Big R vs. little r

One of my many (heavily exaggerated) talents is a little something I like to call "open mouth, insert foot." Yes, I would say I am very good at this talent =)

So I will admit it - I am socially challenged. I try not to be but for some reason I just am not very conversationally gifted. I try to push myself out of my comfort zone but a lot of the time I end up saying something dumb or say it in a backwards/awkward way. You have probably picked up on that on my blog. Words just are not my thing. I don't mean to say things the way I do but I open my mouth and, bleh, out it comes.

Like the time when Kurt and I were dating and we were eating at his sisters house and Kurt asked me if I wanted any soy sauce. I answered, in front of everyone, "Why? Does it make it taste better?" Obviously, that made it sound like the meal wasn't good but it really was. Very delicious in fact. I think what I was meaning to say was "Does it (soy sauce) taste good on this?" Anyway, I was MORT.I.FIED!!! Luckily she was very understanding when I then turned bright red, apologized and tried to explain that wasn't what I really meant. Oye.

Or the time I was at a church function and we were meeting people in our new ward and I pushed myself to make a comment at the table I was sitting at and said "Ya, and I don't understand why some couples run their finances like "this"?" (Not going to say what "this" was because I don't want to offend anyone on here if they run their finances like that.) And a lady at the table says "Me and my husband do it that way." Awkward!

I am learning to laugh it off or explain what I meant but sometimes you dig the hole deeper so you just have to let it go. I am learning. Always learning. And most of the time, laughing.

So a few weeks ago I had another wonderful conversation with someone. Our school has mentors that come in and meet with the kids. I signed up to be the mentor coordinator for Evan's class so I was in charge of contacting people and getting them on the calendar. I had been going back and forth with this one dad via email trying to get a date that worked for both him and the teacher. I thought I knew who he was but wasn't sure. Well one day I was behind him in the pick up line in the hallway. I thought it would have been rude if I didn't introduce myself to him since we had been emailing recently. So I took a deep breath and asked:

"Excuse me. Are you Rich?"

He turned to me with an odd expression and said "Excuse me?"

"Are you Rich?" This time a little more hesitantly because warning bells were starting to ring in my head as they do every time I start picking up on the sensation that I have once again said something weird.

"No."

"Oh, ok. I have been emailing a dad about mentoring and thought maybe you were him."

"Nope, not me."

So then we wait in line to get our kids and on the way out I get the horrible thought of: what if he thought I said "are you rich?" You know, with a little r. As in "do you have a lot of money?" Oh man! Panic sets in as I wonder: what should I do?

He happened to be behind me as we walked out so I turned to him and said "Um, I just realized how that sounded. I assure you I wasn't asking about your monetary status!"

He started laughing and said "No worries. I'm not rich either way!"

Ha ha ha! What a great sport.

So moral of the story: be very careful with your Big and little r's!