No, it’s not miss-shapen, it’s mis-shapen. “Miss-shapen” would mean “shaped like a miss” (like an old-style Coke bottle, for instance).
:: d&R ::
When I was about 13 my family moved from a small town to a big interstate-filled city. It took me far too long to figure out why there were so many streets named after some guy named Frontage…sheesh.
Another stumper - why were so many people on Star Trek named Ensign? Had to ask Dad about that one. At least he got a good laugh about it.
And don’t even get me started on figuring out that “orderves” and hors d’oeurves were the same thing. Being an anti-social reader was a curse.
I had a bit of a thing with marsupials, too.
I had no idea that panda bears are marsupials. None. I thought that they were bears. I had also somehow had the idea that the only non-Australian pouch-creatures were oppossums lodged firmly in my brain.
It broke my world. They had to prove it to me.
Just goes to show what you don’t know you don’t know.
ummmm, what *is[/] a cracker barrell?
I thought the founder of McDonalds was named Kroch, as in crotch. For some reason it came up in class (approaching 20 years ago, I guess this left a mark, since I can so clearly recall it) And I proudly and clearly, with clear innunciation and umph, said his name. I had never said the guys name out loud, so didn’t associate it with what it would sound like when said out loud.
Man, was I embarrased.
I thought minutiae was pronounced min-you-tay.
Ummm… they’re not marsupials. Someone is/was pulling your leg. They are not “true” bears, but based on the most recent bio-molecular studies they are closer to the bear family, from which it is believed they diverged approx 15-25 million years ago, than anything else (including raccoons).
I hate to break it to you, but pandas are not marsupials. They are in the bear family (Ursidae), and therefore, by definition, are placental mammals.
Hey, lno, should I make you feel better by revealing that, to this day,I can NEVER remember which one is Tennessee Ernie Ford, and which is Tennessee Williams?
Or about how I used to think that factories were actually cloud factories because of their smokestacks?
Or how my then-girlfriend had to explain to me the concept of ballet (when I was 24 years old)? “You see, Kev, he does a little dance, then she won’t be mad anymore…”
I was in college during the Gulf War. I was much, much more informed than any of my classmates, but it was an arts college so that wasn’t hard. The point is, I got used to being the Source Of Information for everybody about world politics, and eventually, I’m sure, I got kind of smug about it.
So one day, a couple of girls, both cute and both available, are talking about the allied coalition, wondering why certain countries joined and others didn’t. I’m just standing there, and hey, the girls are cute, so I jump in to offer some facts – mostly regurgitated from a half-remembered Newsweek article I’d skimmed in the grocery-store line the previous week.
They seem receptive to my overture, so I start by saying, “It’s the Mideast countries that are most interesting. Jordan, for example…” and I continued with my take on that country.
I stop, though, a couple of sentences later, because the taller, dark-haired girl looks like she wants to interrupt.
“Um,” she says, “I’m from Jordan.”
Me: struck dumb.
She continues: “I’m here on a student visa.”
Me: “Oh.” I make some excuse about “trusting the media,” and – to my credit, I think – ask her to set me straight. I say to my credit, because if I’d done what I really wanted to do, I’d have run outside and thrown myself into traffic.
But…
But…
There was a book!
[sub]Oh, they are going to pay…[/sub]
Apparently, it’s a barrel full of crackers (a ha!) that they used to have in old-timey general stores. And people would buy their crackers by scooping them up from the barrel, in bulk, rather than in boxes.
I didn’t know the about the mult exit points of the nipple either!
And for many years whilst driving North we used to pass a field with a large sign saying ‘limosins’ - it didn’t dawn on me that a place that had hire limonsines wouldn’t need to use fields and that the brown cows in front of and around the sign were being refered to!
This is embarassing, but I’ll admit to one.
You know those little discreet street signs you see sometimes, white letters on a green background “Target Enforcement Area” ?
Well, around here, the only one I’d ever seen was up by the strip mall. There was a Target store in the strip mall (I’m sure you all see where I’m going here, but I’ll finish just to draw out the humiliation). I was convinced that that sign marked the “boundary lines” for Target’s shoplifting enforcement. I figured if you ran out of there with a handful of CD’s and hit that sign before they nabbed you, you were home free. I believed this until I was sixteen years old when a friend fell off his chair laughing at me, and explained what they really were.
:o
bella
Ooh, another one.
"DO NOT USE ELEVATOR IN CASE OF FIRE"
I thought they were just being a little overprecautious – as in “never use the elevator… just in case!”
I’ve posted this in another thread about silly things you believed as a child, but you get to read it again.
There used to be an amusement park for little, little kids, named very creatively as Kiddieland. My parents would take my sisters and I to Kiddieland for our birthdays but that was the only time. So my sisters and I being the geniuses we are
ASSUMED that kids were only allowed in ON THEIR BIRTHDAY.
We’d drive past and exclaim, “wow, look how many kids’ birthday it is today!” while Mom and Dad laughed their ass off in the front seat.
What kills me is how we came up with this logic. How did I think my sister was allowed in the park, if it was MY birthday? How did she think I was allowed in? How come it never occurred to us that our baby sister, whose birthday is in December, (not a good amusement park month in Chicago) got totally shafted in this deal?
Also, when I was three my sister convinced me that she was born in France. I’m not sure what her motivation was for telling me that, but now that I think about it, when we fought she did surrender a lot…hmmm…
Never seen one. (of course, not living in the US might have something to do with it) So what are they for? Something to do with the Army? I really have no clue.
I got one, though. When I was in fourth or fifth grade, I thought the word “chiropractor” was pronounced “cow-pactor.” I guess that’s what I got for taking my pronunciation cues from my mom, whose English (while fairly good to an extent) has never been fluent or anything. :rolleyes:
F_X
lol, I love this thread! Thank you, lno for starting something that makes us all feel better about our bad moments.
I must break the rules, however, and tell on someone else: My grandmother came to visit us in Montreal, and on a trip out to the country, she asked us how big Sortie is, and why she’d never heard of it if it had so many exits off the highway?
I didn’t get it until years later, actually, the day I realized she couldn’t be 16, because I was about to turn 14 and I knew my mom had to be in her thirties by then. Granny very nearly peed her pants luaghing at me, so I told her what “Sortie” means in French.
Until I was about 12 I thought there was a television program called “To Be Announced.” It was some boring news announcement program, I figured. It seemed to be on an awful lot.
Ok. Here’s a few from my adulthood:
-
Had no idea about the nipple thing until reading this thread.
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I still cannot understand why the gerund form of “lightening” is not “lighteninging.” I cannot say “It is lightening out” without it sounding just wrong in my ears.
-
I usually consider myself to be someone of above average intelligence. The following confession really puts that into question. A few years ago my husband and I rented a movie and when I saw the message “this movie has been formatted to fit your screen” I asked him “How do they know how big our screen is?” I was not joking. I seriously thought there might be some kind of mechanism in the video tape that figured out what size our screen was (via communicating with the tv in some way) and adjusting the movie formatting accordingly. We still joke about it.
And I meant “lightning” and not “lightening.”
Seems like that has a high potential of becoming a barrel full of crumbs rather quickly.