# Perfectly ordinary things that strike you as marvelous when you think about them **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 24, 2009, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588 "2009-03-24T15:20:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![manx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/65b543/32.png) [@manx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manx)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/81 "2009-03-26T14:34:46Z")
I was in bed the other night, with my laptop on my knees, and my mother, seeing that I was on Skype, called me. She was eleven thousand miles away from me and we sat, on opposite sides of the world, me in darkness, her in morning sunlight, and chatted about our lives for a few hours. Skype cost me nothing to install. I don’t need (as my mother did when she lived in Sydney and her family in Gisbourne, New Zealand) to book the phone call ahead of time with the phone company. I don’t even need a _reason_. Twenty years ago that same phone call would have had to have contained maybe a years’ worth of conversation, and would have been carefully planned. Now? Easy as anything. And in another twenty years… I don’t know. I can’t imagine it, but one day my child will look at me and wonder how I managed my life with the limited technology available. Amazing. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/82 "2009-03-26T14:40:32Z")
> [@Aghris](#): > > I regularly sit in my car, or take the train, and see other people doing their thing. These people woke up that morning, brushed their teeth, did all sorts of things that I’ll never be a part of. I pass them, never meeting them, never seeing them again, and they have just as a complex life as I do. There is some kid in the Fillipines, _right now_, who plays soccer with some of his friends, and I’ll never know. > > Terry Pratchett opened my eyes in how boredom is actually really amazing. We are surrounded by wonders, the fact that we are conscious is a miracle on its own. We drive cars, fly planes, go into space. We get bombarded with thousands of stimuli per second. And two days ago I sat at home, nothing on TV, and I was _bored_ for a while. > > The fact that millions of years ago, the atoms from my body were part of a star. A hundred years from now, this little carbon atom in my left pinky will be part of a tree and the water molecule that just passed my ear drum will split and sends it oxygen atom to Ms. Holly Winkelman, 23 Parkton Plc, London while its two hydrogen atoms will be used to power the space shuttle on March 4, 2014, leaving the atmosphere for ever. I was watching the Phantom Tollbooth a few night back. An oldie but a goodie (not as good as the book though) and I had the same idea: how can anyone be bored? Look at the world! Water amazes me. The feeling of swimming in it, being submerged in it, feeling it move around me. The fact that it can be frozen, heated, directed and manipulated, but that’s all temporary, and in the end it will outlast us and can kill us with very very little effort. The supreme indifference of the rivers and oceans. Lust. I look at a certain person, doing a certain thing, and chemicals start percolating. Only certain people, certain things. Other people, no reaction. And sometimes, no telling what it will be. Snakes. A long limbless body, no appendages. It shouldn’t be successful, but it is, and it’s beautiful (to me, anyway). ---
**Author:** ![Hedda\_Rosa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hedda_rosa/32/1204_2.png) [@Hedda\_Rosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hedda_Rosa)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/83 "2009-03-26T14:48:51Z")
Showers. Each time I shower I am amazed and full of gratitude that any time I want, all the clean hot water I want comes out of the wall. In my own house! ---
**Author:** ![interface2x](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/84 "2009-03-26T16:05:44Z")
I have this thing in my home that is just a bowl filled with water. I use it to expell my bodily waste into the water, push on something and it spirits away this waste to some unknown place, never to be seen by me again. I don’t have to worry about it, I don’t have to care. I just know that whenever I have to do this in the vast majority of buildings, they have this thing that will take care of it so that I never have to deal with it myself. Still pretty amazing to me. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/85 "2009-03-26T16:54:38Z")
> [@badbadrubberpiggy](#): > > What amazes me, is that, hundreds or thousands of years ago, someone _figured out how to make bread_. More importantly, thousands of years ago someone _figured out how to make beer._ ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/86 "2009-03-26T17:27:33Z")
The fact that two people can decide together to create life. My wife and I created two other human beings out of nothing. They are our creation, and we are solely responsible for their development into other adult humans. If that ain’t mind boggling, I don’t know what is? ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/87 "2009-03-26T18:41:08Z")
The fact that most of the fauna not microorganisms on earth evolved to have most of our senses in one end of our bodies, which is a poor argument for redundancy. Who the hell thought cephalic designs were a good idea? 😃 To say nothing of the fact that way back when, some monkey thought, “Hey, let’s see what I can do if I try walking on my back legs all the time instead of knuckle-walking…” Dishes involving tapioca. Or acorn flour. Both of which are rather poisonous until they undergo a fairly involved process. (Fugu!) :dubious: The concept of infinity and the fact that us three-dimensional creatures can imagine it. ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/88 "2009-03-26T19:45:56Z")
Ships, thundering great bloody ships made of steel and iron. And they float ---
**Author:** ![Nicolas\_Bourbaki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@Nicolas\_Bourbaki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nicolas_Bourbaki)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/89 "2009-03-26T20:10:20Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > Also, in a totally different vein, rain. Think about it. Water falls from the sky. FROM THE SKY! How weird would that be if you weren’t used to it? Imagine if you lived somewhere without precipitation and someone tried to convince you that where they are from, water just pours out of the sky - gallons of it! Enough to soak everything! Enough sometimes to flood the streets! Would you believe them? Holy shit, I was about to post this almost word for word. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/90 "2009-03-26T20:16:12Z")
> [@flodnak](#): > > I work at a preschool/daycare, and we’re once again just a few months away from sending our rising six-year-olds out into the world. Have you ever thought about how much a child learns in the first six years of life? Without any special instruction, they work out how to sit, crawl, walk, run, jump, catch, throw, and put things in their mouths; they learn the names of thousands of things and actions in their environment, and how to put this information together into sentences others can understand, sometimes in two or three different languages; they memorize hundreds of songs and the rules of dozens of games. On top of this we teach them the rules for toileting in our culture (the actual muscle control is something the children must learn themselves), basic manners and customs, and the use of many unnatural tools like forks, crayons, and scissors - and not a few manage to find the time and brain capacity on top of this to learn to read, write, and do simple arithmetic. Each and every one of us did this. In six short years. We will never learn so much so quickly again. Yeah, this is amazing. Just the language skills alone…my son is 2, and he’s still working on 2-word combinations. I remember my daughter was at about the same level at his age, and now that she’s 4, she can speak in complex sentences, tell stories about thing that happened to her, describe things at school. It’s astounding the verbal development that takes place in a 1-2 year period. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/91 "2009-03-26T20:42:01Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Touch typing always seems like magic to me. When I start typing, words just appear on the screen and I don’t even have to think about it. It kind of feels like witchcraft to be able to do something that cool that quickly. I was typing on Ye Old IBM Selectric II, and a teenager watching me remarked with awe “That is so cool. You actually see what you’re printing as you are typing it.” The instanteousness of news stories. It use to take weeks to get the news. Then newspapers made it weekly, than daily. News programs made it hourly. The iInternet gives us news as it happens. ---
**Author:** ![Audrey\_Levins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@Audrey\_Levins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Audrey_Levins)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/92 "2009-03-26T20:54:30Z")
Perhaps because I didn’t get much of it last night, but I think of sleep as one of the coolest things ever. It’s like a “reboot” button. You completely check out of your life for a few hours; you are allowed to be unconscious and uncaring while you recharge. And almost always, whatever seemed horrible the night before will seem much less so by the time you wake up. You get to leave yourself behind. You get to bury yesterday and start from scratch. For those of you who have never had insomnia, just trust me…sleep is one of the greatest gifts in the world. Not to mention that sleep gives you dreams…including my personal favorite, The Flying Dream. It’s one of the few things humans can’t do in real life…but you can always experience it–as vividly as if it were real–in your dreams. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/93 "2009-03-26T21:15:26Z")
George Carlin on the elevator: I walked in a little room, the doors closed and there was a humming sound, then the doors opened and I was in another place. ---
**Author:** ![mauxlicious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bc8723/32.png) [@mauxlicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mauxlicious)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/94 "2009-03-26T22:44:52Z")
Athough it has been suggested that some of the posters in this thread are high right now, let me assure you I am not. What marvels me though is the whole idea of seeing a plant, thinking, hmmm what if I chop that down, dry it out and light it on fire and then do this in a controlled manner, for recreation. I mean really? Smoke is an irritant, it doesn’t make any sense. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/95 "2009-03-27T01:47:22Z")
The miracle of pregnancy. I saw a woman I used to have a class with today, a beautiful, intelligent and warm individual, and she’s about 4 mo preggo. And I thought, wow, how special is this that a woman can grow, right inside her, a real live BABY! How awesome is THAT?! ---
**Author:** ![HubZilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@HubZilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HubZilla)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/96 "2009-03-27T01:59:49Z")
That for 42 cents, I can mail something to anywhere in the US, and it will reliably get there in 2-3 days. Just the immense amount of organization and sorting that gets it from point A to B. Whether in rural Nebraska, or here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/97 "2009-03-27T03:13:45Z")
Good thread. Mine is at any point in time I have 3 gigabytes of casual data storage available on me (2 gig USB stick on my key chain, and a a gig on my phone) and that’s a piddly amount! I could easily add more! I’m walking around my daily life with machines capable of remembering 3 trillion digit binary numbers, and I find it annoying to record 7 digit phone numbers sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Redfrost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc29f/32.png) [@Redfrost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redfrost)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/98 "2009-03-27T15:12:22Z")
**Paper.** Who thought this up first? I can grasp writing on clay, or bark, or reeds. You grab what’s handy and start writing (which is also pretty freaking amazing, writing). But who thought to take wood or old clothes, pound and shred the ever lovin’ shit out of it while soaking it water, then straining the resulting pulp through a fine screen, let it dry, then write or paint on it. A fairly complicated process when you think about it. I mean, did this happen by accident, did someone get a vision, what?? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/99 "2009-03-27T15:29:21Z")
> [@Sarahfeena](#): > > Yeah, this is amazing. Just the language skills alone…my son is 2, and he’s still working on 2-word combinations. I remember my daughter was at about the same level at his age, and now that she’s 4, she can speak in complex sentences, tell stories about thing that happened to her, describe things at school. It’s astounding the verbal development that takes place in a 1-2 year period. Our little girl’s language has developed incredibly quickly. She turns 2 next month, and already she’s making multiple word sentences. It’s incredible to realize that she’s not just the cute little lump that we used to tote around and play with. She’s turning into an honest-to-god actual _person_, wholly separate from us, with thoughts and ideas of her very own. It’s crazy and amazing. Cramazing. Or something… ---
**Author:** ![Avarie537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/48db29/32.png) [@Avarie537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avarie537)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588/100 "2009-03-27T15:54:22Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > The fact that two people can decide together to create life. My wife and I created two other human beings out of nothing. They are our creation, and we are solely responsible for their development into other adult humans. > > If that ain’t mind boggling, I don’t know what is? This is what I came here to post (but with genders reversed). It’s really profound. I feel especially filled with awe that I did most of the physical work in the beginning. They grew in me, nourished solely by my body, until they decided they were ready to be born. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfectly-ordinary-things-that-strike-you-as-marvelous-when-you-think-about-them/490588.md?page=6)