"What we have here is a failure of communication" - an example
I tell stories. My stories are like PARABLES, or JOKES, mostly with a LESSON or a MORAL or a PUNCH LINE at the end. My stories usually are about how smart I am, or how I cope with how NOT-smart I am by how I LEARN from others.
* Problem is, I tell them in little groups of people who don't "get" them (bad choice of audience). Then an EXPLOSION happens, on their part or my part, and I end up looking like a jerk.
HERE is a spelled-out EXAMPLE:
The story was about my old shack garage from the 1950s, wooden. 20+ years ago when I moved here, I took out the back wall of it at the alley so I could drive in from the alley and decongest the traffic at the front. (See how smart?) After 5 years the old garage started to LEAN because I had taken the SUPPORT away. So at the "Happy Hour" a carpenter taught me that I could use a JACK to straighten up the building and then nail in an "X" of two 2x4s to provide support/skeleton to the building. I did what he said and it worked (see how I learn?) . Also, he taught me (I learned) that not too many nails were needed because EACH nail imparts 50 pounds of strength (he said; don't fight me on what somebody else told me).
NOTICE that the point of my story was to show how I am SMART to LEARN from others, from a HUMBLE man in a HUMBLE place.
* So, when I'm telling my story to these two women and the husband of one of them, the dominant woman says, when I get to the 50 pounds of strength of each nail part, "SO, YOU NAILED *LOTS* OF NAILS!"
**********HERE'S THE PROBLEM OF COMMUNICATION: She took the entire story and sabotaged it. She MISSED THE ENTIRE POINT. But, also, in the process showed how little she thinks of me by saying that I would do the EXACT OPPOSITE of the wisdom I was receiving from the carpenter.
********I admit, bad choice of audience, with the bad outcome predictable, which I do over and over. AND when these episodes happen, I am always TAKEN BY SURPRISE, cannot pinpoint the communication problem in real time.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Who cares what the woman said!! You just highjacked your own story! 
You were narrating the story and interspersing it with a narrative commentary over voice to bring attention to the specific parts where, in fact, you were learning something to prove you do indeed learn. 
I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what the overall BIG result of all that learning was! 
Then the woman cut in like a bad advertisement just before the climax and punched the air right out of the story! 
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad your covered bridge garage is still standing and all but the story was about what you learned each step of the way plus whether you acknowledged it with your over voice narration. 
I get that it wasn’t the point of the story. I was trying to interject a funny. Granted it works much better in person. I was kidding. I still am!
