Has this happened to you? Details inside.

You might be a perfectly rational / intelligent person but sometimes it happens that you miss to catch simple clues and act in a way such that you look like a fool in front of others because of the way you acted. It dawned on you afterwards what you did was really foolish thing to do after thinking it through but that’s too late to explain the other people involved that it was a genuine mistake / lack of judgement on your part. My question is why this should happen in the first place and how can one deal with it if such a thing happens?