Picture this, its Thanksgiving, the whole family is there. So after having a few hours of visiting eating and thanking the Lord for the blessings He has given us, we break out the game of apples to apples. This is my first time to play the game even though I’m 19. We’ve been playing for a while (everyone from my little sister who is 10 to my grandmother who is in her late 70s) when it gets to my turn, and I have the word “busy”. So I start getting cards like, “homework”, “school”, “chores”, “work” and so on (about 15 people are playing this game). Then I read one and it says “honeymoon” I must have gotten a strange look on my face because my best friend just starts laughing. Then it dawns on me, and I kinda threw the card down and went “oh! no no no”. At this point all the adults are laughing at my reaction/the card. My little sister asking my mom for an explanation (which she does not get by the way). After choosing from one of the other cards, everyone is just so curious, so I ask “who put that?” Turns out it was my Grandmother! I’m pretty sure I was bright red for about 5 minutes. But its nothing I will forget anytime soon.
Rachel – Somewhere
Several years ago my family and I had the most awkward Christmas dinner. It was the year that my grandparents decided they would treat us all to a special dinner at one of their favorite restaurants. When we arrived at the restaurant, it was packed. Completely busy, but we weren’t worried. My grandpa had made a very special reservation several days prior to have a private room for the whole family to dine in. Our confidence in the reservation was short lived as we found out the staff had made a mistake and had already given the room to another party. So instead of our nice private room, they put a bunch of tables together and stuck us in the bar. Fabulous. So after an hour or so passes, we get our meals and we’re eating and enjoying our time. Suddenly, an old man, who was sitting in the booth behind us, falls out of his seat onto my brother, passed out. Now, the old man is on the ground, not breathing and his wife is hysterically crying (which also made my cousin cry). My aunt decides this guy needs some sort of help (he was choking) and so she socks him in the stomach! A nurse, who was sitting at the bar, yells at my aunt, runs over, pushes her out of the way and starts doing CPR and the Heilmlich maneuver. Next thing I know, paramedics rush past me, revive the old man, and roll him out on a gurney…all while we’re eating dinner. That was enough drama for Christmas dinner, right? Probably not. As we’re all trying to calm each other down and get back to enjoying dinner, the restaurant keeps getting more and more crowded by the minute. Apparently there was no more room to sit in the waiting area, so this strange old man decides to sit down right next to me on the booth/bench thing I was on. I was totally creeped out..and for a long time none of my family even noticed this old man sitting right next to me at our table. Finally, my grandpa saw the guy and says to him, ” I don’t think you’ve met my granddaughter, her name is Emily.” It was totally awkward. After awhile, the man left and I thought that had to be the end of our crazy night. Nope. There were crowds and crowds of people waiting to eat. What made it worse was that the service was completely slow. My cousin didn’t even get her meal until everyone else was eating dessert. Anywho, as my family was trying to finish up dinner and dessert, an angry old man starts pacing throughout the restaurant, yelling at each table, “YOU EAT AND YOU LEAVE!” We loved that. What a merry Christmas!
Emily – CA
I remember reluctantly going early to help prepare my great-uncle’s house for his 80something birthday last summer. There was this gorgeous girl helping with the food. I figured she was around my age and I wanted to “talk” to her and possibly get her number. My trip might end up not being a total waste, I thought. She was around my aunt a lot and the way they were talking it was like my aunt raised her or something but I was sure she wasn’t her child. Anyways, this girl was really good-looking, no joke, so I finally see her alone and I muster up the courage to go talk to her. And so it went … Me: “Hey” Her: “Hey ” … long awkward pause Me: *I point to my aunt* “Do you know Aunt Flo?” Her: “She’s my aunt” Me: “oh … that’s cool” … another awkward pause … “I guess that makes us cousins” Her: [with a rather sarcastic smile] “Yep” I die a little inside, make up some lame excuse about something I have to do and quickly walk away. I tried my best to not be seen by her the rest of the day.
Frank – Earth
When I was a teenager, I really wanted to jump off the Orford-Fairlee Bridge into the river, but my mother talked me out of it. ”It’s too high and you could break your neck,” she said. ”Besides, there could be old bridge posts you could land on.”
Shortly thereafter, I was just about to take a walk across the bridge when I saw about a dozen young (and handsome) guys standing on the other side of the rail, about to jump. Eager to save their lives, I began running as fast as I could, yelling: “Don’t jump! Don’t jump! You could die!”
They politely refrained from jumping until I reached them. Grinning, one of them asked me why he shouldn’t jump. I repeated what my mother had said. Trying valiantly not to laugh, the guys told me they’d already jumped off the bridge several times and it was perfectly safe. A hot blush flooded my face, but I tried to play it cool. ”Oh, carry on then,” I said. I was almost out of earshot when they burst into guffaws.
The moral of this story is: Don’t listen to your mother.
Rachel – NH
Oh, haha. This was SO awkward but still funny, I have two sisters and two brothers and our family live really close, always phone each other, chat on-line etc. blah, blah, blah. I’m the only one who doesn’t have kids so *sometimes* when my sisters phone me I’ll just be in my house reading or doing some work or whatever and I have a pretty short attention span, well….SOMETIMES, actually quite often either they or my mum will phone me and get me on the phone and just talk and talk about something that I’d get quite bored with after a while, I’ve never been good at getting out of boring conversations, like I’d just be a ‘Yeah? Really? Wow? No way?’ type person but one day I hit on this amazing idea, I only have a mobile so I decided that if I was in the middle of a conversation I couldn’t pay attention to I would just hang up and pretend the reception went dead, I was so pleased with myself and I started doing this quite often, then one day my sister was talking and I knew I had to go out so I hung up the phone, but I actually didn’t, I only thought I had, she could still hear the radio in the background….so she phones me back two minutes later and she’s like ‘Tanya….’ in this really exasperated voice…..’Will you STOP hanging up on everyone ALL THE TIME!’ I was like ‘What no, no, no my reception just went dead O_O’ …and she’s like ‘No it didn’t! You hang up on us all the time! You’ve been doing it for ages, it’s because you can’t pay attention! Everybody knows and they laugh about it all the time but will you just stop doing it now……!’……I was like..’Uh…oh. Really? ReeeallllY??? Seriously? Noooo. Oh. Hmmmm.’ ……Plan = dumb. :O
Tanya – Belfast
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
My in-laws appear to be very reserved people and quite frankly they intimidate me. When my husband suggested last August that we skinny dip in broad daylight in the river behind his parents’ house, I was horrified. Their driveway winds past one of the bends in the river and I knew they could drive past at any moment. I wasn’t about to let them see my bare backside on our family vacation. However, after my husband stripped down, I finally consented on one condition: we walk upstream to a more secluded area. He agreed and instead of donning his clothes for the hike like I assumed he would, he began strolling along the river bank buck naked with nothing but his river shoes on. I followed him a safe 200 yards behind, hoping I could at least feign ignorance, forgetting I was carrying his clothes under my arm. We were almost safe around the river bend when I heard the sound that echoes terror in my mind to this day: a honking car horn. I whirled around to see my in-laws, who had paused in their driveway to wave at their wayward offspring. I stood there, dumbfounded, holding my husband’s clothes, and could not even bring myself to wave and possibly distract them from seeing their flasher son in the distance. After about a thousand suns rose and set, they drove on, having had their fill. I prayed with all that was in me that my husband had made it around the bend in the creek. To my horror, my husband was still standing there, sun gleaming off his winter white body. He told me his only response to his parents was to wave proudly over his shoulder as his strolled on! To make matters worse, he still wanted to swim. He figured the worst was over, his parents saw him. So he continued up the creek to the “abandoned” foreclosed home next door to skinny dip in the former neighbor’s share of their creek. Not a minute later I see him running full tilt toward me, naked as a jaybird, a look of glee and shock on his face. “There have realtors there! They’re showing the house!” It was one of the most awkward moments of my life facing his parents that night at dinner. Thankfully, they laughed it off. I would have thought we’d be ex-communicated! Next time my husband asks me to skinny dip, I’m waiting for twelve o’clock midnight.
Brittany – Somewhere
About five years ago my Mother-in-law was attending church with my husband and I. During the sermon she just kept going on and on about something in a not so soft wisper. Suddenly aware of all the people around us I started to become embarrassed by how much of a distraction she was causing and before I knew what I was doing I turned to her put my finger to my mouth and said “sssshhhhhhhh” I swear it was like a reflex! While she did immediately stop talking…lets just say this did not improve our relationship at the time.
Leah – SC
Years ago, I went out to eat with my parents, my husband, brother-in-law and sister. I don’t remember the occasion, but the experience is forever branded in my mind. The waitress came to our table and did her schpeal about the lunch special and “what would we like to drink?” One of her “flair” pieces was a pink ribbon. My dad noticed this and started talking about cancer in general. Always one to make a point to be politically incorrect my dad said jokingly, “Well, some people just have it coming.” A funny expression crossed the waitress’s face and she told us that her aunt had just died of breast cancer. Not to mention the fact that my brother-in-law’s father had just died of cancer earlier that year, after a long and terrible ordeal. Oh, Dad.
Liz – VT
I had just gotten dressed and was about to head out to go dancing with my friends. I was wearing my favorite little black dress and felt like a million bucks. My father complimented me, but remarked that he didn’t think white stockings really went with my black dress.
“Uh, Dad, I’m not wearing stockings.”
“Yes, you are,” he protested, thinking I must have put some on and forgotten about them. ”There’s no way you’re legs could be THAT white.”
Well, they could be. I invested in some self-tanner shortly thereafter.
I had been living abroad for over a year and had been home for several months, but had not seen my older brother, Stephen. I was driving down a freeway with three little boys that I was a nanny for, when I saw this truck speed by me, that I thought was him. I began following him, trying to get his attention, flashing lights etc… I finally got up close enough to motion for him to pull over, which he did. I also pulled over, got out and ran up to his truck as he got out, he was facing the other way. As he turned around, I reached out to give him a big hug yelling STEPHEN!!! As my arms started to envelop him, I realized it wasn’t him. He was looking at my horrified. I stopped and said “You are not who I thought you were.” I then hurried back to my car which by now was filled with the gleeful laughter of three little boys.
Lea – OK
So one Thanksgiving I brought a friend to the family gathering with me. She had never met them. We have a rather large family and aren’t formal in any sense of the word. This particular time we knew several people were going to be gone for Christmas so we decided to do a white elephant gift exchange. We were sitting in a circle with forty gifts in the middle of the floor playing the game. My friend’s turn came up and she picked a box about a cubic foot in size. Inside it was filled with cat hair. It bounced out all over the place as my friend was frantically trying to brush it all off of her as fast as possible. Everyone was either laughing or “ewing.” My Uncle piped up with laughter saying it was his box; I think his wife hit him. He announced that inside the box there were five euros. She took out the euros and exclaimed “I’m allergic to cats!” and walked as far away from the box as she could get. The room went silent, and people started picking up the cat hair from the floor. For the rest of the evening there was profuse apologizing. Luckily she didn’t have an allergic reaction.
Hana – TX
