I work for a property management company that mostly works with low-income folks. I don’t understand how a woman my age (25) can have 5 kids (the oldest being 8 or 9), each with a different last name. I just don’t get it! It’s really easy to NOT get pregnant, even if you are having sex.
(Don’t get me started on the random-syllables-slapped-together-as-a-name thing.)
I don’t get the mindset of the kind of person who, in a workplace, will come in, case the joint and the people, then set about ostracizing and restrticting and punishing the ones who are so good at their jobs, that for them to continue to shine would expose his incompetence.
Or the management that goes along with it.
People who are against spaying and neutering pets.
People who think that if something is “natural”, it must be good. They persist in this belief even after you mention some natural things that are not good or safe. Or, for that matter, people who believe that a beaver’s dam or a prairie dog town is natural in a way that a human city is not.
Some of them garb it in less religious-sounding language, but it’s the same thing. We had a thread here a while ago where someone didn’t want her kids participating in Halloween because it “didn’t send a positive message” :rolleyes:
People who do stupid and/or unnecessary things to prove how tough they are.
People who think something like, “If I had to learn to use log tables, my kids should too. Never mind that nobody uses them anymore and they’re incredibly tedious, if I had to suffer through them, kids today should too.”
Rioters. Like the ones in France who set cars and buildings on fire, not knowing or caring who they belong to. I can understand wanting to destroy something that belongs to an enemy, but not just wanting to destroy stuff at random.
That’s not a great example, but yeah, it was that thread that led me to post the example I did. Really good examples escape me right now.
People that glom onto one way to do some basic domestic chore. I had one live-in girlfriend that would go ballistic if I didn’t fold the bathroom towels the “right” way. And to her, there truly was only one right way, and it should have been obvious to all.
People who don’t read for pleasure, and who brag about how seldom they pick up a book.
Yeah, my mom once told me I was doing it wrong because I was stirring a bowl of cake batter clockwise instead of counterclockwise. The way I see it, if you’re doing it and I don’t have to, knock yourself out doing it any way you want, I won’t complain.
I do, on the other hand, have routines for doing certain things, and I stick to them because otherwise I’m likely to forget some vital step. I tend to get upset if I’m interrupted, too, because that’s also likely to make me forget something. This is especially true of stuff I do when I first get up in the morning, when I am a long way from my theoretical best. So I could see an incident like you mention happening with me in either role.
I don’t get that mindset either.
People who don’t watch TV and think that makes them a better person than someone who does. I know that, if I didn’t watch TV, I’d find some other way to waste the same amount of time I waste watching TV, so I would be no better as a person. Maybe you do worthwhile things instead of watching TV, but that doesn’t mean anyone else would.
People who are pathologically cheap.
People with the “I’ve Got Mine” mentality.
People with the “Bomb 'em back into the Stone Age” mindset.
Agreed, but if I may offer an opposing view: I don’t get the mindset of people who have no hobbies other than watching TV. They just come home from work and veg in front of the tube until bedtime. Now I’m no TVless angel, I watch way more than is good for me, but at the same time I’m painting, or drawing, or doing math problems (for fun!), or designing gizmos, or whatever. I can’t understand idle hands.
Cats.
I love you Zoe, but I don’t understand why you do the things you do.
That election was your’s until you pissed on Ted Koppel’s laptop, goddammit!!
Line cutters.
Riders of loud motorcycles. (And don’t give me any horsesh*t about how loud bikes are a safety measure that makes inattentive car drivers take notice. That’s just a case of retrofitted “plausable rationalization” (my term) that allows selfish egotists to get away with making life unpleasant for everyone else in earshot. Jerks.
~ stuyguy, who rides a motorcycle
People who pull scams to get money out of companies. A famous example would be the woman in the finger in the Wendy’s chili case. It’s looking like the guy who supposedly got glued to the toilet seat might be another example. But this applies to people who buy a dress from a store for a special occasion, then return it afterward, too. You’re being dishonest and making life more difficult for the rest of us.
People who are racist/sexist/whatever. I just don’t understand how someone could think that someone else is less of a person because of their skin color/gender/whatever.
And on a completely different level:
People who don’t get physics. I’m very good at it. (I think it’s sexy) I just don’t get how you don’t get it.
Wow, it’s astonishing that you are aquainted with all the conservatives/Republians in the country, so that you can come to this conclusion.
Hey, once upon a time a resembled that remark! 
Probably would have helped if I went to class or had the background preparation, like calculus (engineering style physics), but that’s not the point. Physics is hard and if someone doesn’t have the necessary mathematics skills it’s going to be super hard to be successful in physics.
What I don’t get is people that never try and just say its too hard.
People who won’t learn how to use apostrophes.
I don’t understand the “bleeding heart” viewpoint. It seems strange to be obsessed with what you consider minority issues at the expense of everything else. There are other, more mainstream things going on too. The country can’t function if the government was always tied up with the bleeding heart cause de jour.
Minorities are aren’t always right nor are they always the victim. The police really may have been justified in shooting that black guy. You weren’t there. When minorities riot, it isn’t usually brought on by a higher cause. It is usually just young, bored, male, poor people that sense a window of anarchy and decide to ride with it. Sometimes thugs are just thugs regardless of their religion or the color of their skin.
Poor people don’t deserve all of our attention any more than middle-class or rich people do. There are reasons people are poor and most of them aren’t the fault of society. Some people are just plain screw-up and their financial status reflects that. I have them in my family and my wife in hers. Government checks are the last thing they need. That is just giving them more rope to hang themselves. The first additional government program to help the poor should be money management classes. Lottery tickets, pawn shops, and check cashing establishments prevent any prosperity when you are starting with little to begin with.
The U.S. isn’t the most evil power the world has ever seen. It is actually pretty benign and usually a force for good. Next time you see a history book lying around, pick it up. You will be amazed.
I don’t understand people that can’t understand a differing political ideology.
I was raised in a very strongly Democrat family. Eventhough a lot of the opinions my family had on politics really didn’t synch up with the Dems platforms. It basically just came down to my Grandparents were Democrats because where they grew up everyone was a democrat, so my parents were by extension democrats. They were pretty dogmatic about it too, which is funny since they really didn’t seem to agree with most Dem positions.
But since I was raised in a Democrat home but have always had Republican leanings I was questioning the stances of the other side from an early standpoint. And I certainly was able to come to conclusions as to why someone might support X Dem policy, eventhough I didn’t. In fact I think it makes me a much more complete person that I’m able to rationally accept that the Democrats have some pretty good ideas, I just don’t ascribe to them.
I’ll never understand how someone can’t understand a differing political ideology. It would seem you’d almost have to be dogmatic to be that way.
People who say they are a “man trapped in a woman’s body” or vice versa. What does a woman without a vagina feel like? I don’t get it at all.
Absolutely. Being proud of never reading is something I will never understand. Bragging about it is just unfathomable.
(I love reading.)
I agree with this one, too. I went to high school with a girl who was raised Catholic, in a relatively devout family. She even considered becoming a nun for a while. After college she started dating a guy who was Jewish and he told her the only way for them to continue dating after things started to get serious (this was before any talk of marriage) was if she converted. She pretty much said, “Okey-dokey! If that’s what it takes!” and chucked her whole belief system for his. Her parents were devastated - she pretty much cut off her whole family for his. I don’t have a problem with someone converting, after careful consideration, but this just seemed different. Like she said, “I want to be with this guy, so I’ll ‘be Jewish’ for him.”
People who deny the Holocaust happened or it wasn’t that many Jews/Gypsys/homosexuals etc. who were killed.
It makes me want to curl up and cry.
People who don’t understand that growing up in the US you learn a lot about Christianity (in general) by simple exposure, so talking about other holidays in school just is a mere drop in the bucket in balancing the exposure equation.
I truly don’t understand the position of some people that get outraged that because we talk about Kwanzaa and Diwali (spelling?) in school, that we better teach (yet) more about Christmas to “balance it out”? You can’t help but learn about the basics of Christianity just by growing up in America. It’s so pervasive- for example, people may not realize that the whole school calendar is set up to allow for easy observance of Christian holidays (Christmas and Easter holidays, nothing ever scheduled for Sundays, but lots of friday evening or saturday events etc), but makes it really hard to observe other ones.
I just don’t understand how a group that is in the 96% majority can feel so threatened because the rest of us may not want to feel ostracized or reminded, yet again, that we are a small minority in a very large country. Will you forget it’s Christmas if there isn’t a huge lit tree and Nativity scene at City Hall? Do you not realize how it can feel to be reminded over and over that you just don’t quite belong?
Wow, that was bottled up…
I’m sorry if the post crossed the line from opinion to rant. Moderator do what you must :o