What misunderstandings have you allowed someone to labour under because you were too polite to correct them?

[wellthisisembarassing]

I'll start.

In my lounge is a photo from when the dc were tiny and they met Belle and the Beast at Disneyland.

The dc are all dressed up next to the characters. When my friend saw the picture she started to exclaim at how amazing we looked and especially ME, how stunningly beautiful and different I looked.

But of course it wasn't me, it was a Disney princess actress.

I was going to correct her but she got so into gushing about how well turned out I am in that photo compared to normal I thought I'd spare her embarrassment, so now I hide that photo whenever she comes round

That I was still working in an industry I left a few years previously. It was a friends Dad so not someone I see regularly, it was nice he remembered and I didn't want to go into details of why I left.

My partner and I went to a musical. Audience members were encouraged to dress up and get into the spirit.

Afterwards outside we were approached by some fans of the musical who thought we had been in the show. Gushing about how awesome the musical was and how did we get to be in it. Could we teach them some dance moves?! We cannot dance at all! They wanted autographs and were going to look out for us when they watched the musical on DVD they had bought.

@catfeets this is the best story ever

AuntieJoyce A similar thing happened to DH when he was in Tokyo for work.

Everywhere he went people were asking for selfies with him and they seemed very excited to meet him!

We spent ages google image searching famous people trying to work out who they thought he was, the closest we found was Wentworth Miller (Prison Break) but I'm not sure if he's big in Japan!

Our NDN had called DH Dave for years, his name isn't Dave.

@catfeets

The thought of 45 fluffy little guinea pigs is inherently hilarious 😂

How many guinea pigs are you down to now then ? Do you lose five a year?!

I take church services in various places and used to take one once a month in a particular church where, in normal times everyone had coffee afterwards. The first time, I was brought one with loads of milk. I only like black coffee but it seemed rude to send it back. Thereafter I was always given milky coffee! If I go back when times are better I think I will have to say I got used to black coffee in lockdown!

@AlexCabot admit it that’s a sneaky shoehorn to let us know you’re married to a Wentworth Miller lookalike

There was a lovely old lady in the village where I used to live who was convinced my baby daughter was a boy. She used to see me out and about with her in the pram and would peep in and say things like "oh it's lovely to see a baby boy all in pink".

Joyce Only from a distance. If you squint!

@Bumpsadaisie sadly all 45 guinea pigs have since passed on into guinea pig heaven to run free in the (also made-up) huge back garden.
It took me years to get it down to a realistic number . I even pretended my mum was a guinea pig breeder to try to explain away the large amount but all that brought was 'when's the next litter due' questions

That I was German. Just before Lockdown I discovered that many of the mothers in DDs class thought that DD and I were German, having just moved from there. At a birthday party I was complimented on how good are English was. They were surprised to find we were actually British, that DD had attended British schools abroad,and that DH was also British. There are quite a few other European children in the school, so it seemed logical at the time.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves similar to mine when I was a child my dad was in the army so moved about a bit . When I was 8 my parents left the armed forces and we came back to the UK from Germany.
The children in my class all thought I was German . I was very shy and tried correcting but no they were convinced, my accent was very different back then but I'd gone to a English speaking armed forces school and didn't really speak to any Germans as my house was also a armed forces with all English speaking people.
Also years later I mentioned it to a colleague that I lived in Germany as a child and she was surprised that I didn't speak any German as children pick it up quickly, again I said I went to a English school and didn't mix with many Germans except to go to the shops with my parents etc but no she was convinced I should be fluent in German .

Cafteets that's hilarious.

Not quite the same but does anyone remember that hilarious poster that got on the wrong bus with work, dressed in costume, but the bus was going to a funeral? Utter gold

@Butterer my mum used to take in unwanted pets so I was never sure exactly how many we had. There were so many animals that we could have opened a petting zoo 😄.

@islockdownoveryet that is pretty much the situation... But we have moved between Germany, Cyprus and UK pretty regularly. They know a little German but have forgotten all their Greek& Turkish.

Does anyone remember a story in the Guardian where one of the columnists’ guinea pigs had a massive litter of about 11 and then the columnist in blind panic had released them into the wild to run free?

Cue understandable outrage in the comments at the prospect of 11 guinea pigs being picked off by predators/inclement weather conditions one by one a la Hunger Games. Or, perhaps more terrifyingly, SAS style hard-core guinea pigs surviving and taking over the countryside like mink, changing the ecosystem forever

Not to change the subject but apparently squirrels can live up to twenty years in captivity!

These are brilliant
@AuntieJoyce it's quite common in Asia for locals to want photos with white people, particularly if they're young, blonde, well dressed etc?
Dh and I once had a huge queue form at the Taj Mahal!

In our old house there was a couple living opposite us. When DS was born they come over to the drive one day when OH was putting him in the car and said congratulations. They kept referring to DS as a baby girl, and said how beautiful ‘she’ was. OH felt too awkward to say that he was actually a boy and didn’t tell them any different! Few weeks later they saw OH again and asked him how our ‘little girl’ was and he still couldn’t bring himself to tell them!

Not me personally, but a friend of mine (who is from India) met a guy on a night out in a busy pub. He asked her where she was from, and she said India and told him the specific part of India where her family lives.

She asked him where he was from, and he told her. But it was so noisy that she couldn't really understand what he said. So she said, I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, where are you from? And he said it again, but she still couldn't hear. She felt awkward asking a third time, so just blurted out, oh, I never heard of that, where is it? Guy was like, You're Indian and you don't know where Pakistan is?!?

She was so incredibly embarrassed (she's a smart well-travelled woman with a PhD who obviously knows where Pakistan is). Guy shuffled off shortly after but we also still laugh about it years later.

DH is "Tim" and his brother is "Steve".

When we moved in to our current house, we introduced ourselves to 80yo NDN. She later sent us a card addressed to Johnny..... and Steve.

Obviously I couldn't just correct her like a functional because I am British, so I sent her back her a thank you card with Johnny and TIM in mile high letters.

Only, by that time, she had kindly briefed about 4 houses on her lovely new neighbours. We promptly got a little stack of welcome cards addressed to Steve.

I seriously considered just marrying BIL to avoid further awkwardness, but ultimately settled for only ever referring to DH as "my husband" in conversation and printing his name very clearly in Xmas cards. It's been 7 years now... ndn now calls him Tim but I am actually not sure if our other neighbours know.

*like a functional human being

See, I can't even write actual sentences.

Mind you, I am just as bad. A recent incomer to the street dropped us a note signed Tasna. Unusual, but hey. I have greeted her as Tasna ever since and made polite chitchat.

I looked again at the card recently. It quite clearly says Tasha with a squashed up H. Idiot. Me, not her!