If you haven’t seen your grandmother in many years, we suppose it’s natural that you wouldn’t know exactly what she looks like. And we guess it’s not out of the realm of possibility that you could be on a mission to pick her up from the airport, armed with only an identifying photo, and mistake her for another elderly lady.
But Reddit user everygoodstuff took a case of mistaken identity to another level, as you can read about in this TIFU story. The mission: Pick up grandma from the airport after a long flight from Japan. The outcome: an unmitigated failure.
As the redditor explains, she was sent to the airport to pick up Grandma—who doesn’t speak English, which was the first problem considering everygoodstuff doesn’t speak much Japanese—and after waiting two hours for “an old Asian lady with snow white hair to come out,” everygoodstuff appeared to have find the right person.
“From the terminal, I see an Asian lady come out; she has white hair and looks exactly like the lady in the photograph I’m holding,” everygoodstuff wrote. “I assume it’s my grandma, so I approach her, and say welcome in my super broken Japanese. She responds very kindly and says something I can’t understand; I tell her in English that we’ll talk more when mom’s around to translate. I offer to take her luggage, and we walk out together.”
After driving Grandma No. 1 home and giving her a meal, three or four hours pass. That’s when the redditor’s mother called and asked why grandma hadn’t been picked up from the airport.
Wrote everygoodstuff:
I ask her “wtf are you talking about because she’s here with me,” and I snap a photo and send it to mom. Then she tells me that the lady isn’t our nana.
Whoops. Turns out everygoodstuff had picked up Grandma No. 1—who, in fact, wasn’t everygoodstuff’s grandma at all. So, the redditor returned to the airport, found Grandma No. 2, brought her home, had a meal with both Grandma No. 1 and Grandma No. 2, and then drove Grandma No. 1 to her true destination. So, who was this elderly imposter?
Wrote everygoodstuff: “She was just an old lady from Japan whose family signed her up for a spa getaway retreat after her husband passed away, and thought I was from the agency to pick her up. I asked which resort she booked, saw her itinerary papers, and drove her to the place she signed up for. Before she left, my real grandma, fake grandma, and I had a mini supper, and I apologized for causing major confusion. Before I dropped off my fake grandma at the resort, she tipped me.”
That’s the biggest win at all. Grandma No. 1 was so cool that she dropped everygoodstuff a $50 bill. Which goes to show you that sometimes incompetence can land you a nice little payday, especially when you know that a grandma—any grandma, really—will love you and all your little mistakes. As for how Grandma No. 1 and Grandma No. 2 interacted…
“They talked over supper,” wrote everygoodstuff. “I don’t really know what they were saying, but someone must have mentioned how I fucked up.”
H/T Someecards
