My toast joke made my neighbor's kid cry at the block party

Last Saturday during the neighborhood cookout on Maple Street, I saw this kid drowning his pancakes in syrup and thought I'd be clever. I said, 'Careful there, you're going to turn into a waffle if you keep that up.' His mom laughed, but the kid just stared at me for a solid 10 seconds then burst into tears screaming about wanting to stay a human. Turns out he had a nightmare about being a waffle the night before and I basically replayed his worst fear. He avoided me for the rest of the party, and now I just wave from across the fence instead of talking. Has anyone else accidentally hit a weirdly specific trauma with a joke?

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lisa512d ago

Did he at least tell you about that nightmare after he calmed down, or did you have to piece it together from his mom? Because that level of specific coincidence is wild. I once told a kid at a birthday party that his balloon would float away if he didn't hold it tight, and turns out his older brother had let go of his hand at a carnival a month before and he got lost for like an hour. The kid dropped the balloon on purpose and ran to his mom crying, and I spent the rest of the party explaining to other parents that I wasn't the balloon thief, just a guy with a bad sense of timing. You basically became the villain in his personal origin story without even knowing you were auditioning for the part.