I have a cousin who didn’t know you can get mashed potatoes by mashing up some actual potatoes. He thought they had to come in powder form from a box. I took the opportunity (it was Thanksgiving) to further educate him: Gravy idealy comes from the drippings of the bird, not from a can.
This was a couple of years ago. Next year I may let him in on the secret of cranberry sauce.
tangent+rant: It bugs me when people throw out the drippings, and then go out and buy gravy in a can. Especially if you’re on a budget- you just threw away perfectly good gravy and now you’re going to go buy some that won’t taste nearly as good?
Recent polls revealed that some people have never been polled, until recently.
I was taking my nephew to the Bull Run Battlefield and I asked them what they knew about the Civil War. Blank stares. I asked them who fought it. Don’t know. I told them, then asked them who won. No clue. I almost turned around and went back home. They were in 4th and 6th grade.
On the other hand I don’t know:
Any Pokemon characters
Anything about Dungeons and Dragons
The names of the spice tramps
The names of any of the boy-toy groups
Any of the MTV VJs
When I was in college I went out with this beautiful girl(lucky for her). During the course of the evening she asked me what courses I was taking. I mentioned that I was taking an astronomy class. So she asked me if I’d be able to tell her her horoscope. After patiently explaining the difference between astrology and astronomy, she said “yeah, but would you be able to tell me my horoscope?” I never went out with her after that.
I went out clubbing with my So and a few of his friends including a very Polish guy named Pavel. After a while I ran in to a group of girlfriends and thought to introduce all of them. One of the girls, Karen seemed to really hit it off with Pavel. After they chatted and danced Karen and I were talking.
She said, “That guy seems really nice. He said he was from out of town.”
I sort of sputtered and asked,“Do you mean Poland?”
She responded, “That’s what I said, from out of town.”
Yeah I guess Poland is a little bit out of town from Winnipeg, Canada.
MtnMan: I grew up in Durango, Colorado. … One summer a tourist asked my mother (who worked in the tourism industry), “Who paints the tops of the mountains white? Is it the city or the state or what.” When my mother assured him that it was actually snow he replied: “Come on, you can’t kid me, I’m not your average stupid tourist.” How right he was.
I too grew up in Colorado. I remember going to the the top of Loveland Pass on US 6, which is on the Continental Divide. Some tourists there were looking around for the crack where the continent was dividing.
I explained what the divide meant; they were mystified. I was half-tempted to pee in the middle of the roadway to show them the puddle going both east and west.
This isn’t quite on topic, but I think it relates:
My college roommate, a friend of his, and I were cleaning up my house. I got a pillowcase and a broom to clean up cobwebs. My roommate’s friend remarked on how interesting it was that dust formed such delicate structures on the ceiling. He was further amazed when I explained that they were just dirty spider webs; hence cobwebs.
Raquel Welch talking about the “52 states” on Larry King’s program.
From personal experience, I don’t remember what prompted this, but I was talking to a co-worker who did not know how many pounds were in a ton.
I had a friend who vainly tried to explain to a twentysomething high-school graduate the concept of “percentages.” She had not clue.
I had a lawyer friend who sincerely thought that NASA trained astronauts in a “gravity chamber,” where gravity was “suspended,” thus allowing them to practice for the Zero-G of outer space.
And I can’t start to get into the invariably losing battles I get over “folk wisdon” with various family members and acquaintances. They heard someone say [whatever] one time, and that’s that!
My old roommie and I had two friends who moved out of state. One moved to California, and one moved to Florida. We were in New York. We were talking about visiting one of them, and she came up with the bright idea of visiting both of them. As I was considering that, she said to me ‘isn’t Florida on the way to California?’ I laughed, she didn’t. She had no clue where California was. Sheesh.
Rose
It’s not really that amazing, but it was very fuuny. Some friends were discussing another fellow, who had recently grown a beard. One was describing it, correctly, as a Van Dyke. Suddenly, from farther down the bar, a voice proclaims:
“C’mon! Dick Van Dyke never had a beard!”
I am a redhead, you see, and I do not tempt. I insist. -Cristi
A girl I went to high school with once declared that she didn’t care for any of the new translations of the Bible. Instead, she preferred to read the Word of God as he originally spoke it to the men who wrote the Bible. She, of course, was talking about the King James version.
Actually, some fundamentalist christians will tell you that Christianity is not a religion. If you look at them kind of funny they will say: “Religion is man reaching up to God, Christianity is God reaching down to man.” Which is a rhetorical saying amoung some preachers. I got into an discussion with a friend once who followed this line of reasoning. I showed him a dictionary, and stated that if he wanted to communicate with people he should use words in a way they would understand. I think he actually believed me.
The people who don’t know the basics of geography or history are beginning to really scare me. Our educational system just seems more and more fucked up (not the fault of the teachers, IMO).
The other stuff about entertainers is sad and/or funny, but I don’t lose sleep over it.
I think it was the comedienne Liz Winstead once joked about this. When John Lennon was shot, her mother called her and said, “Liz! Someone shot Jack Lemmon!” (-50 points if you don’t know who Jack Lemmon is.)
Years ago, I read a the National Lampoon “True Facts” related item. A student wrote an essay that began something like this: “Today we learned about Lennon’s tomb. I think it’s very unfair that this former Beatle had to be buried in Russia…”
