Just today at the restaurant, I said I was going to go powder my nose and my daughter said, “Powder your nose? Isn’t that a euphemism for doing cocaine?”
Two nose related:
I kept noticing an odd smell whenever I got my teeth cleaned. At first I thought it was from the neglect, and, after several months, I figured out I was smelling the hygienist’s latex gloves.
Whenever I would shave, my nose would itch. Turns out it was residue propellant from the shaving cream.
:smack:
I used to spell it maeby.
Hey, we’re supposed to be relating things that we personally “finally figured out”. Save your stories of others for the Pit! 
Although even numbers generally go east/west and odds go north/south, there are areas where they’ll go the opposite. Also, three digit numbers are offshoots of the main line and can often go in any direction.
In post #68 I provided a link to a Snopes page that explains the numbering conventions. 
Completely understandable mistake.
After all, AC/DC *is * an Aussie band! 
:eek:
That in Carry on Wayward Son, by Kansas, they’re singing:
[Carry on!]
You will always remember
[Carry on!]
Nothing equals the splendor . . .
NOT:
[Carry on!]
You will always remember
[Carry on!]
*That the eagle has landed . . . *
My cousin is a techno DJ, and when he came to visit us the last time he’d taken over my car stereo and popping CDs in, and he said, “Have you heard this one?” and I said “I don’t know, I hate how electronic music all sounds the same in the beginning. Don’t they have the slightest smidgen of creativity?”
So he looked at me like I was a space alien and told me that duh, they all sound alike in the beginning because you have to mix them into the previous track, dumbass. Which makes perfect and absolute sense and is patently obvious now that I think about it. Sigh.
Many years ago I was in a bar that had a sign that read, Free Beer Tomorrow. Well, turns out I had plans for the following day so I could not return. A coupla years later I was in the bar for the second time and realized the sign was hanging permantly and was a joke. I was so glad I didn’t ask the first time.
I thought until a few years ago that “To Be Announced” was a PBS TV show. It seemed like whenever I saw it in the TV guide, it was under a listing for a PBS station so I thought it was some kind of panel show.
Well it sounds like a panel show, doesn’t it? I thought it was something about current events and the whole point was that you didn’t know exactly what they’d be discussing until you tuned in. They’d based it on whatever was in the news that week.
I only realized I was mistaken when I got digital cable 3 years ago and saw “To Be Announced” sometimes listed for every single channel.
I’m sure that I have plenty of these “duhhhh” moments of my own, but I can’t think of any right now.
Some that have been reported by others:
Dave Barry noted in his Guide to Travel that when they were in Germany they always came across “Einbahnstrasse” in every city. “Hey, we’re on Einbahnstrasse again!” they’d say. Until he figured out that it meant “One Way Street”.
My aunt gave us directions that included a turn at a sign for “Ten-R-Ten”. She was with us in the car later when we drove there, and she suddenly started yelling and pointing. “Turn here! Turn Here!”
“Where?” asked my father, “At the sign that says “IORIO?””
Staple Removers. All my life, when I had to remove a staple, I would turn the document around, try to fit the 2 teeth of the remover into the 2 curved parts of the staple, and then squeeze. The 2 back parts of the staple would now be loose enough to rip the staple out, causing some slight damage to the paper. I did this for years until one day, for some reason, I did it the correct way. It was like a revelation from god. I think god laughed at me for 25 years or so, and then finally let me off the hook.
Uh oh… isn’t that how you do it?
[slinks off amid cruel jeers]
It was only four or five years ago that I came to the realization that a “bear claw” was a type of doughnut, and not an actual ursine by-product.
A surprising number of guys don’t know this, I’ve mentioned it as a joke before (women having 3 holes) to completely blank looks and the need for explaination.
My pathetic confession is that for years I thought it was ‘Duck’ Tape. You know, for tying up pesky ducks to keep them under control…
Me and my husband were accompanying the inspector through the house one last time. The inspector was doing things like testing outlets, glaring at window casings, and so on. Then we moved to the kitchen. The inspector tested the dishwasher: he pulled the handle over and turned it on. He tested the oven by turning on the heat and lights. Then he set the microwave for one minute and let it run.
I stared at the microwave, aghast. I started figeting, hopping from one foot to the other. I gave the inspector increasingly anxious looks, until I blurted out, “Why are you running the microwave while it’s empty? Won’t it explode that way?”
They both gave me looks of incomprehension. “No,” the inspector said slowly.
My mother had told me when I was small that the microwave would explode if you ran it without anything inside. I had lived in terror of that for twenty-five years! Damnit, mom! :smack:
You know that dumb kid’s joke, “How do you get down from an elephant? You don’t get down from an elephant, you get down from a duck!”
For years, I just didn’t get it. I just didn’t make the “down” connection. I kept wondering how you would get down off of the elephant’s back. :smack:
Then one day in high school, as I was putting on my down vest, it finally hit me.
It was like a light bulb went on. “Oooooh, I get it!” I felt like such a moron.
For me, it was a joke that had me flummoxed for weeks when I was a kid.
Friend: Ever hear the story of the three holes in the ground?
Me: No
Friend: Well, well well…
Me:
Me: Uhhh, okay. What is it?
Friend: That’s it.
Me: What’s it?!?
Friend: Well, well, well…
Me: Stop saying that!!! What’s the story!!!
It was weeks later, while drifting off to sleep one night, that I bolted upright in bed with the realization that I had been had.
It has always been my understanding that to run a microwave oven empty would damage the magnetron. Not make it blow-up, but rather cumulatively decrease the output power.
RF & MW gurus, please enlighten us…