Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Same with Sandy Shaw.

i don't know how to explain it but i used to think chickens had a really weird way of "mating", something to do with the rooster's legs. (!!?!?) :)

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

"that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character."

^^^Dude, you beat me by a month. Thanks!

I once spent a half hour trying to eject a cd from a Mac before someone finally told me there's an eject button on the keyboard. I was going through all these crazy menus and preferences...

I think I was like 16 or 17 when I learned that cows and bulls were the male and female versions of the same animal and not two distinct animals.

What sort of seemingly basic facts did it take you a surprisingly long time for you to learn?

― filthy dylan, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 5:30 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

loooool one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory.

I think I've done that Mac eject button thing too :(

Pronounced lapels like 'labels' for years until corrected but happily don't dress well enough to use it often

My girlfriend was shocked to learn, at the age of 33, that a 'Flea Circus' is actually a rather charming mechanical toy, and is in no way operated by any parasitic insects.

Ismael, at the age of 32, is shocked to learn the same thing. This thread is getting embarrassing

WAT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_circus

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory

no but seriously, what is this about?

i mean i can see that there's rarely anything to size them against in the big white antarctic, but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

u could still play tag w/it tho

But you could make the same assumption with ostriches in the big yellow desert (or wherever they live), and in that case you'd be right!

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

aw no-one said 'where babies come from'

I've had a lot of experiences in my adult life with mispronouncing words I understood as part of written text, but hadn't heard aurally in the context of conversation etc. For example, I was well into my twenties before I knew the word "vehement" wasn't pronounced veh-hee-ment. I wish others would politely correct you when you do that instead of letting you blindly sound like an idiot.

I'm a bit like that, but now I'm in the habit of saying works incorrectly, I can't get out of it. Canal is not pronounced can-el, but there's fuck all I can do about it now.

^ This happens to me all the time too - so much so that I actually now find it quite amusing when I realise, midway through a sentence, that a word I've never heard before is looming at the end. I suppose that people who talk a lot, rather than reading, must find the same with spelling. It only annoys me when some moron uses it as an opportunity to score cheap points (sadly fairly often)

I was going to start a thread like this, but it was going to be more about 'life lessons' that took you forever to learn, rather than trivia.

Anyway it's taken me this long to fully realize how unreliable first impressions can be when it comes to people.

but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

haha

TAL have an episode on this in the "best of" section on their wesite. people who thought unicorns were real, etc., lots of awkward silences at cocktail parties: good stuff.

i like to tag birds. (runs)

There's a penguin here and he wants to say "you didn't touch me ner ner ner"

I thought penguins went "weh weh weh"

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

― Huey in Bristol (Huey in Melbourne), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 7:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you couldnt get me in the same room as a ouija board

I was about 35 when I figured out Open Sesame = Open Says Me.

i used to think HAZCHEM was a foreign word for danger like Achtung

I just figured out, like 2 days ago, that the lyrics are "highway to the danger zone"

(until then, thought they were "I went to to the danger zone")

ooh i like that

lol mandee those are even better

Nothing, as I'm not shockingly old.

Misheard lyrics are always better. The singer of my old band had this (intentionally) corny line that went "sleep all day til the telephone ring / head to the bar and shake that thing", the latter half of which I always thought was "head to the barber and shave that thing".

My friend always thought that Op Ivy song Take Warning went "skate boarding", which is way better.

Same with Sandy Shaw.

Ok I sounded this out several times in several different ways and I still don't get how this is a pun. Help?

I think that 'Shaw' is meant to sound like 'shore' - I don't hear it either

Sandy Shore.

Shaw is pronounced exactly the same as Shore, in England.

hows it pron in USA?

Well I guess it must be different, if people are having problems hearing it? Dunno.

I didn't even know it was her real name, tho.

wasn't, rather

I knew someone who, if my friend is to believed, is said to have uttered at age 18 "wait, you can't get pregnant if your clothes are on, right" while making out.

'Shore' rhymes with 'oar'. 'Shaw' is the same as the first three letters in 'shopping' xp

i'm loving this thread. so many discoveries!

WAT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_circus

― Øystein, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:59 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

http://www.noonco.com/flea/movie.htm

My flabber hasn't been gasted quite like this in a long time :-/

xp I only got that Sandie Shaw pun because I once attended a seminar about legal practice given by an English professor who made a big thing out of the difference between 'law' and 'lore'. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about

Wait - how the hell DOES a candle work?!

I know, right?!!??!

i too only figured out lipps, inc. lately. also, fear's lee ving. it never occurred to me until i was driving in the car one day and bam.

I just now got Lipps, Inc. I say in my head "Lipps Incorporated" whenever I read that.

I was pretty close to thirty when I was told that "prevalent" is not pronounced pree-VAY-lent. I liked my version better. "The PREE-VAY-LENT opinion in this country is that Barack Obama will be a force of change."

I didn't realize until sometime in my sophomore year of high school that being forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson (Focus on the Family) every morning on the way to school was completely fucked up. My dad used to drive me to school everyday for years, and that shit was always on the radio.

"i used to think HAZCHEM was a foreign word for danger like Achtung

― Cittaslow Mazza (blueski), Wednesday, 12 November 2008"

haha yes, i thought it must be turkish

Xp table.

I know that I am not alone in thinking that and am a little bit surprised to be told otherwise.

Are you trying to wind me up?

That you can salt your cooking water all you want, the pasta will absorb less than half a gram of salt per serving (125g), and the rest is drained.

Except that one often reserves said salty (and now starchy) water to add back to the pasta to loosen the sauce!

yeah, or to add to the sauce if needed

but also *to thicken the sauce

anyway when a scientist can cook me a beautiful carbonara, i might consider taking into account what they have to say about the cooking process

https://preview.redd.it/my-new-favorite-meal-spaghetti-carbanana-v0-fxfo0w5qkxf11.jpg

it isn't worth trying again haha

"Sure but the idea of a "forgotten tribe" seeking to return home predates the modern concept of zionism."

That was basically the plot of Battlestar: Galactica, and that show actually predates recorded human history. At least the early-2000s reboot predates recorded human history. The original, 1979 version was apparently set in 1973:
https://en.battlestarwikiclone.org/wiki/The_Hand_of_God_(TOS)

That's a "thing I was shockingly old when I learned". The other thing I was shockingly old when I learned is that the last episode of the 1979 version of Battlestar: Galactica did make a half-hearted attempt to wrap up the series. I always assumed it just ended. Nonetheless the fact is that modern human myths and legends - including the 1979 version of Galactica - are just vague recollections of original Caprican myths. And also this explains why the world has gone in a bad direction over the last few years. It's because the people who wrote the early-2000s Galactica ran out of ideas and started writing badness. And that has leaked into modern human society.

This raises the question of why the people who make modern Star Trek haven't hired Tricia Helfer yet. She's still around! She still acts. Imagine how Star Trek nerds would react if Jeri Ryan and Tricia Helfer had an act-off. They would be ecstatic.

On September 17, 1978, the full 148-minute pilot premiered on ABC to high Nielsen ratings. Two–thirds of the way through the broadcast, ABC interrupted with a special report of the signing of the Camp David Accords at the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, witnessed by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Following the ceremony, ABC resumed the broadcast at the point where it was interrupted.

Could you imagine making it two hours in with one more to go and that happens? On a school night?

listened to Spiritualized's LaGWFiS album for the last 20 years and it only dawned on me recently, and this is despite being fully aware of the lyrics, "Cop Shoot Cop..." had nothing to do with police.

xposts - check out John Prine's "Sam Stone" and the lyric Jason cribbed from, then it's really obvious

The rather gruesome origin of the term 'hamstrung', I'd never thought about it before. Ouch.

For most of my life I thought that in the Lion the Witch and Wardrobe that Lucy said of Aslan "Terrible paws! As if he didn't know how to velvet them!" but she actually says "Terrible paws! If he didn't know how to velvet them!"

I thought velveting was some kind of skincare routine that lions did to make their paws look nice and Aslan didn't know how to do it. But it just means when they keep their claws retracted, and Lucy meant terrible in the older sense of "terrifying"

That is a good one

oh, terriblepaws

I still call moisturizing my hands before bed "doing my velvet paws"

had absolutely no idea Albert Brooks and Bob Einstein (Super Dave Osborne/Marty Funkhouser) were brothers!

whaaaaaat?!?

Yup! Which means that Albert's real name is ...

Wait, what???
D'artagnan was a real person!
They may've just found his skeleton:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/25/skeleton-three-musketeers-dartagnan-alexandre-dumas

Carl Reiner was asked during a Tonight Show interview who the funniest person he’d ever met was, and he said Albert Einstein.

(A high school kid who was friends with his son.)

i've just read that about d'Artagnan in the intro to 3 musketeers.

the dumas was 'based on a real story' although i don't think he used much more than the names and the first scene meeting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers#Origin

You don't get jackdaws in North America.

(I'm staying at my sister's just now and she has them on her roof and, Jesus, they are noisy buggers).

the Capt Bligh in the Rum Rebellion was the same Capt Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty

(actually Governor Bligh in the Rum Rebellion)

You don't get jackdaws in North America.

oh but we get grackles. they terrorize parking lots everywhere. i thought they were corvids - they look like they should be - but i guess not.

there is a relatively noisy bird in the southwest called the pinion jay. again, not a corvid though i thought otherwise. their loudness is thrown into relief by the quiet of the desert. we camped beneath some pinion trees one time and little did we know we were entering a pinion nut harvest factory staffed by some very loud employees.

Jackdaws love to nest in chimneys and my sister has a chimney which she had covered over with a wire grate and, of course, the jackdaws simply worked their little hearts out removing the grate, piece by piece.

... because as well as being noisy as fuck, jackdaws are Corvids and so are ingenious little fuckers.

(xps) pinyon jays are Corvids btw.

huh i just looked em up, i always figured they were larger and more crowlike