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?

I had a lady accost me when I was shelf stacking in asda, for 25 minutes she insisted I'm German / of German descent. I tried telling her I'm actually from Swedish descent but she knew what she was talking about because of something she had studied (I forget what but along the lines of language) and because I'm tall and wore plaits that day that makes me German. It also didn't make a different that my plaits were Dutch braids but hey ho! She was well dressed, well spoken and I would have pegged her as intelligent but she was very, very odd.

That my child had speech delay because I worked and they went to nursery three days a week.
they were deaf

A friend ordered chips in the pub recently and the waitress asked if she was allergic to potatoes 🥔 😆 We assumed she was having a dizzy moment and had just meant to ask “Any allergies?”

That my son taught a 13 year old how to swear.

We had American B and B guests, ( not singling out Americans, most are lovely!) who came in, saw shelves of books in the living room, and said to each other...' Gee, they've got books! They surely can read?' Another couple saw me ironing and said how good at ironing I was, and I even had lovely handwritng! We had a few encounters like that, including a kind soul bringing us cakes of soap, in case we didn't have any here...(far north). After the reading episode, I dug out the graduation photos and hung them on the wall!🤣🤣

I LOVE this one.

The strangest thing has to be from an old flatmate "You're not really like a woman at all, you're basically a man. Because you're smart and you're interested in things, like the world and space and stuff like that."

Also my mum thinks that taking the contraceptive pill makes you infertile.

When I was a teenager a customer where I worked was extremely affronted when I said that I didn't want to sit in the sun as I'm a redhead and I burn easily and never tan. She said that I was wrong because she knows lots of people with red hair who DO tan.

I really don't know why it bothered her so much that I was sitting in the shade.

A friend tried to explain to me that another friend had very perky upright boobs because she never wore a bra and so they naturally learnt to support themselves!!

My gp believes that I should have been cured of my incurable disease during lock down because "I'd been on medicine for it got 18m (at that point) so I shouldnt need it by now as it should be better."

When I pointed out how stupid this was and that it is an incurable condition.... He told me I needed to see him "about my mood" 🤦🏻‍♀️

@Tdcp I have had two older Irish gentlemen insist I am definitely Irish because I have ginger hair. Two separate occasions now. Neither would accept it is possible to be any other nationality or heritage and also ginger. One even suggested I must be illegitimate with a secret Irish father (my dad is actually the ginger one). Neither of them were ginger themselves.

I had a virtual assessment with the local NHS Adult Autism team during the pandemic. The assessor started the appointment by saying "I don't believe all of this new-fangled nonsense about men and women presenting differently - you either have it or you don't". He also told me that the pre-assessment questionnaire I'd filled in (all two pages of it, which was basically all about the behaviour of young autistic boys) was something he'd made up himself - twenty years ago.

He concluded that I wasn't autistic because I'd made a pun, so I understood humour. Yes, I understand my own humour... but I can't tell when someone else is joking his report also stated as fact that I do not do XYZ, or there was no evidence of XYZ, when we hadn't discussed it at all.

I later found a female psychiatrist with up-to-date, specialist knowledge and a questionnaire so in depth it took me a week to complete it. She was in no doubt that I'm autistic.

If only 🙄

All my adult life I have preferred to be styled "Ms".
This often initially caused consternation and criticism, then became normalised as we moved into the 90s. Until recently. I have been asked by young female colleagues (in their 20s) if I'm divorced. No, I explain, happily married for many years. "But Ms means divorced so you'd better change it" 🙄

That's rude of her, but I can still read small text with one eye closed, so would glasses not still help with vision in the other eye? Sorry if that's an insensitive question.

I love the sheer optimism of this - just pure, blind faith in you and your womb haha

I was struggling with my mental health and put my child into nursery full time - from 4 days a week to 5 days a week. I decided to keep my day off so I could recover.

SIL: but why would you do that!? I cherished my day off with my kids! When yours goes to school you’ll never get that day back with them!

And that made me spiral and I spent several more weeks in therapy learning how to let go of the guilt and not want to punch her in the face!

Depends on what the reason is for the visual loss in the other eye. If it is short or long sightedness (eye not focusing correctly) then yes glasses can help.

If it is a cataract, or damage to the retina (retinal detachment, macular degeneration, diabetic damage, etc) then no, glasses won’t help.

"Never eat raw red peppers, they're too sharp and will cut up your insides" said to me completely unprompted by a customer when I was stacking the fruit and veg at work.

Apparently being delighted that DD was accepted at a uni over 3 hours drive away, meant that I didn't love her and I couldn't wait to get rid of her. If I did then I would have insisted she went to the local one even though it didn't offer the course she wanted.

One of the many reasons why I'm glad my exMiL is an exMiL.

"I guess I'm just going to have to accept that she's not going to be going Oxbridge. It's a shame really."

My mother, on my daughter, who at the age of 2, wasn't yet potty trained. She was deadly serious.

"There's something wrong with this [Yamaha Clavinova] piano. You're meant to press the keys and it'll play the chords with the notes one by one [that'll be an arpeggio] you. It's crap.".

FIL, an "expert" on music. I sat down and played the first movement of a Mozart piano sonata. Seemed to be working fine.

"You sure are intelligent for being a girl!" Poor idiot actually thought he was
a) paying me a compliment
b) more intelligent than me
He seemed confused as to why I started to avoid him even more than before. Yes, I had already been avoiding him as his stupidity was grating.

Yeah, I've been Ms since I was 18. I changed my surname on marriage but not my title. Lots of people have told me this means people will think I'm divorced. Nobody has said why I should give a shit.

My sister was in a doctors waiting room once, the mother of a friend of ours walks in and sits down, when she sees my sister she loudly announces in front of the packed waiting room, " you're not sick"

At what age though? Not a compliment these days!