Have you ever found yourself thinking: OMG! Did I Say That?

When asked her opinion on punctuality, an applicant for an office job assured me she thought it was extremely important. “I use periods, commas, and question marks all the time,” she said.

— Mel Roberts
from Reader’s Digest

Sometimes we mis-speak and sometimes we mis-interpret by answering the wrong question and sometimes we simply say exactly the wrong thing.  My mother-in-law’s favorite quote – she was a very misunderstood woman – was:

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said,
but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

And unfortunately, for whatever reason, she was right – people often mis-took her meaning and assumed the worst. My friends were convinced that this dear mother-in-law of mine hated me based upon a comment she’d made at our wedding rehearsal dinner.  But as soon as they told me what she’d said, I KNEW that they’d taken her meaning wrong, that what she really meant when she said “and look what we’re getting” was that she and her husband, parents of 2 sons, were happy to share one of their sons with my parents in return for gaining the daughter they’d always wanted!  You just had to understand her context, that’s all.

Yogi Berra had a similar problem when he said the following:

• Half the lies they tell about me aren’t true.
• I just want to thank everyone who made this day necessary.
• I never said most of the things I said.
• If you come to a fork in the road, take it.
• It gets late early out there.
• It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.
• Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.
• You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.
• You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours.
• You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you.

But Then There’s Foot-in-Mouth Disease

I’m sure you’ve done it too – said exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time and created the perfect storm!  Brandon Keim of Wired.com points out that “It’s one of the more frustrating aspects of human nature: The harder we try not to say or do or think something, the more likely we are to slip — and often at the worst possible time.”  Harvard University psychologist Daniel Wegner explains what he calls “ironic processes”:

This is when we manage to do the worst possible thing, the blunder so outrageous that we think about it in advance and resolve not to let that happen. And then it does. We see a rut coming up in the road ahead and proceed to steer our bike right into it. We make a mental note not to mention a sore point in conversation and then cringe in horror as we blurt out exactly that thing. We carefully cradle the glass of red wine as we cross the room, all the while thinking “don’t spill,” and then juggle it onto the carpet under the gaze of our host.

Normally, our vigilance for such pitfalls helps us avoid them. We steer away from ruts, squelch improper comments, and protect carpets from spills by virtue of our sensitivity to error. Knowing the worst that could happen is essential for control.

But sometimes this sensitivity backfires, becoming part of a perverse psychological process that makes the worst occur. Observers of human psychology have suggested that the mind can indeed generate just such ironic errors. Edgar Allan Poe called this unfortunate feature of mind the “imp of the perverse”…

Ah yes – Beware the “imp of the perverse” who can (and will) torpedo your best intentions!

Still, S**T Happens – What Do You Do Then?

I’m guessing we’ve all had our embarrassing moments when we’ve said something we wished we hadn’t… Conflict resolution innovator Tammy Lenski says that the secret to recovering from such a moment is to:

1. Show you’re self-aware enough to notice your error. Utter a prompt mea culpa.
2. Apologize. Keep it sincere and brief, since dragging it out can actually make matters worse.
3. Use a bit of self-deprecating humor. Think of this step as balancing out the universe’s scales of justice.

She goes on to offer some suggestions for what you might say to recover from your social faux pas:

• Yikes! If I were standing outside myself I’d slap me right now. What was I thinking?
• Have you ever said something that you knew was going to come out wrong, but you couldn’t stop yourself in time? This is one of those moments.
• Gosh, a good fishing rod would be helpful right now (making the motion and sound of reeling in a fish)! Then maybe I’d have a reasonable chance of taking back what I just said so I could get it right.

There ya go – just slap me…

And Then There’s the Just Plain Stupid Stuff

These bloopers can be filed under “Did I really say that?” From non-sequiturs to bad puns, here’s a couple of OP’s lapses:

Nice 2-bedroom home. The owner has noted that there are termites that have done some damage. Selling house ‘as is.’ Don’t Wait. This Wonderful Property Will Not Last Long.

— Clifford Gale II
as quoted in Reader’s Digest

If you are always straightening things, you have OCD. If you are always eating things, you have OBCD.

— Steven Hart

And from Fun-With-Words.com, some malapropisms:

• He had to use a fire distinguisher.
• Dad says the monster is just a pigment of my imagination.
• Isn’t that an expensive pendulum round that man’s neck?
• My sister has extra-century perception.
• “Don’t” is a contraption.

When all is said and done and you’re still feeling foolish, how do you recover from ironic processes, bad puns and malapropisms and plain old bloopers?  You do as my gracious but oft’ misunderstood mother-in-law did: you laugh at yourself!  No sense in getting rattled – it just gets in the way of social niceties. Better to chuckle at your ineptness, apologize if necessary and move on.  AND, should you be in the audience – help smooth things out – change the subject and carry on!

How do you recover when you find yourself thinking: OMG! Did I Say That?