What's the funniest misunderstanding you've had?

[CuriousLadyBird]

Do you have a funny story about a misunderstanding where it be you've misunderstood something or another person has misunderstood you?

I'm just starting this thread because I thought about something that happened last week and giggled to myself.

I'm currently under the community mental health team as my mental health is not where I want it to be but next year I've been accepted on to a mental health nursing course and can start If my mental health is stable enough (just a bit of background).

So I had a home visit off someone from the CMHT and we were chatting and discussing my future etc and they asked what my goal was and I said "I think my long term goal is to be sitting where you are" and I meant like becoming qualified as a mental health nurse and helping people but this person must not have understood what I meant and said "Well you live here so you can sit here anytime you want".

I was a bit like what? But didn't say anything and carried on with the conversation so I don't know, I think maybe this person thinks my long term goal is to sit on the other side of the sofa (and I appreciate people with other mental health conditions may have issues sitting in certain places so maybe that's where we've got mixed up) but thinking back to it has really made me giggle.

Next time they come I might sit on that side of the sofa and they'll think I've reached my long term goal

God that made me laugh, how dim must they be?!

I think maybe their brain just didn't engage haha I bet they cringe when they think about it now

Not me but a work colleague - he had to present at a conference so signed up for an evening course for public speaking. He went along and joined the others but when the "course" started it became obvious he was in an alcoholics anonymous meeting. He got up and said he'd got the wrong room, but he said he could tell that people didn't believe him and thought he was just not ready to commit yet - and gave him pitying and knowing looks as he left.

Had a check of some dental work…..was laying down in the chair with the special glasses on……once finished the dentist held out his hand and I shook it (ha ha ha I am laughing already), he just wanted the glasses back 🤣

A former colleague of mine had copied down a curry recipe. When making it she’d written down 3/4 of pint of water but mistead it and added 3-4 pints of water. Couldn’t understand why it was so bland.

OP that’s v funny - you have got to sit there next time she comes round.

My DH and I had booked a holiday in Croatia. A friend asked where we were going on holiday, and I said. ‘Oh, DH and I are going to Split.’ Very upbeat. Friend reacted most oddly until I realised she thought I had told her we were splitting up, not going to Split, a city in Croatia!

I would have possibly thought that with autism I don't always remember all of the turns of phrase etc I do what the MH nurse did loads!

I told my friend that a man we both knew from dog walking, Colin, had died.
We had a chat about how he'd been in poor health for a while, how lovely he was, how we hoped his wife was okay etc.

My friend went and bought a 'Thinking of You' card for his widow. As she was posting it through the letter box, Colin opened the door. She blurted out "I thought you were dead" and handed him the sympathy card 😳

It turned out there are two Colins from dog walking - both the same age, both with failing health, both lovely men. We both only know/knew one of the Colins. So when I told her that Colin had died, I didn't feel the need to clarify which one (because I thought there was only one), and she didn't feel the need to check which one (because she thought there was only one).

Ooops.

When my niece was young, DH asked his brother what we could buy her for Christmas, as we have no children ourselves so have no idea what to buy.

DH was bewildered by the reply: "Oh just get her some Frozen stuff, she's only just got interested in that and she loves it!". DH was imagining buying her bags of chips, frozen peas etc 😂

@PronounWanker omg 😱 that is funny and yet… shouldn’t be.

lol thanks these are making me laugh 😂

My DS moving from one shared house to another. DH was travelling up to help him. We only had a small car so I messaged DS that Dad had hired a mini people mover to shift his stuff. For some reason DS thought this meant DH was employing a person with dwarfism to help with the move and couldn't understand why he wouldn't employ someone taller. He was most surprised when DH turned up on his own in a hired SUV.

Split 🤣

Friend was upset at having accidentally hit a deer. I asked if it was dark, and she replied I don’t know I couldn’t see it !!! I meant was it night time !!!

A relative had their obituary printed in the magazine of their profession’s chartered institute. He was, and still is, alive and well.

Some of these are fantastic OP yours really made me smile, love the one about Split too!

The only one that comes to mind for me was the time that one Christmas my sister and I had just finished watching Star Wars and my mum came in to us having a conversation about Chewbacca. She listened for a while looking more and more perplexed until she said 'but isn't he still in that dreadful coma?'

She thought we'd said Schumacher...

Mine are language/culture related. DH and I come from Irish families but now live in the U.K.

I once told a mutual friend that MIL went out most weekend nights because she loved the "craic'. An Irish word roughly meaning to have a good time in the company of others. However as it's pronounced CRACK my English colleague thought my lovely respectable Irish granny of a MIL was doing crack cocaine. She was so shocked she cried!

on another occasion we mentioned to DS's girlfriend who was with us on a Ireland that we were going to 'Packies Bar' Packie being a common abbreviation for Patrick. She went very quiet and later said to my son that she hadn't realised we were racist and didn't we know how offensive the P word was!c

This is too cute and funny! X

I used to work in a hospital and was new to the job when I was asked to call Ivy Hugh in from the waiting room for her procedure. After calling the name multiple times and getting no answer, I went back to my colleague and said Ivy Hugh isn't answering. Turns out the procedure was called an IVU and my colleague had asked me to call 'the IVU'

Not me but an ex friend of mine, she,worked on a butchers market stall, one day a notice came over the tannoy saying "congratulations to xxxx ( another stall holder) on his forthcoming wedding"
She turned to her boss and said "is it his fourth wedding?!?!"
Another time she wanted a new coat fir her 7 year old daughter, she went to the coat stall next door and daughter was at school so didn't know which size to get ( dc was very overweight) so as the owners knew her the wife said " just take both and bring back whichever doesn't fit and pay for the one you're keeping" the husband then pipes in "or you could just bring us a joint" in a joking way
She replied "I don't smoke that stuff!"
I had to remind her that he probably meant a joint of meat from the butchers stall you work at?

When I was a kid my Mum happily told me we were having Nan over for dinner. I burst into tears, I didn't want to eat Nan for dinner

I had a boss who was right into amateur dramatics. We didn’t really know one another particularly well and had never spoken about about anything apart from work, but the theatrical stuff was well known in the office and one day his secretary told me he was pissed off cos he was rehearsing Shirley Valentine and the lead had pulled out through ill-health. A few weeks afterwards we were awkwardly sitting waiting for something work-related to begin and I said ‘so, you found a new Shirley yet?’ and he went all weird like I’d been really inappropriate. Turns out his long-term girlfriend was also called Shirley …and they’d just split up. His fault more than mine for jumping to bizarre conclusions but I still cringe 😬

I had a lovely lodger from Austria one summer who had come to do temp work at a local theme park . Her English was mostly pretty good. She was a university student but had never lived away from home before and was enormously positive and enthusiastic about everything and was seizing every opportunity for new experiences with both hands.
I came back after a few days away and asked if she had had a good weekend. She said, ‘Yes, I tried cocaine!’
I was like ‘omg Tina, are you sure that was a good idea?’ 😮
It turned out she had actually said, ‘I tried cooking.’

Oh that's me! I'm very literal. I would have thought you meant sit on the other side too!

My very first job was as a care worker in the community. I was still a teenager and very shy. When one of my colleagues went on holiday I was asked to cover one of her clients for the week. This woman misheard me when I told her my name and thought I'd said it was Patricia. I was too embarrassed to correct her so just I went with it because I was only going to be there for a week...

Except my colleague left a month later and they gave me this client permanently. She continued to call me Patricia. Her family called me Patricia. Her neighbours called me Patricia. I got Christmas and birthday cards from her with "To Patricia..." This went on for a terribly long time. I still feel mortified thinking about it.

I was in Spain at a spa in a dark immersion pool with seats when a couple came in and starting getting really frisky. I and others left, but I was a bit annoyed so when the (Spanish) spa attendant asked if everything was okay I said "no - there are people having sex in the pool!"

About 30 minutes later I see a man stealth-creeping in there with a mask and a spray gun, looking like a zombie beekeeper. My whinge had been translated as "insects in the pool"....

Hopefully it scared the bejesus out of frisky couple.