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?

Don't get me started on ebay, it's how I make a living. They're some of the weirdest, rudest people that frequent that platform - I've had love letters & death threats to my house, amongst other things 🤣

MIL, deadly serious, that despite the advent of the internet "you can't really beat the Pears Dictionary".

Seagulls are quite therapeutic to hear... Unlike the humans who swim at 6 am and scream like they are being attacked by sharks..

I have a distant friend, a bit like Jay from the inbetweeners who would frequently come out with absolute Gems that he fully believed, a cpuple examples as they're many...

• "Been working 185 hour weeks getting some construction work finished for a customer". Called him out on it, he was adamant 🤣

• "Was pulling a wheelie on the M4 at midnight, doing over the speed limit, came off but totally landed on my feet" not a single mark on him or his bike.

My MIL was a great one for coming out with stupid comments. One time she pointed out that if they'd moved to a retirement home (as we had occasionally suggested) that would have finished them off! This was because a friend of theirs had died, and they had moved to retirement home the previous year 🤷

I had similar working in McDonald's whilst at University. I was doing a degree in Biochemistry. A customer felt the need to berate me for only having one star on my name badge. Apparently, Id never amount to anything. I do wonder what has happened in these peoples lives that makes them feel like they should judge/belittle complete strangers.

On the early train a few years ago, working on my laptop, when a man seated opposite (in an otherwise empty carriage) told me that people like me were the reason he'd never got married, as my typing was 'aggressive'.
I still boggle at it now!

When does she go back = to school to give you a break, I would have thought

At the local jewellers asking to have my engagement ring cleaned. Man behind counter said “ Have you been in a brawl or bare knuckle fight because the ring is bent out of shape!”
It really wasn’t.

Oh god, mil on hearing diabetic dh missed jam. “Don’t you buy him sugar free jam <faux outrage, she didn’t give a shit about dh>?”

Long convo of no because it doesn’t exist followed by her insistence Sainsbury’s make it and she has some. Triumphant stomp to the kitchen & return, with reading glasses, “oh, reduced sugar! Well it’s still lower in sugar!”

Still too high for a diabetic to have regularly though.

We had that at least 3 times. It never got less tiresome. She’s still thick as mince from what I hear trying to get dn to give a ebf newborn tap water 🤦🏻‍♀️

I used to tell dh if I ever wanted to bump him off I’d fill the fridge with “sugar free” jam 🤣

Dh had other treats though.

That as a woman, I have “never really achieved anything” because I haven’t had children.
Also, chatting to an American in New York. He asked if we had traveled to the US “via the bridge”? What bridge? He thought there was a massive bridge that connected the US and the UK……

Tate St Ives a few years ago, two women, fifties, moved like dancers,
dressed funkily, DFL’s,
member showing card, friend in pink converse, harem pants, wanders off
toward staircase,
elderly woman receptionist loudly enquires of member - is your
Mother alright going up the stairs ?

I have had plenty of patients ask me that as well!

I volunteer in a second hand bookshop. Criticised by a customer for our prices -£1 or £2 - because we were ‘discouraging reading’. I was, for once, lost for words.

did you ask him what colour was the boathouse at Hereford ?

Are you sure he did not mean 120km per hour which is 70mph. Which is still too fast for towing anyway.

This…. Why are we bending over backwards for ridiculous people. If she wasn’t harping on about never eating to all and sundry the op would never have commented. She was justifiably surprised to see her eating as apparently she can’t eat….

Ooh that's a good rejoinder. Except I have no idea!

Ooh that's a good rejoinder. Of course, it's..er...blue?

Around 10 years ago (a few years after being widowed) when my mother was healthy and mentally fit, we thought it would be a good idea to drive to to the South of France. She insisted that foreigners smelled because they ate foreign food. Had us load tins and dried food into the back of the car. She would not eat anywhere and always ate cold food out of tins back at the hotel. It was the first time I spent time with her after childhood and she came up with some gems:
A) aren’t you a little sad you have mongrels (my husband was South Asian), didn’t you want to have blond children like your sister?
B) you are giving them bad habits. Why are you getting them used to foreign food?
C) Your whole family were really sad that you were married to a foreigner. Now that you have done that a decent Englishman won’t want to touch you(I had been widowed for little over a year).
D) Why do foreigners eat cold food?
E) Why do foreigners eat food that hurts them?
F) it is too hot abroad which is why foreigners want to come to England.
G) Foreigners should all rejoice at the benefits of the commonwealth. (I still don’t know what this means).
H) he only married you for your passport (about my husband who was a doctor and was from a family of doctors who for 2 generations worked in the NHS).
we have loads of such stuff over the last several years which people have said was due to Alzheimer’s, but I didn’t know this caused racism.

The vast majority of scientist 96% believe that climate change is caused by human activity. It is not a belief like a religion but a scientific assumption based peer reviewed interpretation of data and modelling based on this data that has been subject to scrutiny from the wider scientific community. There are some outliers who believe solar activity, natural cycles, God to punish non-gender specific bathrooms etc but they have not had proper peer reviewed scrutiny and had dubious opaque funding.

the fact there is a majority of scientists that agree to manmade climate change seems to point to the fact that this is more likely than not.

A GP receptionist told me not to make eye contact with anyone who has an eye infection, that's how you catch it.

I grew up in Belfast but went to university in England. An English boy in my halls in first year once very earnestly sat me down, clearly needing to get something off his chest and said "you know...because my mum is Irish and...you know...you do hear stories..."

(I thought he was going to ask me if I was in the IRA or something at this point)

He continued; "...so, have you ever seen a leprechaun"?

I am not even joking. It sounds so ridiculous that it is made up, but sadly I am not!

3 boys, so wanted a girl, had another boy -
elderly neighbour commiserating,
“four strongsons to carry your coffin “