Count me in on the pineapple dumbwagon. Huh.
I thought ‘gigolo’ was pronounced ‘GIG-O-LO’ until the Deuce Bigalow movies. I haven’t seen them, but I heard the radio ad and said to myself, “What the hell’s a jigolo?” Doh. Well, in my defense, that’s how it’s spelled…
I used to think that **all ** old people were wise, you know, due to them having stored up years and years of knowledge.
Ronnie Reagan finally cleared that one up for me.
This reminds of what my boss told some corporate people. They had been in full charge of a missile development and test program for over 20 years (let’s just say twenty five for instance). Then the Navy decided to get a second source which put their noses really out of joint.
In a meeting one of them huffed, “After all we’ve got twenty five years of experience.”
My boss then remarked, “You mean you’ve got one year’s experience repeated twenty five times.”
Huh, go figure. I always thought it was Rigel (and am now embarrassed to call myself a Physics/Astronomy major). Rigel is #7 
I thought the Washington Redskins were from Washington state until I was about 25.
I did too until right this very second. :smack:
I’m kind of on the opposite end of this sort of thing right now. Moved by a bad impulse, I began using the salutation
<Individual’s name> et al., in my emails to one of the other departments I have to deal with here at work. One of those people has picked up on that, but he says
<Individual’s name> et all,
And I don’t know how to break it to him that he’s doing it wrong. It’s been at least a year now that he’s been doing this, and he’s working on an MBA too. I feel bad. I should have nipped that one in the bud.
Of course, given some of the place names up there, I don’t think they could be any more confusing if they tried.
You’ve got Vancouver Island, Vancouver BC, and Vancouver WA–all different. And the main city on Vancouver Island isn’t Vancouver, as you’d expect, but Victoria.
Then, just to be mean, somebody even decided to name a city in Washington State “Mount Vernon”!
You think that’s bad? We’ve got Mount Lake Terrace, too.
Is it a mountain? A lake? Someone’s porch? I don’t know! I just know the post office was as confused as I was by it back when I had to send car payments to a business operating from there. Fully a third of the payments came back to me. The lady at their end was very understanding. “Happens all the time, hon,” she said. Well, yeah, I imagine it did. Sheesh.
Behold, pineapples on the hoof.
Despite being born and raised a Catholic, despite attending a Catholic school for nine years, four years in a Catholic college: I still confused the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth, until very recently.
Yes, many people do, but dammit, considering my upbringing… :mad:
This one is very dumb. A few years ago I was thinking about our local football team, the Buffalo Bills. My thought process went like this: “The Bills? That’s a weird name for a team. What the heck is a “Bill” anyway? Why would they have named the team…oh” :smack:
I didn’t know the pineapple thing until it was brought up awhile back either.
You’re kidding me.
I’ve only lately managed to completely internalize the knowledge that Holland is directly adjacent to Germany. I always thought it was across the water in Scandanavia somewhere. The sad part is, I was still making this mistake up to a year after I’d actually been to Holland.
My boyfriend knows a woman who was a full grown adult when she found out that seahorses are real. She thought they were mythical, like unicorns and mermaids.
I think that’s kind of wonderful - it’s like going to the zoo and seeing a dragon!
A previous incarnation of this thread taught me that “elbow grease” is an idiom meaning “work.” I thought it was a type of grease.
A lot of stuff in this thread. The pineapples one I learned from the previous thread, but it still freaks me out.
And another one named “George”.
sob I tried to bring up lno’s classic Jerry Lewis/Jerry Lee Lewis post as one that exemplifies what the OP is looking for. Alas it seems to be gone. sob
Don’t beat yourself up about it. I talked about this with my ex-wife recently - she has a similar background to yours, and is still a regularly church-goer and all that; I’m not a Catholic. Not only did she not know the difference, she wouldn’t believe me. :smack:
Own confession: I was about 15 when I first discovered that I’d got the mechanics or sexual intercourse all wrong - women have this extra hole called the ‘vagina’. And it’s not at all the same thing as an anus. Luckily, I found this out long before I put my confused ideas about human reproductive organs into practice, but it was very embarrassing nonetheless. Blame woolly teaching.
