16? I could see not knowing not to do any of the above. 20? Yeah, that’s fishy.
Heck, I’m a lot older than those numbers added up, and just a few years ago, I learned the hard way not to grab a hot dish out of the oven with a WET towel. Live steam is hot, folks.
Over the years I have worked with pharmacists who did not know that:
Lesbians menstruate
Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in blood transfusions
Women usually do not produce breast milk unless they have just given birth
Which reminds me: In 2008, I was horrified at how few people remembered, if indeed they ever knew, that Sarah Palin was not the first female VP candidate on a major party ticket. And interestingly, it was not long after Geraldine Ferraro, who had that honor, made a blip in the news because she said she was taking thalidomide for the multiple myeloma that eventually killed her.
That’s one that wouldn’t shock me. The Mondale campaign was pretty forgettable except for having a woman on the ticket and that he got clocked by Reagan. And it was 24 years past. To me, I’d say disappointing, but not shocking.
I stopped being shocked about what average reasonably-informed people do not know (or “know” but are wrong) about one another’s countries, hell never mind that, about other cities and regions within a day’s drive, around 18 when I simultaneously (a) first lived in a different culture and (b) got access to a major library’s periodicals room. It hit me the amount of filtering that went on (and thus the modern “echo chambers” are not new except in scale).
I am starting to wonder what traumatic experience did manson1972 undergo with rocks, though…
I’ve always had a pretty good internal sense of which direction is north, south, etc. Even when I have traveled to other places that I’ve never been, I still know which way is which. I’m sure the arc of the sun gives me enough clues subconsciously, but still I know which way is which readily.
I have met many people that don’t have any clue which way is which, even in the very town they live in. Maddening.
Thinking of it because I just talked with her : A woman who believed that you sow seeds to grow potatoes.
OK, some are going to say that how potatoes are cultivated isn’t necessarily common knowledge.
Except that she’s the daughter of a farmer who grows potatoes and was raised on the farm.
Look, I don’t expect the average Joe to know this. But when the Program Manager of a Federal Government contract doesn’t know whether the contract they are managing is Time and Materials or Firm Fixed Price, I stand there trying to remember to breathe. And then, when I tell them which it is and they shrug their shoulders and snort that it makes no difference to them I shudder visibly.
To their credit, when I explain the difference and what it means about how they should be managing the contract, they generally do look appropriately shocked and frightened.
In my over 25 years in this business I have run into maybe three PMs who knew and understood all this before I took the time to explain it to them.
Also, it is possible to grow potatoes from seed. Not all varieties produce seed, and what they grow into is kinda pot luck, so virtually no-one but plant breeders bother. It’s generally known as ‘true potato seed’ to distinguish it from the normal ‘seed potatoes’.
Anyway, my example: I got into a conversation with a girl at work about pet fish last week. She said she used to have them, but they kept dying, and she didn’t know why, she fed 'em. I asked what sort she had.
“Dunno, the ones they sell at the pet shop”
I asked “just goldfish, or was it a tropical tank?”
“Tropical?”
“Did you have a heater?”
“Don’t think so. Think we had goldfish, we got a whole bunch of different ones. We got clownfish once, you know, like Nemo? They looked really cool but they just died”
So yeah, apparently one of my co-workers kept fish for some time without knowing some lived in cold water, some needed heat, or that some needed salt water.
Ignorance about the earth going around the sun or political stuff from 10 years ago is one thing, but it makes me furious when people keep animals in such ignorance they’re killing them. Usually in awful and horrific ways (like starving them to death, or giving them the wrong “atmosphere” to breathe by trying to keep a salt water fish in fresh water).
I’ve had 8th graders with no learning disabilities who didn’t know odds from evens; the triangle from other shapes; which are mountains, rivers and lakes on a map; twice or half; $1 facts like 4 quarters or 10 dimes;
That would be in English, but what are they called in French? The poster was clairobscur, so I’m guessing the language was French.
In Spanish the potatoes you set aside to plant are called patatas de siembra, planting potatoes: the word semilla (seed) isn’t anywhere in sight.
Never mind 8th graders, MsKaren: I’ve known many adults who couldn’t read a map at all. It’s one of those skills which need to be taught but too often are not. As soon as my brothers got old enough that I could handle them and the maps at the same time, Dad set me as the navigator: I didn’t understand why (I was in the back seat) until I needed to use Mom as a nav. She can read the map OK so long as nothing is moving, but giving directions to a driver is a different skill: she can only remember about half the time that “right on the map” is not the same thing as “right as the car goes”.
Oh, right, true - probably something similar then (“sprouted tubers” was what I could find on French gardening sites), in which case, yeah, I’d expect a farmer’s kid to know better.
Some of us, to manage navigating, have to turn the map around at need, to match the direction of travel. Regarded with great contempt by the truly adept map-practitioners…
I grew up in West Texas and still did not know that until I was an adult. Do horses really care? What would happen if you tried mounting from the right?
