There’s seven billion of us and counting, so no pressure if you mistook one human for another. Fortunately most of the time it doesn’t lead to humiliating moments, but in these cases it has!
1. Guess she didn’t know her boyfriend that well…
This is actually kinda funny. So, back in the eighth grade on Valentine’s Day I’m just sitting there at my table chatting with friends, enjoying myself. Suddenly some random girl came up behind me slapped me upside the head, spun me around, and kicked me straight in the balls.
I went down asking why did you do that. She was horrified and very apologetic. She said ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.’ Found out from gossip that her BF dumped her on Valentine’s Day and I looked like her BF from behind. Mistaken identity hurts a lot.
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2. I mean, er, no, musta been someone else…
I was at a wedding for friend. A very high-level corporate CEO I knew said hello to me and introduced me to his wife. Greeting her, I said we had met a couple of weeks earlier at another event. She looked at me strangely. I later realized that the woman I had met previously was not his wife but was a woman he was seeing on the side
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3. A mistake in the night
We were spending the night at my in-laws cabin at the lake. We had a full house, with people sleeping on beds and pallets on the floor. In the middle of the night I had to relieve myself, so without turning on the lights I wove my way past all the beds into the bedroom containing the sole bathroom. I came upon a male figure who was bent over picking up something on the floor.
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Thinking it was my nephew John, I didn’t hesitate to give him a two-handed wedgie – the wedgie to top all wedgies. Then I heard an ooomph and the voice wasn’t John’s, rather I had just given a wedgie to John’s grandfather, my 65-year-old father-in-law. For once in my life, I couldn’t say anything – I was dumbstruck. Even now, 20 years later, my mother-in-law almost loses it when we start talking about the time I gave her husband a wedgie – she laughs until she’s crying, just like she did the night it happened…
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4. Just singing, that’s all!
In college, I had a friend named Victor. Walking across the quad one day, I saw him about 10-15 feet in front of me. I quickened my pace to catch up and started yelling his name. ‘Victor!! Victor!!!’ He didn’t respond so I yelled louder. ‘VICTOOOORRRR.’
The guy turned around, probably wondering who was making all that racket. It wasn’t him. Immediately my brain s–t its pants and I unthinkingly switched my yelling into a song. ‘Victor~ VICTORRRR victorrrr.’ I even looked away, gazing at the sky, to the side– anywhere but him. The guy gave me a funny look, turned back around, and kept walking.
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5. Newlywed life
Soon after I got married my wife and I were spending the weekend at her parent’s house. We played cards with her family until pretty late at night and she left before me to go upstairs to bed. I am trying to be the good son-in-law so I stay to help her mother clean up. I followed along upstairs about 15 minutes later and walked into the spare bedroom where we had slept the night before. I see that my wife is already in bed, but there is enough light to see and she appears to be nude under the sheets. Seems like an invitation to me, so I strip off ALL my clothes (we are newlyweds you know what I have in mind and certain parts of my body are in fact already anticipating and reacting to what I have in mind).
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Just as I am lifting the covers to climb in bed next to her, she rolls over, and it is not my wife but her sister who is home from college. She tells me that unbeknownst to me my wife has moved us to a different bedroom. We laughed about it later, but I am not sure my sister-in-law has ever totally gotten over the sight of me standing there naked with an erection about to jump her in bed.
6. You’re a fake and a phony!
For two days in a row, a ‘census worker’ came to my family’s house twice looking for information. She had no credentials or paperwork and my dad called the police after her most recent visit. She was, in fact, a phony census worker scouting the neighborhood and the police were looking for her.
That same evening, someone pounded on our front door. It’s pretty unusual for anyone to use that door, especially relatively late at night and in the dark. My mom immediately started yelling, ‘Don’t answer it! Don’t answer it!’ My boyfriend and I started running around. My dad comes running, screaming, ‘Get me a baseball bat!’ My boyfriend runs for a baseball bat and I flip on the porch light. It was the next door neighbor with some mis-delivered mail. Also, my boyfriend couldn’t find a baseball bat and came running with an umbrella.
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7. Passing a suckle
A couple of years back, we had a family get together at my grandma’s house. We have quite a large family, and all my aunties and uncles were there. As you can imagine, Arab festivities are pretty hectic.
My aunty received an important phone call. Her son was getting restless, and needed a breastfeed. So she grabbed him hurriedly as she went into the room to take the call and feed her son. Strongly engaged in the conversation at this stage, she unbuckled and began to feed him. He refused to suckle, and began to whine, so she impatiently held him on. After his cries became more persistent she finally looked down. It wasn’t her son.
8. Nothing a super-sociable guy like him can’t handle
Company Christmas Party. End of the night & I’m 5 drinks in. Big group of directors, executives, and higher-ups talking as the lights start to come back on. A little intimidating, but nothing a super-sociable guy like me who’s 5 beers deep can’t handle, right? For the first few minutes everything was great. I’m talking a bit loud, but it’s all in good fun. Suddenly a man walks over who looks oddly familiar. He looks a bit like our director of engineering, except without a mustache. Anyways, I put my hand out and introduce myself. The man looks at me oddly, but shakes my hand back, without introducing himself.
Immediately I know something is wrong, but I can’t put my finger on it. The energy is off. People are looking at me funny. Not knowing what else to do, and too stupid to keep my g-ddamn mouth shut, I drunkenly remark, ‘Nice to meet you. You know, you look so much like George!’ Everyone stares at me in disbelief. I just sort of stood there, not quite sure what the hell was going on. A wave of odd energy washes over me. After what seemed like an eternity, finally another director smiled at me and asked, ‘…Uh huh…and why is that?’
BOOM.
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The moment of truth sets in. It was him. It was George. He shaved his mustache, and idiot me didn’t recognize him to the point where I introduced myself to him. Keep in mind, we had been working together for at least two years at this point. There was some commotion, somebody changed the subject and a natural exit opened up. I exited the scene by calmly wrapping things up and ‘introducing myself’ a second time (you know, to reiterate the fact that I was KIDDING, duh!).
By the time I was done with my orgy of poor decision-making, my face was flushed and my pits were soaked. But I basically made it out of the situation okay. The fact that I was able to play the whole thing off as a joke is a testament to how slick I can be when the pressure is on. Still, to this day I can’t help but wonder how many in that group knew the truth – that I had a major mess-up and barely got away with it.
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9. Could have gone worse…
I had visited with my brother in the Amsterdam Staatsliedenbuurt – a neighbourhood with many immigrants from the Ukraine, Russia, Poland and the Eastern Block – and was standing at a bus stop. I’m tall, with a shaved head, and I wore a fingertip black leather jacket over a Sisters of Mercy T-shirt and jeans.
On the other side of the street, a Mercedes stops and a guy winds down the window and looks me over. When he gets out, I can see obvious prison tattoos peeking from his sleeves. He walks over to me, smiles broadly and begins talking to me in Russian. I blink and tell him in Dutch that I don’t understand him. He looks at me speculatively, looks me over again, and says, ‘Sorry.’ Then turns and walks back to the Mercedes, gets in and drives off.
Then I realise that a Russian ex-convict just confused me with one of his acquaintances. And how I’m lucky that he had positive feelings about this acquaintance. If this acquaintance had screwed him over, I could easily have found myself dying in the gutter with an angry Russian ex-con hovering over me, not even knowing what I was supposed to have done. Safe to say, I was extra wary the next time I visited my brother.
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10. Coulda met Ted
In the late 1990s, I worked on several projects for Turner Broadcasting. On one occasion, this work required a visit to a senior executive on the 14th floor. As I came off the elevator, the receptionist smiled, waved me through and said, ‘Ted is waiting for you.’ I’m sure I looked confused because the receptionist immediately said again, ‘You can head on back, Ted is expecting you.’
At this point, I stopped and told the receptionist that I was actually coming to see another executive. She then stood up and closely inspected me from head to toe. After about 10 seconds, a look of total horror came over her face. ‘Oh my word, you look exactly like Ted’s doctor!’ In hindsight, I wish I would have just kept on walking. Striding into Ted Turner’s office posing as his personal doctor would have been a much better story to tell 15 years later.
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11. Long distance and bad lighting
Once I went to this upscale bar/art gallery/music venue outside of Nashville. At that time, I was carrying on a long distance relationship. We hadn’t seen each other in a month. I arrived late because of traffic; she had texted me a general idea of where she’d be standing. I walked down into a dimly lit basement. After a few minutes, I spotted her. She looked great. I carved a path through the dense sea of people, walked up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist, kissed her neck and whispered into her ear, ‘man, what a sweet ass.’
My lips sensed the mistake before my synapses could fire off the message.
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My girlfriend—I mean random woman I’d just molested—turned around, a look of shock and disgust. Quickly, there were two ‘what the f’s,’ in rapid succession, one from the lady I had just violated, the other inaudible but it was easy to read on the lips of her boyfriend.
There was a brief intermission, everyone bought more drinks or used the restroom. The ladies boyfriend exited one of the stalls while I washed my hands. I profusely apologize about the earlier incident, which elicited a firm, F you…you piece of s–t.’ I mentioned the similarities between my girlfriend and his.
Except, it wasn’t true. Later, when I saw her in the light, she looked nothing, nothing at all like my girlfriend from the front and I had to admit not much from behind either. If there is a lesson in any of this, a lesson for all the kids out there, it’s this: don’t grope women in dimly lit basements under the influence of marijuana and alcohol unless you’re more than 90% sure it’s your girlfriend. Results may vary.
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12. The most embarrassing moment of his life to date!
Oh boy!! I still remember that incident. It has been the most embarrassing moment of my life till date. So, one fine day a friend of mine and I were walking out of Pizza hut after a sumptuous lunch. I was walking slightly ahead of him. Once we were out of the restaurant, I told him, ‘Man did you see that chick in a red top, back there. Boy oh boy was she hot.’
After not getting a reply the next moment I turned around to see that the same girl was walking behind me with her friends and my friend was walking right behind them, trying to suppress his laughter. I still cannot forget the expression that girl gave and the embarrassment I felt. Sighing and shaking head slowly.
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13. Not Arnie’s wife
My sister, her husband and a visiting friend, Arnie, went out one evening. I babysat their kids at my sister’s home. Arnie’s wife came over to wait for them to return. She eventually went to the guest room to sleep and I curled up facing the back of the couch.
When I awoke, Arnie was spooned against my back, thinking I was his wife! I was a very shy 13 yr. old. WTF do I do? My brother-in-law rescued me. He laughed, told Arnie he was spooning with the babysitter. Arnie sprang away. Went to find his wife. I pretended that I never woke up.
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14. Who is that guy?
A number of years ago, I was in Las Vegas for a convention. I’d driven up from Los Angeles and, since I had my car in town, offered to pick up some associates who were flying into Vegas from Prague at the airport. I pulled up to the curbside passenger pickup area and saw five of them standing there, waiting for me. I’d known Don and John for a few years, so we all said our hellos; Tommy and Yves were two of their younger coworkers whom I’d corresponded with, but never met in person, so it was good to finally meet them face to face. There was another younger guy with them who I’d not met, but figured he was a newer employee I’d get to know at some point. We all said our hellos, loaded up their luggage, got into the Suburban, and made our way to their hotels – they were split up between a couple of the hotels on the Strip.
Due to traffic, the drive was actually taking a while. Don, John and I talked shop along the way, with the other guys not saying much and just focusing on the sights (plus I knew many of their younger employees spoke little to no English). At one point, I just wanted to confirm their hotels with Don, who was sitting in the passenger seat next to me. ‘Tommy and I are at Flamingo. John and Yves are at Treasure Island,’ he said.
‘And the other guy?’ I asked.
‘I have no idea who that is…’ Don mentioned. Well… s–t. Neither did I. I made eye contact with the other guy in the rearview mirror and simply asked, ‘Do you have any idea who we are?’
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‘I have no clue who any of you are,’ he sheepishly confessed.
It turns out he was just some guy standing next to the group of people I was picking up at the airport, waiting for his ride. When I stopped in front of them at the curb, I just assumed he was with my group so introduced myself to him. He was waiting for a ride from someone he’d never met before, and so figured – given the way I introduced myself to him – I was the person picking him up. At some point during our drive he figured out he was in the wrong vehicle with the wrong people, but decided he’d just ride it out and get a taxi from the first hotel we stopped at. The guys I meant to pick up just assumed he was someone I knew (though probably found it odd I didn’t bother introducing them to him).
I think we all ended up feeling like we’d just been through the adult version of running up to your parents legs in a crowd and grabbing them, only to look up and realize you’d latched on to some stranger. Nonetheless, I offered to drop him off at his hotel and that was that.
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15. Professionalism….and confidence! Somehow he did it.
I lived in a small town at the time, and it was a busy Friday night. It wasn’t often that you saw someone new, but it was summer, and more people were coming to spend their summer there. I was conducting interviews the following week to open a restaurant, and it was my last weekend out before the craziness that is opening a restaurant. I saw someone who I thought was my friend who I haven’t seen in a few weeks. She was talking to some other girls. I snuck up, put my arm around her, and greeted her. Only it wasn’t her… I quickly stuttered, ‘Oh my god, you’re not Shannon… I’m so sorry… It’s the haircut… you guys have the same haircut.’ She replied, ‘Yeah, it’s ok, I guess it is a popular haircut.’
‘Sorry ladies, my apologies … Ya know … small town … don’t see a lot of new faces often. Enjoy the night!’ Not really too embarrassing except for the fact that this girl walks in for an interview on my mass interview day. ‘So … any chance you were out at the bar on Friday night?’
‘Uhm, yes … If you saw an Asian guy on Friday night in this town then it was me … what did I do?’
‘You came up to me and thought I was your friend, remember? The haircut!’
‘Oh … yeah … sorry about that …’
Luckily, she thought it was cute, and funny … and somehow I still managed to pull off professionalism, and confidence. I don’t know how seriously you can take the boss hiring you if something like that happened.
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