Kevin Page: 800 Words, George the Dog and when introductions head south

Actor Erik Thomson plays George Turner in 800 Words. Photo / File

ON THE SAME PAGE

At the weekend I discovered getting the wrong end of the stick runs in my family.
I am quite pleased about this.

For a couple of days I thought I would be the only person present at the next annual general meeting of the Silly Plonker Club.

Now it seems one of my elderly relatives will be there too.

So let me explain.

On Saturday Mrs P and I took George The Dog for a walk, whereupon we bumped into an acquaintance of my beloved.

But this was not just any old friend. This was an actress no less, who had appeared in a very popular NZ television series not that long ago.

Naturally, Mrs P introduced us.

"She was in 800 Words," she said of her friend as we stood there.

At this point I have to say I was completely stumped. I had one of those weird moments where even though 800 Words had been something we watched every week, and enjoyed, I could not recall a single thing about it or who this actress, one of the main players, was.

To the uninitiated the programme concerned the trials and tribulations of a man named George who moved to a small town with his two kids and wrote a newspaper column entitled, you guessed it, 800 Words.

Anyway, my blank expression must have been cringingly embarrassing to the charming actress (who I must say I do recall now and who was very, very good) and after a brief period of small talk we parted.

As we walked on Mrs P hissed at me in disgust: "Kevin Page!" - you know it's bad when they say your full name - "800 Words. You remember. We watched it every week. She was after George".

Now bear in mind dear reader I was somewhat on the ropes here, I was being told off, my brain was all over the place trying to remember a television show and as a result all I heard was the last bit: "She was after George."

"What?" I replied, startled. "She can't have him."

I don't really know what I was thinking but it took 10 seconds of slow brain processing for me to work out this actress wasn't actually after my dog but had had her sights set on the male lead in the show and Mrs P was explaining it all to me.

She shook her head and laughed as we headed back to the car but through my embarrassment I did wonder whether she might put the number for the loony bin on speed dial, just in case.

So anyway, I spent a couple of days being embarrassed and thinking I was losing my marbles.

Then an elderly relative in the UK came up with a doozy in relation to getting the wrong end of the stick so I knew it wasn't just me.

Here's what happened.

Our youngest has been online as part of a team from his bank fronting ads promoting Māori Language Week and featuring Māori words in everyday banking use.

Naturally as proud parents we have been sharing the ads on Facebook with family and friends across the world.

If you are not online savvy then basically its like the kids doing a drawing at school and sending it to Nana so she can stick on her fridge. You know what I mean.

So, one part of No.2 Son's monologue features a seemingly harmless sentence which goes something like "I have a recurring utu tika" (which I gather means "direct debit").

In the general context of the advertisement it seems perfectly normal but a cousin, delirious with laughter, messaged me back from the UK to tell me one of our old aunties had been shown the piece.

She'd obviously not caught the preamble or quite understood what was going on.
But when the line in question had been uttered she'd solemnly reported one of her friends from bingo had had a terrible time with exactly the same thing and the doctor had given her antibiotics to get it sorted.

• Kevin Page is a teller of tall tales with a firm belief too much serious news gives you frown lines. Feel free to share stories to kevin.page@nzme.co.nz .