Oh My God—I Thought You Were My Father!

This happened many years ago, but is one of my favorite stories.

When I was 17, I went to Ireland with my parents. We were there over my birthday, and I decided I wanted to get my nose pierced to celebrate. My mom and dad asked the hotel concierge where we could get it done, they recommended a place, and off we went.

As soon as we walked in the door, we realized it was a sex shop. We were surrounded by hardcore fetish gear, toys, and porno dvds. But a worker greeted us brightly and confirmed that they indeed did piercings in the back.

My parents were permissive and liberal when I was a kid, so they just kind of shrugged, giggled with me, and let the guy lead us through to the back. A heavily tattooed, outrageously attractive woman pierced my nose, and although I did not yet know I was a lesbian, I was certainly interested in the way she apologized for the pain by saying, "Sorry sugar!" in her lovely Irish accent.

Piercing complete and a bit woozy, I walked back into the sex shop to find my parents, and spotted my dad standing in front of a wall of dildos.

"Checking out the dildos?" I joked, but to my dismay the man who turned to face me was not, in fact, my father.

This poor random Irish guy took a look at me and said uncomfortably, "I'm just looking around." Keep in mind that although I was 17, I am 4' 11" and looked about 12, so from this man's perspective an actual child had just interrupted his sex toy browsing to question him about his behavior.

Mortified, I threw up my hands and said what came to mind first, the most situationally absurd sentence of my life, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry—I thought you were my father!"

As the man's face contorted in horror, the implication of what I had just said hit me, and I fled. I found my parents and shooed them out of the store. I told them what had just happened and they laughed all the way back to the hotel.

Tl;dr My parents accidentally took me to a sex shop to get my nose pierced, I jokingly asked a man I thought was my father about browsing dildos, the man was not my father and I apologized by implying that my father and I were shopping for sex toys together.