My bro-in-law has a story about that. His aunt (so it goes) went to a butcher to get something to eat. He says, “How about some beef tongue?” She makes a face and says, “Ick! I’d never eat anything that came out of a cow’s mouth! Just give me a couple of eggs.”
Was that before, or after they used that joke on All in the Family? 
Thank you for the explanation, Kyla, but such an informative, polysyllabic response would not have come from my ex. But no doubt someone explained that to her–she just couldn’t explain it to me.
I was taking sailing lessons last summer. The woman captain who was giving the lessons had us introduce ourselves. One of the students was from Taiwan. When he said this, the captain replied, “Oh, I love Thai food!”
I was dumbfounded, but not in the least bit surprised.
I just found this thread, and I think I have a couple of qualifiers.
When I was a college senior in Aerospace Engineering, I shared a carpool with a Psychology PhD student. This was in the days of the Space Shuttle’s first flight, and she asked me why there was so much concern over the safety of the shuttle during re-entry. That is, why did it get so hot and why was that a worry? (so far, good questions) I gave the explanation about high speeds, friction with the air, shock waves, and novel heat shield approach, etc. Then the conversation turned:
“Aren’t they going real fast all the time they’re up there? Why aren’t they hot all the time then?”
“Well, yes, but when they’re in orbit they don’t get hot because there’s no air to generate friction.”
“Well, then, what is there?”
This well-educated person didn’t understand that the atmosphere thinned out to nothing in space, and she didn’t even seem to grasp the concept of a vacuum. [didja watch anything about Gemini, Apollo, etc.? ever wonder why they didn’t just use a big airplane? wonder about the bubble headed suits they wore?]
Second case. I’m at a design review for an aircraft being given by a defense contractor. This is a formal briefing with Q/A where the designers describe their approach and the military folks (I’m one) can ask questions and offer suggestions. A briefer describes that they’re going to use compressed nitrogen as an energy source for some particular action. One of the safety engineers (musta been a EE) asked, “What is the environmental impact of releasing that nitrogen into the air?”
The briefer gave a blank stare for about two seconds and recovered nicely - “Well, the atmosphere is about 75% nitrogen to begin with, so I guess that might go up a little locally.” He then moved on (mercifully) quickly.
A woman I used to work with did not know that one could be a Christian and not a Catholic. This was a 26-year-old with a university degree; I was only 21. She had never heard of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, or of Henry VIII and his wives, or any of that stuff. She knew that there were other (non-Christian) religions out there, and had heard of Lutherans and other protestant denominations, but couldn’t grasp the fact that, no, I wouldn’t be having a wedding mass (even though I’d be getting married in a church), and didn’t know that there are huge differences in beliefs. She’d grown up Catholic, but had been educated in public schools; there’s just no excuse. :rolleyes:
And then, just yesterday: I’m on a plane from San Jose, CA, to Seattle. The people in the seats behind me are looking out the window after the pilot announces that we can see the Three Sisters mountains, etc. They’re debating between themselves if the other mountain they can see is Mt. Shasta. (for those of you who aren’t familiar with the west coast, Shasta is huge, and is accompanied by a huge lake, and is in California. Three Sisters is about halfway into Oregon.) I could tell from their conversation that they knew Shasta was in California and 3S was in Oregon, but they still couldn’t decide if this was Shasta or “Shasita” or something. So they ring the bell for the attendant. Gesturing to the window, they ask the attendant if she knows where we are. She gives them a blank look and says, slowly, as if she were talking to a 3-year-old, “We’re in an airplane, going to Seattle.”
I wanted to slap all of them.
This sorta tripped me out. Once I was in the checkout line at the supermarket and was unloading a bunch of chips and soda, maybe some booze, because they were all loss leaders that week and were insanely cheap. The lady behind me said something like “y’all havin’ a party?” I actually looked at what I was buying and laughed and said “Oh no, just stocking up on the sale items.” She sorta stared at the stuff on the belt and said “You mean you buy lots of things when they’re on sale? That’s a good idea!” Like it had never occured to her. I think about her often and wonder if she goes through life going to the store every day and buying just enough food to eat that night. (And grumbling about how expensive it was, lol.)
Guilty, as charged. I grew up in Florida. I moved to Boston when I was 16. I don’t notice my accent, while others cringe at it. One of my best friends, however, has an accent that could strip paint off the walls. He came to visit me a few months ago, and it got to where I was embarassed to take him into public. The worst was in Wendy’s…he didn’t mention that he didn’t want mayo on his chicken sandwich, and upon finding the crap on there, he stormed up to the counter, “I don’t want no mayo-naise on this here sandwich!” The employees were trying not to laugh. Hell, I was trying not to laugh!
Course, I’ve known yankees that deny their accent too…
::sigh::
In my redneck school, which was about 99% Protestant, I, a Methodist, got in many, many arguments with inbred hicks that YES, you CAN be Catholic AND be a Christian. Christianity is a faith. Catholicism is an OFFSHOOT of that faith, as is Protestantism. Yes, you ARE a Protestant. I don’t care if you call yourself a Lutheran or a Methodist or a Baptist, you are STILL a Protestant. No, Hindus are NOT Christians. They believe in Shiva and Vishnu and other gods like that. No, most Jews DON’T believe in Christ. Yes, they believe in our God. No, they don’t believe in the Holy Spirit, or the Trinity. Just God.
Jesus H. Christ! You should at least know SOMETHING about your own religion.
Judaism begat Christianity, which begat Catholicism, which begat Protestantism, which shat out hundreds of splinter groups. Not to mention the splinters of Judaism and the splinters of Catholicism et cetera!
I HATE IGNORANT MORONS! Argh! I had to explain, reexplain, argue, clarify, simplify, reexplain, argue, and then, finally, give up. Okay, sorry, Luke, I didn’t know that Easter Orthodox Catholics weren’t Christians. My fault, Luke, you frickin GENIUS you.
–Tim
I just had two kids at my workplace who were surprised that we had Presidents named Harrison and Garfield.
This made me roll my eyes and walk away.
This is nowhere near as deep as the previous posts, but it amazed me at the time.
Several of the women I employed at a day care center I used to run were talking about music during their lunch breaks when one of them mentioned Donna Summer. Every one of these women were old enough to remember disco firsthand, mind you. One of them piped up:
“Donna Summer? The lead singer for the Supremes?”
Agh. Nearly killed my little “Once Upon a Time I was a DJ” soul.
A woman I worked with (fundie, but low-key) didn’t believe Catholics are Christians. She said they use a different bible, so they can’t be Christian.
I grew up in West Texas and was shocked to discover (at sometime in high school, I think) that there was such a thing as a white person who is Catholic. I just always assumed that the Mexicans went to the Catholic church and the white people went to the other “normal” churches. Then, of course, I went to college on the east coast and not only met more non-hispanic Catholics, but I also saw firsthand that Jewsish people were real beings and not some strange mysterious group of people that were talked about on TV.
I may have gotten a decent book education in college, but the life experiences I received were a hell of a lot more important. 
The first year of law school, I wind up with a professor who’s supposed to teach “Legal Research and Writing.” She tells us we have to look up “presidents” (pronouncing it prez-uh-dents) for the decisions we are urging the jugde to make with our written arguments (briefs). A classmate, a former newspaper editor, says helpfully and gently “Precedents?”
“No,” she says, “presidents.”
“Um,” he says. “I’m sure you mean the word ‘precedent’ which is spelled P-R-E-C-E-D-E-N-T.”
“No, that’s incorrect. There’s no such word. The word for a prior decision you’re citing is ‘president’.”
OOOOOOkay.
This woman was an assistant district attorney in Essex County, New Jersey. Urk!
I never knew that hamburgers came from cows until I was about ten years old. I had never really thought about it until then.
I’ve met a disturbing amount of people who have no idea what a gerbil is.
Some might consider her breathy in the classic ‘damsel in distress’ style. She is quite able to get her upper torso moving in a most amazing way with no apparent motion from her spine. All this while merely smiling and asking “how may I help you?”
‘Melanie’ is the latest addition to the accounting department of a business that was recently visited. Her charms most certainly fall in the visual category to say the least. Several short conversations over the first part of a week revealed that she was a pleasant woman of 27 who while taking some entry level accounting courses over the years, had primarily worked in word processing and general ‘Woman Friday’ type office situations.
That Thursday was to be the end of my visit, so several people including Melanie were invited out to lunch. Melanie said she was an infrequent wine sipper, but decided to join another old sot and me in the evils of martinis. When we got back to their office, the little darlin’ seemed to have a just shy of inappropriate buzz going.
I grabbed my stuff in preparation to leave, but could not resist saying good-bye to Melanie and her inhalations one last time. I asked her what she was working on and was told that all the service department’s expense accounts had to be checked to make sure that the techs had used the correct job numbers for the customers visited. She sorted through, and then pushed several of the pages towards me. In a conspiratorial voice, she said she understood that many of the men were traveling to and from cold areas of the country, but couldn’t see how they lost and had to replace so many five to ten dollar…Skycaps.
The sweetheart had been suffering a month long brainfart that only the truly innocent and naive might achieve. We agreed to keep it to ourselves, and now a most enjoyable image comes to mind when picturing her giggling and inhaling, with her hair tucked loosely inside a woolen…ski cap.
Although I’m sortta scared to know, which law school was that?
This happened to my former English teacher about 5 years ago.
She went to a KMart-type store around Easter, at which time the store had an aisle devoted to Easter items. More specifically, aisle 9. When my teacher got to the aisle, there was a special sign, decorated in Easter colors, and flowers, and eggs etc.; and the letters were in this light violet color. The sign read, “Isle 9”. Read that carefully. Being an English teacher, she wanted to corect the mistake, and so went to get the manager. She brough him over to the sign, pointed to it, and said, “Bermuda or Bahamas?”. It took four explanations for the manager to notice the error.
But there’s more. A week later, my former teacher went back to the store. She noticed that the Easter aisle sign now had an “A” in thick black marker among the pretty pastels of the rest of the sign.
One more story. When I was in 5th grade, a classmate of mine insisted that Rhode Island was, in fact, an island. A teacher was called over and she straightened him out.
That should be “correct”, not “corect”.