# Everyday, normal things that mystified you as a kid. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 23, 2018, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130 "2018-08-23T21:05:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/61 "2018-08-25T11:12:33Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > …I thought the loser in a presidential election got to be Vice President. I finally asked my mom what the loser became, and she said, “Nothing.” This didn’t make any sense to me, and it still doesn’t. This was true up until 1804, so you weren’t as clueless as you think. mmm ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/62 "2018-08-25T12:06:10Z")
Corner mail boxes. They were sealed up and mail only went in thru a one-way lid. I thought that the mail went directly from the box to the post office via … what? Some sort of underground vacuum system? But there’s nothing on the bottom of the box like tubing or anything. How did the mail get out of it? Then when out walking with an aunt I saw a mail carrier unlock it and pick up the mail. ---
**Author:** ![WildBlueYonder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ce7236/32.png) [@WildBlueYonder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildBlueYonder)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/63 "2018-08-25T15:21:16Z")
Neilson ratings. How that worked I had no idea but I made sure the tv was on when my favorite show came up, if I were leaving so it would not get canceled! My mother went along with that! ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2018, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/64 "2018-08-26T19:29:47Z")
> [@Jennshark](#): > > Posted before: when I was a kid we called short ankle socks with pom-poms attached to the heel “peds.” > > Highway on-ramp signs reading NO PEDS ON HIGHWAY confused me for years. For some reason I never asked my parents why short socks were illegal on the freeway. > … Then there’s the story of the Chinese billionaire who sponsored school crossing signs in the US, as long as they put his name “Ped Xing” on each one. 😉 I never had any trouble with left/right, but sometimes I still have to stop and think which way is north, south, east or west. Left/right confusion is commemorated in the comedy cliche, “Go left! No, your other left!” ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2018, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/65 "2018-08-26T20:50:51Z")
I once worked with a woman whose preschool-aged daughter declared that there were boy colors and girl colors, and all objects were male or female based on their color. Okay, so what if an object has both boy and girl colors in it? Then it’s both. And she had a major meltdown when they were out somewhere and she saw a man wearing a shirt that was a girl color. The things kids come up with! ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/66 "2018-08-27T04:25:35Z")
My sister did the thing with the directions. We lived near an old fault line with a bench and then the mountains. Since that was “up” it must certainly be north, right? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/67 "2018-08-27T10:07:32Z")
The up = north thing throws off a lot of adults. Discussion of the Upper and Lower Nile had made heads splode. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/68 "2018-08-27T10:26:57Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > The up = north thing throws off a lot of adults. Discussion of the Upper and Lower Nile had made heads splode. Jay Leno used to do a segment on _The Tonight Show_ where he took a camera crew out on the street or a beach and asked people simple questions, and they showed the stupidest answers.[sup]\*[/sup] One of them was “is the U.S. above or below the Equator?” Leno and his writers were not as clever as they thought. - At least, I hope there were smart answers that were edited out. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/69 "2018-08-27T11:54:37Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > My sister did the thing with the directions. We lived near an old fault line with a bench and then the mountains. Since that was “up” it must certainly be north, right? I lived in Denver for a few months many years ago. Now that was a place where you always knew which way was west. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/70 "2018-08-27T12:37:48Z")
> [@ThelmaLou](#): > > I lived in Denver for a few months many years ago. Now that was a place where you always knew which way was west. You’ve never met **Mrs. FtG**. She could live there for 40 years and not understand that the mountains were to the west. ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/71 "2018-08-27T12:59:08Z")
I was very young when Winston Churchill died. His was not a sudden death, and at every news broadcast they would have another bulletin about his status. Now, I knew that if an animal was in pain and dying, the proper thing to do was to put it out of it’s misery. But I could not understand how, for several days, they would put bullet after bullet into him and still not cleanly finish him off. Something else I could not get my head around was the relative hardness of materials. Is metal harder than wood? Yes. OK, then if metal is harder than wood, a wooden arrow cannot penetrate metal - no matter how thick or thin the layer of metal is - because metal is just the harder material. Finally, when I was a chunk older, my memory is more of the misapprehensions of my parents. I remember my mother telling me that, whereas a conventional oven cooked things from the outside in, a microwave cooked them from the inside out, and that was the difference. Nothing I could say would make her consider the sense of this assertion - it had been in the newspaper, so it must be true (the newspaper in question being the Daily Express, one down the pecking order from the Daily Mail). j ---
**Author:** ![TRC4941](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trc4941/32/6792_2.png) [@TRC4941](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TRC4941)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/72 "2018-08-27T15:28:35Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > My father’s car had the headlight high beam switch on the floor (maybe all cars did in those days) I couldn’t see how the high beams went off whenever a car was approaching and back on after it had passed us. Quite a mystery, for years. I thought maybe the car had some sort of sensor that did it automatically (which might be feasible now, but probably wasn’t in 1966). I posted this story before, but can’t help relating it again after reading this post. In the late '60’s (I was probably 8 or 9) my mom, sisters and I were in the car with our aunt (married to my dad’s uncle). Uncle Ralph worked for at a car dealership and was always driving a different car. So auntie had a car she wasn’t used to driving. It was a summer night and we were heading down the highway in a wooded area. She all of a sudden said (this is what I heard anyway), “where are the brakes? I can’t find the brakes on this car. That damn Ralph, always giving me a different car to drive.” I was in a panic, thinking we were going to crash because she couldn’t find the brakes. :eek: What she really said was, “where are the brights”. :smack: I had never heard of “brights” and had no idea what they were. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/73 "2018-08-27T16:15:12Z")
> [@Treppenwitz](#): > > I remember my mother telling me that, whereas a conventional oven cooked things from the outside in, a microwave cooked them from the inside out, and that was the difference. Uh… actually, that is a big difference, if put in a not-very-scientific way. “The microwave cooks things from the inside” is shorthand for that explanation about molecular resonance which isn’t easy for physicists and chemists to understand, much less your average person who needs to remember that the tea can be **HOT** when the cup’s handle isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/74 "2018-08-27T16:30:19Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Uh… actually, that is a big difference, if put in a not-very-scientific way. “The microwave cooks things from the inside” is shorthand for that explanation about molecular resonance which isn’t easy for physicists and chemists to understand, much less your average person who needs to remember that the tea can be **HOT** when the cup’s handle isn’t. Nah, she meant the physical inside - the centre. And I do have that science background and degree, and she would still insist on this all the way from my fledgling science education until long after I graduated. j ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/75 "2018-08-27T16:35:05Z")
> [@AskNott](#): > > Then there’s the story of the Chinese billionaire who sponsored school crossing signs in the US, as long as they put his name “Ped Xing” on each one. 😉 My grandfather told my mother that pedestrians were people from Pedestria. She believed him, and answered a question at school with that information. I am not sure she ever forgave him the joke. ---
**Author:** ![Jennshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Jennshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jennshark)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/76 "2018-08-27T19:26:48Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > My sister did the thing with the directions. We lived near an old fault line with a bench and then the mountains. Since that was “up” it must certainly be north, right? In Utah it was easy: Big Wasatches on the East (lived in foothills of 12k peak). In San Diego ocean = West. I was clueless in Appalachian Ohio my two years there, too many rolling hills and no tallish landmarks. In Jersey the Delaware is two miles to my West-ish, but I still have to really think about which way the Atlantic lies when I’m figuring out which direction I need to go on East-West highways (it’s Easterly, but it’s hard to shake my So Cal Pacific Ocean directionality). Manhattan was really easy to navigate once I learned which river was which and that Harlem/Bronx was “up,” but Philly still confuses me. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/77 "2018-08-27T19:41:41Z")
> [@Jennshark](#): > > … > > Manhattan was really easy to navigate once I learned which river was which and that Harlem/Bronx was “up,” but Philly still confuses me. “The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down. The people ride in a hole in the ground. New York, New York, it’s a helluva town!” ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/78 "2018-08-27T19:45:43Z")
> [@Jennshark](#): > > Philly still confuses me. I spent 4 years in Philly and never learned to navigate. I tried visiting the Liberty Bell multiple times, but every time I thought I was close, the street would become one way/do not enter and I’d end up somewhere else. I once was lost in a neighborhood so bad that a cop stopped me and led me to safety. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/79 "2018-08-27T20:36:49Z")
My mother said once she was traveling in the old south and saw 2 water fountains. One was labeled “white” and the other “colored”. Well their was a line to the white one so she walked over and used the colored one. She was dissapointed in that the water was just plain old water. ---
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2018, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130/80 "2018-08-27T21:38:15Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Jay Leno used to do a segment on _The Tonight Show_ where he took a camera crew out on the street or a beach and asked people simple questions, and they showed the stupidest answers.[sup]\*[/sup] One of them was “is the U.S. above or below the Equator?” Leno and his writers were not as clever as they thought. When interviewing candidates for an electronics technician position, I started asking people what was the difference between AC and DC (note that these were all people with associates degrees or better in electronics), and by far the most common answer was analog current versus digital current :smack:. Very few got the answer correct. For my contribution to this thread - There was a highway we traveled frequently that had an “Adult Toys” store on one of the exits. My pre-sexual knowledge brain always tried to imagine what awesome toys adults kept all to themselves, or if they were just the same toys as in a regular toy store but adult sized. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyday-normal-things-that-mystified-you-as-a-kid/820130.md?page=5)