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What’s the silliest mistake you ever made?

3 min read

I’ve pulled some real winners when it comes to stupid mistakes in my life. There are the daily missteps first thing in the morning such as pouring orange juice rather than milk on my cereal or starting to apply my pink lip liner only to realize I’m holding a black eyeliner pencil in my hand.

One of my best silly mistakes was boarding the wrong bus one day when coming home after work from downtown Pittsburgh. I was upset then mad at myself and then later couldn’t stop laughing. I even owned up to it and wrote a column about it just to give all of you a chuckle.

One teenager I know recently got his driver’s license and somehow managed to mistakenly put a bit of diesel fuel in the gas tank rather than unleaded. I laughed when I heard this because I almost did the same thing once, only to be saved by the diesel nozzle not fitting the opening.

None of these, however, measures up to the gaffe my friends recently pulled. They were on an organized tour to Scotland and Ireland and ended their trip in Shannon, Ireland. They went to the Shannon airport at 6 a.m. for their 9:30 a.m. flight only to find the flight not listed on the monitors and the airline check-in counter not open yet. Being confused, they called the airline and were told they were at the wrong airport. Yep, they went to the wrong airport! After I stopped laughing, I asked them how in the world that happened. and they said their tentative itinerary flew them out of Shannon’s airport. They claim they didn’t know their final itinerary and tickets flew them out of Dublin instead. How they didn’t look at the tickets to make sure where they were going is beyond me.

Rather than grabbing a cab and trying to make the two-hour drive to Dublin in time for their flight, they decided to change flights and leave from Shannon. The airline informed them this would require a new ticket and would cost $1,700 per person. After much debate and arguing, they fortunately realized they had enough frequent-flier miles to cover the tickets and wound up flying home with the miles and a nominal fee. Now, they are arguing with the tour company and airline to get their miles back, claiming it wasn’t their fault. Maybe so, but if I had gone to the wrong airport, I would either be so glad I had enough miles to fly home free or be so embarrassed by my mistake that I wouldn’t tell anyone.

This story had me laughing so hard that it got me to thinking what other silly mistakes I’ve made. What silly mistakes have you made? I’d love to hear about them and maybe even pass them along in this column to give all of us a smile.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.

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