. . . why people thought Monopoly was a fun game when you could go to Jail just for landing on the wrong space.
. . . why I had two parents but four grandparents. Did I need a spare set? (I was close to one set and not the other. I saw the first set as my “real” grandparents and couldn’t really figure out the role of the other set. This was when I was in my egocentric stage: 3-4 years old.)
When I did a worksheet in 1st grade, one of the questions was my mom’s first name. I didn’t recall her being called anything except Mom. I put down “Caroline” because that was the name of the mother in the Little House books.
We were going on a picnic in the woods. My mother told me to get dressed in play clothes and put on “holy” socks, and then went off to pack things.
“Holy” socks, I thought, “What the heck are holy socks?” I dithered and finally figured that holy socks must be those you wore to church. I therefore picked a brand new pair of dress socks.
When I came traipsing out and my mother saw that - instead of the worn-out, full-of-holes socks she told me to wear - I had put on my best pair, she about hit the roof.
The '64 election season had started, and I was mystified by all the talk about the “Candidates” who were running. How could those people run for office in our country, I wondered?
I thought “Candidates” were people from Canada. :smack:
I was thoroughly creeped out by the song “My Bonnie.” I thought it was a song about a ghost, whose BODY lay over the ocean and he damn well wanted it back.
I loved complex machinery and scientific equipment. But I never understood when you were building a device that you would know in advance what it would do. Somehow I had the idea that you would spend days hooking up different motors and capacitors and bunsen burners and gears and stuff, and then when you were done you’d switch it on and have to do some testing to see if what you’d made was an oscilloscope or a retro-encabulator or whatever. Obviously you’d need to be careful during this testing in case you’d randomly invented a chainsaw cannon or a doomsday device.
I remember asking a neighbour who was an engineer what he’d do if, eg, he was trying to invent a midsize car engine and instead ended up with a coffee-machine. Like, would he phone a kitchenware company and try to sell it to them, or did he have to take it all apart and start over because the parts were too valuable to waste?
I had the same idea about recipes. I used to write stuff on my chalkboard like, “1 cup sugar, 2 sticks butter, one pound flour, 2 scoops chocolate chips, bake” and title it “Chocolate chip cookies”. I never got up to the actual testing.
I’m making too many posts in this thread for comfort. :dubious:
When we learned the alphabet song in kindergarten, I thought one of the letters we were singing was alamano. I kept looking and looking at the chart above the board trying to find alamano. At some point I noticed that we were also skipping all the letters between K and P, yet it was probably a couple of years before I realized that there was no alamano in the song.
I was a military brat, and always wondered why Fort Belvior didn’t look like a “fort”. There were no walls, towers, turrents, or cannons. We didn’t even cross a moat. And how come there weren’t a lot of soldiers carrying guns and tanks driving around?
“Why did Mom keep a chocolate bar in the bathroom and never eat it?”
Well, some of us Dopers were more adventurous and tried it–and resolved never to eat a candy bar made by Exlax again.
I’m surprised there weren’t more questions about Santa Claus: for example since he came on a sled and there wasn’t any snow on the ground this year could he still make it? And how could he come down our tiny chimney? And the big question: would he find out I did X and not bring any presents (since Santa Claus only brought toys for good little boys and girls).
A young man of my acquaintance knew it as Little Minnow. His mother was heartbroken the day he came home from kindergarten asking, “Why didn’t you ever tell me it was l-m-n-o instead of little minnow?!”
I didn’t understand how someone could be going through a stage. I thought it had to do with a theatrical stage somehow.
When I was three, I wondered why I couldn’t always understand the older neighbor kids I played with, and I could rarely if ever understand their mom. I figured it was just big words I hadn’t learned yet. Years later, I figured out that they spoke Spanish.
I wondered why people told me that if I looked at the sun I would go blind, when obviously I could glance at it and only get a small “negative” circle. I thought maybe I had special powers.
Also, my dad was a musician. He would go off to play “in a band”. I wondered why he didn’t introduce me to other musicians (like the Beatles, who I assumed were all still alive and performing in the mid- 90s) since obviously they all worked at the same place.
If anybody is looking for more of these kinds of stories, check out www.iusedtobelieve.com There’s some funny ones on there!
We lived in a very small town near the boundary between two time zones. On the other side of the boundary was a city. Our TV was broadcast from that city, we bought our groceries there, etc. It was a point of confusion or inconvenience that our town used one time and the city used another.
My dad thought it would be a good idea if our town just decided to change time zones. I didn’t get it. I asked him, “Yeah, but what about real time? You know, the ‘stuff’ the clocks are telling us it is when they say it’s 3 o’clock. You can’t change that just by deciding, right?”
The conversation did not end with either of us understanding what the other was trying to say.
Here in the US, the signs say “For Rent.” The first time I travelled to London (at age 12, mind you), I was amazed at how many well-marked public toilets there were. I think I finally figured it out on Day 2.
My mom tells the story that I once asked her “How do you spell dong?”. Mortified, she asked, “Where did you hear that word?”. I said, “You know, like that song Delta Dong”.