.
It was my turn to drive. I thought I had eliminated everything, but the gas started surging in me again. This time, I was facing the stress of driving the 15-passenger van through mountain valleys and up and down major hills, having to pass slower drivers. I couldn’t let myself get so big. Never could I put up with driving that way. So, I decided to drive down the gas into the seat, hoping it would absorb the force and the stink.
My nostrils searched for the stench. They found none. I got a little bolder. My seat received surge number two. Still no stink. Going up an uphill curve, my groin got fat, and again I made my seat my victim. Amazingly, I smelled nothing. As I continued to freely pass gas, reality finally hit me. About the fifth or sixth time, I just about died at the wheel because the smell was so bad. And then it suddenly dawned on me – NO ONE was resting, no one was reading, no one listening to music, and no one was chatting with anyone. I looked through the rear-view mirror. They were all looking at me, with angry looks on their faces, especially the girls. Apparently, I smelled nothing those other times because the vent blew the stink into the faces of everybody else sitting behind me. Humiliated, I had to hold it for the next couple of hours of driving.
At the next stop, I let loose my last blast, and outside it still stunk. If you had asked me why I didn’t take anything to eliminate the gas, I would have told you, “I have no idea.” I went into the fast food place, and ate a big burger meal. Surprisingly, my gas stopped. I had no more for the rest of the entire trip. Go figure.
Joe – MD
There was a time that I was invited to speak in a Brazilian city that I had never visited before. I was at a point in my language learning when I could do OK in a conversation but needed a translator for public speaking. So, after one extended meeting, we went out for all-you-can-eat pizza. It was nearly midnight. I was tired from the meeting. If you have ever are learned a new language, you will know that to try to communicate in it when you’re tired can be a recipe for disaster. This was no different. So, the waiters were serving different kinds of pizza. One was sliced chicken with a certain cheese topping that I liked at the time. However, it was one of those Portuguese words (“catupiry”) that I believe almost any foreigner would have a hard time pronouncing correctly. Being tired, there was no way I would be able to say it correctly if couldn’t say it when totally alert. The word that came to my mind was mixture of that cheese and the word for computer. When I spoke out my desire for THAT pizza, my translator, a fair, blond-haired lady, who was sitting right next to me, dropped her mouth so fast and turned the deepest shade of red that I can ever remember in my experience, and started saying, “I can’t believe you just said that!” She started alternating between shock, laughter, and sheer embarrassment. “Say what?” I had no clue. Finally, after a few minutes of the internal terror of, “What did I just say?!”, someone translated my gaffe. Imagine this: I am one of featured speakers in a conference, and I just used one of the worst swear words in Portuguese. It is a punchy word that sums up all of the gross things that prostitutes do in their sexual acts. I had just spoken out loud that I wanted all that on a pizza … with chicken.
Joseph – DC
