One of the reasons that observational comedy is so popular is because it points out those things that we all just know, but don't really think about. We all experience certain everyday situations; at the shop, on a bus, in the office. There are hundreds of small, mundane occasions when we all pretty much think and feel the same way, we just don't realize it.
We here at Bored Panda have collected a list of just these kind of occasions, and there are sure to be plenty of them that'll leave you nodding along in bemused recognition. Scroll down below to check them out for yourself, and add your own in the comments!
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Keeping track of your passwords can be difficult, it's a fine line between good online security and being able to remember the damn things. And it's only getting more complex. Capital letters, numerals, but don't you dare try using that dash. Just coming up with a decent one takes a certain talent!
This is the perfect time to test out your neutral face, look straight ahead, maybe whistle a bit, relax. It can get awkward though if there's no exit except at the checkout, and you have to squeeze your way through, drawing the attention of everyone...
Thank god for the autosave. This one seems more of a 'retro' experience for me, however those easy excuses for not handing in an assignment are long gone.
Word is sh*t if you want to add images. There are two tricks you can use: 1. Insert a table, one column, invisible borders, and insert the image inside the cell. You can even add another row below for a caption or explanation. It always stays centered! Something similar if you create a "text field"? ( I use Word in Spanish and don't remember in English), if you insert the image inside a "text thingy" you can move it easily, although it sometimes moves the text around it. My advice if you work a lot with text and images is to get Microsoft Publisher. It's much better, and it saves hours of work, and your mental health.
I regard heavy machinery as anything heavier and more complex than the remote. I'm high, unpredictable and a risk to everyone. Now leave me alone.
As life gets easier, the easy things seem harder. Whereas we used to happily traipse up and down the high street for our shopping, the act of getting up off the couch to grab our credit cards now feels like a major inconvenience. If this is you, try saving your card number and expiration dates on your browser, and if you can summon the effort, memorize those 3 little numbers on the back. Good luck and Godspeed!
This is an awkward one, because once you are past a certain point it becomes desperately impolite to ask. As an Australian you get a slight pass because you just call everyone 'mate' anyway, but eventually you're gonna get caught out!
But why do we forget people's names? The simplest, and most brutally honest reason is that we're just not interested. We are much better at remembering things that we are motivated to learn, so if somebody keeps forgetting your name, they probably just don't really care about you. Sad!
Only 3 years? And here I am stressing out about the time I crapped myself at Jake Mcgrath's 5th birthday party. Sadly, some things will just never leave you.
We grab our phones multiple times a day, often for no reason other than habits based on addiction, for pleasure, and obsession, for relief from the anxiety of 'missing out.'
Writing in Psychology today, Dr. Larry D. Rosen believes that your motivation for constant connection is a combination of pleasure and anxiety. "How much of each, I believe, is based on the individual," he says. "Personally, I would say I grab the phone about 75% of the time for anxiety reduction and 25% of the time for pleasure. I watch others and when I see some smiling as they tap keys and await return missives, I assume that they are feeling pleasure. Most often, I don’t see them smile at all, but maybe express an almost a visible sigh of relief." How about you?
Yup. And the other similar thing is when I'm cooking something that has recipe on the package and I read the recepie and then throw away the package. And next minute I have to take it out of garbage - sometimes several times.
Who pays attention to single minutes? Most of us know more-or-less how long 10 minutes feels. "I'll be with you in 10," yeah, you pretty much know what you're getting. But a single minute can be taken for granted, that's like, no time. Except at the gym.
"Hold that plank for one minute," somebody tells you. "No problem," you think. "Piece of cake." It's only then do you realize how excruciatingly long those 60 seconds can be. You watch in creeping horror as the seconds slowly drip by, oblivious to your shaking, sagging ordeal, before you collapse around the 40 second mark in a quivering sweaty heap. That one minute is now your personal Everest.
this is true! in my head I'm thinking 30 seconds has pass, look down and nope....14 seconds
The term 'voice confrontation' is used to describe the phenomenon of not liking your own voice, and comes from the false expectations you get from hearing yourself 'internally' most of the time. Because we hear ourselves through our bone structure, we are tricked into believing our voices are deeper and richer than they actually are.
Speaking to The Guardian Dr Silke Paulmann, a psychologist at the University of Essex, says, “I would speculate that the fact that we sound more high-pitched than what we think we should leads us to cringe as it doesn’t meet our internal expectations; our voice plays a massive role in forming our identity and I guess no one likes to realise that you’re not really who you think you are.”
Yes, this happens all the time. Some people just give off that vibe, don't they? The best way to deal with it? Just walk away my friend, unless you wanna get peri-annoyed and post-annoyed too.
We all have those engagements where you'd rather be absolutely anywhere else in the world but there. In these cases, the period beforehand needs to be savored to its fullest, like every sweet minute on your snooze alarm.
Sometimes something as simple as sitting half-naked alone in a towel can be the sweetest thing, because you are not THERE. Or maybe you're just a bit of a space case and zone out from time to time.
Packing is never fun, there's always the temptation to take more than you need. That's never a good thing, as it makes your bag heavier, stuff is more difficult to find and you're essentially just taking items of clothing along for the ride.
So why do it? Well, it's in our nature to delay decision making, so if we just pack it all and decide what to wear later, our lazy brains are happy. Underwear is different because it's small, so you feel like you can throw in plenty and it won't matter. Plus, putting on a fresh pair of boxers always feels better than fresh pants, or a jumper. Doesn't it?
This phenomenon is known as a 'mondegreen,' which The New Yorker explains is a "misheard word or phrase that makes sense in your head, but is, in fact, entirely incorrect."
It has all got to do with the way your brain processes the sounds you hear, and is governed by things like knowledge and familiarity. For example the classic 'excuse me while I kiss the sky,' is often misheard as 'excuse me while I kiss this guy,' because kissing guys is a common occurrence, kissing skies not so much!
Another situation where you truly embrace every minute. Even though you know that these three minutes aren't gonna make the slightest difference to your level of morning freshness, you are gonna savor them, drink up every second of sweet, cozy sleep. Aaaaand it's over in a flash and you're getting up anyway. Was it worth it? You bet it was!
I kinda miss the days when we had four channels and that was it. For dinner you had news, news, soap opera or The Simpsons, easy choice! Now it's at least an hour of fraught decision-making, eventually resulting in a complete lack of commitment to anything. Gah.
Or: Step 1: Parcel loaded in van. Step 2: Driver will be with you in 5 minutes. (Me waiting at the door.) Step 3: You weren't home.
Are you still afraid of the dark? Kids are hardwired to be afraid of the dark, evolutionarily it made sense, as we are exposed and vulnerable when we can't spot potential danger.
Thomas Ollendick, professor of psychology and director of the Child Study Center at Virginia Tech explained why to Live Science. "Kids believe everything imaginable, that in the dark robbers might come or they could get kidnapped, or someone might come and take their toys away." Essentially, their fears stem from "the unexpected," he said. While kids grow out of such fears, if the anxiety reaches extreme levels and is considered a phobia, called nyctophobia, Ollendick says that can last through adulthood if left untreated.
You can bite your tongue and not give that person a piece of your mind, you might even be able to stop yourself giving a frustrated or sarcastic sigh. But keeping a good poker face takes discipline and practice, one social skill that I'm just gonna have to keep working on.
Everybody loves the horsies! I guess if you grew up around horses though, the excitement probably would be reserved for something more exotic. "Oh look, mooses" would be my version of that.
Speaking of mooses; if goose is geese, why isn't moose, meese?
But what if you live in the country and you see horses, like, 100 times a day?
Nope. Not just you. I say horsey!, doggy! and moo cow!. But only when referring to an animal I just saw. In any other reference, I use the proper word.
Load More Replies...My boyfriend calls this my "animal Tourette." I announce any animal I see.
Me, driving in my car with my mum as passenger. I randomly shout out: “Look, baby sheep!” My mum, thinking I was giving some kind of smart a**e condescending lecture on what breed of sheep they were or something, goes: “What kind of sheep now?” Me (in a squeaky voice) “Baby sheep!!!’ Mum: “Oh. (pause) They’re called lambs.” Me: “Oh yeah, that’s right.”
Load More Replies...We ride motorcycles and I wave at every darned horse even though I know it totally destroys any street cred I may have garnered by wearing a bitchin' helmet and riding a Ducati or Beemer.
-- Because "moose" is derived from an Algonkian word and "goose" comes from Proto-Indo-European.
That is irrelevant. Languages are adaptive. Meese and shoop should be words by now. I mean, come on, we made up really stupid words like yeet. Lol
Load More Replies...I rode past a farmer's field yesterday and shouted "oh hello sheep" when i saw all the sheep.
My grandfather used to talk about a flock of cows. Me: herd GF: what? Me: herd of cows GFa: Of course I have heard of cows.
I moved to a new city and saw donkeys for the first time. I was so excited I wanted to go and pet them. People were like, dude, chill!! Just donkeys.. ☺️☺️
I want to ride a donkey really bad. I don't know why; I just want to. I have asked several people if I could ride theirs (I offered to pay) and, so far, no one has let me. I'm gonna buy one just so I can ride it around the yard.
Load More Replies...me: that is a beautiful tree! Friend: I think the tree like you too…?
Oh and Moose is fron an algonquin word so it doesn't have to follow the rules of goose-geese bc I thnk that one's germanic-anglo-saxon.
Haha, on vacation, husband says, "look at all those little horses!" No dear, those are sheep.
OMG I've asked the "why isn't moose 'meese' if goose is 'geese'" billions of times!
It has to do with the origins of the words. While the word goose started with the beginnings of Old English which had different ways to pluralize words depending on their classification which caused the "oo" to mean singular and the "ee" plural with words like Tooth (teeth) and Foot (feet). As the language evolved into its modern form a lot of the odder ways to signal plurals stopped being used long before the word "Moose" was borrowed from a Native American language in the 17th century and so it never received the "ee" pluralization the other words did.
Load More Replies...I live in the country, so if I did it for every enclosure, I wouldn't have any voice left after just a ten minute drive to work, so I've resorted to just saying it in my head.
Camels when I am in Tunisia. It's kind of my second home since 16 years so one could think I should be used to it meanwhile
Honestly I shout out any animal I see that is not a dog or a cat lol. Me on the road with my friends constantly: "Oohh look a Hawk" Friends: "Ok...it's just a bird" Me: "But it's a hawk...yay!"
im sorry as a Maine resident seeing a moose is not nearly as exciting as sheep
Does anybody else lick their thumb and then make a stamp, pounding motion in the other hand after they see a white horse? I find this to be weird and my husband and his family do this all of the time for good luck.
I've only heard of it as a game. When travelling if you spot a white horse, which has to be completely white, you mark the incident by 'stamping' aka licking your thumb and pressing it to the other palm. To prevent cheating you were then supposed to make a separate note. Whoever sees the most completely white horses is obviously the winner. This wasn't anything to do with luck. I wonder if it's something that's just changed meaning over time? My sister insists that saying hello to magpies is lucky when the actual tradition was saying 'Good morning, Mr Magpie, how are Mrs Magpie and all the other little magpies?' and was meant to ward off bad luck. These things get altered - in my sister's case she didn't bother asking why my mother did this and so taught her son something different. There are some weird supersitions around!
Load More Replies...Not when you see them every day. It gets boring after about 30 times.
I think it's all the animals? At least in here you inform everybody about all the wildlife too if they're something you can't see in the city. And people just generally happen to feel happy when seeing animals.
Load More Replies...This. Then you make the mistake of going on to Google to search for 'liver pain,' and five minutes later you have convinced yourself that you now have hepatitis. Good times.
The best phone convo I ever eavesdropped on was a woman telling her husband off for buying a roller coaster. "You BETTER be joking. What are we going to do with a whole roller coaster?! I don't care if we'll be the coolest grandparents ever! Well, I hope it's comfortable because you'll be sleeping in it!!" And all I could think was that I hope they get divorced.... because I want to marry a man who owns a backyard roller coaster LMAO
Some people just reach in front of them and get what they want. No reason why two people can't get to the same item.
Judging the line at the supermarket is one of those handy skills that can get you ahead in everyday life. Sure, that guy might have a small basket, but they are all fresh goods that need to be weighed and typed in manually, That lady has a trolley full of cans but they are all the same, and will pass through with a single scan and a quick count. Tactics!
But what do you do when you're toward the back of a line, and you sense a new checkout is about to be opened. Do you make the move? Skip the queue and get in to an undeserved lead? Or fairly and politely let the people in front go, as they have waited longer. What's your strategy and etiquette?
This happens too often to be a coincidence, there must be an explanation. According to an article by Lucas Reilly in Mental Floss, your body adapts well if you have a good sleep routine, and tries to preempt the stress of your dreaded alarm.
"Your body hates your alarm clock. It’s jarring. It’s stressful. And it ruins all that hard work," he writes. "It defeats the purpose of gradually waking up. So, to avoid being interrupted, your body does something amazing: It starts increasing a protein called PER and stress hormones earlier in the night. Your body gets a head start so the waking process isn’t cut short. It’s so precise that your eyelids open minutes—maybe even seconds—before the alarm goes off."
Some people are receipt keepers, while others aren't. What am I gonna do with a grocery receipt from last week? Claim it back on tax? I'm definitely in the no-receipt camp but it's true, sometimes a random urge does strike and I find myself running through a few "what if just in case" scenarios.
But yeah, like this guy these feeling are based on absolutely nothing. Still beats having a wallet full of Walmart receipts from 1996.
Why do we get this collective feeling of the years going more slowly than they actually do? Perhaps it's because we haven't embraced the 'style' of the most recent decades yet, because we are still close to them.
The 70s 80s and 90s all have a definitive feel to them, and for me anyway, the 90s still feel close by. The 2000s and 2010s haven't yet been defined in my head, so it all kinda feels the same. 2014 could've been yesterday as far as I'm concerned. What do you think?
I loved these! But am I the only one who is annoyed by all of the summaries written about each tweet? It makes it more funny and relatable if you just leave the tweet without adding to it.
Yeah I agree it's like over-explaining a joke or a pun
Load More Replies...or the small panic attack you get when the trainconductor comes around asking for the tickets although you have one
Another one: The frustration you get when you text someone and they take A WEEK to reply
When you feel like taking a hand sanitizer bath because you're on the toilet in a public restroom, hear a person come in, use the toilet and then exit without the sound of running water to confirm they've washed their hands. That's when I wish I could scrub up and glove up like I'm prepping to perform surgery. So gross......
When you are trying to look up the name of a certain classical piece. Normally with a pop song you could look up the lyrics, but you can’t look up the lyrics if there are no lyrics.
Or if the lyrics are in a foreign language (like Latin) and you can barely make them out. (Looking at you, Carmina Burana.)
Load More Replies...I loved these! But am I the only one who is annoyed by all of the summaries written about each tweet? It makes it more funny and relatable if you just leave the tweet without adding to it.
Yeah I agree it's like over-explaining a joke or a pun
Load More Replies...or the small panic attack you get when the trainconductor comes around asking for the tickets although you have one
Another one: The frustration you get when you text someone and they take A WEEK to reply
When you feel like taking a hand sanitizer bath because you're on the toilet in a public restroom, hear a person come in, use the toilet and then exit without the sound of running water to confirm they've washed their hands. That's when I wish I could scrub up and glove up like I'm prepping to perform surgery. So gross......
When you are trying to look up the name of a certain classical piece. Normally with a pop song you could look up the lyrics, but you can’t look up the lyrics if there are no lyrics.
Or if the lyrics are in a foreign language (like Latin) and you can barely make them out. (Looking at you, Carmina Burana.)
Load More Replies...