Open mouth, insert foot.

I seem to be doing the whole foot-in-mouth thing a little too often lately. It usually happens when I care about someone and I just want to help...

Case in point:

World-famous skydiver from Quebec sends out email inviting all those to who participated in the Canadian record attempt last year to participate again this year. Long bilingual email.

I reply, saying I’ll be there, and by the way, if he needs anything translated—anything to do with this year’s record attempt, that is—I’d be happy to do it for free. I appreciate all the time he’s putting into organizing this event, etc.

He replies saying, “Cool! So my translation must have been pretty bad, huh?”

Crap. I didn’t mean to insult him! The English version of his bilingual message wasn’t bad at all. You could tell it was written by a non-native speaker, but I’m sure no one would hold him accountable for that. They just care that he’s an amazing skydiver.


I just wanted to offer my help! I’m sure it must have taken him forever to write that message in English. And I’m sure he’ll have other messages to send out, too. If there’s one thing I’m good at... Oh well. I just hope he didn’t take it too personally and believed me when I told him I really just wanted to help in any way that I could.