Too late.
My take here is, pretty much, “it all depends”. I see astro’s point: I’ve been, in a past relationship, astro’s “the explainer”: my SO (though her formal education had been fairly thorough, and continued till she was aged 16) was in most things, pretty profoundly ignorant, and pretty resistant to learning what she might be told about. She didn’t resent being the explained-to, and expressed (truly or falsely) interest in that which was explained – but it didn’t stick with her. She was by no means stupid – it was just, she was rather like Sherlock Holmes: in that she knew the fairly restricted amount of stuff which she needed to know, to function in her life, and didn’t want to clutter her brain up with un-needed material. (If the word “Amazon” had meant anything to her, it would have been as a big South American river – and however many times I might have blathered on to her about female warriors in antiquity, that would just have gone in one ear and out of the other). She was an absolute sweetheart in many ways; we never made a lifelong commitment – that not turning out to happen, wasn’t primarily about me being a trivia-geek and her the polar opposite of same; but that which astro neatly summarises, would have been an ongoing low-level source of frustration and gripe-fodder to me, if we had committedly got together. Different types, neither of them objectively right or wrong.
I feel that Maastricht makes a good point – so much to know (especially in these times) – and, different people have different areas of interest, and intellectual curiosity is not universal / obligatory / the absolute and recognised-everywhere distinction between “the right” and “the wrong” sort of people. And, seemingly wildly incompatible couples, have paired off and had lifelong loving relationships – and all the other permutations implied therein, have happened and can happen and can be highly successful, or disastrous, or anything in between: all part of the human comedy.
Over the years, I have worked with pharmacists who did not know that:
- Lesbians menstruate
- Women do not usually produce breast milk until after they have given birth
- Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in blood transfusions
And I worked with a woman whose RN daughter thought reindeer were mythical animals until she went to a live Santa exhibit at the local mall. :rolleyes: 
:eek:
Damn. I mean, just, DAMN.
I didn’t know Thurber wrote The Secret Life of Walter Mitty!
And I enjoyed reading The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
And I like Thurber. I was just telling Mrs. Napier about that cartoon of the couple in bed, and one of them’s saying “And I say I heard a seal bark!”, and there’s a seal peeping over the headboard at them. For some reason she didn’t see why this would be funny.
You know what? If you took all the facts in the world and laid them end to end, they would reach to where there’s no way we can remember them all. Just too many of them.
I’ve mentioned her before, but I was acquainted with a lady who was born and raised in Texas and did not know where Mexico was. I had just returned from a trip to Mexico. I was sitting in my regular bar, when she said hello and mentioned she hadn’t seen me for a while. I said I’d been in Mexico. She said, in all seriousness as I was soon to learn: “Where’s that?” I laughed at what I thought was her little joke, but it hurt her feelings enormously. She said in a hurtful tone of voice: “Well, I’m not smart like you.” Turns out she honestly did not know where Mexico was despite, again, having been born and raised in Texas. Granted, she was not the smartest bulb in the bunch at the best of times, and I don’t think she had finished high school – she’d left to pursue a, um, professional career – but I was flummoxed by that revelation and felt bad to boot. She was not kidding, you had to know her.
I also knew an American over here who was from Baltimore and had a master’s degree in journalism. So it is inexplicable to me that he had never heard of HL Mencken. He seriously had not. Although he grew up in Baltimore, his master’s was from a small school in Boston, and his bachelor’s degree was in a non-journalism-related field. But still that seems incredible. I still see him around from time to time, but he has some serious mental problems and has in fact been in and out of psychiatric wards in Bangkok. He absolutely refuses to leave Thailand, but it would be the best thing for him. I see his writings in the paper occasionally. He writes freelance, considers himself quite the storyteller, but his stuff is pretty innocuous tourist fluff for the most part, with no insights whatsoever. The last I heard, his main job now is teaching English at some school he managed to wheedle his way into. Strange little guy, to say the least.
Don’t worry. Amazonian will be common knowledge soon:
Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot, breaks silence on casting in ‘Man of Steel’ sequel
“I represent the Wonder Woman of the new world,” she said. "Breasts? Anyone can buy for 9,000 shekels (roughly $2,500 in U.S. dollars) and everything is fine.
“By the way, Wonder Woman is Amazonian, and historically accurate Amazonian women actually had only one breast. So, if I’d really go ‘by the book,’ it’d be problematic.”
No shame in her not knowing, the problem comes in when you offer an explanation and they don’t want to learn it. I do not understand people who do not want to learn. Useless information is the best! And often useful.
BTW, my high school nickname was “Amazon Annie” and I’m just over my 40s.
And it makes you very good at Jeopardy.
Right. If any single piece of knowledge like this is a dealbreaker, you’ll probably die a lonely man.
Exactly. No one knows everything and even something you think should be common knowledge likely isn’t as common as you think. Especially with info as unimportant to people’s lives as this trivia. Now, say, if she has no idea who the vice president is or something like that, I’d be a bit worried. But even then, it’s not necessarily a dealbreaker.
Was Xena an Amazon? I mean I know who Xena is, but have no idea that she may me an Amazon. I know Wonder Woman is, but the TV show is probably a bit before her time and she may have zero interest in comics. I know absolutely nothing about Qaddifi’s bodyguard. Qaddafi may be somewhat important to know regarding world events, but his bodyguard is nothing but trivia.
Several years ago I worked with a group of programmers, analysts, systems engineers, whatever. One guy was berating another for not working hard enough. I told him not to be such a Simon Legree. I got a full round of blank stares. “You know, Simon Legree, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” More stares. “The novel, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the abolitionist.” “What’s an ‘abolitionist’?” Yikes. Okay, square one. “Have you ever heard of the U.S. Civil War?” “Oh, yeah, I think we studied that in high school one time.” These were all VERY intelligent young men with college degrees.
I once had a young (20-ish) Hispanic coworker named Carmen Miranda. When we met, I said “I bet you get a lot of jokes about your name.” He looked at me with a blank expression. So I said “Like people expecting you to wear fruit and flowers on your head.” Still a blank expression. So I had to explain to him who Carmen Miranda was. Now I’m sure lots of young people had never heard of her, but if you have exactly the same name, I can’t believe nobody had ever mentioned it to you.
And by the way, for you young’uns, this was Carmen Miranda.
Not specifically. She was a villain, a bandit queen, a right nasty – until Hercules showed her the error of her ways. From then on she was an (edgy!) good guy.
And lesbian icon.
(Warning: strong language)
I’d be rather surprised if a 40 year old woman had never heard of Wonder Woman, Xena, or Qaddafi, but one could have heard of all three without coming across the word “Amazon” in the sense of “female warrior”. And the OP seems concerned about this woman’s intellectual curiosity, not her familiarity with pop culture such as the backstories of comic book characters or fantasy/action shows of the '90s. I was a pretty big Xena fan, but I have to say I don’t think familiarity with the show is something that should be expected of all well-educated adults.
Xena was a woman warrior but explicitly not an Amazon. The Amazons – women warriors who lived separately from men in all-female communities and had their own customs and rituals – appeared on the show a number of times and Xena’s sidekick Gabrielle was kind of adopted as an Amazon, but even someone who caught a few episodes of the show here and there might never have heard the word “Amazon”.
But getting back to the OP, it’s not clear to me that this woman was as confused as he thinks she was. Her response about the (male) trainer being more of an Amazon than she was doesn’t make much sense if she thought astro was talking about Amazon.com. It sounds like she understood that Amazons were warriors or at least big/tough/strong people and just didn’t get (or forgot) that the term only applies to women. Since the term doesn’t come up much outside of classical mythology and fantasy fiction, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone not particularly interested in these areas had heard the term “Amazon” before but was vague on the exact meaning – perhaps confusing it with “Spartan” or thinking it meant warriors from the Amazon region of South America.
To be frank though, that you (astro) are even asking us about this suggests to me that you’re looking for reasons to dismiss this woman as unworthy of you. If that’s the case then I think you should just move on, for her sake if not your own.
I guess I should have told the rest of the story. Even after I explained it to her, or tried to, she still looked totally lost. I finally said “It’s geeky humor” and moved on. Either her school system didn’t require chemistry or she was promoted without learning anything.
Yes, same thing. At some point, the kid said that some non-Latinos told him that Carmen’s a female name, but nobody ever mentioned Carmen Miranda to him.
She specifically said she thought the reference was because he was big and powerful like “amazon.com” when I told her he could not be an amazon because… blah blah etc.
I would have find this cute and endearing.
I is dumb.