Submitted by sandalcade t3_10ztds9 in tifu
So in Germany there’s a celebration where kids dress up in costumes and such around this time of the year. Last year we had just moved to this little town and my daughter started going to a new daycare (Germans, what is the English equivalent of Kita??) and around this time they had a little celebration where the kids got all dressed up, etc. One of the kids was dressed like a Smurf and I very loudly said to her in German “You are such an adorable Smurf!” and got on with my life for a whole year.
Anyway, I was out in our backyard with our kid this afternoon and another child called her name from over the fence. Turns out that Smurf kid lives just a few streets away and was out walking with her grandmother and her mother. So we get to talking, my wife comes out and we’re chatting about various things and got to talking about this year’s carnival celebration at the daycare and I ask the girl “are you going to be dressed like a Smurf again?” And her mother sort of recoiled very noticeably when I said that. So I thought that I was confusing the kid with another kid so I apologised and said “I’m sorry didn’t she dress up like a Smurf last year or am I confusing her for another kid?”
That’s when I realised my fuckup. Her mother responded saying “She was dressed as a SMURF but not…that”
So this whole time, I thought the word for Smurf was “Schlampe” but it turns out it’s actually “Schlumpf”….you can re-read everything I excitedly said to this poor little 3 year old and replace the word “Smurf” with “Slut” because that’s actually what I’ve been saying without realising.
I know it’s an honest mistake but I cannot stop cringing and wondering why nobody corrected me on that first day. I mean, all the other parents there, the educators and everyone heard me. I’m now wondering if I’ve ever used that word anywhere else in other contexts it shouldn’t have been used.
Tl;dr: German can be confusing.
Edit: I don’t know how I butchered that title but it should read “TIFU by …”
I should also add for clarity that German is not my first language