Bridge

Grandpa (irritably:)  "I told you, the restaurant's right under the beer! I mean bridge!"

Laughter

Me: "You're making the bed laugh."

What I meant: Hell if I know!  Mum was reading in bed and I made her laugh really hard; we were both deliriously tired.

Eating

Mum: "I'm going to eat my foot up."

What She Meant To Say: "I'm going to take my food up and eat it."

Beer

Mum: "There's beer in the coffee machine for you."

Fridge

Me (indicating kitten): "Mum, has he ever tried to get in the fridge with you?"

Mum: "I've never tried to get in the fridge!"

Context: Whenever I open the fridge in our kitten's presence, he tries to climb inside.

Root

Mum (waving a pear at me): "Feet root!"

Leather

Mum: "No, no, not the teflon pans, I need the leather ones."

What She Meant to Say: "I need the cast iron ones."

Smells

Mum: "The papal el smills."

What She Meant To Say: "The paper mill smells."

Brush

Mum: "We're going to need a real stiff-brustled little bish."

Self-Actualization

Aunt: "I just want the best for you - I don't want you to be Maggie, or your grandpa, or even me.  I just want you to be me... and maybe a little bit of me."

Bottle

Mum: "You wash my wattle bot?"

What She Was Trying To Say: "After you washed my water bottle, where did you put it?"

Lettuce

Aunt: "If you want some lettuce on your hamburger, I think Maggie got some of that fancy mescaline."

Me: "Some of that WHAT?!"

Artichoke

Mum: "The leftover pizza is for you; you can offer your grandpa the...thing that isn't an artichoke."

Me (looking past her into the fridge:) "...Pork chop?"

Washing

Mum (handing me the French press:) "Will you please put this in the washing machine?"

Alive

Me (cheerfully:) "I hope he's still alive."

What I Actually Said: "I think he's still asleep."

Feathers

Aunt: "The sauce has such wonderful feathers."

What She Actually Said: "The sauce has such wonderful texture."

Laundry

Mum (taking a plate from me): "I'll put this in the laundry for you."

River

Me: "It's the oldest house in the river."

What I Meant To Say: "It's the oldest house in town."

Pie

Me: "You're warm, like pie."

What I Actually Said: "You're warm and nice."

Dessert

Mum: "For ice cream, there's dessert."

Bits

Best Friend: "It has girly bits!"

What She Actually Said: "It has frilly bits!"

Antique

Best Friend: "These people and their confusing antique wangs!"

What She Actually Said: "These people and their confusing antique ways!"

Context:  Some businesses still want you to snail-mail your resume and cover letter.  We sort of think they might be aliens.

Underwear

Best Friend: "Cat's underwear!"

What She Actually Said: "Cats! Everywhere!"

Spacer

Me: "I'm a heat spacer!"

Cat

Me: "They think you're their cat.  Wait! No!"

Hearing

Mum: "His earring haids give him trouble."

Christians

Best Friend: "I'm learning to do Christians."

What She Actually Said: "I'm learning to do ceramics."

Dishwasher

Me: "Are you going to put the big motherfuckers in the dishwasher?"

What I Actually Said: "Are you going to put the big metal things in the dishwasher?"

Context: The things in question were stovetop burner whotsits.  I promise.

Sideways

Mum:  "Your bottom's sideways."

Context: She referred to a framed picture which was hanging off-kilter on my wall.

Ass

Mum: "I'm going to put my ass back."

What She Actually Said: "I'm going to get my ice pack."

Goat

(Context: We have a goat, whom I used to feed every morning and every evening.  In the rainy winter months, this involved a lot of putting on and taking off of rain gear, which, combined with interacting with a goat -  not so much an animal as a fuzzy, hundred-something pound avatar of pure cussedness - made me kind of grumpy. By which I mean I grumbled.  A lot.)

Me: (Typing to Amazing Girlfriend) "Brb - fucking goat."

Amazing Girlfriend: "NOOOOOOOOO. DON'T DO IT."

(Two weeks later...)

Me: (Typing to best friend) "Brb - mother fucking goat."

Best Friend: "Hurry! STOP HER!"

Lights

Ex's Dad: "The streetlights beep when they change so deaf people know when it's safe to cross."

Familiar

(Context: My grandfather is a friendly Ent disguised as a charmingly rosy-cheeked, white-bearded and dapper elderly gentleman.  He's also deaf as a post.)

Me: (unexpectedly encountering Grandpa on his way out of a bank I deliver to)  Hello! You look familiar!

Grandpa: (beaming absently in my general direction) Thank you!

French

Mum: "Paul likes coffee from the prench fress...I can't believe I just said that."

What She Meant to Say: "Paul likes coffee from the French press."

Cats

Aunt: "Talk to you later - I'm being stared at by three hundred cats."

What She Actually Said: "Talk to you later - I'm being stared at by three hungry cats."

Birthday

Mum: "That's how I'll spend my seventeenth birthday."

What She Actually Said: "At least I'll have a break in between."

Breast

Mum: "I just put the binless, sconeless turkey breast back in the freezer."

Three

Mum: "Hang on! I only have three hands!"

Teepee

Me: "There's a tower of toilet paper in that field."

Context: "There's a teepee - as in a tent, not a tower of toilet paper - in that field."

Eat

Mum: "There's food downstairs on the counter for you.  Don't eat it."

What She Actually Said: "There's food downstairs on the counter for you.  Don't heat it."

Refrigerator

Mum: "When you come home, you need to hump the refrigerator."

What She Actually Said: "When you come home, you need to hunt the refrigerator."

Context: They'd rearranged the kitchen while I was at work.  The fantastic thing was she told this to my best friend, who was visiting, who then proceeded to come to the restaurant where I worked and tell me I needed to come home and hump the refrigerator...we'd both somehow gotten the idea that this was URGENT, so home I hurried to (in the only non-perturbing/baffling interpretation of "come home and hump the refrigerator") move a large kitchen appliance.

Poison

Mum (at 8:30 PM): "Good morning! Where's the poison?"

What She Meant to Say: "Hello! Where are the cat's meds?"

Larry

Me: "I always feel irrationally triumphant every day after I do  Larry. Oh god, did I just say that?!"

Context: Larry is a family friend whose house lies on my newspaper route, about three quarters of the way through, at the top of an extremely steep hill.

Letter

Mum: "I sent the Pearl to letter. I mean, I sent the check to Pearl."

Eye

Mum: "I know this looks fine.  I just want your eye for dessert."

What She Meant to Say: "I just want your eye for details."

Weather

Mum: "I take it the weather hasn't started yet? I mean, the router."

Hungry

Mum: "Are you hungry, or did you pretty much eat yourself out earlier?"

Context: I'd spent the day at a seafood festival.

Emptiness

Me: "Lo, there is an emptiness deep inside me! An emptiness that only one thing can fill!"

Mum: "I know, I know.  Go eat your damn lunch."

Cat

Mum: "Damn cat put a nose up my hair!"

Nuts

Mum: "I've been getting produce from the nuts and co-op."

What She Meant to Say: "I've been getting produce and nuts from the co-op."

Wrid

Mum: "By the wrid, I way the rest of you."

What She Meant To Say: I haven't the faintest.

Shoes

Mum: "To hell with fashion, I'm going to get the rest of my food! Shoes!"

Tim

Mum: "He had, in his opinion, had the tim.  Pinned."

What She Meant to Say: I have no damn idea, she was laughing too hard to explain.  I think the "he" in question was one of our cats.

Pregnant

Mum: "Well then, you're pregnant."

What She Actually Said: "Well then, I beg your pardon.

(Note: I'm a guy.)

Eyes

Me: "It's all right.  You're a mother - that means you've got eyes in your backside."

Sex

Best Friend: "We should have sex!"

What She Actually Said: "Are we all set?"

Water

Mum: "Could you please make more water?"

What She Meant To Say: "Would you please get me more water?"

Buttocks

Viking Friend: "I shall smite you with my buttocks!"

What He Actually Said: "I shall smite you with my battleaxe!"

Evil

Mum (looking at a photo of a cake decorated spectacularly as the Eye of Sauron): "Wow, that's fantastic - don't know if I'd feel comfortable eating it, though."

Me: "Yeah.  There's just something odd about cutting into a giant, flaming, sentient, evil eyebrow.  Eyeball! Eyeball!"

Frog

Mum (joyously): "I'm a frog!"

What She Actually Said: "I'm enthralled!"

Whales

Grandma (at the crack of dawn, while running, flailing, in her nightgown, into the Pacific Ocean,  yelling at a pair of blue whales): "No! No! No no no  no no!"

Context: She was worried they were about to beach themselves.

Haddock

Best Friend: "Right now, I am a haddock."

What Best Friend Meant to Say: "Right now, I have a headache."

Temperature

Mum: "It's supposed to be in the early 60's today."

Backwards

Context: We had just driven two hundred some-odd miles, thrice in one day, as part of a long and convoluted move from one city to another.

Mum: "And just think; tomorrow we get to do the whole thing all over again - BACKWARDS!"

Daisies

Mum (dishing up spaghetti for Grandpa): "Careful, guys, it's got bay leaves in it."

Grandpa: "It has daisies in it?"

Me (entering the kitchen from outside just in time to hear him): "It has BABIES in it!?"

Flood

Grandma (nearly every time she called this poor man's office): "May I please speak with," pause to think, and enunciating very clearly: "Fuck Chlud?"

(This happened so often that whenever she called him, her co-workers gathered round her desk to enjoy the inevitable auditory fireworks.)

Spiders

Best Friend (comfortingly, to arachnophobic friend she just startled badly with a rubber snake): "I'm sorry, I didn't realise - I mean, there are people who don't like spiders, who like other things!"

Birds

Me (waxing eloquent): "Come look out the window - it's beautiful out here, the sunlight's all mellow gold, and the trees in front of Bucky's house are in bloom, and full of hummingbirds - "

Mum (trying not to laugh): "That's not very poetic!"

Me: "How so?  They're gorgeous, they look like little embers!"

Mum: "Oh...Oh!  Hummingbirds!  I thought you said 'fucking-birds!"

Me: "Well, it is  spring..."

Sunset

Mum: "When we lived in Tualatin, I liked to look out to the east and watch the sunset."

Context: Trees, hills and buildings blocked the view westward, and Oregon's frequently dramatic skies beautifully reflected the sunset's colours.

Dishes

Mum (passing me a dish to wash): "This too shall pass."

Me (goggling at her): "This too, shelf-ass!?"

Biting

Me: "If it was my ass, it would've bit me."

What I Meant To Say: "I'd forget my ass if it wasn't attached" or "if it was a snake it would've bit me."

Glasses

Mum: (exhales as I lean over her shoulder to hug her at her office chair)

Me: "You fogged up my glasses!"

Mum (astonished): "I fucked up your glasses?"

Fuzzies

Me: "It left me full of warm-and-fuzzies."

Mum: "EW!"

Me: "...Yes Mum, there are no organs in me, just kittens. Raw and wrrrrrrriggling."

Mum: "Ewwww!"

Crow

Clark: "I had to suck some crow, though."

What He Meant to Say: "I had to suck up" or "I had to eat some crow."

Soup

Me: "Thank you for the cat soup!"

What I Meant To Say: "Thank you for the cat socks!"

Refrigerator

Me: "Grandpa was in the fridge this morning, looking for the milk..."

Mum: "Really?  Why didn't you tell me? It'd be a hoot to see the long skinny legs sticking out!"

Nutria

Context:  This one needs three background details in order to make the proper amount of nonsense. First: several years ago, I had just moved to Portland, OR, from the Southwest, after a personal rough patch that left me a wee bit sleep-deprived.  Second: during the nineteenth century fur boom, some enterprising soul imported a large rodent called the nutria to the Pacific Northwest, to raise for fur.  Third: at the point at which this occurs, I'd been in Portland approximately four months and, still not having seen one of the little buggers, had begun to insist my family had made them up to pull my leg and that "nutria" was, in fact, a kind of snack bar.

Me (in the passenger seat of Mum's moving car, having just spied a nutria): "There, there was a-! I saw one!" (cue frantic gesticulation)

Butter

Mum (across the dinner table from me, gesturing imploringly at the butter):  "Hoo, hoo!"

Shoved

Me (writing): "She stared her prisoner in the eye across the starkly lit steel table and, coldly and deliberately, shoved her glasses up her nose."

Microwave

Mum: "Your microwave's in the oven."

What She Meant to Say: "Your dinner's in the microwave."

Hands

Mum: "You're still getting inky fingerprints everywhere. Make sure you wash your hands well before you dry them!"

Me (once I've stopped laughing too hard to speak): "I'm hardly going to dry them before I've washed them."

Touching

Me:  "The cat kept being cute at me and touching me with my paw."

Mum: "With your paw, hm?"

Ringwraith

Mum (holding out a crumple of aluminium foil):  "It's a tulip!  It's just opening - here are the petals, and here's the stamen, and here are the leaves."

Me:  "Nope. Wrong.  It's a ringwraith.  Look, this is its robe, and this its hood, and here are its angry little arms, and - "

Mum (startled and disturbed): "Here's its WHAT!?"

Me (nonplussed): "Its angry little arms...?  With the spiky gauntlets and the stabbing?"

Mum: "Oh thank god, I thought you said angry little arse!"

Owl

Me (musingly, looking up at Mum from my computer): "Owl legs."

Mum: "Hello,  wait, what did you call me?!"

Context:  She was wearing a shirt with a snowy owl on it.  Apparently I found its legs somehow significant.

Watching

Mum: "When we get the TV room set up, we'll have the couch across from the TV, with the coffee table in front of it so we can sit there and eat movies and watch popcorn."

Coffee

Grandpa (reminiscently): "Back when I first met your grandmother, she used to pour a lot of coffee in her hair..."

What Grandpa Meant to Say: "Back when I first met your grandmother, she poured so much cream in her coffee that it turned the colour of her hair."

Migraine

Mum: "If the migraine's in the van, you need to take the keys and move it."

What Mum Meant to Say: "I have a migraine, so before the contractors show up you need to take the keys to the van and move it out of their way."