Skip to main content

Mistaken Identity

I have a lot of female friends. I've never actively tried to make this happen, but that's just how it's turned out over the years. Most of the time, I don't think anything about this. I mean, what does it really matter? I can still play basketball or pick up football with the fellas, I don't do anything scandalous, and it's not like it changes my life in any negative ways. Well, most of the time. Every now and again, it makes things hilariously interesting.

See, the big problem is that most people assume that a guy and a girl who are hanging out are romantically involved somehow. One of my oldest friends at work happens to be female, and people have been whispering about us for years. She's engaged and I have dated several other women during the time we've known each other, but that hasn't stopped imaginations from running wild. Heck, I went skydiving with my sister-in-law, and the instructor assumed that she was my girlfriend. Like I said, people make a lot of assumptions.

I've actually gotten used to this, that's just how it goes. There's nothing I can do about it, and it gets old having to correct people. Every now and then, though, it gets especially interesting. I visited a (female) friend of mine in Phoenix on the way to the Grand Canyon once, and we both ended up laughing. She was working as an actress at the time, so we agreed that she'd get me complimentary tickets to the show, and we'd hang out afterward. It was a good play, and I walked over to the backdoor to wait for her to get out.

Now, this friend of mine had told me that occasionally "back door Johnny's" will camp out back there to hit on the actresses. So, already, I was feeling a little leery about this plan. Still, that's what we'd agreed to, so I headed over. I saw all of the other actors, so I nodded hello, and stood off a little ways away. They'd just got done working, I didn't want to bother them. Besides, I didn't know them, and they were clearly making plans to go do something afterward. I figured it wasn't my place to interject.

Anyhow, my friend got out, and she talked to her fellow actors for a few minutes. I didn't catch much of the conversation, but I did hear:
Friend: "Nah, not tonight. I already made plans, you guys have fun."
Actor #2: "C'mon, it'll be fun."
Actor #3: "Nah, guys, leave her alone, she's hanging out with her friend."
Actor #2: "But ..."
Actor #3: "Dude, she's. Hanging. Out. With. Her FRIEND." (Starts pulling the rest of them away)
Actor #2: "Oh... Oh, oh, oh. Um, okay, g'night."

That whole exchange cracked me up. She caught the implication, too, and we had a good hard laugh about it.

Still, that was nothing compared to the time I visited my friend abroad. She offered to let me crash at her place a few days to save on costs, so the eyebrows were already raised before I even got there. However, this was someone that I'd known a while, and an off-hand comment would seal my doom. See, she was talking to one of her roommates about her love life, and she was complaining that some of the guys she was dating didn't get her. That led to:

Friend: "I swear, there needs to be a School of [Her Name] so that these guys could learn."
Roommate: "Haha, that'd be hilarious."
Friend: "Yup, and as they figured things out, they'd graduate."
Roommate: "Haha. What about that guy who is coming to visit?" (That'd be me)
Friend: "Haha, him? He should be teaching graduate level courses"

What she meant was that I'd known her for so long that I had all sorts of dirt on her. I'd heard her stories and I knew some of her secrets, so it was a fairly accurate description. Still, that is not at all how the room mate took that comment. Instead, the roommate assumed that we were romantically involved, and no amount of saying otherwise would dissuade her. Let's just say that I caught more than one smirk pointed in my direction during my stay.

Like I said, the whole things has led to quite a few laughs. Still, I may have to start wearing a wedding ring or something so that people's imaginations don't go crazy.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From Scratch 2

A few months ago, I tried my hand at making home-made dumplings . It came out all right, and it was definitely passable for a first attempt, but we always said that we should have another go at it. After all, if we liked it all right when we made it with no first-hand experience, it should come out even better after having at least one rep under our belt, right? We found out this weekend. First of all, the Mild Wife helped with the dough preparation this time around. I knew to be wary of making the dough too sticky this time around, but because she has more experience with baking, she was able to guide us through the pitfalls. What really surprised me was just how little water you can/should add at a time. We're talking about a tablespoon at a time when you're trying to make a ball of dough. I mean, I knew not to overwater it from previous experience, but it still surprised me to add in that little water at a time. Still, there was a method to this ( including the trusty sanduk...
Post a Comment
Read more

Inside and Outside

As I've mentioned before, the Mild Wife and I invested in a sewing machine during the pandemic. It was the most basic model we could find, but it was good enough for what we needed: to make a few masks. And now, over a year later, I still think that it was a good investment. Interestingly, even with restrictions being lifted a bit, we still find that we need masks. Some stores still require them, and neither of us wants to be in a position where we needed a mask and didn't have one. So, we still have to wear and wash them. And even though we've never run out of clean masks to wear, we did notice that we were close a couple of times. So, I recently broke out the sewing machine to make a few more masks. When we initially invested in supplies, we bought a pack of fabric squares. We figured we weren't going to need super high quality, and having a bunch of squares would give us options in case one of us screwed up (read: me). That also gave us the ability to add a little v...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...
Post a Comment
Read more