Questions you should have asked as a kid

This stemmed off from Tzel’s “Weird things you belived as a kid”-

I was wondering about any stupid things that you learned an an absurdly old age.

For example-

Me, I didn’t know that pickles were made of cucumbers until I was 18 (don’t laugh, it’s not funny).

I remember- it was years ago and i was a cook at a country club and I said something stupid to my boyfriend about the pickles, something like:

“Do you you ever wonder about pickles? I mean, what are they? Do pickles grow on vines or something?”

He looked at me incredulously

“They are cucumbers- you didn’t know that?”

Oh, the shame.

If only I had asked this when I was five i would have saved a lot of face- my boyfriend thought this was incredibly funny and told all his friends and they all laughed at me.
Sigh. That was five years ago, though. I should be over that.

But did anyone else have a similar revelation at too late an age?

Dad, now that you’re leaving, are you going to be sad that you will not be an active participant in our lives? Should I try to keep in touch with you, or would you prefer just to show up for a couple of hours on holidays?

“Hey Mom and Dad, is it OK if I take my paper route money and buy some stock in this little Microsoft company?”

“Don’t girls LIKE that?”

No, they don’t.

At least, that’s what they always told me.

Whenever I read the word, “facade,” I thought it was pronounced fay-cade, and was a totally different word from the one I had heard, and imagined being spelled something like, “phesod.”

Similar to Tzel, I never heard aborigine pronounced until I was in college. Until that time I thought it was pronounce a-bore-a-gyne.

Continuing in the mispronounced words vein, I thought chaos was supposed to sound like “chah-ohss”. Then there was that other word that meant exactly the same thing, kayoss.

Turp, we need to talk.
i thought that the thing with the circus peanuts was kinda funny.
your enthusiasm for pudding snacks was endearing, but still a little strange.
the fish-in-resin thing was odd, but i was willing to let it go.
the bug spray bit was a little freaky, but i decided to give you another chance.
now i find out you are ignorant for 18 years about the simple fact that pickles were once cucumbers.

don’t take this the wrong way but lady, you need help.

and to think, i’m the one saying that.

now, i’m willing to help, and all i need is three hours of your time, a cattle prod, and four random episodes of happy days. and 20k in cash.

I was married and had kids before I realized that a person wrote IN CURSIVE. I always thought the word was INCURSIVE.

Me neither. I didn’t learn until I was sixteen, when a friend and I interviewed my grandfather about the Depression for a school project.

OMIGAWD…I didn’t know that…I thought it was fah-cade.

Until a year or so ago, I always thought that genre was pronounced “jen-ear.” Mom laughed at me when I said it.

–Tim

My mom, until about 2 weeks ago, didn’t know Alaska was connected to the northwestern portion of Canada. She, having always seen it in a box on the atlas, thought it was simply separate and up north. Oh, the shame.

A woman I work with (42 years old, from a mostly rural area) just told me tonight that she just found out last week that cows had sex by the male mounting the female. She always thought they did it similar to the missionary position or side by side like worms or something. When I asked her if she knew that goats gave milk, she looked at me like I was stupid and said, “Only for baby goats!” She still doesn’t believe me that many American humans eat cheese made from goats’ milk on purpose!! Not exactly something she should have asked her parents, I guess, but this thread just reminded me of that!

I didn’t know that hamburgers came from cows until I was 12. I knew they didn’t come from ham, so I assumed there was some sort of hamburger animal out there.

[Homer Simpson]Yes, Lisa: a wooonderful, maaaagical animal.[/Homer Simpson]

Um…let’s see, I didn’t realize until recently that pricciar is just Pat’s first initial followed by his last name. I always thought it was a reference to some mystical being I’d never heard of. “Ooooh, what’s a pricciar?”

I feel so embarrased.

Oh yeah, that and I’m constantly finding out that words I use all the time aren’t spelled the way I’ve been spelling them.
Dough!

Don’t worry DeathLlama, I didn’t know about pricciar until you just mentioned it.

I also didn’t realize that you still had to steer when the car was on cruise control until I was oh, about 16.

We won’t even get into the words that I can’t pronounce or spell.

Well, I don’t really have anything that bad, just one little spot on my record. I always used to think et cetera was pronounced “excetra”. I had always only seen it as “etc.” so I wasn’t sure about the spelling or proper pronounciation. How was I set straight! My parents laughed at me, mocked and ridiculed me for a few days, and then finally told me:

My mom to her friends: “Don’t kids say the darndest things. ‘Excetra’, hahahahaha!”

Me: “Stop making fun of me! Why are you laughing at me!”

Then, when they finally told me, I couldn’t figure out why they thought it was so funny. I wasn’t real old when I found out. Maybe 10 or 11. Somewhere around there.