TIFU by attending a butterfly release at my office
For the past few weeks I’ve been walking by this one department in my office and they’ve had these butterfly gardens, basically little net houses. At first they’re caterpillars, then they become cocoons, and then they turn into butterflies. I walk by every day and look at them because it’s so cool.
Today I’m on my lunch break and one of my coworkers, who’s also been over there looking at them, is like, “Hey, they’re about to release the butterflies outside the building, come watch.” And I was like oh my gosh. So I ran after them.
Mind you, as I’m walking up to this butterfly release, I do not know a single person there. I have never even seen any of these people’s faces before. But in my mind, this is just a small department of ten or so people releasing the butterflies they’ve been raising, so whatever.
I get outside and the small crowd is gathered in a circle and they’re like okay, we’re going to release the butterflies. I’m so giddy, smiling ear to ear.
Then the woman doing the release is like, “I’m not very good at public speaking, so sorry if I mess up.” And in my head I’m like girl it’s a butterfly release, it’s not that big of a deal.
Then she’s like, “If anyone wants to say a few words before the release, you can do so now.”
No one says anything. It’s completely silent and feels so awkward. So I decide to help break the silence and I’m like, “I hope the butterflies live a long great life.”
Then it starts to click.
We had all gotten an email about three weeks ago that an employee at the company had passed away. I didn’t know her, so I didn’t really think anything of it when I went outside.
They’re literally having a memorial for her.
Apparently she really liked butterflies, and the butterfly release was part of her memorial.
Me and my coworker look at each other like oh my God, we just crashed a memorial.
Then they started playing her favorite sad John Mayer song, everyone’s crying and giving eulogies for like 30 minutes, and me and my coworker are just standing there completely mortified.
But we were so deep in at that point that we couldn’t leave because that felt disrespectful. It was disrespectful to be there in the first place, but also disrespectful to leave, so we just stood there sweating until it was all over.
Then afterward we were basically like, so we didn’t know, sorry for crashing your memorial.
And I know technically for TIFU it’s supposed to actually be your fault, and obviously I had absolutely no idea this was a memorial. They also definitely had multiple chances to tell me this was a private moment and that I probably shouldn’t be there, but no one did. That being said, I did willingly follow everyone outside to a butterfly release where I knew literally no one, so this entire situation only happened to me because I decided I needed to go see these butterflies get released. I feel like that has to count for something.
TL;DR: Thought I was going outside to watch some butterflies get released. I was very wrong.