How do you even end up in those kind of situations??
I can't remember anything super juicy, but there was an awkward moment that happened late in the 90's when I was a young teenager.
I usually came home from school a few hours before my parents returned from work. The house is at a rural area, so there weren't any friends to hang out with, so I spent my afternoons at home alone or with my little sister. One afternoon, the phone rang. We still had a landline telephone that the whole family used, so I answered with my whole name, as was the custom. On the other end was a man, who I guessed was my father's acquaintance as he asked if Jussi (=my dad) was at home. I answered that he wasn't, but he didn't hang up. Instead he started talking about my dad and his work and all kinds of things. He seemed like a very social person, and I replied to his questions about my dad and our home the best I could. It was a nice conversation which I enjoyed. He was easy to talk to because of his familiar way of speaking.
At some point the conversation seemed to steer towards the end, and he said something like, "It was very nice talking to you, Jussi talks so much about you." It seemed a bit odd, especially since dad isn't the kind of person to talk much about his personal life, but I thought that maybe dad did talk about me at work, what did I know... He continued, "Who knows, maybe we can meet up sometime, spend the evening together? It would be so nice to finally see what Jussi's wife looks like."
The word "wife" made me freeze. I was old enough to realize that he thought he was having a "friendly-flirty chat" with his work buddy's wife. If the guy had known my parents better, he would've realized from the start that he was talking to his work buddy's underage daughter. You see, my parents have never gotten married, so while me and my little sister have our father's surname, my mom still has her maiden name. So when I introduced myself in the beginning he must've thought I was the Mrs. of the house, and since housewives were still quite common at the time, he didn't question how there was an adult at home so early in the afternoon.
I was so dumbfounded that I didn't have the courage to correct him at that point, because we had been talking for quite a while. I struggled in embarrassment through the rest of the conversation until he hung up. Still to this day I wonder if my voice really sounded so mature that someone would mistake it for a grown-up. I don't know if he ever found out about the mistake -- or my parents!
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Topic: Embarrassing misunderstandings? (Read 2944 times)