What's the most ridiculous thing anyone has said to you?

[chimamandafan]

I occasionally volunteer at a local community centre. It's managed by a woman who tells anyone who cares to listen that she has a medical condition that means she can't eat. She looks well-nourished but I've always been too polite to ask her questions about her condition.

I volunteered at an afternoon event today. I get the seniors to their seats and make pots of tea. Cake was served. The woman who never eats was standing there eating cake.

'Look at you, eating cake! Are you better?' I said. 'Oh,' she said, 'you know me, you know I can't eat because of my medical condition.' 'But you're eating...' She walked off and is apparently really pissed off with me. Apparently I'm rude.

There are some real weirdos around, aren't there?

Oh, and my grade 1 teacher picking on me for wearing trousers (this was about 1970) and insisting if little girls wear trousers they have to wear skirts over them, because they'll get the trousers dirty. Wtf?

Someone once said to me it’s “impossible” that my kids are in consecutive year groups at school after the other. Now, apart from the very basic maths of it, surely they’d met people in their lives who had siblings the year above or below?? It’s maybe not that common but ermmm not impossible!

My in-laws who live in a different city once looked after my son, he banged his head so they took him to their doctors. Their doctor insisted he could only exam him if he's registered at this surgery so proceeded to change my child's address to my in-laws house. My son has numerous consultants and a ehcp. Was a nightmare to sort.

When speaking to a friend after my sons asd diagnosis. "Well I know someone who's baby was born without an arm, at least it's not that bad" ??!!!

"Your son can't have a dairy allergy"
"Why?"
"He eats eggs"

A friend had paid for one of those completely bogus allergy tests for her dc, where you spit into a tube. The test revealed the dc was allergic to blue dye & red dye. But not purple, purple was absolutely fine.

I'm confused by this one as saying you were struggling to get pregnant implies that you were actively trying to get pregnant and had attempted it several times.

"It'll just happen" is a normal response to someone who is trying to get pregnant, no matter what means they are trying. Its just an attempt at offering some hope that one of the tries will work.

'Ah well, he'd have been going off to University soon anyway'
16 year old DS had just been killed in road accident

That they distinctly remember one year when Good Friday fell on a Saturday 🙄

winteriscoming2022 - so sorry this happened to you.

I went to a private doctor about recurrent chemical pregnancies. She told me because I'd done a pregnancy test before my period was due, it could have been a false positive because every woman makes pregnancy hormones every month. By her thinking, even virgins would get 12 positive pregnancy tests a year! I had it confirmed by a fertility specialist that false positives are very rare. I paid her £200 for 15 minutes to be told this rubbish

At a wedding, sone weird guy latched on to me and asked how I knew the couple. I said the bride and I met at uni and we had had joint birthday parties the whole time because her birthday was the day before mine.

"Oh, you were very quick to get that in, weren't you!"

"Get what in?"

"That her birthday is before yours!"

"Yes, it's the day before."

"You really want me to know that you're younger than she is, don't you! Haha, I can tell!"

Absolute weirdo. Probably gatecrashed.

Might be a follower of the McCartneys' Meat Free Mondays. It's not a mad idea...it's a way of reducing meat consumption even if you don't give it up completely.

By a health visitor at ds 4 to 6 month check. I was EBF, she said I would have to stop at 6 months because 'this NHS poster says 'only give breastmilk until 6 months'. As in don't give them any solids until then. When I argued that is not what it means she suggested that I would need extra support from HV team to help wean him from my breast. I complained about her on the way out.

Dd, 22 months in hospital after a febrile seizure. 'No I can't come and take her temperature now, it was fine an hour ago and she can't have calpol every 4 hours because mum is over anxious'. 10 mins later dd was hallucinating, temp of 40.something and had to have a cannula fitted in anticipation of a lumber puncture, paediatric consultant summoned but temp went down with calpol, which was then given every 4 hours and 'mum knows best, if she is not happy I want to be summoned immediately'.

A friend of mine is adamant you can't catch cold sores , you are born with the virus. She's quite high up in NHS.

As a teenager a friend told me before my birthday that it wasn't on the 17th but on the 21st and was most insistent about it. 40 odd years later I get a card on the 17th so she now realises I was right about the date I was born.

I was once asked by someone who had admitted she'd never heard of my brain condition how my parents didn't spot it. Well that would be because they can't look into my brain and because (unlike Downs Syndrome for example) there's no obvious visible symptom. And so many of the symptoms are conditions in their own right (such as Autism) and aren't always symptoms of underlying conditions.

I'm in my 30s. Parents now usually find out at their 20 week scan.

I had something similar when at university and working tills. I had a mad with a young teen tell him; 'This is what you will be doing if you don't go to university'. I piped up with 'Oh I DO go to university. I am doing a PhD in biology'. (I wasn't. It was a undergrad in history, but it just came out my mouth)

*man

When I worked at WHSmith as a student I was putting some CDs back on the shelf when a man came to the counter. I walked straight there and said, ‘Hi, how can I help?’ with a big smile like I always did. He called me an idiot and an imbecile and started walking off shouting that he had never encountered such a rude person in his life. I was genuinely baffled. I did wonder if there was some dementia or something because it was just so random and ridiculous.

I love this thread. Keep them coming!

As a very self conscious and not slim teen (not fat but not slim) I once sat on the floor quite heavily near a family friend and he bellowed to everyone, “woah, I thought that was an earthquake”
I still love this person dearly and it was an off the cuff (albeit very thoughtless) comment but it’s never left me.

Motheranddaughtertotwo
I took my teen DD to the doctor for cold like symptoms, he looked in her mouth and declared it was definitely tonsillitis. She looked him dead in the eye and told him that her tonsils had been removed years ago. I mean if he hadn’t examined her (or checked her record) then fine but he actually looked. We never went back to that doctor

You can get tonsillitis with no tonsils, I had mine removed when I was four. I get it once every 2-3 years still, had to get a note on my file from an ENT specialist in the end as it confused the GP massively.
The ENT said that it's caused by the scar tissue where the tonsils were removed getting infected.

I’m hospital the nurse said, you’re tiny. Were you always this small.

Working my Saturday job in a cheap shop, a really unpleasant looking man paid at the till and sneered at me "Keep the change, you look like you need it..." and I was just left speechless!

Yep this is true. Usually a Sum-Up attached to their mobile phone.

Just remembered another one, a counsellor I saw briefly insisted that there had already been 18 versions of Covid before the pandemic and that's why it was referred to as Covid-19

My friend who is homeless has a card reader (albeit she uses it when busking, not just straight begging), they're apparently quite easy to obtain/set up - now we're living in a largely cashless society everyone has to move with the times!