I Feel Like Swallowing Myself

Recently, I offended a blogger. Judging by the depressing mood of her entries, its obvious she’s going through a hard time after a breakup. I’ve never met this blogger. In fact, I don’t even know who she is. I was just concerned that she treated herself unhealthily to get through it. So, smart Kenny left a comment on one of entries. I wrote “Its just a break up. Its not the end of the world.”
She shut down her blog the next day.
Its not the first time I offended someone I barely even knew. I have this stupid habit of saying something too honest and too frank straight out of my mouth, most of the time without thinking. Then straight after I said it, I regreted immediately. I just wanted to curl myself up into a ball, lock myself away and throw away the key.

I’m interested to know if any of you have a similar experience. Have you or someone you know said something that you immediately regret the second after it came out of your mouth? Something that makes you want to swallow yourself up. If you have, comment, or blog an entry on it. 🙂 If not, gee… thanks for making me feel bad as I am already.

Swan
When I was 15, I used to work at a local supermarket. As it was the festive season, my working hours stretch from 8:30am to 12am. By midnight, I was exhausted. I saw a middle aged man walked into the store. He wanted to buy a bag of rice, but he couldn’t make up his mind which bag of rice to purchase. So I watched him as he picked up a bag of rice, placed it on the electric scales, check the weight, put it back, picked up another bag of rice, and repeat the process. It was interesting watching him so determined to find the bag with the highest net weight. So I said to him jokingly, “Come on… there can’t be that much difference in the weight anyway.”
He calmly put that bag of rice back. Then he came up to me and he just exploded. “SO WHAT? WHAT’S WRONG WITH WHAT I’M DOING? I’M JUST MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS!” And with that, he stormed out of the store whilst I was standing there red-faced. I felt like shit for the rest of the week.
Then there’s another incident when I was 16. I was invited by Jasmine, a friend of Wendy to attend her birthday party. I have heard a lot about Wendy’s group of friends, so I was quite eager to meet them all, especially a guy called Michael who happened to be the birthday girl’s crush at the time. So there we were, 15-20 of us sitting around in a circle introducing ourselves, and I asked which one is Michael. Apart from me, there were only two other guys at the party. One was slouching on the sofa, hands in pocket and a cap over his head. The other had a shaved head, skinny physique and squatting on the floor in a gorilla-like pose. I pointed to the latter and asked “Is he Michael?”. Michael smiled, and the birthday girl said “Not bad…. you’re correct, but how did you guess?”. Without thinking I replied jokingly, “Well that was easy. Michael sounded like ‘Monkey’, and he looked like a monkey so I guessed it must be him.”
Monkey
There was silence for 5 seconds, but it felt like a week to me. I immediately knew I said something wrong and I just wanted to swallow myself up and vanish from the face of the Earth. Obviously Michael wasn’t happy, the birthday girl wasn’t happy, and I felt like an outcast for the rest of the evening. We met a week later for dimsum and Michael still wasn’t talking to me. I felt like crap.
Since then I tried to watch my speech. Sometimes I just can’t help myself. I wanted to joke around sometimes, but people take me a bit too seriously and I ended up offending people I barely knew.
So if anyone of you are reading this, especially Michelle, please accept my apologies. My brain went on vacation sometimes and my mouth started to act on its own. I am sorry.

25 Replies to “I Feel Like Swallowing Myself”

  1. A message for you from Michelle,
    “anyway, tell kenny that all is forgiven. I over reacted and I think it was aggravated by the fact that when I read his comment I was in a pretty horrible mood.”
    But can I see you try swallowing you anyway? that would provide entertainment for a few days at least.

  2. I have been in that same situation all my life. Everytime I opened my mouth, almost always I wished I hadn’t. No matter what sort of situation I was in – with family, friends – it was always the same. It got to the point where I forced myself to have no opinions so I wouldn’t have anything to say at all.
    But you know, being frank and honest is better than not saying anything at all. At least you are heard, and some day you will meet the people who appreciate that honesty, the no-nonsense, no-frill sort. Who wants to be friends with those who don’t understand you anyway?
    Don’t be like me, got nothing to say, end up being drowned out by the noise. ‘Til this day, I don’t think I’ve ever gave out my opinion on anything. (Unless it’s anonymous, like this comment.) Tee hee.
    Don’t feel bad. It happens to the best of us.

  3. LOL. no worried kenny, owez say d wrong tings 8 d wrong moments – evn in front of my ‘elders’. mum n dad din quite like how str8fwd i sumtimes was. but i do admire u 4 bein able 2 admit o tis so publicly. *hugs* u’r a good guy, kenny. dun b so hard on urslf.

  4. Kimm – I shall give you a live performance next time we meet. 🙂 Thanks for relaying the message to Michelle anyway.
    Hsin – I dunno… I think some people know that some things are true, but they don’t want to hear people say it, like the ‘end of the world’ comment and the ‘bag of rice’ comment. But sometimes I went to far in terms of joking, like the ‘monkey’ comment – that’s inexcusable.
    Izuan – Thanks for showing that I am human after all. Haha.
    Irene – I’m a good guy? 😀

  5. Kenny, live and learn. Do make sure you pregress and offend less people each day, learn how to listen. There are books out there to help you be a better listener, a person that everyone enjoys having around. Saying the right thing is important. I have a friend, he has a 100K USD job, nice car, decent house but at 36 years old he still don’t have any luck with ladies, because eveytime he open his mouth he pissed people off.

  6. gosh it just happened to me today. assumed this girl who had thrush caught it sexually and asked her to be my guest speaker for my campaign in the future. actually not all thrush are STD. got my facts wrong. i apologized to her after another reader told me off. was pissed at him for doing that but after much pondering i realised he was right =P
    then i blogged bout it today! haih..anal thinking…

  7. it’s Sagittarius, they are neutral joker and sincere…telling the truth can turn to some very funny for us Sagittarius (cos we are part human and part animal LOL)

  8. yup, it happens a lot. to me. once had this society outing whereby some seniors were thoughtful enough to prepare food which totally sucked. And dumb-assed me, not wanting to waste the food, loudly declared,”Never mind, i’ll feed it to my DOGGIE…..”
    needless to say i wished i could turn invisible as really hurt their feelings. ish, felt horrible. but it’s part of growing up i guess 2 make stupid remarks, hehe

  9. Put a smile on your face when you say it and meant it as a joke. Don’t worry too much about it. Just be your spontaneous self.

  10. I’ve managed to save up roughly $25267 in my bank account, but I’m not sure if I should buy a house or not. Do you think the market is stable or do you think that home prices will decrease by a lot?

  11. there are times when your brains just wanna screw with us, i have spoke words that shouldnt been said at times, but nowadays i rather keep my mouth shut, however when i am feeling too comfortable i tend to do it again without realizing it.

  12. It’s okay, Kenny cause everyone makes mistake. The more important fact is that you realize that you made a mistake.
    It always happen to me too, so don’t get too sad over it, okay? 🙂
    Cheers~

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