Assumptions

I have known Beavis for a long, long time, but I can't say I know him well at all. Unfortunately, conversation is not his forte, so all I have to go on for much of the time is behavior and history.

I tend to stick my foot in it from time to time.

This weekend, I asked him if he knew how many women he had been with.

Perfectly legitimate question - we may get physically involved, and this is the sort of thing I should be privy to. However, my wording was a bit...offensive. There's that assumption thing - Beavis is a very nice looking guy, and I know for a fact that both his best friends were in the three-digit range ten years ago. I backed up and re-phrased my question, but the damage had already been done. I therefore had no right to get pissy about his reply:

"Probably a lot less than you."

When we started talking actual numbers, it turned out that he was absolutely right - his count is around half of mine. Of course, he was wise enough to not ask a question he didn't want the answer to, but I can do the math all by myself.

This sort of shocked me on a couple of levels. First: I had made a judgement about Beavis that was dead wrong, and offensive to him. Second: Beavis made a judgement about me that was dead right, and offensive to me.

Hmm.