I thought voting was er… much more exciting than it is. I mean, it’s an exciting civic duty and all but I thought that all the adults went to a very private ball and danced for a while and then left. We grew up in a very safe small town so when it was election time my parents would pick up my grandmother and drive her to the polling place and go inside, leaving my brother and I in the car so I think I extrapolated from the important adults I knew being allowed in to vote, and us kids being stuck outside. It was sort of a disappointment to find out it wasn’t a private ball for adults.
My brother and I were born about 18 months apart so when it was one of our birthdays, my mother would always tell the other one that it was our “half-birthday” because we were half way to the next year. I remember telling someone that since she didn’t have a brother or sister, she couldn’t have a half birthday. I just thought it was on your sibling’s birthday, I guess. Probably it was mum coming up with a way to stop us from bickering over birthday privileges.
Sometime after learning how to tell time and before learning about fractions I made the mistake of thinking that the term quarter after meant 25 minutes after because 25 cents was a quarter. I made my mom late because of that one.
But then again I also thought that when women grew up they didnt have have enough time to go to the bathroom and that was why they wore pads.
Well they used the same blue liquid in the diaper commercials as the pad ones, and I knew what a diaper was for. :smack:
Heh, somewhere along the line I got the idea that babies were made when a man and a woman went into the bathroom, got naked, and the woman drank some of the man’s urine. After all, I knew it involved being naked, a penis, and getting some substance from the man inside the woman.
The right to bare arms. I thought it was strange the constitution included a dress code, but was glad to know I could always go sleeveless.
Drawn and quartered. I was quite horrified to discover what that meant while studying another subject. So I assumed the
“No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
was the same kind of quartered. I found relief that as home owners, my parents would never have to let a soldier be chopped into four peices in our home.
And I assumed that women got pregnant from literally sleeping with a man they loved. They had to sleep in the same bed for it to happen. The same room, but separate beds then it wouldn’t happen. That was why Mr and Mrs Brady slept in seperate twin beds, they had six kids, and didn’t want anymore.
I also thought that during the Munich olympics that gorillas had taken hostages. I wondered why the German gorillas were so mad to do that. I figured German zoos must not be very nice and they were rebelling for better conditions like more bananas or something.
I had trouble with Pontius Pilate, too. Only I just always pictured him looking like Eric Estrada.
My mother used to watch daytime talk shows. Alan King would be on occasionally. At school, we had a lunch that I thought was “Chicken Alan King.” I thought he was on the talk shows because he was a famous food inventor. (I still call it that, too.)
And I thought Kentucky bluegrass was going to be blue. Bright blue. I was so disappointed.
Another misunderstanding from a Catholic youth: I thought the line in the Creed that says “I believe in one holy, catholic, apostolic church” meant that you could only be a member of one parish – that you had to believe in one physical church. I was pretty concerned for a while there, because my father was an organist and we went to lots of churches!
My mother laughed for quite some time after I finally asked her about it.
This was (sort of) the case until the 12th Amendment was adopted in 1804. The candidate with the most electoral votes became president, and the one with the second highest vote became vice-president. It was not considered a punishment, however.
That reminds me. In growing up in Western New York (Chautauqua Country, on Lake Erie,) when there were mileage signs on the major highways, they always mentioned Binghamton (264 Miles to Binghamton!) So I grew up thinking Binghamton was one of the biggest, most important cities in New York State.
I thought the same thing of concentration camps. Of course that changed the day that I noticed that the frozen grape juice my mom bought was “from concentrate”, so, how foolish of me to think otherwise, the Nazi’s obviously forced people to make grape juice. I was a strange little dude.
I was confused by the ‘founding’ dates in a book about churches. I still have this vivid image in my head, of explorers pulling back foilage in the forest and ‘finding’ an undiscovered church lying undisturbed in a clearing. I had vague notions of ancient civilizations leaving churches in their wake.
I’m sure you can imagine my horror I found out that my dad had been approached by a headhunter. A job headhunter, that is.
My mother had a habit of using the slang word “umpteen.” Like, “We just saw umpteen million cars on the freeway!” and the like. For some reason though, perhaps I lumped the “ump” part in with “hump” and always assumed it meant something dirty. Every time she said it, I’d blush and look around to see if anyone else was listening. I never uttered it for fear of being punished over something naughty.
Preventing forest fires meant causing them.
Anybody older than you in school just got to grade 12 and then waited for all the younger kids to catch up so we could all graduate together.
I could never get the hierarchy right for freshman, sophomore, junior and senior. By my illogical reasoning, I believe either of the first two were further along in the game than the latter.
I was similarly taken by this. I thought it was “chewed”. It made sense as people having to nibble away at the listed price. It was only once I read it that it dawned on me what it meant.
My own confusion was when I was listening to teh Winnipeg Jets on the radio. We didn’t watch hockey games back then. I would hear “Peter, Tagly and Eddie on a break away…” and never could figure why the Jets never won more games with all the odd man rushes they generated. Then I saw a game on TV and saw the roster: Peter Taglianetti
I thought you could “misle” people, because I read about people who had been misled. I figured it was something similar to kicking, for hearing about mis(t)le-toes. However, I found it strange that, especially at Christmas, you would kick people first and then kiss them.
See, English is not my first language (I started learning at age 10), and we do not use mistletoes for Christmas decoration here.
I thought the same thing. “Misle” was pronounced “my-zell”. And English IS my first language.
I never connected it with mistletoe, though.
I also had no idea that, in a ‘real’ restaurant, they cooked the food after you ordered it. I was familiar with hamburger places and such, where a large number of people were continuously ordering the same thing, and the food was prepared before you arrived; and I was familiar with home, where we were told what was going to be for dinner; but restaurants were a mystery.
Another one: whenever I saw a television show listed as starting at 8:00 EST, I assume that meant “estimated time.” You know, the football game or whatever may run over so they could only estimate the time.
