An Adult Should Really Know This - Silly Things You've Had to Tell People

[magicdomino]

This was off a "I hate my mother-in-law" site.  The poster said that she went out for lunch at a food court with her MIL (even though they didn't get along), and the poster ordered sushi.  When her food arrived, MIL spotted the wasabi and said "Ooh, I like that stuff.  Can I have some?"  The poster, thinking it was unlikely that her MIL had had wasabi before, said "Are you sure?  That's wasabi - it's like horseradish.  It's really spicy."  MIL scoffed "Of course I'm sure!  I know what wasabi is, thank you.  I eat it all the time!"  She proceeded to scoop up the entire spoonful and ate the whole thing.  Cue red face, choking, and eyes pouring with tears.

Wasabi, guacamole, all those foreign green mushes taste the same, right?   

[Thipu1]

This was off a "I hate my mother-in-law" site.  The poster said that she went out for lunch at a food court with her MIL (even though they didn't get along), and the poster ordered sushi.  When her food arrived, MIL spotted the wasabi and said "Ooh, I like that stuff.  Can I have some?"  The poster, thinking it was unlikely that her MIL had had wasabi before, said "Are you sure?  That's wasabi - it's like horseradish.  It's really spicy."  MIL scoffed "Of course I'm sure!  I know what wasabi is, thank you.  I eat it all the time!"  She proceeded to scoop up the entire spoonful and ate the whole thing.  Cue red face, choking, and eyes pouring with tears.

Wasabi, guacamole, all those foreign green mushes taste the same, right?   

Although I've seen it happen, I don't understand how people can mistake wasabi for guacamole.  Wasabi is usually quite a thick paste while guacamole is looser in texture.  Also, guacamole usually has a delicious smell while wasabi doesn't smell like much of anything. 

Back in college some friends and I went out to a Chinese restaurant with a fellow student who had never eaten Chinese food.  One of the. Condiments on the table was a small bowl of Chinese mustard.  Before we could stop her, this poor lady slathered the mustard on her egg roll the way
you'd put regular mustard on a hot dog.  I didn't know that faces were capable of turning that color.
 

[GlitterIsMyDrug]

One of my friends maintains that wasabi should not be green because green is a cooling color, and one we associate with things being "safe" or "ok" just as green light go. So it should be red.

This was after she took a big bite scoop having no idea what it was, I believe she was deeply offended at the safe green coloring misleading her. Apparently those of us saying "Don't, you'll burn your entire mouth" wasn't warning enough.

I can eat spice, but wasabi is like...evil. Even the tiniest bit, nope, I'm pushing it away.

[VorFemme]

I've heard certain peppers referred to as being "as hot as rocket fuel" and wasabi being "as hot as lit (burning) rocket fuel" - so, yeah, it can be amazing how people who grow up in locations with milder spices react to the really hot ones for the first time.

My mother tells the tale of these little red peppers that looked like grape sized tomatoes that a friend had in a bowl on the kitchen counter.  My brother was a toddler who could just barely reach that bowl and they saw his hand reach up and get one pepper.

Mom wanted to stop him, the hostess told her that he'd bite into it and start leaving the peppers alone.

They heard a funny squeak...but two minutes later his hand reached up and sneaked another pepper out of the bowl.  They moved the bowl.

He likes hot food to this day (and he's over 50 now). 

[hermanne]

Do NOT eat the pistachio ice cream!

[OSUJillyBean]

Do NOT eat the pistachio ice cream!

 

I dislike anything spicy so I've never tried wasabi. 

[VorFemme]

Do NOT eat the pistachio ice cream!

WonderfulGrandSon's loves that movie - and after watching the first one 437 times, his parents were ready for a change...I was ready to see the sequel after only watching the first one four times...I'm a wimp in my fifties, I guess.

[nutraxfornerves]

Woman: Rolls! Buns! Pastries! Don't you sell bread here?
Hostess: Ohhh! ...um, no. This is a sushi restaurant...

I was having lunch by myself at the Hog Island Oyster Company in San Francisco. I was sitting outside. To get to the outside area, you had to enter the restaurant under a huge sign that said "Hog Island Oyster Co." and walk past the oyster bar, piled high with oysters & staffed by a guy shucking oysters and serving them to customers seated at the bar.  While I was eating, a waiter seated a couple at the table next to me and handed them menus. They were speaking German, which I knew well enough to understand them, and I assumed they were tourists.

They took one look at the mens, stood up & rapidly walked out. They had suddenly discovered that the Hog Island Oyster Company specializes in--guess what?

[Onyx_TKD]

Woman: Rolls! Buns! Pastries! Don't you sell bread here?
Hostess: Ohhh! ...um, no. This is a sushi restaurant...

I was having lunch by myself at the Hog Island Oyster Company in San Francisco. I was sitting outside. To get to the outside area, you had to enter the restaurant under a huge sign that said "Hog Island Oyster Co." and walk past the oyster bar, piled high with oysters & staffed by a guy shucking oysters and serving them to customers seated at the bar.  While I was eating, a waiter seated a couple at the table next to me and handed them menus. They were speaking German, which I knew well enough to understand them, and I assumed they were tourists.

They took one look at the mens, stood up & rapidly walked out. They had suddenly discovered that the Hog Island Oyster Company specializes in--guess what?

Specializes in, or serves nothing else? If I walked in to a restaurant called "Oyster Company," I would expect almost everything on the menu to include seafood, but not necessarily for everything to include oysters specifically. For instance, I've eaten at Red Lobster (walking past the "Red Lobster" sign and past the tank of live lobsters), but I don't think I've ever eaten lobster there (not even a dish just containing lobster). I ate other seafood. If that's what they were expecting, I don't think it's particularly silly.

[TootsNYC]

We had a truck get stuck under an overpass somewhat nearby.  They brought out the fire department and police and eventually had highway engineers out there trying to figure out how to get the truck out without causing more damage.  The road was closed for HOURS and drew quite a crowd.

It was a 14 year old boy who solved the problem when he suggested they let some air out of the tires on the trailer.

That's a really old story/puzzle that I've heard multiple times over many years. One of the characters in in the movie, Working Girl (1988) tells that story almost verbatim.

And it used to be told about the local mental institution.  One of the patients was the problem-solver.

I have always thought there might be a grain of truth to that one as there is a low-clearance underpass just outside that institution.

And the punch line is: "I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid."

My father told is when I was a child.

[RingTailedLemur]

This was off a "I hate my mother-in-law" site.  The poster said that she went out for lunch at a food court with her MIL (even though they didn't get along), and the poster ordered sushi.  When her food arrived, MIL spotted the wasabi and said "Ooh, I like that stuff.  Can I have some?"  The poster, thinking it was unlikely that her MIL had had wasabi before, said "Are you sure?  That's wasabi - it's like horseradish.  It's really spicy."  MIL scoffed "Of course I'm sure!  I know what wasabi is, thank you.  I eat it all the time!"  She proceeded to scoop up the entire spoonful and ate the whole thing.  Cue red face, choking, and eyes pouring with tears.

I knew someone who did that with horseradish sauce once.  We did warn her.

Similarly, someone I knew tried to prevent some American tourists from using English mustard as they would American mustard, liberally applied as a condiment on a burger.  They wouldn't listen, and got quite a shock.

[Jocelyn]

I've heard certain peppers referred to as being "as hot as rocket fuel" and wasabi being "as hot as lit (burning) rocket fuel" - so, yeah, it can be amazing how people who grow up in locations with milder spices react to the really hot ones for the first time.

My mother tells the tale of these little red peppers that looked like grape sized tomatoes that a friend had in a bowl on the kitchen counter.  My brother was a toddler who could just barely reach that bowl and they saw his hand reach up and get one pepper.

Mom wanted to stop him, the hostess told her that he'd bite into it and start leaving the peppers alone.

They heard a funny squeak...but two minutes later his hand reached up and sneaked another pepper out of the bowl.  They moved the bowl.

He likes hot food to this day (and he's over 50 now).

Let us hope someone had him wash his hands soon after.
I have a friend whose husband was proud of the hot peppers he grew in their garden. He demonstrated for friends that the heat was in the crease of the pepper, showing them how they could stroke the pepper with a fingertip safely, but their hands would burn if they stroked the crease. Soon after, he went to the bathroom   and made the tactical error of deciding to take care of another task rather than washing up before AND after. Cue dramatic screams. Apparently one's fingertips go numb to the burn, so that you might believe the hot oil is all wiped off...

[Jocelyn]

On the other hand, I went back to the Mongolian grill at my favorite restaurant, and the grill man tried to give me the wrong plate, in the mistaken belief that 'lady no want hot oil'. I would have told him that it was an interesting assumption, but I was pretty sure his English wasn't up to the task. (For those not familiar with Mongolian grills, you select the ingredients for your stir-fry from a buffet of raw foods and condiments, and the grill man stir-fries it for you. And yes, hot pepper oil is one of the options.)

[Hillia]

My old boss told us a story about her honeymoon in Hawaii.  She and her husband had gone for dinner to a very nice Asian restaurant.  He was mildly congested (allergies, not ill) and when he spotted the wasabi on the table, he said, 'Oh good!  This will clear me right up!' and ate a whole large spoonful before she could stop him.  She said the results were instantaneous, impressive, and pretty gross.  He started sneezing and coughing, and it a few minutes before he could stand up and run to the men's room.

DH has a cousin who is so insecure that he absolutely, positively, cannot admit that he doesn't know something or hasn't done it, and hasn't done it bigger/faster/more than anyone else.  This despite the fact that he has lived his whole life in very small towns and has had pretty limited experience with a lot of things.  I took him to lunch at an Asian restaurant that featured noodle and rice bowls with varying levels of spice indicated on the menu.  One dish had 10 flames (the others were 1-5 flames), a jokey warning ('So hot it burns twice!') and a serious warning about the levels of heat and the kinds of peppers used.  When the waitress took our order, she tried to discourage him, repeating the warnings about the heat and telling us that when the chef was making a batch of this sauce, he had to wear goggles and gloves and no one else was allowed in the kitchen.  Cousin insisted that he ate hotter food than that every day for lunch, so she brought it out.  Yeah.  He managed to choke down one or two bites before telling me he was too full.  I offered to order him a replacement meal because I did feel sorry for him, but he swore that it was delicious and he just wasn't hungry.  He took it home 'for lunch the next day'; it sat in the fridge for a day or two before I finally pitched it.

[nutraxfornerves]

Woman: Rolls! Buns! Pastries! Don't you sell bread here?
Hostess: Ohhh! ...um, no. This is a sushi restaurant...

I was having lunch by myself at the Hog Island Oyster Company in San Francisco. I was sitting outside. To get to the outside area, you had to enter the restaurant under a huge sign that said "Hog Island Oyster Co." and walk past the oyster bar, piled high with oysters & staffed by a guy shucking oysters and serving them to customers seated at the bar.  While I was eating, a waiter seated a couple at the table next to me and handed them menus. They were speaking German, which I knew well enough to understand them, and I assumed they were tourists.

They took one look at the mens, stood up & rapidly walked out. They had suddenly discovered that the Hog Island Oyster Company specializes in--guess what?

Specializes in, or serves nothing else? If I walked in to a restaurant called "Oyster Company," I would expect almost everything on the menu to include seafood, but not necessarily for everything to include oysters specifically. For instance, I've eaten at Red Lobster (walking past the "Red Lobster" sign and past the tank of live lobsters), but I don't think I've ever eaten lobster there (not even a dish just containing lobster). I ate other seafood. If that's what they were expecting, I don't think it's particularly silly.

This is not a chain. The company is a major producer of farmed oysters, and any guidebook or restaurant directory would have mentioned that. The menu has very few things that aren't oysters-- salads & a couple of clam or crab dishes. From the conversation I overheard, it simply had not occurred to the couple to look at the posted menu or the surroundings. They just liked the idea of dining outside on a nice day.