‘What’s the funniest misunderstanding you’ve had recently?’ – 23 small but highly comical muddles

Big misunderstandings can lead to big problems, as Donald Trump is finding after starting a war on a country he appears to know nothing about, but the smaller ones are more often than not just a bit comical.

They’ve been chatting about this on the AskUK subreddit after iffyClyro asked this:

‘What’s the funniest misunderstanding you’ve had recently?’

And they kicked things off with this.

‘Currently my wife and I are expecting twins.

T’old my best mate my wife was pregnant and turned out so was his wife. I then said yeah but for me it’s times two.

‘He immediately starts whispering “Who else did you get pregnant, is she going to find out, what are you going to do?”

Hopefully that one got sorted out speedily. Lots of other people chipped in with their own stories of entertaining misapprehensions, like these…

1.

‘Me and my husband got a house in a different town, while still renting in London. He did a bunch of renovations and lived there for a couple months before we could move there fully. In this time, he met most of our neighbours.

‘One of them, a couple in the their 70s, told him they spend a lot of their time going out with their caravan. My husband, who is from Romania, took that to mean they are part of a circus, and they go around with the circus most of the year. He didn’t mention the whole interaction, or their age, he just told me we are neighbours with two circus artists.

‘I almost died laughing when I met them the first time, they are old and can barely walk lol, but somehow my husband clocked them as circus artists.’
–ThisIsSpata

2.

‘My sister in law was in hospital and kept hearing the nurses talking to this one patient, who they referred to as ‘mystery man’. She figured it was possibly an amnesia patient, or homeless person.

‘It was neither. It was a Mr Iman.’
–StitchyBitchyWitchy

3.

‘When I was a receptionist I received a call asking to speak with “Fiona”. I checked our records and couldn’t find a single Fiona so figured she no longer worked here. Went back and forth a couple of times with the caller insisting to speak with Fiona.

‘Eventually, in the most frustrated and broadest Essex accent imaginable the caller finally says “nah, vi owna ov va cumpny”.’
–decidedlyindecisive

4.

‘When I first moved to the Uk I thought it was lovely that there was a ‘mother and son day’, but I was confused about why there was never a ‘mother and daughter’ day. It took me at least three years to figure out that it was actually ‘Mothering Sunday’. Now that I write it out I’m still actually not certain that I have it right after eight years.’
–ProfessionalGrade423

5.

‘I was recovering from an ankle operation to have hardware removed after a nasty break. I got myself a few pairs of baggy PJ’s for my hospital stay. One of the PJ’s had cats all over it. Whilst wearing the cat PJ’s, my hospital roommate asks how many kids I have. I reply that I had two.

‘Next day, her adult children and grandchild visit her. She introduced me by saying I had thirty two cats. Turns out I misheard her question. She saw my cat PJ’s and asked how many cats I had. I heard children and replied with two, she misheard and thought I had 32 cats.’
–Choice-Ad-9221

6.

‘Went for a Thai massage in Thailand, expecting something like the standard calming massage you see on TV. I’m a woman, by the way.

‘Taken to a room by a male massage specialist who speaks almost no English. Proceeds to apply the Thai massage thoroughly for two hours, which actually consists of being contorted into painful positions, being stood on, and generally manhandled to the point of almost passing out from pain at a few points. The lack of a shared language meant that I just had to go along with everything.

‘Walked out feeling completely beaten up, but the next day I felt AWESOME. I can’t decide whether to go through with it again.’
–Realistic_Ad9820

7.

‘I was driving my mum to the hospital on a super hot sunny day. The attendant approached my car and as I wound the window down he said, “Looks like you’re steaming there mate”. I replied, “Yeah, I’m sweating mate” and drove on. It was only when I pulled over to park I noticed steam coming from the bonnet of my car.’
–Careless-Wonder7886

8.

‘My husband was gushing over Katherine Jenkins, a very lovely opera singer, the song was a take on a hymn. So I said “It’s a hymn”.

‘He looked at me and said “It’s a HER”. I said, no, it’s a hymn, trying to enunciate more clearly. “It’s a fucking her”, came his irate reply. Bit of back and forth until I was able to convey I was not talking about her gender, but the style of song…’
–TheNinjaPixie

9.

‘This was a long time ago and they’ve now both passed.

‘My Nan and a friend of hers she hadn’t seen in years got to meet up in Weston-Super-Mare. Both of them deaf as posts but also too proud to wear their hearing aids. My Nan was telling her friend about how I was going to be going to university in a couple months and it’s where a mutual friend of theirs studied.

‘The friend was merrily chatting away about how she hadn’t been to Weston in decades and how much it had changed. Both completely oblivious they were having two different conversations.’
–FloofyRaptor

10.

‘My nan was like this, except she didn’t wear her hearing aid because us screaming kids hurt her ears. Anyway, once her niece was visiting and told her someone had died. My nan replied with, “Oh lovely, that’s nice.” Her strategy was a 50/50 guess of good or bad news and respond as such.’
–piggycatnugget

11.

‘Not recently but during covid when we had new starters left right and centre. I’d trained some of the new people on home shopping. Thought one of them had a personality disorder: one day chatty, one day blank expression zero chat. Thought I was losing it… turns out I’d been working with identical twins for three WEEKS!!’
–liabilityno1

12.

‘Had a weird conversation with someone once (admittedly not recently) where they were talking about motor racing and Germany for reasons I couldn’t understand.

Realised after a while that when they asked me where I lived and I said “near Birmingham”, they thought I said “Nurburgring”. It was in quite a noisy pub to be fair.’
–BobBobBobBobBobDave