It is like: That Moment thread. But with the added feature of being those cringe worthy moments that we all have (though some have lasted a little bit longer than a moment). This is where you tell us something you did recently or in the past, that you find cringe worthy. Or it can be a just a moment or so in time that made you cringe. This should be a fun thread to share those less than glamorous moments in life. So Play Nice or I will not be happy with you...O_O I will start this off, alrighty. Try not to laugh to hard. And lets have fun. My cringe worthy moments: I use to like pop back when I was around 12-13. You know that bad catchy music, like Aqua-Barbie Girl, The Backstreet Boys, and the one time thing Chumbawumba, and on and on. Not too mention that awkward fad of wearing baggy jeans that died out back in like 2001-2 . I was a loser back in high school, from trying to hit on someone Shakespeare style, to having long hair, to being the "scariest guy on campus", cause I listened to Heavy and Death Metal on my Sony discman with 120 decibel headphones, and hardly talked. To having to explain that cymbals are not donuts. Yeah I had to explain to a 16-17 year old individual that Musicians Friend does not sell bronze donuts, cause drummers don't pay large sums for donuts. (Yes I play the drums, and have a 9-piece Pearl Export Series kit ) And finally, I had a legit conversation with a random stranger that Wal-Mart should carry sex toys since they carry everything else. So what are your cringe worthy moments?
Back when I first came to Japan, I was waiting in line at the local convenient store when another gaijin walked in. There were quite a few of us in the neighborhood, but I hadn't met him yet. He said to me something that sounded something like he was clearing his throat because he had a hedgehog in it, and something like: "Ygryah, mnae Smaerk, gtmichya" To which I replied: "Hey, I'm Iain, what's your name?" He looked at me strangely, turned his natural Scottish accent down about 400%, and said (again): "Hey, my name's Mark, good to meet you." D'oh.
When I first came to P.R. I had to deal with a heavy dose of reality as to how not-proficient I was in Spanish (thinking myself fluent), and the realization that my mother swears like a sailor on shore leave. I was at a family gathering at William's family's house and as I was walking into the house with food containers in my hands, the heavy security gate swung closed quickly and hit my elbow in that one spot we all know that causes that horrible spike of electrical pain to shoot down your arm. It's a really heavy gate. I almost dropped everything I was carrying. I yelled out "Me cago en la hostia!" I come from a secular home where religion was simply absent as a thing. The word hostia - which I had heard my mother yell out countless times in the phrase I had yelled - was just an empty sound to me, like caramba or coño. It didn't really mean anything as an explicative. William's family was dumbstruck. Everyone's eyes as big as quarters. William later explained to me that what I had said was "I shit on the host!", the host being the eucharist, the bread that is meant to be Christ's body in the ceremony of mass. Not a cool thing to yell out in a family gathering where the father is a deacon and everyone has a roll in the church.
Yeah, it was the worst. Me cago en [fill in the blank] is a common explicative used by latinos. You can fill in the blank with almost anything. As a culture we aren't prudish about the shit part of the phrase, so had I chosen something non-blasphemous, I would have been in the clear, everyone would have laughed and it would have been funny in that schadenfreude kind of way. You often hear me cago en la madre (I shit on your mother) or me cago en los tomates (I shit on the tomatoes... don't ask me to explain why tomatoes, I have no idea...) But no, I unwittingly picked the grand daddy of all me cago en permutations.
That time when me and the hubby joined the 200km/hour club. There was a line outside the toilet by the time we came out. Other passengers smirking. I wasn't sure whether to cringe or grin. TMW a class mate, drunk, went on a tirade how there would never ever be anything between us because we were class mates. I'm not sure how he thought I was even interested in him 'cause I wasn't. I would've rather taken a nailgun to the knee than dated him, but I didn't have the heart to break his delusion, so I went along with it. Cringey behavior from both of us. TMW my English teacher dragged my drunk ass to bed (This happened on a student cruise and she had to make sure I made it to my cabin). I couldn't look her in the eye the next day. Every moment when I've tried to pretend I'm sober when I'm really not. TMW me and my best friend filmed Matrix fanfic. We didn't own shiny latex or leather or anything, so we made costumes out of bin bags. We were huge Matrix fans back then. A giant teddy bear played Agent Smith. We were about 13 or 14 at the time, though, so I guess it lessens the cringe.
Hahahaha Yes, a "role", not a "roll". Wow.... Just imagine..... "Dude, are you feeling the holy spirit yet?" "Yeah, it's just kicking now. I need some water, and then.... I wanna' go dance."
I'm hoping this just meant depositing you there to sleep it off, and not what my perverted mind filled in the first time 'round.
Is there no possessive in Spanish? As in, my knowledge of French and Italian is suggesting that the literal translation is I shit on the mother...which, I can imagine, has connotations in a Catholic country?
Bin collection day—early morning. I rise naked and peer through the blinds. Bin wagon's only 50 yards up the road and nearing. My bin won't be touched if it's fallen over—to which it has (night raccoons in Manchester methinks), I'll be left with rubbish for another week—damn, council policy you see to leave anything but the most prepared bin. Fluorescent jacketed man nearing too; the bin wagon draws level. He steps over and completely disregards my week's cast offs. So unhelpful; it'd take no effort at all to stand it up. Incensed I throw on dressing gown, leg it downstairs and out the door to confront. He's two houses away by now so I lift my bin to its wheels and chase after him pulling it behind me. Four houses away. "Oi, Oi, you forgot this. Take it!" Dressing gown's come a little bit open. He's not a bin man, just some random on the way to work. Who thinks I'm offering up my man part. V. lucky I didn't get punched.
Nope, there absolutely is possessive in Spanish, but there are instances when we don't make use of it for reasons that have to do with the way the language handles logical assumption. For example, in Spanish it would be very unidiomatic to hear someone say me duele mi brazo (my arm hurts). We say me duele el brazo (the arms hurts). A person would always refer to his or her own body / body-parts in this way. We say this because who else's arm other than your own is capable of biofeedback to your brain? That example is a standard, in that it's always said that way. The same thing happens in conversation with things that clearly can belong to anyone, but once ownership is logically established, we tend to revert to just using simple el/la instead. All languages use this form of logical assumption to one degree or another, but Spanish uses it to a great degree, as exemplified by Spanish being a pro-drop language where subject pronouns are almost never actually said or written since the verb carries all the information already as to the who of the action. So, in the case of me cago en la madre, it's understood that what is being said is just your mother, not The Mother, mostly because la madre is used in so many different curses (you can use it just by itself, even) that we almost never call Christ's mother that. She is la virgen. It can backfire at times, bth. Across the history of Spanish culture, children have had to deal with the confusing situation of one's own mother saying maldita sea la madre (damned be your mother). The logical conundrum of your own mother damning herself as a curse of anger at you leaves you in a fix because on the one hand the irony is funny and on the other hand she's standing there with a sandal in her grip, ready to deploy, so heaven help you if you laugh.
As a kinda/sorta linguist, I approve this message (although I know as little Spanish as is possible due to a very whitebread upbringing)
