Regrettable opening lines
March 31st, 2009 | 1 Comment
When I was in college, a good friend nervously opened a major presentation in a poetry course this way: “I feel like I should start with a joke. My hometown is so small it legalized incest.” Except for my snickering, utter silence.
A few years before as a particularly unworldly freshman, I was confronted with a tribunal of girls who wanted to screen my worthiness to court their girlfriend. I began my case and sealed it with this intro: “Well, I’ve been with a lot of girls…”
A leading technology analyst and editor once opened his conference keynote speech on an optimistic note: “Life’s a bitch, and then you die.”
After college, I did a combined slide/audio presentation on reggae and debuted it at a party. A friend’s wife came up to me afterwards and said: “I really didn’t think you were smart enough to do something like that.”
Me to future wife at beginning of a date early in our relationship: “Whew, your breath is bad…”
Guy to me after introducing myself at a business meeting: “You must get a lot of jokes about that name.” Me: “Ugh, not really…”
Some lines don’t leave us no matter how hard we try to forget them. What regrettable lines have stuck with you?
