I once knew a first grade teacher who, during the discussion of a shetland pony, asked, “How long before it becomes a horse?”
We laughed well.
[QUOTE=Raguleader]
…Actually, being a Catholic in a rural Oklahoma town exposes one to all SORTS of charming lapses of common sense and knowledge. Another girl, who I had the misfortunte of sharing a 45 minute long school bus ride with, believed that Jews and Muslims were Protestants, because they weren’t Catholic. I tried to explain it to her, but eventually gave up…
[/QUOTE]
No, they’re not Protestants, but they are Christians. The Jews, anyway.
At least, according to my 7th grade teacher (Catholic school in PA). We were naming every religion we could think of, and classifying them as Christian vs. non-Christian. Hindu? Non. Lutheran? Christian. Catholic? Christian. Muslim? Non. Jewish? Christian.
I tried arguing with the teacher. She override me. I gave up in disgust.
My mother was absolutely certain that wearing glasses makes your eyes weaker. I asked the family ophthalmologist this and he said that no, it didn’t. My mother’s response, when I told her, was “What does he know?!”.
I’ve told this story before here, but …
Years ago, I worked in swanky deli with a wonderful cheese section. On the counter was some Sap Sago green grating cheese. A bubblehead was at the counter and asked why it was green.
“Because it comes from the moon,” I said.
Her jaw dropped and her eyes grew wide.
“Reeeeeeealy?!?!”
:rolleyes:
That cow had to be up to something after jumping over the moon.
Several years ago, two of the women in the office where I worked were looking at Us or People or one of those celebrity rags. The issue featured Ellen deGeneres and Anne Heche, who were still together at the time. One of the women said “Ellen deGeneres is so butch and Anne Heche is so feminine!” To which the other replied, “Of course – one has to be the man and the other has to be the woman.” :smack:
[QUOTE=Zabali_Clawbane]
Maybe he was used to a multi-telivision household that only had one satellite receiver? 
[/QUOTE]
I had actually asked his brother that (because that was my original thought as well) and alas, their last residence (for five years!) was set up with cable just as I had set up the current one.
[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
Now, most probably there isn’t any (intentional) use of grasshoppers in peanut butter, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if there was some sort of something that has a “gross” origin in some major brand.
[/QUOTE]
Mmmmm… inago!
[QUOTE=calm kiwi]
those Candians really pay off.
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Poor spelling aside, could explain that statement, please?
[QUOTE=Licentious Ectomorph]
Several years ago, two of the women in the office where I worked were looking at Us or People or one of those celebrity rags. The issue featured Ellen deGeneres and Anne Heche, who were still together at the time. One of the women said “Ellen deGeneres is so butch and Anne Heche is so feminine!” To which the other replied, “Of course – one has to be the man and the other has to be the woman.” :smack:
[/QUOTE]
My office supervisor once spent an hour going over some photos of gay couples in the area and determining whose the wife & whose the husband. One of those moments when I had to bite my lip to keep my mouth shut.
[QUOTE=Mama Zappa]
No, they’re not Protestants, but they are Christians. The Jews, anyway.
At least, according to my 7th grade teacher (Catholic school in PA).
[/QUOTE]
That reminds me – yesterday I was motoring around with my above-mentioned manager, and we passed a big-assed ultra-modern Super-Church.
Him: “What is that, a synagogue? Yeah, it’s a synagogue.”
Me: “I don’t think so.”
Him: “Sure it is, look at the roof.”
Me: “You mean that thing underneath the huge cross?”
I just got one today. I work in a college I&TS department, and we had a problem with a student computer that has a lot of viruses that slowed down the network. I got an email from a student asking me if we had reduced Internet bandwidth in order to save energy.
[QUOTE=Rilchiam]
I don’t know if this was truly dumb, but a few years ago, during the NBA finals, I heard a co-worker say, “But the Lakers can’t always win!”
Well…if one team consistently plays better than the other teams in the league, then they’ll keep winning. It’s not an awards show, where people vote and factor in who deserves it more and who will have other chances. If other teams are inspired to improve so that they outperform the multi-championship team, then one of those teams will win. In sports, the race generally is to the swift.
[/QUOTE]
Not dumb at all. Name a pro basketball team that won all its games in any season. No pro team can always win; a good team will win more, but will have a few losses (pro football has a few exceptions, but the Dolphins lost games the next year, so they didn’t always win, either).
[QUOTE=Annie-Xmas]
My office supervisor once spent an hour going over some photos of gay couples in the area and determining whose the wife & whose the husband. One of those moments when I had to bite my lip to keep my mouth shut.
[/QUOTE]
To be fair, this (and the one about Ellen Degeneres and Anne Heche) doesn’t sound like stupidity so much as the people in question trying to frame something strange in the only framework they have available for monogomous relationships. Once they accept that you CAN have two people of the same sex in a relationship, they may not make the connection that the people need not be the same gender.
It’s a sociology thing, lots of people have the hardest time thinking outside of the box when it comes down to it. The only difference between open-minded people and close-minded people, oftentimes, is the variety of contents inside the box that you’re thinking in.
[QUOTE=Cerowyn]
Poor spelling aside, could explain that statement, please?
[/QUOTE]
Gaudere’s Law strikes again. I should know better than to point out a typo. :smack:
[QUOTE=Nava]
Case 1: BE, my best friend since K1.** In Spain, most pools are public or semipublic spaces, rather than private. ** She was preparing to take the exam for her driver’s license. She’s always been one of those people who mutter when they study, so when she was doing the practice tests…
[/QUOTE]
It’s the bit in bold of this post I really don’t understand. I thought at first you had typo’d ‘driving’ and really she was doing a SCUBA exam but on further reading it appears not. So what’s up with the public pools in Spain?
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
Not dumb at all. Name a pro basketball team that won all its games in any season. No pro team can always win; a good team will win more, but will have a few losses (pro football has a few exceptions, but the Dolphins lost games the next year, so they didn’t always win, either).
[/QUOTE]
No, I said this happened during the finals. She was talking about their chances of taking the championship that year, which they did, as they had the year before, and the year before that. By her logic, the Lakers couldn’t always take the championship, as if it was a matter of luck or fairness. And by mine, they could, unless they choked, or another team was inspired to push themselves past the bar the Lakers had set.
Customer service people get all the good ones… I work for a major cellular provider and my all time favorite is what I get after explaining to the customer, who is way over her minutes, that by going up one rate plan for an additional ten dollars per month we can backdate the plan to get rid of the hundred plus dollars in current overage, only to hear the following: “But I don’t want to pay that much!” Not enough :rolleyes: !
Also, did y’all know that cellular companies arbitrarily add minute usage to random accounts just to up revenues? Shock to me, too, but it’s solemn gospel to a sizable percentage of our customers.
This one chapped my hide back in the day–I had a spell of going to Jehovah’s Witness meetings in my late teens, and a young woman came up to me and one of the elders and asked how to pronounce the name “Pliny,” which was included in the text she was due to read aloud that day. The elder said “That’s pronounced ‘PLY-knee.’” I advised them both that I had recently completed my second year of Latin and that the vowels in that language are “ah, eh, ee, oh, oo” and therefore the correct pronunciation is “PLIH-knee.” Care to take a guess which one she went with? Mm-hmm, because being a high school dropout but a male “elder” conveys automatic rightness over someone who’d actually had to translate passages written by the gentleman in question–and gotten an “A” in both classes, thankyouverymuch! :smack: Not to mention the pronunciation guide right down at the bottom of the “Watchtower” page in the footnotes–which concurred with my assertion… :smack: :smack:
I had a great one today. I’m quite new in my job and still in the stage of getting to know folks. Today I saw someone I’d met and chatted with a little bit prior to my going on two weeks leave and then spending most of this week in training rooms away from everyone. So it was a relatively long time since I’d seen him. First thing out of his mouth was ‘Hey! How are you? I haven’t seen you since the last time we spoke!’
To his credit he realised what he had said when I started laughing but there was a real ‘wstfgl?’ second there.
[QUOTE=Rilchiam]
No, I said this happened during the finals. She was talking about their chances of taking the championship that year, which they did, as they had the year before, and the year before that. By her logic, the Lakers couldn’t always take the championship, as if it was a matter of luck or fairness. And by mine, they could, unless they choked, or another team was inspired to push themselves past the bar the Lakers had set.
[/QUOTE]
Still, it doesn’t make the statement “they can’t win all the time” stupid. They can’t (and haven’t). Hell, even if she said, “they can’t win this year,” she could have been right – remember the Red Sox coming back against the Yankees.
[QUOTE=SmartAleq]
Customer service people get all the good ones…
[/QUOTE]
That reminds me of a story I’ve told here before about a fella who brought his new ultra-cheap consumer-level fax machine in to me, asking how he could hook it up to his computer. (RS232 IFs, at the time, were a high-end option.) He insisted that it was possible, and after quite a bit of back-and-forth (including my consulting the service manual to be absolutely sure that this option wasn’t available as an upgrade,) he revealed that he bought that model specifically because it was PC-compatible…
…and that he knew that it was, because it was beige. And PCs are beige.
Except that he apparently didn’t know the word “beige.” He said described his new fax as “computer-coloured.”
I still think I deserve a special service award for managing to avoid laughing in his face.
I went to use the grinding wheel at work one day, but it was worn down to the point that it was worthless. I went to the shop foreman and had the following conversation.
Me: The grinding wheel is worn out do you have a spare?
Foreman: Yes.
Me: Me could I have it so I can finish my job?
Forman: No.
Me: Why not?
Forman: Because if I let you use the spare we won’t have a spare.
Me: Sooooo??? 
Forman: I need to have a spare in case the grinding wheel wears out.
Me: But the grinding wheel is worn out.
Forman: Right, that’s why we need the spare.
Me: What? Do you think I’m going to ruin your spare wheel.
Forman: No that’s not it. What I’m telling you is if you use the spare I won’t have a spare.
I know you think that he was just playing a joke or mindgame on me. But no he really is that dumb/strange. One day all six of our company’s machininsts were looking all around the building for a 3/4" combo wrench. I asked the forman why he didn’t just take 5 minutes and drive over to the hardware store to buy a new wrench for about $6. He said he didn’t want to waste the company’s money. I think the wrench was found after about an hour and a half. :smack: