Most people hate awkward situations and try to avoid them as much as they can. A 2022 survey revealed the situations people in the U.S. find the most awkward. Sending a gossipy text to the subject of the gossip was rated as the top awkward scenario there could be. Watching an intimate scene in a movie with parents and clogging a toilet followed in second and third places respectively.
But what about situations where you're caught in some sort of a compromising situation, but it's truly accidental? One netizen was curious to hear such stories from other Internet users. So they asked: "What is your 'It's not what it looks like' story?" People came through with all kinds of ridiculous stories, some of them so absurd they seemed like they were taken from a Hollywood comedy.
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I've posted this before on my old account but it's funny so I'll share again.
My family and I went to this really weird little festival that happens every spring to celebrate a frozen dead guy. I wanted to do the polar plunge with my dad so I used spray hair dye to make myself look a bit grey and I put on a fake beard so I could look like his mini me. It was so windy that year that they couldn't keep the warming tents up, so our alternative option was to pack in the back of a 1970s ambulance and try and un dress then re dress in warm clothes with 15 other random naked strangers.
My dad didn't want to do that so he decided he would Walk up the main street and change in the cafe bathroom. Unfortunately it was so cold and windy that hypothermia was starting to set in. I had to go into this tiny a*s bathroom with my dad to help him get changed. As we were nearly done some old lady came barging in the bathroom cuz we were taking way too long. At that very moment I realized I had f****d up.
My dad was standing up and I was on my knees trying to button up his jeans (Levi 501s have a lot of buttons and they are weird to button on someone else.)
She had a look of horror on her face and the only thing I could blurt out was . "NO it's okay! He's my dad!"
That was absolutely not the right thing to say lol.
Last night my husband came to visit me at the restaurant I work at. I served him some sushi and it was a fun way to break up my shift. After he left, I was busing his table and I took a sip of the Arnold Palmer he had left behind. Looked up and realized a family a few tables over has just watched me slurp out of a half-empty customer's drink through a used straw.
I was a lab tech working at a pharmaceutical research lab, and we ran out of pregnancy tests. I went to Walgreens to buy some home tests, and I needed 5 of them. I was about 8 months pregnant.
I worked on a low budget movie (that never got finished), for one scene we needed scenes from the crime, gory bloody pictures they would put up on the board in the police office. Dumb**s I worked with dropped them off at Walmart for printing and enlargement (back when that was a thing). He did not warn them.
When we went to pick them up he got pounced on by police and had much explaining to do. Also, same guy.... I had made two corpses from skeletons, using the old tissue paper and latex method, same genius just tosses them into the back of his pick up truck to take them to the set. Got pulled over for speeding. They pretty much were pulling him out of driver side window while was he screaming "they aren't real people!" over and over again. When they finally touched one and realized it plastic they let him go while ticketing him for every thing they could because they were pissed. Personally I was thrilled my work was taken so well.
Spider in my car got me pulled over for swerving all over the road. We found it and the cop just laughed at me. I’m not scared of spiders, but that big f****r was dangling in my face.
Years ago my team did a cabling job to add some registers to the garden center in a Walmart. This kind of work is done overnight because there are much less customers in the store. There were cables in the conduit already but plenty of room for two more, but we were outta of clearglide, wire pulling lubricant, so we grabbed some KY from health and beauty.
We would often grab things at night, drinks, hardware, whatever and keep the packages to pay for it before we left in the morning.
That morning 4 guys went through the checkout line with 6 empty energy drinks, a couple of snacks, and an empty bottle of KY, which we informed the cashier was empty because we used it in the garden center the previous night!
A long while ago now, I was walking home from a friend's house. We had been smoking and drinking, so I was a little out of it.
It was around 1am and I was almost home, when I saw this little old lady doubled over and struggling to walk. I asked her if she was okay and if she needed help. She said she was fine, but asked if I could help her home as she didn't live too far away. So I gave her my arm for her to support herself and off we went.
Her home wasn't that far, but it was slow going. At this point, I had already decided that I was going to ring an ambulance for her, but thought I'd get her home first.
When we eventually made it to her home, she took her key and opened her door... Only to collapse into her house and pass out... And then the house alarm went off... And then her neighbours appeared. Luckily, the neighbours believed me and the old lady managed to get some medical attention.
When I was 16 I met a girl on Myspace that lived in Canada, which happened to be a short drive from where I lived in the U.S., so we planned a meet-up in Windsor, just across the border from me. I had never crossed the border by myself and was fairly new to driving solo. When I got to the border, I accidentally pulled into one of the express lanes and just drove to the toll booth ahead, thinking I would just explain that I had messed up and chose the wrong lane, whoops no big deal, I'll just pay and be on my way.
Well no, they thought it was suspicious so they asked me to pull into an open hangar nearby and sent some officers to check out my car. When they approached and asked me to pop the trunk, I just did it because I was s******g my pants. My parents did not know where I was and I was so scared of getting in trouble with border patrol.
So right after I pop the trunk they call more officers over. I am asked to step out and put in hand cuffs, and then the questioning starts. Who am I and where am I going? Who is the girl and how do I know her? At this point I'm terrified. They all went from pretty chill to very serious in a matter of minutes. Then one of them reaches into the trunk and pulls out a sword and it HITS me.
A week earlier I had been filming a video for one of my classes with my friends and it was a war scene from a book. We had amassed all of our medieval mall ninja weapons for the video and in the end, the weapons all ended up in my trunk and I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THEM. I'm talking swords, axes, flails, bludgeons, bardiches, nunchucks, EVERYTHING. For the next 2-3 hours I was questioned while they picked my car apart.
In the end I think the only reason they let me go is because I also had a giant bag of Magic: the Gathering cards in my backseat and after explaining the game to them they realized I had no life and was probably too nerdy to be any real threat. I also had a single rose for her on the passenger seat (I know, I am so suave) so I think they could see I didn't have bad intentions..
They let me through, I met up with the girl, and we made out on a play structure for like 4 hours. Drove home that night and never told my parents. Ah, to be young again.
I’ve posted this before but what the hey, I was hanging out with a guy friend (I’m a girl) watching movies.
I fell asleep in the middle of the third one, had a hot dream and woke up to my own orgasm while he sat on the other end of the couch sporting an erection, but with both hands up, and looking equal parts terrified and horny.
I was beyond mortified. He was like “I-I didn’t know what to do-“
I had actually been dreaming about him and didn’t know if I’d said his name or not.
I got the f**k out of there.
I have never been so f*****g mortified in my life. But, after a lot of him pushing and me being embarrassed, we ended up dating. Been together about a year now.
Edited for clarification.
Back in seventh grade, when I was at peak "awkward teen boy" there came a day in gym where we were set to play volleyball. The only problem was that when we got to the gym the coach realized she'd forgotten the volleyballs, but no problem, because they were just sitting in the storage room...in the girl's locker room, and she decided to send me, a boy, to go get them. She assured me that I would not get in trouble if I was caught but even still I was about as not-at-all thrilled over being given this job as I possibly could be, because I was sure that if any girl saw me in there she would tell the rest of the school that I was a pervert sneaking into the girl's locker room.
Well halfway through the mission my worst nightmare came true and I turned a corner to confront two girls who were heading back into the locker room. They stared at me, I stared at them. I started panicking and in my discombobulation I decided the best possible thing to do at that moment would be to tell these two girls that I'm not a pervert (because obviously that would have cleared everything up) but I was so flustered that what came out instead was "I'm not gay," and then I really smoothed things over by running away.
Surprisingly the fallout for this wasn't too bad. I got made fun of a bit for it but people had pretty much moved on by the next day. Not me though. Twenty-seven years later this still haunts me.
I was staying over at a friend’s cottage in the country with my girlfriend (now wife). A bunch of my friends were there as well, male and female, but we got the spare bedroom because we were a couple.
We all went to bed - after about twenty minutes, the bed we were in collapsed, making a terrible clatter.
Instantly, the whole house erupted in cheers and laughter.
Reality: bed was very rickety, no one had actually slept in it for a long time, and we were just peacefully resting in the bed when it just collapsed. But of course, everyone assumed we were screwing up a storm and literally “broke the bed”.
My mom once barged on my room without knocking with a shocked face and asking “what are you doing?!” I was laying in bed, laptop on my belly, chocolate on my mouth watching YouTube exercise videos. They kept making noises she assumed was either sex or p**n. To this day we laugh so hard about it 😂.
My dog ate some string. I had to pull it out of his butt on a walk. People were like "YIKES" and giving me a wide berth.
Was OP doing it with his teeth or something? It's actually a pretty common thing if you have pets.
My personnel clerk was telling me about a sexual harassment issue in my office, as soon as she repeated what was said, “are you asking me for a bl**job”, the store gossip walked by and sure enough I’m being spoken to by corporate HR within the hour. Thankfully I had proof of what was actually going on.
According to my mom she peeked through my open door and saw me in my chair, hands at waist level, shaking a bit as I worked my hands and was breathing heavily.
I was playing Spider-Man 2 fighting Scream.
When I was 5, someone had gotten into my uncle's blue spray paint sitting on his porch and they had sprayed some of it on the porch. He lined up me and my brothers and checked our hands for any blue and saw blue all over *my* hands.
I frantically tried to explain as a five year old that it was from coloring markers from earlier at school but he had none of it and marched me to my mother to 'expose me'. My mom took a look at my hands and easily identified the difference between blue markers and spray paint and called my uncle an idiot.
It was actually my middle brother but he was wearing gloves so there was no transfer on his hands. I wasn't going to be a snitch to that idiot uncle though.
I'm surprised no one called the police on me for this...
I do general repairs as a side gig. I offered to help a friend fix his sink one day. So I park my work van on the street outside his house and start organizing tools to bring into the house. Suddenly I look up and I see his 3 year old daughter has somehow wondered out of the house and is walking in the middle of the road. Yikes. So I quick run after her, grab her off the road.
However, I couldn't bring her into the house just yet because my van was still completely open, with tools strewn about. So I had to put her in my van while I finished organizing.
To anyone one else, it probably looked like I kidnapped a girl into my van.
Owned a horse as a kid, partner went with me couple months back to visit him at the stable he lived at to visit him. Said horse has a habit of nipping (not out of aggression, to show affection/play). Horse was nuzzling his head onto my chest and bit right by my tit. Gently pushed his head away, but that s**t HURT.
Went home with partner and was getting undressed for some quality time. He took a look at me and went, "what's that?" I look down and there was a giant forming bruise/bite from where the horse nipped me. I quickly explained but he found it f*****g hilarious.
Reminds me of the time one of a friend's five large dogs dive-bombed me from the stairs because I only have two hands and wasn't petting him with at least one of them, leaving a big, vaguely paw-shaped bruise across my upper arm. The next day I had an appointment with my therapist and apparently it looked enough like a hand-shaped bruise that I had to show photos of the dogs to convince her I wasn't being abused at home. 😬
Got charged with a marijuana-related felony charge back in 2004. When you become a felon, you have to register at the Dept. of Corrections. I register, and they give me a small card with my info on it. Fast forward a few months and i walk into a liquor store for cigarettes. No ID. I search through my wallet and find this card and hand it to the guy.
"You're a sex offender?"
"huh?"
"The card says SEX OFFENDER REGISTRATION CARD"
"WTF?"
they had given me the completely wrong card, and i was walking around as a sex offender.
Why would they issue someone a sex offender card? Is that person ever going to show it to anyone? Can he use it to get a discount at Pervs R Us?
More like "it's not what it sounds like."
My daughter, who was a toddler at the time, told my wife that, "In the middle of the night, Daddy comes into my room naked to play."
It took me a second to figure out what she was talking about and a lot of praying that I sounded believable.
My daughter was having a night terror 2 weeks earlier. I got out of bed in the middle of the night wearing only boxer briefs to see what the problem was. I ended up acting silly with her and joking around to try to ease her mood and get her ready to go back to sleep.
When I was about 12 I mentioned to my cousin that I remembered her parents getting married after their divorce. (They were only divorced for a year before getting back together.) She was shocked as they'd never told her. I said, "Well, ask them!" Her mother was FURIOUS! "How dare you tell my child my business!" (The child was at their second wedding; I stupidly assumed she could remember it even though she was only about 3.) So about 15 years later I'm sitting with my male cousin (her younger brother, born after the remarriage) and we're talking about stupid things we did. I go, "Like that time I told your sister about your parents getting divorced and remarried." "WHAT?!!" THEY HADN'T TOLD HIM EITHER! I begged him not to tell my aunt because she'd kill me. So we said we'd been looking at photo albums and there were pics of his parents' second wedding. This is why people say not to keep that kind of secret from your children: some relative will tell them about it. Sorry, you guys.
Female, platonic friend used to jokingly act a little crazy over chocolate. One day, she saw something in my pocket. It was a six-inch screw (technically, a bolt). Her: "You have chawklit!" Me: "No, I don't." Her: "In your pocket!" Me: "That's not chocolate." Her: "I want what's in your pocket NOW!" Me: "You want a screw?" She turned beat red. "Oh my God, that's your ... " Then I turned beat red. "No, no, not 'do you want TO ...' I meant, it's A screw!"
So we both got embarrassed and bolted.... (Just punning about that part.)
Load More Replies...Me and some friend visited a car exhibition, and we saw this very fancy looking Benz. My friend shouted loudly "damn that's fat!", (in Sweden we say "fat" like in "rad") - just as a very large man walked past, looking at my friend while my friend looked back at him, face turning all red.
When I was about 12 I mentioned to my cousin that I remembered her parents getting married after their divorce. (They were only divorced for a year before getting back together.) She was shocked as they'd never told her. I said, "Well, ask them!" Her mother was FURIOUS! "How dare you tell my child my business!" (The child was at their second wedding; I stupidly assumed she could remember it even though she was only about 3.) So about 15 years later I'm sitting with my male cousin (her younger brother, born after the remarriage) and we're talking about stupid things we did. I go, "Like that time I told your sister about your parents getting divorced and remarried." "WHAT?!!" THEY HADN'T TOLD HIM EITHER! I begged him not to tell my aunt because she'd kill me. So we said we'd been looking at photo albums and there were pics of his parents' second wedding. This is why people say not to keep that kind of secret from your children: some relative will tell them about it. Sorry, you guys.
Female, platonic friend used to jokingly act a little crazy over chocolate. One day, she saw something in my pocket. It was a six-inch screw (technically, a bolt). Her: "You have chawklit!" Me: "No, I don't." Her: "In your pocket!" Me: "That's not chocolate." Her: "I want what's in your pocket NOW!" Me: "You want a screw?" She turned beat red. "Oh my God, that's your ... " Then I turned beat red. "No, no, not 'do you want TO ...' I meant, it's A screw!"
So we both got embarrassed and bolted.... (Just punning about that part.)
Load More Replies...Me and some friend visited a car exhibition, and we saw this very fancy looking Benz. My friend shouted loudly "damn that's fat!", (in Sweden we say "fat" like in "rad") - just as a very large man walked past, looking at my friend while my friend looked back at him, face turning all red.