Everyone has a moment in their life where they screw up. Whether it’s ordering something off Amazon while drunk and not realizing it until the inflatable castle arrives, or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to a girl in a skirt, we all have a story of a mortifying mistake.
Over on Reddit, the hive mind of the internet, there is a board for precisely this kind of story. TIFU (or Today I F-ed Up) is a place for everyone to share their mistakes and for the internet to commiserate with them.
One user called TinyMeatGang1 shared his own screw up by, of all things, complimenting a girl’s dress.
It starts very innocently, and with good intent. TinyMeatGang1 sees a girl wearing a skirt. Simple enough.
Beyond that, he sees her with her hand in her pocket. Pockets? On a skirt? That’s amazing! It’s a well-known fact that women’s clothes have fewer or much smaller pockets than men’s clothes so this is cause for celebration!
Later, our hero talks to the girl and mentions her skirt pockets and how great they are and…she says her skirt doesn’t have pockets.
As he recounts:
“I mentioned that I had seen her earlier with her hand in her pocket. Her face went bright red and revealed that her hand was amputated. What I thought was her hand in her pocket, was her stump resting against her hip.”
Oh. Oh no. TinyMeatGang1, today, you did ‘F’ up.
That is the exact kind of story you could see happening in a movie, where reality is heightened to unrealistic levels. But it happened to someone, in real life.
How do you recover from something like that?
“Ouch. But still, this is kind of a wholesome TIFU. At least you gave her a laugh!” – latenerd
“You STILL didn’t notice the missing hand once you approached her?” – itsKaaaaaayshuh
“Moral of the story: Don’t ever assume women’s clothing has evolved.” – partaura
“As appendage deficient, she had to be impressed to see how you managed to get your foot in your mouth.” – StromboliOctopus
He concludes his story explaining she thought it was funny.
As he says:
“I apologized immediately, but luckily she thought it was funny because she’d never heard that comment before. I’m still dying inside though.
TL DR; Complimented a girl on having a skirt with pockets, turns out she just didn’t have a hand.”
So, not the end of the world, then? Although, wow, cringe, amirite?
But to be fair, the sheer number of people sharing their own similar stories shows how common this can be.
“This reminds of one night in a festival in Bilbao when one of my friends was smoking a rolled cigarette and someone from behind asked us for some tobacco. My friend said yes and handed the tobacco and papers. The guy cleans his throat and asks quite timidly if we could roll him a couple cigarettes and my friend answers rudely: “dude are you missing a hand or what? Roll them yourself ffs”. Then he taps my friend’s shoulder with his stump… never seen my friend apologizing so many times in a row.” – Fuhgaws
“First day of university one of the guys in my flat was struggling to open something and I said “do you need a hand” and he raised his stump at me….. fully hadn’t noticed when we introduced ourselves. When people ask he tells them it was bitten off by a shark when he was a toddler.” – softtimes
“I lived with a girl missing most of her fingers and didn’t notice for a month because she did everything so naturally lmao” – _annie_bird
It’s really easy to spend a few hours on TIFU reading the embarrassing stories of strangers, and commenting support in turn. Really just a time sink.
It’s a little more difficult to find the time to make just so many puns.
“But did you get those digits?” – onelym
“Only 5” – ballistic5
“You did the best you could with the information you had on hand.” – reptilesni
“I give this post one thumb up.” – justamie
“Most amputees are able to laugh off that sort of thing and even joke about it, simple mistake and not really OP’s fault.” – caremal5
“Wait, they laugh it off? I thought most undergo surgical removal.” – terminaljive
TinyMeatGang1 hasn’t posted or commented since he shared his story, so we don’t know how things turned out.
Maybe they started a great friendship? Or maybe they never spoke again after she kindly let him know he has no reason to be absolutely mortified.
At the very least, they got a funny story out of the situation.