I was sitting behind two little old ladies on the bus. One turns to the other and says “If the sun is always out in the daytime, why isn’t the moon always up at night?” That just boggled me. I didn’t know it was possible not to know that.
In context, it wasn’t actually stupid, but out of context…
I heard a girl say “No head, Ma”.
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The solar powered flashlight reminded me of the warning the State Dep’t. gave to the US Consulate here in St. Petersburg about possible Y2K problems. They thought that Russia’s entire electrical system and phone system might collapse (they didn’t- they’re too old to have microprocessors) so they told the Consulate to stock up on solar powered radios. In St. Petersburg on Jan 1, of course, there is about 2.5 hours of very dim sunlight per day. I don’t know if it would be enough to run a calculator, much less a radio.
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I was working as a paralegal on a big case 2 years ago. When the trial actually started, the firm moved the trial staff from the Manhattan office to a Brooklyn site near the courthouse. I was assigned to compare proposals for copier service at the new site. One proposal was a long letter from a fairly large service that I wish I had saved because it was so full of idiocy. The one thing I remember was that their proposal said the copiers would be manned “24/7, 5 days a week.”
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Back in the brief period when Robert and Morton were both public figures, somebody said to me “I wonder if Robert Downey, Jr. is Morton Downey Jr.'s son?”
JDM
A friend of mine’s workmate who would often have what she considred to be “really deep thoughts”:
“Um…if you took…like…a bullet…and threw it… like REALLY hard at someone…like…would you shoot them?”
matt_mcl, take it easy on us poor american tourists.
The first time I visited Montreal with a friend, neither of us spoke much french. We drove to Longueil (sp?) and took the metro into the city, not wanting to drive. Not only did I park my car in the wrong parking lot (read: 3 hour parking instead of day long) my friend and I spent forever trying to map the metro with the bus station map on the first floor. Someone asked us if we needed help, and smirked and pointed downstairs to the metro station.
Sigh. I just wanted to point out that sometimes these “stupid tourist” moments aren’t really stupidity per se, just a lack of language skills or a bit of confusion in an unfamiliar area.
Oops…thought of a couple more…
I’ve posted this one before in a different thread, but it’s my absolute favorite…
My roommate in graduate school, who otherwise had a reputation of being rather clever, was known for saying things as she thought them rather than thinking about them before opening her mouth. One day we were watching some cheesy 80’s horror film on the USA network. The female character comes back to a home where we, the audience, know she will find the bodies of her murdered family throughout the house. The killer is still in the house waiting for his next victim. The scary music starts as soon as she closes the front door behind her. My roommate then says (very passionately I might add), “OH MY GOD! If I were that girl, as SOON as I heard the scary music, I would be OUTTA THERE! She is SO stupid.” Initially I looked at her with the understanding that she was just ACTING stupid for humor’s sake, then I realized that she was totally serious. I actually had to tell her, “But (insert name here), she can’t HEAR the scary music!” We both had a good laugh over that one.
And one from a very good friend, who is also usually quite clever…
On a trip to England a few years ago, whilst driving a rental car, he started waxing philosophical trying to figure out why in the UK, one drives on the left side, in the US, one drives on the right.
This is what he came up with:
“Oh, maybe it is because the pilgrims came to America to run away from British rule. They wanted to rebel against the Brits and do things their own way, so when they came to America, they decided to drive their cars on the right side of the road instesad of the left just to spite England.”
Yes, he specifically said “cars”.
Shania Twain on the Divas c.d., prior to singing You’re Still the One.
“I wrote a lot of songs during music class. This isn’t one of them, but it is one I wrote.”
While stationed in Turkey, I had a Sergeant First Class aske me with a straight face,
“since we are in a country that does not celibrate Christmas, do we get a Christmas bonus?” After 5 minutes to regain exposure I told him that the Army is not in the busnes for paying money for religeous events that are not recognized in a country, if they did then the Pagans and Wiccans would be making big bucks back in the states.
(Re: Russian African-Americans)
You know, I’m almost not willing to believe that story, but I suppose it’s possible (reading the other examples in this thread.)
I think Russian African or Russian black would be correct. I think accounts of media overusing “African-American” are exggerated. In my years at newspapers, “black” has always been the preferred term. According to AP style:
I cannot think of one paper that does use “African-American” as the default term for those of the Negro race, though I suppose some must exist somewhere…
In World history class in 10th grade, we were discussing the Bush tax cut of a few billion dollars. I completely forget how much it was, but we were talking about it for quite a while. We talked about how they were sending back checks to American families…
A girl in the back row raises her hand and says:
“Three billion dollars per person???”
Then, a few days later, we were dicussing illegal aliens from mexico crossing the border. Someone mentioned how millions of them came over…
And the same girl gasped and said:
“You mean…real, live aliens?”
Here’s two that I can think of:
- In college, one of my roommates was known for being a bit dim socially even though she was one of those 3.9 GPA sorts of students. In any case, we were once talking about a trip I’d made to NYC and I mentioned that I had seen a marquee advertisting the movie (play?) Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. The title cracked us up and we were indulging ourselves in a good snicker when my roommate Lauren piped up with “Hey, my parents saw that!!”
We all found that to be the height of hilarity, and it became sort of a catchphrase when we were being silly…one of us would say “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom” and another of my roomates would respond “Hey, my parents saw that!” and we would chortle.
One day, we were goofing off and two of us went through the above exchange while Lauren was in the room…except after my friend said “Hey, my parents saw that!”, Lauren gets all excited and says “Hey, so did MINE!!”
Can you say “Whoosh”?
- One of my other roommates and I were watching RoboCop, and the movie gets to the part where the truck full of hazardous waste spills onto one of the bad guys and he starts to stagger around with his skin melting off. We’re all laughing because it’s so obviously overdone, and Jackie says “How can you laugh at that? It looks absolutely terrible!!”
I responded “But Jackie…it’s so obviously fake, how can it possibly bother you?”
Jackie, much to her dismay, utters a response that we will never let her forget to this day: “How do you KNOW it’s fake, JADIS??”
We all gaped at her for a minute, then just about died laughing. She, of course, meant “How do you know that’s not really what it’s like to have hazardous waste poured on you.” No matter, we still give her shit about it. 
For what it’s worth, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom is a minor classic of the fringe theater scene, written by a rather famous drag performer who also gave us, IIRC, Psycho Beach Party and other cult favorites, and lots of people, me included, have seen it. Wasn’t clear from your post whether or not you knew that…
Yep, we knew that. 
It was the oddity of the title that had us snickering at first. The idea of Lauren’s straight-laced parents going to see something that, in our minds, had to be at least marginally questionable subject matter based on the title is what set us off further.
I guess you had to be there to get the original humor…but the fact that we continued to poke fun at it while Lauren remained oblivious is the truly funny part, at least for me. 
When I was in college I rode a motorcycle to class. Once I hurt my hand rather badly (in an unrelated manner) but I was still able to ride because it was the hand that controls the front brake lever, which is easy to pull (and sort of optional, since the rear brake is controlled by a foot lever). The other hand controls the clutch lever, which is much stiffer and would have been difficult with an injured and bandaged hand.
So I was explaining this to my friends in the physics dept. and the response I got was:
“Clutch? You mean it has a manual transmission?”
“Yeah, almost all motorcycles do.”
“But there’s no floor. How can there be a stick shift?”
And these were PHYSICS students, who are supposed to be able
to think abstractly enough to realize that a transmission is what connects the the engine and the drive wheel(s), regardless of its size and shape…
Oh, I thought of one! My dear old mom said it.
We were driving to a baby shower in a new neighborhood, one of those mini-estate places, with little McMansions, where it apparently is gauche to have house numbers where they actually show.
We were trying to figure out which house it was that we were looking for, and I was looking at houses on both sides of the street trying to find a house number. My mom suddenly remarked, “Well, it must on your side, the odd numbers are always on the left side of the street.”
Huh? Wouldn’t the ‘left side’ change depending on which way you were driving?
I was recently teaching an SAT course, and under discussion was, “Expel:Student”. The answer was supposed to be “Deport:Alien”.
I asked, “What do you do when you deport an alien?”
One girl said, “Well, since we know they’re not real, I don’t know what that would be.”
This was in graduate school, the professor is discussing something about design and asks the question: “Why are manhole covers round?” A girl known for her interesting answers raises her hand and says “Because the holes are round?” Sheesh!
Of course, you-know-who had already answered this.
Ya know, this almost makes sense!
In high school, I had a friend who was smart enough to graduate as valedictorian, but she was a bit of an airhead. We had to read a short story called “Tuleracito” for AP English, in which the main character is compared to a gnome.
We were kind of idly chatting one afternoon, and I asked her whether she liked the story or not, and she said something like,
“No. I didn’t get what all the gnomes and stuff were about. What’s a gnome?”
She pronounced it guh-nomee.
I can understand why someone might have never heard that word before, but I guess I would expect more from a future valedictorian. She could have looked it up, after all.
A couple of years back my and I had this exchange:
Friend: I watched GONE WITH THE WIND last night.
Me: Did you like it?
Friend: It was ok. I watched the colorized version. It looked horrible.