Amusing quotes from people mis-dating you

[Nora]

I'm sure you've all had people come up to you and say some things that to them sound quite sensible, but to someone with a bit more of an interest in the matter sounds absolutely hilarious....

The other day at the spring ball at school, I was wearing this lovely bias cut long pink gown I stole from my sister, 40's makeup with involuntary 30's lips due to my lip shape, and pin curled hair that looked vaguely 30's-ish, just a bit too long.
This lovely girl comes up to me and says: "Oh my! You're so beautiful tonight! You look like Marilyn Monroe, I just love that mad-men 20's thing you have going on!"

Err, yes, thanks a lot! ...Close enough.



What fun situations have you encountered?

 

[Fastuni]

Haha, well at least she had covered everything from the 20´s to 60´s.

Here most mis-dates of my strictly 30-40´s styling put it at the 50´s (which is close enough) or 70´s (which I can´t understand.... maybe it´s the wide lapels).

 

[newsman]

Ha! Wow. I bet Nora looked wonderful.

No one has every miss-dated me. But I have had plenty of people ask me how old I am. I've also had they say well "he was there before" type comments.

The first police department I worked for had a missing person's case they could not solve. The problem was the guy basically disappeared while the officers were chasing him through a small town. The chief the detective and loads of officers working the case simply could not figure out what happened to this guy. Over a period of a couple of years it became a real mystery. Especially, to the guy's family.

Anyway. Fast forward in time (pun intended) and the chief consulted a clairvoyant. Now I'm not much into this type of thing. Either was the chief. But he and the detective in charge of the case asked her for help. She provided details about an old mill, a series of numbers and in a confusing way....they brought in a navy dive team and found the guy roughly where she said the department would. With details that were very accurate. Enough to freak people out. It's like these guys didn't know how to work a missing person's case.

Many years later the clairvoyant came in for fingerprinting for one reason or another. She and I started talking and she asked me about my interest in history. Anyway. I brushed it off without thinking...probably because we had someone in a cell that needed to be processed and dropped off at the local jail. As she left she said, "You should ask yourself why you feel so compelled to do what you do." She suggested I have lived before and died "conflict" probably in the 20th centuary.

Again I blew it off. In this line of work you run into a lot of people who's elevators don't reach the top floor. Some who are just missing elevators. Some people simply don't have a top floor.

That was when the chief pulled me aside and told me how they used her in the missing person's case. Even the FBI had used her a couple of times and she had a solid record

I don't know what to think about the situation. But I am open to saying...I don't understand it...but that doesn't mean it can't be true.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I don't know if it means anything but a scientist named Bob Beck tested a lot of people with psychic abilities many years ago. Faith healers, dowsers, Pennsylvania Dutch hexenmeisters, a Polynesian Kahuna, native American shamans, the works.

He found out that if they were genuine, they had one thing in common. When they were doing their stuff their brain waves exhibited a pattern of 7.83 cycles per second, which is the earth's natural resonant frequency and between alpha and theta on the electroencephalogram.

They could only tune in to this frequency for a split second, but if they were good they could pick up enough information that they could talk about it for hours.

Maybe your psychic did that. Got a flash of inspiration then tried to interpret it, which she was good enough to get mostly right.

Remote viewers seem to operate in a similar way which is why they sometimes get startling hits, other times not.

 

[Nora]

Oh my... That's really quite creepy...

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Last year at the county fair I was wearing grey slacks, black & white spectator wingtips, a white french cuff shirt with an open collar & a milan straw hat & had someone ask me if I was in a band.

 

[newsman]

Oh my... That's really quite creepy...

Nora it was far less creepy that some of the people I've meet over the years. Some of them may have been latched on to some earthly or other earthly frequency and turned out so to speak.

In this case...the clairvoyant also saw the number 45 quite a bit. I'll give her the speed on the road was 45 MPH. Most of the roads in the area were 45 MPH. The suspect's watch was found with the minute hand stopped on the 45th minute of the hour. He was also 45 years old.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I was buying paint this morning and ended up severely confusing the clerk when I kept asking her for enamel, like you'd use for painting doors and woodwork. She'd never heard of enamel, and finally had to go find a supervisor who apologized and explained there's really no such thing as enamel anymore, but there's still a couple of products that say "enamel" on the can for older people who keep asking for it. "Ah," I replied. "Sorry for the confusion. I haven't been in this century long."

 

[Stanley Doble]

Now they call it melamine if you mean for kitchen cupboards and trim.

 

[newsman]

"Ah," I replied. "Sorry for the confusion. I haven't been in this century long."

Oh, that is priceless!

 

[jamespowers]

Oh, that is priceless!

And free here every day on the Fedora Lounge---tell your friends.

 

[newsman]

And free here every day on the Fedora Lounge---tell your friends.

I do have to say this is the most civilized place on the internet.

Everyone here seems very nice.

 

[Nora]

Nora it was far less creepy that some of the people I've meet over the years. Some of them may have been latched on to some earthly or other earthly frequency and turned out so to speak.

In this case...the clairvoyant also saw the number 45 quite a bit. I'll give her the speed on the road was 45 MPH. Most of the roads in the area were 45 MPH. The suspect's watch was found with the minute hand stopped on the 45th minute of the hour. He was also 45 years old.

Oh my! I'd get it if it was 42, but...

Last year at the county fair I was wearing grey slacks, black & white spectator wingtips, a white french cuff shirt with an open collar & a milan straw hat & had someone ask me if I was in a band.

Well, you'd probably look right at home in a barbershop quartet!

"Ah," I replied. "Sorry for the confusion. I haven't been in this century long."

Oh, that is priceless!

Indeed!

 

[Edward]

Enamel? Is that an older term for what we call "gloss" now? "Enamel" paint is still available here in the UK, but it's a different thing, designed for craft and modelling use. Commonly used by those who build model cars and trains for the glosst finish it gives (as distinct from the matte effect of water-based acrylic paints once dried).

Haha, well at least she had covered everything from the 20´s to 60´s.

Here most mis-dates of my strictly 30-40´s styling put it at the 50´s (which is close enough) or 70´s (which I can´t understand.... maybe it´s the wide lapels).

With the Seventies, it's definitely the wide lapels. A lot of folks have real trouble believing there were ever wide lapels before the 70s...

Last year at the county fair I was wearing grey slacks, black & white spectator wingtips, a white french cuff shirt with an open collar & a milan straw hat & had someone ask me if I was in a band.

A near relative of "are you in a play/going to a party/gonig to a wedding" et cetera ?

I've occasionally been asked whether I'm a "lindy hopper"; being a tribal jiver who seems them as the enemy, I find this extremely insulting!

The most common assumption I get is 1950s. Not unreasonable, as my cobbled-together style most commonly resembles a nondescript late 40s/early 50s look, though it's the same whatever I wear if people think it looks "vintage". I suppose it's the most widely-known term of reference, and in the broader popular culture, the Fifties remain by far the most popular era for revival - or so it seems to me - so it's obvious why folks might think that. (Unless I'm hearing them wrong and they assume I am in my fifties.) Actually, with all the hoopla with the last screen run at Gatsby, I've noticed people thinking twenties again more - especially if I'm wearing a boater (or "panama", as any straw hat is to many folks).

Andrew Maxwell, a fairly big name stand-up, once looked at me from the stage and said "you look like a Doctor in a film from the 1950s, where questions of sexuality are hinted at but never answered, they just linger in the air". I was vaguely flattered by that. A firend of my brother's once looked at one of my photos and said I looked like "an elegant, 1920s sex criminal". lol

 

[HudsonHawk]

I was buying paint this morning and ended up severely confusing the clerk when I kept asking her for enamel, like you'd use for painting doors and woodwork. She'd never heard of enamel, and finally had to go find a supervisor who apologized and explained there's really no such thing as enamel anymore, but there's still a couple of products that say "enamel" on the can for older people who keep asking for it. "Ah," I replied. "Sorry for the confusion. I haven't been in this century long."

Out of curiosity, what do they call now what they used to call enamel (which is widely available at every paint store around here)?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Out of curiosity, what do they call now what they used to call enamel (which is widely available at every paint store around here)?

Apparently the favored term among the big-box crowd is "latex door paint" or "trim paint." The only real oil-based enamel I could find was Rustoleum, which was hidden away in a remote section along with the traffic-striping paint and graffiti remover. I finally found that Lowe's does sell a "Latex Enamel," which was hidden away in the same section, and from everything I could see was identical to their "latex door paint," except that the "door paint" cost more.

I've run into this issue at every paint store I've gone to in the last few years. A couple years back I went to Sherwin Williams and asked for enamel and got the same blank look from the clerk. I told one of the kids from work to go over and get some enamel for a project at the theatre, and she came back with some weird story that the clerk told her enamel is "illegal" now, which makes no sense at all.

I don't care what the trendy HGTV term is, I grew up calling it enamel, and enamel it will remain. Just like the only time I ever was in a Starbucks I got in an argument with the clerk for insisting on a "small" hot chocolate. Language is powerful, and when you use the terms the Boys From Marketing try to force you to use, you're giving them that much more power over you.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I've run into this issue at every paint store I've gone to in the last few years. A couple years back I went to Sherwin Williams and asked for enamel and got the same blank look from the clerk. I told one of the kids from work to go over and get some enamel for a project at the theatre, and she came back with some weird story that the clerk told her enamel is "illegal" now, which makes no sense at all.

Lowe's, I can see how they were confused. But the Sherwin Williams clerk ought to know better. You can get latex enamel, but you can also get the oil-based kind, which is what gives you that smooth, shell-like finish. This what is what I recently used on all my window trims, baseboards and crown mouldings. I'm pretty sure this is something like what you were wanting:

http://www.sherwin-williams.com/hom...erringCategory=interior-paint-coatings/paint/

 

[LizzieMaine]

Lowe's, I can see how they were confused. But the Sherwin Williams clerk ought to know better.

Evidently when you go on Sunday, you don't get the first-string team.

I miss the "Vita-Var" enamel Texaco used to send us for painting the station -- we used it freely around the house, so that just about everything we owned was painted either gloss white or dark green.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I miss the "Vita-Var" enamel Texaco used to send us for painting the station -- we used it freely around the house, so that just about everything we owned was painted either gloss white or dark green.

If you got it from Texaco for the station, it was probably that fire-retardant paint, which would have been water-based, but was thick as tar. You can still find that stuff (though not from Vita Var), but they're awfully proud of it. I think it's about $100/gallon.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Don't they have melamine paint where you are? Sold for kitchens, bathrooms and woodwork, it smells like the old enamel and goes on like it too.