Until two years ago, I thought the Mississippi Delta was the delta of the Mississippi River. I don’t know why I believed that, except maybe possibly because they call it the Mississippi Delta.
Anyway, I thought it was the delta of the Mississippi River in the same way the Nile Delta is the delta of the Nile. And whenever I would hear about events or locations in the Mississippi Delta in such a way that it was clear they were located in the State of Mississippi as opposed to the State of Louisiana, I figured the delta region was quite large and it was reasonable to believe that it could extend past the state line.
So you can imagine my shock when I learned the Mississippi Delta is, in reality, the Mississippi-Yazoo River Alluvial Plain. I now insist upon calling it that.
I was living in California for ten years before I learned, thanks to a passenger telling me, the exit only lanes on the freeway have noticeably thicker dashed lines.
Beg pardon? Cantaloupe refers to one of two (quite different) varieties of muskmelon: the European cantaloupe Cucumis melo cantalupensis, which has a smooth skin, and the North American cantaloupe Cucumis melo reticulatus, which has a rough netted skin. There are other varieties of muskmelon, such as honeydew, that aren’t called cantaloupe.
Wow, what a great thread! I really love it. I never knew about the pineapple thing. This is a great use of our collective experiences.
I always found it weird about people confusing Holland and Scandinavia! This idea that Copenhagen is the capital of Holland? Never got it. I seem to always remember having it somewhat straight. I didn’t know that the majority of Denmark doesn’t live on Jutland, but rather the rest of the archipelago.
I have a lot of words that I had always read but never knew how to say. I seriously just thought over it for a few minutes and I simply can’t remember a good example…Sorry, maybe I’ll get one later.
A few months ago several of us found out that the Colts football team moved from Baltimore to Indianapolis over twenty years ago.
Within the last year I found out that Bundt is a brand name, not merely a particular shape of cake pan. I am really, really lucky that I didn’t go ahead and bet my friend $500 over it, as I was seriously thinking of doing.
I was the same way about reindeer. Santa is mythical, elves are mythical, reindeer just seemed to be part of that. My boyfriend is Finnish and had to tell me about the reindeer in Lapland. Apparently Santa lives there too so I was wrong about that as well.
A lot other misconceptions are biological. Surprisingly enough enough I became a molecular biology major. Perhaps to settle things once and for all.
I grew up in a house with just my mom and my older sister so I was easily convinced by my sister many things about the male anatomy. She told me men could tie their penises in knots, hop on them like pogo sticks and others I cant remember.
I thought the word “castrated” meant the same as “circumcised” so when the Heaven’s Gate story broke I was like, “why are they making such a big deal about the castration…isn’t that completely normal in this country?”
I didn’t realize for a very long time that women have a urethra in addition to a vagina. I also thought that menstruation could be “held” like urine and that feminine sanitation products were just for the lazy. Wow thats a weird one.
Yes, Yes, The old MS Delta, and MS River Delta. Technically it’s called the Yazoo Mississippi River Delta, as that’s the river between which it lies. I’m surprised most people would even know much about it at all, to be honest.
And about the whole urethra thing?!
I don’t know, i’m not a girl, but for a guy the feeling in the urethra is pretty clear. Could you seriously not distinguish the difference between your urethra and vagina?
Remember, we can’t see the region in question without a very specifically aimed mirror. It’s all just “down there”, especially when you’re little and don’t think to look.
I was told the basic mechanics from a young age, but I didn’t realize that there was a second hole where babies and sex came from until I was 9 or so. I thought that there was just the urethra, and that it would get bigger when I got older, big enough for the penis to go in and the baby to come out.
Due to reading one and hearing the other, I was past high school and still thinking that subtle and “suttle” were subtly related words. We will draw a merciful veil of silence over my first attempt to use ideosyncrasies in a spoken sentence. It wasn’t pretty.
Most recent example: There are two baseball teams in NYC.
The other memorable one is the whole Jesus thing. I honestly didn’t get it until I was about 21. Even to this day, I’m a little fuzzy on the chain of events. I definitely didn’t know about the Holy Ghost until my junior in college history course. Didn’t really figure out who Mohammad was until the same course.
Thank you for all of the pineapple pics but I am also offended by the way they grow.
As for the whole urethra/vagina thing, count me in too. I was 10 or 11 when I overheard some of the boys in the schoolyard talking about how “girls had three holes down there”. Whoa.
Don’t forget some of us were raised in households where it was considered *anathema *to look. I just didn’t know.
