Foot in Mouth Disease: When We Can’t Help Saying the Wrong Thing
A curious anatomical anomaly of the human body is, despite the obvious physical difficulties, all of us are capable of putting our feet in our mouths.
No, I don’t mean in a trained yogi, flexible-beyond-belief sort of way.
I mean eyes and mouth wide open and cramming one’s entire foot ankle-deep in one’s own mouth.
Sadly, there is no vaccine making one immune to this affliction. All of us are susceptible to it at any time in which we find ourselves in social situations.
For whatever reason, I seem more prone to this than most. There have been times where I’ve stuck my foot so far in my mouth, I’ve tickled my uvula with my big toe.
Yes, it is very unpleasant.
What’s worse is, though everyone does it, no one does it on purpose. Like browning one’s trousers due to a stomach flu or after consuming an entire box of Kashi Go Lean Crunch in a single sitting, it’s one of those unfortunate things that just happens…and we can’t stop it coming out.
All we can do is attempt to clean up and make necessary apologies to any injured parties.
In hopes of commiserating with you, or at least providing you with a good laugh, the following are some examples of how badly I’ve stepped in it.
My first semester of grad school, I went to a pot luck lunch for new students. It wasn’t just the people in my cohort, mind you. There were people there from across all disciplines.
I went in hopes of meeting — and making a good impression on — my fellow grad students and the teachers with whom I’d work.
No one from the English Department was there, however.
And though I wanted to bail, I felt it would have been rude to have collected the pan of marinated steak strips I’d made and left. Plus, being a fat guy, I’m guessing people would have seen that and leapt to…unflattering conclusions.
So I stayed and I ended up talking to a girl in her early twenties who was a post-bac pre-med, and a woman in her late thirties who was studying public policy.
During the conversation, the public policy student mentioned something about difficulty finding work/school/life balance, and that she wasn’t sure if her current academic path was the one she wanted.
Looking at the table with the food on it, I saw my pan of steak strips was empty, so I took the next lull in the conversation as my opportunity to leave.
“Well, good luck with your studies this semester,” I said to both ladies.
“You, too,” the public policy student said.
If I had left it at that, everything would have been fine.
I don’t know what spurred me to continue speaking. God knows I hadn’t meant to add anything else to the conversation.
Yet…
As I unlatched my brakes to roll away, after having wished this person luck, and her retuning the sentiment, I heard the following come out of my mouth as I looked her dead in the eyes.
“You seem like you’ll need it.”
Luck, that is.
I don’t know why I said that. I’d like to think I meant well, that I was being empathetic to her earlier comments about balancing the things in her life which competed for her time and energy.
I don’t think that came across, however, as it became instantly apparent that I had said the wrong thing.
She looked at me as if I’d just stood up and wiggled my bare ass at her.
“Do I?” she asked in a tone that full well expressed how annoyed she was at my comment.
I didn’t respond. I just collected my empty pan and wheeled my ass out of there as quickly as I could.
One semester, I worked as a teacher’s assistant for one of my favorite professors. The class: Literature and Social Justice.
It was a great class in which we examined essays, political documents, short stories and muckraking novels which were written with the intention of affecting social change.
Topics ranged from immigration to legislation, from gender identity to human sexuality.
Oh, and I was the only male student in class.
One particular essay led to a rigorous and heated class discussion. The author of the essay — a woman and a rape survivor — had advised any women reading her essay not to go out at night unless they plan on having sex. Her reasoning behind this was that men are genetically/biologically predisposed to be rapists.
As the class was discussing this section of the essay, one by one, I start seeing all the women in the classroom turn and look at me like my Y-chromosome and I were somehow responsible for all the sexual assaults that had ever occurred.
It was exceedingly uncomfortable.
This, paired with my rapidly growing anxiety, are likely what led to me blurting out, “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m too crippled to rape anyone!”
Which is a true statement. Anyone who wants to escape from me for any reason needs only to find a single stair or high curb, and I’m more foiled than a Bond villain.
However, this did not alleviate the tension in the room, nor did it cause anyone to avert their gaze.
Instead, a new conversation began — one about how much of an insensitive prick I was, about how I was representative of cis-gendered white male privilege, and, of course, the patriarchy.
If could have dematerialized out of existence, I would have.
One of the more frustrating elements of being prone to putting one’s foot in one’s mouth is being completely oblivious to the fact that you’re about to do so. This sucks because, in most cases, you realize you’ve really stepped in it, but don’t know why. Or, you remain unaware that you’ve just taken a massive bite of foot-sandwich and find out a week later that you royally pissed someone off without meaning to.
The most memorable instance of this happened to me when I was a kid. I was maybe 11 or 12 when a new family moved in across the street. I soon became friends with the three kids: Ryan (who you may remember from “That Time I Farted in Church…and Everyone Heard It”), Jen, and Matt.
One afternoon, the four of us were hanging out at their house just being goofy kids.
In the course of screwing around, I saw a tube of Cortizone 10 laying on an end table. At the time, they were running these ads on TV with some Chuck Woolery-sounding motherfucker extoling the virtues of said cream’s ability to treat rashes, psoriasis, and eczema.
I don’t remember what prompted it, but in an attempt to be funny, I held up the tube of cream and quoted the commercial, saying in my best TV announcer voice, “It gets under the rash!”
Ryan and Matt laugher their asses off.
Jen, on the other hand, turned bright red. Scowling like an old lady who’s just been told the pet store has run out of her cat’s favorite flavor of Fancy Feast (yes, that actually happened to me when I was working at a corporately owned pet store), Jen rushed over and punched me in the balls as hard as she could. She then ran over and sat sulking under the dining room table.
Ryan and Matt were now crying, they were laughing so hard.
Meanwhile, I was on the floor writhing in pain and feeling like my lower intestines had just jumped into my throat.
What hurt…well, a distant second to the pain in my lower male anatomy, was that I had no idea what I had done to illicit such a response.
Once Ryan stopped laughing, oh, a good ten minutes later, he explained to me that Jen had to use the Cortizone cream for a rash she’d had at the base of her hairline, right above the back of her neck. It was hidden under her long blonde hair, and I had no idea it was there, nor did I know she was using the cream to treat it. And even though it wasn’t visible unless you really looked for it, she was extremely self-conscious about it.
I’d had no idea.
Also, I was an idiot kid. Cut me some slack.
As the previous story illustrates, attempting to be funny is one of the biggest social pitfalls into which we can stumble. Sometimes, our desire to get a laugh is so strong that, in the moment, all rational thought goes out the window and we think, “Surely that suspiciously thin layer of twigs and leaves isn’t hiding a ten-foot-deep pit of poisonous snakes and wooden spikes.”
So we stride forth, filled with the false confidence of a dozen drunken frat boys, self-assured that we’re not about to plummet to our metaphorical death.
In my second year of grad school I had two amazing roommates, Jordi and Kenneth.
They were both pre-med students, massive sports fans, and shared the same side of the apartment. They soon developed an epic-level bromance.
Why did I bring any of that up?
We threw a big Super Bowl party in 2015. The Patriots were playing the Seahawks, and Jordi is a die-hard Seattle Seahawks fan (don’t worry, he has lots of redeeming qualities in spite of his choice of NFL teams, I promise). We invited about two dozen friends over to watch the game.
During the course of the game, Jordi and Kenneth jumped up to celebrate a big play by Seattle. Rather than high five, as is customary when engaging in the communal viewing of professional sports, they did something I wouldn’t have seen coming if it had had headlights and a horn that played “La Cucaracha.”
They reached out and gently touched the tips of their pinky fingers together.
Of course, this breech in sports viewing etiquette needed to be pointed out and, at the very least, moderately mocked. And since no one else was stepping up to the proverbial plate, I took it upon myself to do so.
I wish I hadn’t.
I looked at both of them with a bewildered grin and said, “Wow, guys. That was really homoerotic.”
They both laughed.
However, my friend Will, who happens to be a gay man, looked at me with disgust and just said, “Dude…” in a tone that informed by beyond doubt how shitty of a thing that was to say.
The giant middle finger he gave me was also unmistakable.
I didn’t mean my attempt at a joke to be homophobic, insensitive, and derisive of an entire section of people…but it was.
I immediately apologized to Will, stating that I just wasn’t thinking.
He agree I wasn’t. And that I was being a jerk.
I agreed.
Usually this is the part where I suggest a solution or provide some kind of positive takeaway message.
In this rare instance, I got nothing.
I know there will be future incidents where I will open my mouth and insert my foot like it’s a six-foot-long party sub.
Moreover, you’ll do it at some point as well.
In the 1908’s, G.I. Joe taught us that “Knowing is half the battle.” Unfortunately, this is a battle you’re occasionally going to lose despite your best intentions, forethought, and well-meaning.
And when it happens, you’ll have to make as graceful a retreat as you can.
But hey, at least it’ll make for a funny story someday.
If you liked this story and/or my writing, sign up for my email list for weekly updates on new stories, upcoming features, and cool news. I promise not to overfill your inbox like my own mouth when I say something incredibly stupid.
