Friday, August 07, 2009

an unbelievably distasteful joke

I received an email yesterday to ask me for permission to use my name in a Humorous Contest speech. I thought that was a harmless request, so without much thought, I replied to say "Go ahead". In my heart, I thought that was a really nice and polite person to ask me for permission to use my name. I was looking forward to hearing that particular contest speech and all prepared to laugh, since it was supposed to be a Humorous Speech Contest.

Little did I expect to hear my name being associated with a joke with sexual connotations! Trust me, I have a very good sense of humour and I do crack self-deprecating jokes. But when I heard that speech, I just simply did not find it funny at all. The first thought that came to my mind was "What on earth was going through this guy's head when he asked to use my name in a sexual joke?" I just stared at him with disbelief. It felt like I had been molested.

The feeling of uncomfort and embarrassment just made my stomach queasy. To make things worse, the speaker was a male retiree and a recent aquaintance whom I had only met less than 5 times in the last few months. This incident left me with such a bad aftertaste that I had to expel it all out through blogging at 3am.

That was just an unbelievably distasteful joke.

1 comment:

The Oriental Express said...

I thought in toastmasters' speeches the three things are a no no :-

Politics, religion, sex

Someone should remind this retiree.

I hate speeches where the speakers tried to elicit laughter by talking about their wives, and sometimes even putting them down.