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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/PaulitaN_Price on 2026-04-05 21:51:17+00:00.
So this was last night and i still feel sick about it tbh. My gf’s dad is one of those dudes who barely talks and somehow that makes it worse, like he just sits there looking at you for two seconds too long and you start hearing your own iq drop.
He works with electronics or repair stuff or some kind of circuit wizard job, I dont remember the exact title but like real actual technical shit, not restarting a router and calling it IT like me. We were having dinner at their place and he mentioned this old stereo of his was making a buzzing noise and cutting out sometimes, and for some reason my dumb ass goes oh yeah sounds like a loose connection ive fixed stuff like that before. I have not. I have never fixed stuff like that before. I think one time I unplugged a modem and plugged it back in and acted like a hero. That is the level we are working with here. He just looks at me and says wanna take a look. Not rude. Not excited. Just said it. So now I either admit I was talking out of my ass in front of everyone or I follow him into the garage and die there. We go out there and he puts this stereo thing on the bench, opens it up, and instantly my whole body does that hot-cold thing because it was just wires and boards and little metal bits everywhere, like not movie wires either, actual tiny weird components where if you breathe wrong you probably ruin somebody’s childhood. I should have bailed right then. I should have laughed and said nah man I was kidding.
Instead I started doing this pathetic performance where I leaned in and pointed at random stuff and said things like huh yeah okay I see the issue or maybe this is the connection here, which is insane because I did not see shit. He was just standing there too, quiet, watching me self destruct in real time. And I swear that somehow made me keep going because if he had said dude stop I probably would have stopped. But he didnt. Maybe he thought I knew what I was doing. Maybe he knew I was a moron and wanted to see how far I’d take it. Either way I kept touching things I absolutely should not have touched and then I saw this one little plug or wire or whatever that looked crooked to me, and instead of asking, instead of using my words like a normal person, I just pulled it. Not carefully either. Just kind of yanked it because in my head I was like okay this is the moment where I find the problem and look competent. Immediately there’s this sharp little pop sound and then nothing. Just silence.
The kind that makes your skin crawl. We both froze. I remember saying something incredibly stupid like huh okay and trying to turn it back on. Dead. Fully dead. Like I took a sick old dog and shot it. He leaned in after a sec, checked it himself, pressed a couple things, looked inside, then just goes huh. That was it. No yelling. No wow nice job. Just huh. And honestly I would have preferred getting screamed at because that at least would mean he cared enough to react like a human. We went back inside and when my gf’s mom asked if it was working he said yeah it’s done now. Everybody kind of laughed a little but in that fake dinner-table way where no one wants to make it worse. My gf looked at me like are you serious right now and I wanted to evaporate. The rest of dinner was awkward as hell, like nobody said anything mean, but he got way quieter and I could feel that shift where someone decides what box to put you in and now you live there. Later in the car my gf told me that stereo was old and sentimental and he’d had it forever, maybe since before she was born or close to it, I dont remember exactly because by that point I was busy trying not to throw up. She wasn’t yelling, which somehow also sucked more, she was just like why would you say you knew how to fix it if you didnt. And I had no answer except the real one which is because I’m an insecure idiot and wanted her dad to think I wasnt useless for like five minutes. So yeah now instead of impressing him I basically walked into his garage, killed his sentimental stereo, and probably got permanently filed under this guy should not be left alone with batteries. TL;DR lied to impress my gf’s intimidating dad by pretending I knew electronics, touched his old sentimental stereo, heard a pop, and now the stereo and maybe his respect for me are both dead.