I also was completely whooshed by the similar dirty joke “What’s graty and comes in quarts?”
As a kid, I heard the answer was “Instant Elephant”, which seemed inane, as most elephant jokes are. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that the real answer is simply “An Elephant”, and that “come” has a meaning I was unaware of.
The same guy that enlightened me also told me another joke that, had I heard it earlier, would also have whooshed me: “Why does Dr. Pepper come in a bottle?”
No, you just put all the teeth into the front side of the staple and squeeze. The staple comes right out with no damage except for the tiny holes that you created when you first stapled the pages.
When I was in my first year of German Lit. class at univeristy we had to study a text by Thomas Mann called “Mario und der Zauberer”, which translates as “Mario and the Magician”. It’s a gripping allegory of Fascist italy, with a powerful political message.
However, I misheard this as “Mario und der Sauberer”, which I then translated as “Mario and the Window Cleaner”.
We were in the middle of a class when it struck me and I commented out loud “Oh… that’s why there’s no window cleaner!”.
My professor left shortly afterwards to take up a chair at University of Oxford… can’t imagine why he thought his talent would be better used there.
This is cheating a bit as the confussion wasn’t just mine.
The neighbor came running over to get help for his sister in great pain. Getting there we found her with knees pulled up to her chest in abdominal pain. we called the ambulance (pre-911 days) and told them she ate a can of soup earlier and threw up in the bathroom maybe an hour or two later.
The EMT says “Where’s the can?” and we say “down the hall on the left.” He takes about three steps, stops, turns and says “the soup can?”
It was hard to keep from laughing despite the situation at hand but the sister also was having trouble with " ha…Oww…HaHa…Owwww!"
A woman is going into labour and the frantic husban calls 911:
Operator: “what is your emergency?”
Husband:" She’s having a baby!!!"
Operator: “Is this her first child?”
Husband: “No, you idiot!! This is her Husband!!!”
For you youngon’s’
“Dirty deeds - done dirt cheep” was from the Beenie and Cecil cartoon show. It was Dishonest John’s calling card.
“DJ you dirty guy!”
As a lad I kept seeing a certain word in books. The word was pronounced “ook” (rhymes with “book”). I kept seeing this word, and couldn’t figure out what it was. It even appeared in a cartoon word balloon over the head of a character in one of the books. This disturbed me. I did not know what “ook” meant, and I certainly wondered what reason this character would have to utter this heretofore unknown word. I certainly had never uttered it, and a book in which I was the protagonist would CERTAINLY never contain a cartoon rendering of me with “ook” in a word balloon hovering inches above my head.
I later found out the pronunciation of the word “OK” was “Oh Kay”. :wally
I used to think–for many years–that a garlic press was useless because so little juice comes out. Then someone told me that you still use the crushed part in the recipe. :smack:
I noticed that my electric toothbrush would occassionally cut out temporarily after a few minutes of brushing. This went on for a year or so until finally I spent some time cleaning it and looking to see whether there was any damage to the motor. I couldn’t see anything obvious so I gave up, assuming that it was getting wet and shorting out or something.
After giving up in frustration I mentioned this to my wife, who found it very amusing that I had never recognized the feature to tell me that my three minutes of brushing were complete… :smack:
In Spring of 2001, I bought a slightly used 2000 Nissan Altima. For the longest time I assumed the trunk release lever by the driver’s seat didn’t work, and I always used the key to open it, over all that time.
Then less than a month ago I learned that if I pull it twice, just a little harder, it works fine!
A fairly recent realization of mine: the Amazons of Greek mythology were not from the Amazon of South America – the Amazon river was named after the myth.
In retrospect, this is blindingly obvious. My only excuse is that when I first heard the term Amazons as a kid, I made the connection and then never thought hard about it ever again, because if the Amazons were mythical, it made sense to think that they’d be from an unexplored part of the world.
(Turns out, the Amazons, if they existed at all, were probably from the area around the Black Sea.)
