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This post is just for fun but it comes because of a comment in the Tell Me What You Want post.

Those of you from Europe and Australia and anywhere else they speak the King’s English most likely already know what the word randy means. But for those of you that haven’t a clue why being called randy in the UK can be funny and embarrassing here is the scoop.

Randy means, well I can’t think of another way to put it, horny! Not with points coming out of the top of your head but the sexually excited type.

Picture yourself as a 20 year old military person going into a pub and saying, “Hi, I’m Randy” or if you are an American going into a bar and introducing yourself to some innocent young lady by saying, “Hi, I’m horny!” because that is basically what happened to me when I lived in the UK.

But it doesn’t stop there because my last name is Baustert commonly mispronounced bastard. Try to say that with a British accent and you will see it is even more so. Most Americans avoid saying my last name because they don’t want to mispronounce it.

Before I arrived in the UK I already knew about my name so it didn’t really surprise me to hear the giggles when I arrived at Heathrow airport and I was paged, “Will Randy Baustert please report to the information counter.”

I just put my head down and went to meet my openly laughing sponsor at the information counter.

Now, I have never been a pickup artist with a lot of smooth opening lines, before I got to the UK my pickup line was just, “Hi, I’m Randy” as you can see this did become something of an issue in the UK. But surprisingly it had completely different effects depending on the recipient.

Some women wouldn’t blink an eye and instantly realize that was my name.

Some women would laugh.

Some women would get offended.

And once, only once, I was slapped.

The weird thing was that it ended up being a great ice breaker for all the categories. Of course the women that laughed liked it. But even the ones that were offended (yes, even the one that slapped me) came around when I said, “I am sorry, it is a force of habit to introduce myself when I meet someone and I am a dumb Yank and that is my name.” While I show them my ID card that show not only my first name but my last name. So, now I wasn’t just randy but I was a randy bastard. But it is my name and I had it on all my id cards and credit cards so they had to accept it.

Those that were offended usually became apologetic when they realized that it was truly my name and that my last name was Baustert made them even more apologetic. Yes, even the one that slapped me bought me a pint.

This just goes to show you that sometimes the things you don’t expect to work can actually work very well.

At least I wasn’t a cheeky bastard! Ok, maybe I was at times.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 9:48 am and is filed under Just For Fun . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.