# Things You Learned/Figured Out At A Surprisingly Advanced Age
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [February 26, 2019, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249 "2019-02-26T17:07:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2019, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/81 "2019-03-03T02:34:41Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#):
>
> I’ve mentioned this here before, but I was about 40 when I finally figured out how northern hemisphere school years began and ended. Where I grew up the long break happened over Christmas, so the school year began in Jan/Feb and through to Nov/Dec, i.e matching the calendar year. Until I figured out how you American and Brits did it, I just thought there was a long break as a kind of rest (we used to have regular Term breaks that did the same thing), not actually as an end to the academic year.
Argentinian comic strip Mafalda only ran for ten years but has been a cultural reference pretty much since its beginning. My parents had all ten books (one per year), and in one of them the family’s vacation and Christmas are right after each other. That had me thoroughly confused for years: everything else seemed to be in order, why not those two groups of strips.
It was only years after learning about the different seasons on both hemisphere that things didn’t so much click as CLONK.
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### Author:  [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2019, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/82 "2019-03-03T05:47:21Z")
When I was five or six, my grandmother used the phrase “keep your eyes peeled”. It wasn’t until a random aha moment in my early twenties that I finally thought of my eyelids as like a banana peel or the skin of a grape, you know, something you could peel. Made me feel pretty slow on the uptake.
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### Author:  [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2019, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/83 "2019-03-03T06:21:46Z")
> [@Riemann](#):
>
> The thing is though, if you are truly “left-right blind”, then you can’t distinguish an “L” from its mirror image, you don’t know if the horizontal line on the “L” extends to the right or left of the vertical line. Every way that humans use to distinguish left from right in everyday life is by reference to something else where the knowledge is assumed.
But would such a person be illiterate, or need to try to read any text in both directions before finding only left to right direction is meaningful?
People who have trouble distinguishing left right are almost never direction blind to this degree.
> [@](#):
>
> There’s a well known problem: if we could communicate remotely with aliens who are so far away that we have no shared context (we can’t see the same constellations or galaxies), and we know that they have words for right and left, how could we figure out which is which?
There might be some ways. e.g. the weak force is not p-symmetric. So there might be hypothetical experiments where given a couple known directions (like “down” i.e. towards the nearest significant mass) one could define left and right.
Also you could maybe use a chemistry experiment (optical isomers).
Agree it’s complicated though compared to defining other terms.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2019, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/84 "2019-03-03T09:40:11Z")
> [@Mijin](#):
>
> But would such a person be illiterate, or need to try to read any text in both directions before finding only left to right direction is meaningful?
> People who have trouble distinguishing left right are almost never direction blind to this degree.
I’m certainly literate, in fact I was an early reader, but as it turns out most of the early readers in my class had problems remembering which hand to use for physics’ “rule of thumb”. Knowing in what direction to read \* and seeing both hands as having an “L shape” when you hold tumb and index straight out are by no means contradictory. I’m 50 and I still handle my cutlery randomly.
- top to bottom so long as the line is short enough to see complete when eyeing down the middle, every single one of us
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### Author:  [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2019, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/85 "2019-03-03T10:40:08Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#):
>
> When I was five or six, my grandmother used the phrase “keep your eyes peeled”. It wasn’t until a random aha moment in my early twenties that I finally thought of my eyelids as like a banana peel or the skin of a grape, you know, something you could peel. Made me feel pretty slow on the uptake.
If it makes you feel any better I had never thought through the meaning of that expressed until now.
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2019, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/86 "2019-03-04T01:03:58Z")
If you know how to read English, then right is the direction your eye moves to read new words, only going to
the left when you finish a line.
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### Author:  [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2019, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/87 "2019-03-04T20:12:35Z")
> [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](#):
>
> You know the old joke, “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”? I must have first heard it sometime in the early 1970’s, while Nixon was president would be my guess. Anyway, just last year I “got” the pun. That’s what, 45 years or so that I went around oblivious?.. It gave me the feeling like I got when I went to France (on business) and my French colleague told me the French word for “lemon” was “Citron”. All of a sudden, years upon years of Citron jokes made sense and I had to laugh out-loud.
If it makes you feel any better, I was well into middle age before I finally got the “Time flies…” joke.
When I was seven or eight, I got _really_ frustrated when my parents wouldn’t explain what was so funny about Pierre, the dehydrated Frenchman. I was a teenager before I figured it out.
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### Author:  [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2019, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/88 "2019-03-05T11:17:33Z")
There have been many things I’ve learned here at the Dope. A recent example is the arrow on the gas gauge indicating which side the tank is. It would have helped when I was traveling and renting cars frequently.
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### Author:  [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2019, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/89 "2019-03-05T12:10:52Z")
> [@Riemann](#):
>
> The thing is though, if you are truly “left-right blind”, then you can’t distinguish an “L” from its mirror image, you don’t know if the horizontal line on the “L” extends to the right or left of the vertical line. Every way that humans use to distinguish left from right in everyday life is by reference to something else where the knowledge is assumed.?
Also, it matters whether you have your palms facing inwards or outwards and I can’t say whether either is more natural to me.
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### Author:  [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2019, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/90 "2019-03-05T12:12:59Z")
> [@panache45](#):
>
> We had that class in 6th grade. I was the kid who raised his hand and asked, “But how does the sperm get from the man’s body to the woman’s egg?” I don’t think the teacher ever answered that question.
hang on, what is the point of such a class if that pretty crucial detail is not plainly stated?
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### Author:  [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2019, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/91 "2019-03-06T10:50:18Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#):
>
> I could not tell right from left until I had an operation to remove a cyst from my left wrist when I was 10.
>
> Two decades later, I learned the trick of pointing out your thumbs and raising the first fingers on each hand. The one that makes a “L” is Left.
I tell right from left by thinking of which hand I use to write. As a kid I needed to mimic writing. I very frequently say “right” while pointing to the left, or the other way around, when I don’t think first, for instance when giving directions.
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### Author:  [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2019, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/92 "2019-03-06T13:14:56Z")
I was well into my forties when I saw “courage” in the word “encourage” and realized that it literally meant “give courage to.” :smack:
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### Author:  [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2019, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/93 "2019-03-06T14:07:01Z")
I don’t recall exactly what age, but I think I was well into my teens / possibly early 20s when I learned that the Eiffel Tower isn’t black. It was actually really disappointing.
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### Author:  [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2019, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/94 "2019-03-06T15:27:44Z")
> [@commasense](#):
>
> I was well into my forties when I saw “courage” in the word “encourage” and realized that it literally meant “give courage to.” :smack:
Don’t worry, I was nearly 50 when I read this and learned it. :eek:😃
You learn something new every day. Not sure what I’ll do for the rest of the day.
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### Author:  [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2019, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/95 "2019-03-07T02:39:08Z")
> [@wguy123](#):
>
> Don’t worry, I was nearly 50 when I read this and learned it. :eek:😃
>
> You learn something new every day. Not sure what I’ll do for the rest of the day.
Don’t be discouraged. Go boldly forth.
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### Author:  [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2019, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-learned-figured-out-at-a-surprisingly-advanced-age/830249/96 "2019-03-07T04:16:30Z")
> [@Mijin](#):
>
> But would such a person be illiterate, or need to try to read any text in both directions before finding only left to right direction is meaningful?
> People who have trouble distinguishing left right are almost never direction blind to this degree.
You’re missing the point. If you have access to written text, that’s _telling_ you left from right, it’s no different from having the word “left” tattooed on your left hand.
But the supposed “mnemonic” approach of holding up your hands and seeing that the finger and thumb of the left hand make an L is different. Drawing an L correctly requires you to _know_ left from right in the first place. So somebody who was truly left-right blind could not use that mnemonic. Which is the train of thought that leads to the thought experiment of how you’d communicate L-R to aliens.
> [@Mijin](#):
>
> There might be some ways. e.g. the weak force is not p-symmetric…
The reason the problem of communicating L/R to an alien\* is that parity violation experiments are the _only_ way to be sure, based only on the assumption that the laws of physics are the same for them. The abundance of chiral biological molecules might not be the same for alien biology, that’s arbitrary so far as we know.
\*under the assumption that we have no common access to anything like looking at the same galaxy, we can’t send them anything physical like polarized EM etc., we have to tell them an operational definition, some experiment they can do.
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