Short Arms

Short arms is a term I coined in my family, we use it when someone says something awkward. It's real meaning to me comes from when someone says something awkward that is unintentional and possibly funny but doesn't have to be funny.
In a little bit I will share a few examples of short arms in my own life but first here is the origin of how short arms came to be.
I had a roommate in college with who we discovered that we had the same length arms as each other even though he was only 5'9 (I'm 6'1). He had me do the test where you put your arms against a wall and with one hand touching the ground the other goes as high as it can. For a normal person it should be the same as their height. Mine only goes to my nose, about 6 inches short. Which means on either arm I am about 3 inches short in arm length.

Anyway, later I started realizing that certain relatives that were the most awkward also had short arms. A connection was made and a term was coined in my family. I have known about my awkwardness for awhile, I used to get this comment often "Well Adam, that normally would offend me but I know you don't mean anything mean by it". And I wouldn't mean anything mean because I never understood what was offensive in the first place.
Anyway, here are two examples of Short arm comments that I have made recently.

1. A friend who is a bit over weight was over at my place and he noticed food had fallen on his stomach and I commented, oh that reminds me of that tv commercial where that guy is acting like he is pregnant and is brushing his teeth and he spits and it hits his stomach. I had intended to follow up with, but your stomach isn't as big as his. Instead he shots back, man Adam your kind of being harsh today, that's the second fat comment you've made today. Anyway, I felt awkward and explained short arms to him and used that as my excuse.

2. This next example happened tonight. I was at this guys place in my ward and I was looking at all these engagement pictures he had hung up. I was making comments on who was pretty and I came upon a picture where this girls eyebrows were really thick and so I said "Wow that girl has really thick eyebrows". His laughingly shot back, 'Hey! that's my sister in law your talking about'. I quickly apologized and he tried explaining how they had upped the contrast in the picture and it made all the darks darker and that is why her eyebrows appeared that way. As I looked at the picture I realized her eyebrows were like that a Hispanic girls that I had dated, who I also found really attractive. In an attempt to recover I told him, 'She looks like this Hispanic girl I dated' and I meant to add that I found attractive but he said 'she's not Hispanic' and I said, 'I know, I was just saying'. To this he started laughing uncontrollably and I quickly realized he may be really offended so I said 'I really need to shut up now, I'm just digging a deeper hole.' He continued laughing and for at least three minutes he would start calming down only to look at me and start laughing again as he mouthed the word 'Hispanic' as he shook his head. I am still confused, all I know is that I caused him to laugh really hard for several minutes and I don't know if he is offended or just found my comment really funny. Maybe it was the thought of how lot of hispanics (like Frida) have thick eyebrows.