Foot Lives in Mouth Disease

Like it?   I just made it up.

It’s the name for something of which I’m frequently guilty.  Certain people have absolutely no filter: whatever they think immediately comes out of their mouth.  I lived like this for many years but after great effort, I manag to only say every other thing that occurs to me.

But I have refined this even further.  I never set out to insult or hurt anyone - it just seems to happen.  And it seems to happen inadvertently.  I will come up with something hilarious and immediately start spewing.  Only later do I find out that something I said was inadvertently upsetting to someone in the vicinity.

The genuine oddity here is that I have no knowledge that what I say will upset or offend.  There’s no possible way I can know this.  It’s almost like extrasensory upsetting: I pick up a topic from the ether that bothers someone but I don’t know it.

We have a consultant at work today.  I’ve seen him here before; he seems to be pretty nice.  I made a joke about the damn longhairs in the room (I have a pony tail too) and we laughed.  He said something about not hearing me and I answered that my earphones from my iPod ruined my hearing (in an exaggerated New England accent).  When he answered back, it turned out he has a New England accent.    I never talked to the guy before - how am I supposed to know if he has an accent or not?  Fortunately we all laughed.

I’m the modern version of the guy standing in front of a group making horrible jokes about the boss (while he’s walking up right behind me).

Many years ago I was at a band rehearsal and the drummer’s father said something about the drummer’s girlfriend being late.  I launched into a stream-of-consciousness rant about how horrible this is, he should have used condoms, now in nine months he’ll have a little drummer, etc.   Two weeks later he told me she was pregnant.

How the hell was I supposed to know?   :)

I figure if my foot just stays in my mouth, I don’t have to waste any time taking it out or putting it back in.   Of course the other route would be to just shut the #*@( up, but we all know that’s not going to happen…