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 believe you. I once wore a headscarf draped over my head and over one shoulder, so not fully hijab style but similar, and got asked if I was about to blow the building up.

@Eastofe - I love your friend! This is my favourite response!

I had a work colleague who insisted his wife was a vegan although she ate meat. Apparently because she didn't drink milk, that made her a vegan, and he wouldn't be convinced otherwise.

My DM also once told me a story about a friend's husband who was a coach driver and took people on coach trips.....to the USA. From the UK. I tentatively raised the point that there is a LOT of water getting in the way of that particular coach trip....oh well they go on the ferry for that bit, don't they!

I had a work colleague who insisted his wife was a vegan although she ate meat. Apparently because she didn't drink milk, that made her a vegan, and he wouldn't be convinced otherwise.

He may have been confused if she was buying vegan food. Since DH became lactose-intolerant, I buy some vegan food because I can be sure there's no milk in it, though neither my DH or I are vegan.

'nor I', I mean.

This is true to some degree. A lot of the Big Issue sellers who are homeless have card machines.

Try explaining what a 'public school' is in the UK! Two countries divided by a common language, as someone once said.

“At least you can get pregnant” after multiple miscarriages among the other unhelpful statements…

That being vegan "caused " my autism

Great come back. Shame it’s 15 years too late. Haha!

We had several sets of siblings in our big comp - 2000 children - who were in the same year too. One born September, one born the following August. And October and August, and September and July. It is possible!!!

But it's so weird that someone didn't believe it's possible to have 2 kids in consecutive years. Of course it is! I know many families where this happened - including my own!

A lady in our village who had been on a coach trip to the coast.
She said ‘ I asked the driver how far it was and he said 50 miles. Mind you that’s in a coach how far it would be by car I have no idea.’

One of my friends was having twins and announced on Facebook after her scan that they were a boy and a girl. More than one person commented asking if they were identical

My parents had me,my brother and then surprise twin boys (non identical)

The amount of comments they used to get

'Did you have sex twice?'

'Did you shag your husband,then another man?' (As babies,one had lighter coloured hair than the other)

'Are they ivf?'

'Did you get pregnant with one,then the other grew from that baby?'

'Why don't they have the same name?'

Some people are batshit

@Pineappleandredcheese

Unbelievable. 😆 But yes people do bleat this shite. I have heard people say things like this to people with twins, multiple births, etc, and asking if boy and girl twins are identical. 😂 As for 'did you have sex twice' (because you've got non-identical twins,) I'm sure people have sex a lot more than twice when they're trying to get pregnant! I can't even!!! 😜

Donald Trump saying it may be possible to treat COVID by injecting bleach lol

Surely everyone knows that the only way to get rid of a wart is to go to three funerals and, as the church bells chime, say “Please take my warts with you”?

Head I worked for.

Talking about ADHD pupils.

’It’s all down to bad parenting’

After a couple of open evenings in which the SEN department was in darkness there were very few in school. (They were at our neighbours who were far more understanding of their needs.)

I went on a coach trip once and we stopped on several places on the route. One lady said "I don't know why we didn't go to the nearest place last, then we would get home quicker"

Go figure 🤔

Does this work with husbands and mother-in-laws too?!

KIDDING!

The person talking about the county council's refusal to accept what their closest school was. You'll know the specifics of your situation but it IS possible to be closer to a school that takes longer to get to.

There is a school at the end of our road. We could walk there in 5 minutes. However, we are closer (by about 60cm) to a school that takes 20 minutes to walk to. If you imagine a square, our nearest school is in one of the corners. Rub our part of one of the adjoining lines and the remainder of the square is the route we have to walk to get to our nearest school. The rubbed out line is private land so we can't walk across it. As the crow flies is the standard for calculating your 'nearest' school. In situations like ours it's ridiculous but absolutely correct.

For rainbows you need both sunshine and rain at the same time and I think it helps if the sun isn't too high in the sky. So Ireland gets tons of rainbows but I've never seen one in Malaysia (DH's country of origin) because they don't really get that combination of rain and sunshine at the same time. For the most part when it rains there the entire sky is covered with black clouds. I'm sure it happens occasionally, probably mostly in mountainous regions.

That ants can lift elephants. Said by a Primary Teacher.

I get where she'd got confused - I think she's heard the 'fact' that if an ant was the size of a human, they'd (proportionally, with their super ant strength) be able to lift an elephant.

But what really astounded me was, the others (also all Primary Teachers) kept telling me I was wrong, if she's heard ants can lift elephants then ants can lift elephants. Nothing would convince them otherwise. I mean, if it was true, we'd all be living either in fear of our ant overlords, telling tales of Uncle Dave who was Taken By the Ants, or harnessing the incredible power of the ants and basically, engines would be surplus to requirements, we'd all be commuting via ant to work. I told them this, somewhat incredulously, and was told I was being smug. SMUG. About pointing out that ants, cannot in fact lift elephants.

I honestly still worry about what that lot are teaching kids and it was years ago...

Also at a (very academic) girl's school - mate told me not to use long words because 'the boys don't like it.' I know it was the 60s so there was some excuse but even then I recall thinking, 'so what?'

Do you really think I don't know this? I do: my mum was tube fed in the last months of her life and I was one of those who used to feed her that way. There is no sign of the woman I am talking about having a port and if she did, I'm sure she would have said so. She is one of those people who tells you far more than you ever need to know.

And anyway, why would any reasonable person stand there eating mouthfuls of cake, tell me they can't eat and not explain why their behaviour contradicts what they're saying?

I've been contacted by another volunteer who told me that the manager's FB page is full of photos of her eating with family and friends. I'm not on FB so I can't see. Apparently it's not that unusual to see her eating, although she continues to tell people she can't.