Saying Grace
My family is historically Jewish, though we’re not really religious in any way. Point is, I didn’t really know anything about any other religions at all. So I was like maybe 6 or 7 years old, and I was invited to a sleepover at my friend’s house. Everything seemed to be going great… until it came time for dinner.
As was tradition in my own home, when food was brought to the dining room table, I just immediately began eating what was placed in front of me. This was met with a firm “Ahem! What do you think you’re doing?” from my friend’s father.
I look around and the mother and father look completely disgusted with me, and my friend and his sister look to be in complete shock. I’m like “Um… eating?”, but the father was like “Well in this house, we say grace before we eat!”
So as a largely non-religious Jewish boy, I had no idea what “saying grace” actually meant. I’d never heard of the term at all. And so… in trying to do what the man asked of me, I meekly, simply said “grace”. You’d think I’d just barfed on his dining room table with how red he turned.
He started screaming, his wife started having a panic attack, the children started crying. The father told his wife to call my mother and have her pick me up immediately. A few minutes later, mom arrived, there was an exceptionally loud shouting match between everyone, and then they demanded that we leave.
Never got to hang out with that kid again. All because I said “grace”. Story credit: Reddit / CrashCrashDummy