Socially unacceptable

It's getting so I can't be trusted to talk to anyone.

Last weekend, we had some of the Mister's coworkers over for drinks and charred meat. I managed to execute a flawless foot-in-mouth by making a rude remark about our...enthusiasticaly religious neighbors and their ongoing efforts to recruit us into their flock.

Did anyone warn Abby that the Mister's boss and his wife were devoutly religious folks? Oh, noo...

I apologized, and felt like an ass. Bad manners in the extreme, but hey - it happens.

Yesterday evening, we were standing in the cereal aisle at the local grocery-store-that-sucks-compared-to-Publix. My better half was blocking the aisle, and a couple of people a shade over four feet tall needed to pass.

"Gangway, honey," I said. "Short people to your rear."

Short people being a term I use for children.

Or, in this case, as I realized the second the words left my mouth, a for real dwarf/midget/little person and a child.

If they heard me, they were easygoing enough to not take offense.

I normally don't worry a whole lot about what I say to folks. As Popeye would say, I yam what I yam. But I do try not to say hurtful or rude things to nice people and stangers.

I'm on a roll, though, and am a little hesitant to speak in public right now. It is, it seems, one of those weeks when I would somehow manage to tell a group of schoolchildren they'd really "taken one up the ass" by missing the ice cream truck.