# What's something that people claim happens a lot, but you have rarely, or never, witnessed it? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 13, 2022, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965 "2022-03-13T00:27:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Bootb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Bootb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootb)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/181 "2022-03-14T23:23:54Z")
I can’t speak to the first 2 points. However, I live in Colorado, and I see somebody open-carrying a gun in Walmart a few times per year. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/182 "2022-03-14T23:25:11Z")
I remember that, and the exodus was not so much that men were skeptical, as the attitude of some of those men - accusing women of lying about being raped, that kind of thing. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/183 "2022-03-14T23:42:02Z")
yeah, it was ugly. I left for awhile over that myself. Crept back. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/184 "2022-03-14T23:42:39Z")
Nowadays, $200 doesn’t really buy that much baby formula, but even if it was years ago, she may have lived some distance away, or the store had to special-order something for them. WIC occasionally pays for prescription formulas (I’ve seen it for a PKU formula, and also for a baby who was awaiting a liver transplant), even if the family is otherwise not income-eligible. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/185 "2022-03-14T23:43:55Z")
I’m pretty sure there were some Dopers who were banned over that thread as well. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2022, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/186 "2022-03-14T23:54:37Z")
You know, a holstered handgun wouldn’t bother me, but it takes a special kind of idiot to think you need a AK47 while shopping. > [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Nowadays, $200 doesn’t really buy that much baby formula, but even if it was years ago, she may have lived some distance away, or the store had to special-order something for them. 1995 or so? It was just the juxtaposition of $200 of baby formula and one energy drink. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/187 "2022-03-15T00:02:44Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > I’ve had that happen. If a kid has just been given a cookie at the mall or is eating french fries at a restaurant, he’s going to be pretty well-behaved (how he was behaving while waiting might have been a different story), and something about vivid red hair on a toddler really attracts comments. Oh. My. God. People won’t shut up about my kid’s red hair. If I’ve gotten the “well behaved” praise, it was in the midst of commenting on his hair. My mom got praised for well behaved kids, usually from the people who cringed at the sight of three boys walking into a nice restaurant. Even then I couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for other kids to behave. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/188 "2022-03-15T00:27:20Z")
Every time I’ve seen ill behaved kids, the parents are completely ignoring the bad behavior. Kid learns it’s o.k. to act disruptively when they want to. I was boarding a plane just after Frank Langella once, and he turned around and apologized to me for his slow-moving kids. I wanted to tell him it was one of smallest of inconveniences, but I really appreciated his apology. Made me like him better when he was playing one of his patented bad guy roles. ---
**Author:** ![Lancia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lancia/32/17174_2.png) [@Lancia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lancia)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/189 "2022-03-15T00:33:57Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > I would imagine that adoring young grad students might be hard to resist for a baggy decaying English professor who was never exactly hot stuff to begin with Many years ago I was still teaching on campus. Another instructor and I were hosting an evening drop-in tutoring session. It was a slow night and me (male, balding, overweight, early 30’s) and my fellow instructor (female, shapely, attractive, probably late 20’s) were bored as all get-out. We hadn’t had a single student drop by for half an hour at least. But soon a very… curvacious, sultry young woman came and sat at my table. She was incredibly beautiful and very clearly knew it. The other instructor, who still didnt have any students to work with, came and sat with us to kill some time. This student was working on an essay of some sort that was several days late already and she was desperate to get it done. After some back and forth, talking about the standard essay writing 101 prep tools – organized research, quotations and cites organized, outline, etc – she said, looking very deliberately at each of us in turn, “what would it take to get you to just write this essay for me? I will literally do anything you want me to. _Anything._ I dont have to get up early tomorrow and I’m not feeling tired at all. What time do you two leave here tonight?” And with that she kind of puffed her chest out a bit, leaned back in her chair, and smiled. She definitely knew what assets she had and knew how to work them. After a rather uncomfortable pause both of us told her the only way to get a good grade on her essay was if _she wrote_ a good essay. She soon left, dejected. She never did start any actual work on her essay. After the the class ended and as we were walking to the parking lot the other instructor and I compared notes and agreed that yes, that student was offering sex in return for us writing her damn term paper. It was obvious, but so brazen that I genuinely was second-guessing her intent. I crossed paths with that student a time or three before transfering off campus and each time I felt a little pang of disgust. A very clearly beautiful woman just wanted to use me (and my coworker, apparently) to to help her receive a good grade on a term paper. Which makes me wonder how any baggy decaying English professor could look at some aggressively adoring grad student half his age or worse and _not_ clearly see that she was likely just using him for something – something other than sex, intimacy, and and an actual relationship. Maybe I’m just not wired normally. But I think its squicky. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/190 "2022-03-15T01:12:30Z")
> [@Lancia](#): > > Which makes me wonder how any baggy decaying English professor could look at some aggressively adoring grad student half his age or worse and _not_ clearly see that she was likely just using him for something – something other than sex, intimacy, and and an actual relationship. Well, the young woman of whom I am particularly thinking was quite genuine, I think. And her professor was head over heels. I overheard him crying to a coworker, “The Vita Nuova lives!” (referring to Dante’s Beatrice, for those not versed in renaissance italian poetry). It was all rather eye-rolling. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/191 "2022-03-15T02:24:31Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > I basically never see kids being allowed to run amok and scream in public places while their parents make no effort to control them. When I lived in a certain Silicon Valley city, 40-some years ago, their public libraries were fucking day care centers. Their policy was to make libraries kid-friendly so kids would learn to like being at the library, I think. But they were always overrun with screaming kids running all over the place. Nobody, neither parents nor librarians, made any move to stop it. You couldn’t hear yourself think there. I have no idea if that has changed in the years since. An adjacent Silicon Valley city had a very different policy: There, TPTB made it clear that such behavior would not be tolerated. Guess where I always went when I needed to visit a library? ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/192 "2022-03-15T02:28:10Z")
The library in my old town had to say, at the beginning of every school break, that they were not a free day-care center. They didn’t mind if parents dropped their kids off for an hour or two to run errands, or even if the kids came by after school to do homework, that kind of thing, but no, you cannot leave your kids here all day. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/193 "2022-03-15T02:32:29Z")
The difference now is that instead of bratty kids running around without parental supervision it’s now all homeless people using the free computer access to jack off to internet porn. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/194 "2022-03-15T02:33:26Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > The difference now is that instead of bratty kids running around without parental supervision it’s now all homeless people using the free computer access to jack off to internet porn.   Fine with me as long as they do it _quietly_ ! ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/195 "2022-03-15T02:34:42Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I’ve known thousands of gay men, and can think of only one with a lisp. I know two brothers who are identical twins. One is straight and has a “typical” voice, while the other is gay and speaks with the stereotypical lisp/lilt. ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/196 "2022-03-15T03:26:14Z")
[quote=“nearwildheaven, post:180, topic:960965”] Over the years, working in IT, my brother has worked with a lot of people from India and its environs, and they’re always surprised that people do not do the following things in public,… [/quote] I am an immigrant from India, and I would say that this is purely confirmation bias. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/197 "2022-03-15T03:31:14Z")
> [@Sternvogel](#): > > I know two brothers who are identical twins. One is straight and has a “typical” voice, while the other is gay and speaks with the stereotypical lisp/lilt. What does this tell us about the nature/nurture debate? ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/198 "2022-03-15T03:47:50Z")
Okay, maybe not always, but often enough that he saw a pattern. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/199 "2022-03-15T03:54:56Z")
I talked to many visitors/immigrants who had similar misconceptions about the United States and were surprised when they came here for the first time and realized they were wrong. Strangely NONE of the people I talked to were from India. Most were from Europe; a few were Africa and Asia. I blame Hollywood and the over-saturation worldwide of American Pop Culture. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2022, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965/200 "2022-03-15T04:01:12Z")
> [@Retzbu\_Tox](#): > > My daughter and her friends went to some of the Pride Week events in Chicago last year. They noticed a bunch of guys with variously colored handkerchiefs sticking out of their pockets and asked what they signified. They had a code system to let people know who was single, who was looking for a fling, who was looking for a relationship, etc. Unobtrusive and efficient. 😁 Last year??? We used to wear hankies back in the '70s, to indicate, not our relationship status, but what kind of sex we were looking for. [It got somewhat complicated.](http://eagleportland.com/HANKY-CODE.HTML) There were several different versions going around, plus an east coast/west coast schism, so ultimately you just had to ask someone what he was into. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-something-that-people-claim-happens-a-lot-but-you-have-rarely-or-never-witnessed-it/960965.md?page=11)