This is a great thread. When I was in high school speech class, I had to listen to a fellow student give a speech that the ancient Greeks didn’t like violence on their television programs and the Romans did.
In high school, our madrigal choir was hired to sing at a 12th Night banquet that a local church group was setting up. The organizers needed to know how many of each entree to order for us, so our director put this question to the group:
“Do you want beef or pork for dinner at the Monday?”
only to receive this response from one of the altos:
“What’s the difference.”
We patiently told her that beef comes from a cow and pork comes from a pig, but each explanation was met with “Yes, but what’s the difference?”
When the conversation broke down to “Beef MOO! Pork OINK!” we just said hell with it and put her down for the prime rib.
Whoops…that should read “at the concert Monday.” Preview is my friend. Preview is my friend. If I keep repeating that, maybe I’ll remember once in a while.
[Mr. Burns]There’s a New Mexico?[/Mr. Burns]
I have tried to be aware of “teaching moments” as my daughter has grown up - slip her a little knowledge when she least expects it. That said, one evening she and I were driving home when someone on the radio said something about virgins. I decided to ask the kid if she knew what a virgin was. When she said “I’m not sure” I explained that it was a girl who’d never had sex. She thought a moment and said “Oh, I thought that was a lesbian…”
Presenting me with another teaching moment…
May I plead, tho, that she was only about 8 at the time. I’m doing my damnest to make sure she gets these tidbits from me. The school system here is entirely too uptight to deal with certain aspects of reality. (She’s a HS freshman)
Oh yeah, and she knows WAY more about the solar system than I do, but I can kick her butt in Algebra. 
Hmm, maybe some of these people aren’t as dumb as we think…
Maybe Canterbury Tales, a set of stories told by a group of pilgrims at a time when knights flourished. For that matter, anything set during the Crusades could be expected to have both knights and pilgrims.
-3 isn’t larger than -8, it’s greater than -8. While I don’t think the semantic difference would have made a difference in this case, I know several math professors who will also tell you that -8 is larger than -3.
And one of my co-workers not only doesn’t know how many days in which months, but had never even heard the “30 days…” mnemonic.
Scott
Perhaps you should bet Uncle Cecil. He’s written a column averring that water does * not * go down the plug hole the opposite way in the southern hemisphere.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_161.html
I’ve never been south of the equator (Philippines is closest I’ve come), so I’ve never tested it myself. But my money’s on Cecil.
Ignoring the fact that it isn’t that hard, there are reasons for a 26 year old to never have pumped gas. For example, in Oregon it is illegal for you to pump your own gas. You have to let an attendant do this for you (unless that law finally changed within the last 18 months). For all I know, this is the case in Kentucky as well.
Also, I have several friends my age (26) who have never owned a car. They all know how to drive but do not necessarily have a license. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them had never pumped gas (one friend grew up in a household that never owned a car).
Hey, that’s not as bad as it sounds. Here in Oregon, there are no self-serve gas stations at all. I probably wouldn’t know how to pump gas to save my life (Well, I’m not old enough to have my license yet, but still, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Oregonians didn’t know how to pump gas.) Also, when I travel to other states, I will sometimes momentarily forget that there is sales tax. 
Fifth grade. Darren Peoples owed me 20 cents. I owed him 15. I said “Just give me a nickel, and we’ll be set.” Wouldn’t do it. HAD to have my 15 cents actually handed to him. HAD to then turn around and give me 20 cents. I’ve never understood that.
WAG on the elephant/knee situation: Maybe the elephant is the only creature that has four knees that bend in the same direction?
OK…thinking, thinking…back those many years…I think the teacher said “That’s not an appropriate topic for discussion” and quickly moved on.
And, as I’m thinking of this, another thought pops into mind: could the girl in question have heard of the urban legend and wanted to perpetuate it?
Fifth grade. Darren Peoples owed me 20 cents. I owed him 15. I said “Just give me a nickel, and we’ll be set.” Wouldn’t do it. HAD to have my 15 cents actually handed to him. HAD to then turn around and give me 20 cents. I’ve never understood that.
WAG on the elephant/knee situation: Maybe the elephant is the only creature that has four knees that bend in the same direction?
My browser said the connection timed out on my first post! I swear by all that’s holy!
Overheard in a fancy Chicago restaurant:
Older man: “I’m going deer hunting in Iowa next week. The hunting season doesn’t open in Illinois until the week after that.”
Pretty young thing: “So they do it that way to give the deer the time to migrate to Illinois?”
“The same person once asked me for the year of my birth and when I said 1940, asked what branch of the service I was in during World War II.”
—Tell 'er you were in the Baby Brigade.
At the magazine where I work, we recently ran a story by Cathy Cronkite. The 20-something editor had no idea Cathy’s dad Walter had once been on the tee-vee . . . And I have discovered to my horror that she also remembers Gilda Radner as “oh—that cancer lady, right?”
I was once in an Irish theme pub in London and a group of very noisy American girls walked in. One of them asked the other, very loudly if this was indeed an Irish bar (I would have thought the Shamrock decoration and free-flowing guinness gave her a clue). Her even brighter friend replied loudly “It can’t be - the British and the Irish are at war”
Oh dear
I live in New Mexico, and these are some questions people who are thinking of visiting have actually asked me:
“Do I need to get a special driver’s license?”
“Will I need a visa (or passport)?”
“Do many of the people speak English?”
I don’t have the article now, but before the Olympics in Atlanta, it was reported in the Albuquerque Journal that several people calling from New Mexico to order tickets had been told that they could not make a credit card order from outside the U.S.
Things I have had to explain to people over the age of 20:
Monty Python is not a ‘he’
Neither is Pink Floyd.
Granola is what they use to make the snack bars; a gondola is what they use on the water in Venice.
Patton was a general in WWII; Gerorge C Scott is an actor. There’s a difference.
The Blair Witch Project is NOT a true story!
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is NOT a true story!
The Amityville Horror is NOT a true story!
George Bush and George W. Bush would not be the first father/son elected to the Presidency. (I had to drag out the encyclopedias to prove this one.)
Bill Cosby is a highly successful stand-up comedian and sit-com star. He is NOT just the guy from the Jello commercials.
Aerosmith’s ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady’ was not written for the movie Mrs. Doubtfire, just as ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ was not written for the Lion King (a friend heard this song on the radio and commented how one bit of a song from that movie has gotten so popular) :rolleyes:
Ever hear the phrase ‘Ignorance is Bliss’? Maybe Hitler is a good example of that.
Then she runs out of the room, not hearing the professor’s answer:
‘Because the tastebuds for sweet are on the front of the tongue.’
Scratch1300, you have no idea how much I enjoyed that, once I figured it out, that is. I guess I am as slow as the person I was laughing at.
At the same company, there was another person who had no idea that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis had ever worked as a team.