When to Keep Silent

If I've learned one thing in my life, it's that orange juice and milk don't mix so well. But if I've learned a second, it's that you have got to watch what you say. I try not to say stupid stuff, but sometimes I just end up putting both feet in my mouth and biting down hard.

So try as I might not to, I say stupid stuff. It's generally not intentional, and sometimes it's not overly serious, for example talking about eating meat with a vegetarian (not that I go around talking about meat all the time, mind you, but it is a good way to discover if someone is a vegetarian). I once made a comment about all opera being bad to someone who apparently is a voice student and sings opera. Oops.

But I do have an example that takes the proverbial cake. I was talking on ICQ to a guy I know in California. I don't know him personally as such, we participate in the same online game. I hadn't been talking to him in a while, and he asked me what was new. I must have been in a silly mood, because I told him jokingly that I had just married a French stewardess so she could stay in the country. "That's funny," he replied. "Mine's Swedish."

Now, it happens that in the aforementioned online game, there is a group of Swedes that play, and some of them are the most annoying and disliked players in the game (I myself have been so angry at Swedes in general that I've threatened publicly to destroy IKEA furniture and set fire to Volvos). So naturally I assumed he was just joking back at me.

Only he wasn't. When he started talking about how she wasn't a flight attendant, but was in fact a chef (or was at least going to school to be a chef), that I started to wonder if he was telling the truth. When he used the word "kids" then I knew.

Backpedaling your way out of a conversation like that is mercifully a lot less awkward over ICQ than in person. That doesn't mean I didn't feel like a complete and utter tool when I said "Um, you know when I said I had married a French stewardess. I just made that up to be funny. Oops." He didn't get mad at me, thankfully. So I guess it all worked out okay at my end.

Is there a lesson to be learned here? Obviously there is — know when to shut up. But keep in mind that even if you don't it's probably not the end of the world.