TIFU: Had a quick witted “funny” response in class and was asked to leave.

This happened whilst at Uni in the UK. I studied English (and eventually got my degree at a high level, so must have been doing something right) when we were in a seminar discussing the book that we had to have read that week.

I’m not sure which book (I certainly hadn’t read it), but there was an element to the book that apparently touched on prostitution. The seminar discussion then turned onto the related topic of local prostitution, and the fact that in the street adjacent to our campus USED TO BE a notorious red light district.

Whether it was related to the book exactly or not, the (female for context) professor asked the class “Can anyone think of a reason why there could have been a sudden change and that one moment there was prostitution here and then the next there was not?”

I knew that the responses she was looking for was related to police action, law changes, economic changes in the local community, gentrification of the area etc… certainly I recall thinking that these would have been acceptable responses. But I fucked up and said something else entirely…

So, as the first person to put my hand up in a class where I was the only male out of a dozen or so students I said:

“Perhaps they all just graduated and moved away?”

The laugh that I was so hoping for absolutely DID NOT appear. Instead I had every single person in my class giving me a look of disgust and my Professor suggested that if I can’t take the subject matter seriously, I should leave. So, yeah, I left embarrassed and a little shell shocked if I’m honest.

Really have to read the room a bit more when making public jokes, that’s for sure.

TL;DR I made a joke in my Uni class full of girls that suggested the reason why a local red light district suddenly didn’t have any prostitutes anymore, was that they must have been students and they graduated and moved away. I was asked to leave the class.