Faux Pas?
Actually, what is the plural of faux pas? Is it fauxes pas, or faux pases. I think faux is already plural, like bureaux and Grand Prix. Yeah. Prix Fixes. I’m saying faux pas.
Either way, I think I put my foot in it this morning.
Me and neighbour were talking on the bus and she mentioned a house that has been up for sale in the street nearby.
“Lovely house,” she said, “nice little old man lived there for years.”
“I wonder if he died in there,” I thought, but said, “Yeah, we looked at buying it, but they were weird and didn’t want an offer.”
“Well,” she said, “They are knocking it down and building two smaller houses. The estate agent probably had a deal with the builder and turn down any offers. They do that sometimes.”
“Makes sense actually.”
“It’s a shame. Did you speak to them?”
“Wife did.”
“Such a shame they are building little houses. Nice little old man,” she said again, which got me to wondering which was the operative word in her description.
“Well,” I said, seeing that the conversation had run its course, “guess you can’t stop progress.”
Her facial expression adopted an air of slight defensiveness. “OK. Right, well I was just asking.”
She put her headphones in and pressed some buttons on her minidisc player.
I started worrying that she misheard me, because her face and tone changed when I said “you can’t stop progress”.
I think she must have thought I said something else.
What?
Mind your own business, you witch ?
He was going to die anyway ?
Maybe I looked at her minidisc player when I said it, because I pulled my video ipod from my pocket and that might have been a snub at technology which is, like, I mean, seven years OLD.
Either way, I couldn’t go back and say, loud enough for her to hear above her music: “I said YOU CAN’T STOP PROGRESS” because that’s a crazy people thing to say on a bus at any volume.
So I let the possible misunderstanding linger, because it’s Monday and no one’s taking anything that seriously yet.
Actually, you can stop progress. It’s character that you can’t keep down.