This popped into my head the other day and I feel the need to confess: until just a few years ago, I was under the bizarre misconception that Normandy is located on the southern coast of France. I can’t imagine where I got this, and I was baffled about how the D-Day landings worked. Where did the ships come from, Morocco? That didn’t seem right…
No one corrected me and I didn’t read something that suddenly pointed out the obvious to me, I just realized, at the age of 26 or so, that everything made a whole bunch more sense if Normandy was located in the northern part of France.
Stupidity loves company; what crazy things have you believed, as an adult, that were completely wrong?
I’m not sure the exact age, but for many years when I heard people speaking of going to Trinidad for a sex change I thought they meant the island. Having been to Trinidad Colorado, the thought that it was famous for reassignment surgery never would have occurred to me. First time I heard it was our Trinidad, I laughed at the guy. “Ha! Sure… Since Soldier of Fortune is based in Boulder, why not?”
Maybe this counts: I believed my whole life that my great-great grandmother was Seminole. I found out this weekend that she was actually from Oregon, and therefore I have no idea which tribe/nation she belonged to.
I always figured that the leafy part of the pineapple was the stem. Of course, the base is, but I still wonder why on earth you’d want a tuft of leaves coming off the end of your fruit.
I thought for the first few years that everyone’s pee was green. Mom used one of those blue floaty things in the tank that made the water blue. She frowned upon the use of public bathrooms. I remember actually arguing with a neighborhood playmate about this.
Thankfully, I knew that all my life, and never realized it was a common misconception.
Here’s another preemtive one: The North Star (Polaris) is not (by a long shot) the brightest star in the night sky. That distinction belongs to Sirius.
My addition, and this is a little more obtuse, evolved from a non-sequiter me and my friend had in the 10th grade whilst driving in my car. Were we’re talking about Michael Douglas for some reason… and some how I missed that he switched the conversation over to Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s. He must have seen a Wendy’s sign as we were driving… thus stating: “Hey, did you know he was the guy who came up with the idea of the Colonel for KFC?”… Hence, I wondered for YEARS how or why Michael Douglas would get involved in matters of fast food branding and marketing.
Thank god that I figured out he was talking about Dave Thomas before I made a total douche of myself in front of someone the next time Michael Douglas came up. :smack:
I thought that my all of my baby teeth would fall out and adult ones grow in. In fairness to myself I still had some genuine baby teeth in my early twenties but I didn’t learn that molars weren’t part of the deal until a few years after.
Heh. I think I blew a lot of minds when I mentioned that in a similar thread a while back. Be prepared for an avalanche of disbelief.
So yeah, pineapples don’t grow on trees, as I learned when examining the spiky looking houseplant in my grandmother’s kitchen. Neither do bananas in a botanical sense (they’re not woody barky trees, but really, really big “herbs”.) Watermelons are berries and strawberries, raspberries and blackberries aren’t. Cantaloupe aren’t cantaloupe, but muskmellons. The plural of octopus is octopuses or octopodes, not octopi. “i.e.” doesn’t mean “in example”.
I didn’t learn any of these until I was in my 20’s. Couple of 'em didn’t hit till I was in my 30’s.
Until I was about 14, I was convinced that adults only pretended to like jazz and classical music. I was certain that adults all secretly wanted to rock, but they were adults, so rocking was frowned on, and they had to pretend to like other forms of music. I honestly, sincerely believed that adults, my parents included, would pack into a jazz club, and all sit there – every last one of them – pretending to have a good time, secretly wishing they could be at a rock concert. I felt there was no way anyone could like any music other than rock, and that all adults were just faking a taste for other music.
Not entirely true. Harlan Sanders was made a Kentucky Colonel in 1935 and again in 1949. (It is an honorary title) That’s when he started doing the white suit, southern gentleman thing and refering to himself as Colonel Sanders. Dave Thomas was not involved until the mid 1950’s.
