Things you were shockingly old when you learned

i learned that ingmar and ingrid bergman were NOT brother and sister only a couple of years ago

Right. They're mother and son, of course.

no, they are the same person, before and after sex change. Surely everyone knows this?

nobody told me that beards were itchy!

― Bus to Yoker (dog latin), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 5:30 AM (7 hours ago)

there's that day and a half when stubbly turns to furry, and then after that it's ok

...unless you are not, in fact, a person with a beard, but rather a clean shaven-person who is kissing the person with the beard, in which case the only way to stop the itching and scratching is to grow a beard of your own so as to cushion yourself from the other person's beard. this works best if both of you are men.

or a dwarf woman

not all dwarf women have facial hair, coffeetripperspillerslyricmakeruppers (Latham Green).

Me, I learned last year (age 42) that ponies are not just really young horses.

Me too.

They can still be if you want them to be. Just like how rhinos are obese unicorns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarves_(Middle-earth)#cite_note-17

Despite having read the pony/horse thing here and in the previous thread, I still don't think my mind is willing to accept it.

A pony is a small horse (breed), and a young horse is generally also a small horse, so it's not that weird of a belief.

I on the other hand am a stallion

--I used to think death metal vocals could only be achieved using studio manipulation
--when I was like 10 years old I used to think those raspy high pitched hard rock singers a la Brian Johnson, the dude from Cinderella, Rob halford, et al, were demonic or were achieving those sounds due to some pact with the devil, so when I got the Wayne's World soundtrack Cinderella's "Hot and Bothered" scared me so I always skipped it.

I was also like 20 when I realized many live albums were overdubbed and it didn't provet hey really could pull it off live

Realized I was going around pronouncing "wolf" like "woof" when I was about 30 years old.

larry the cable guy is a racist turd

that alt-print screen allows screen capture of only the active window

Whaaaaaaat?!

36 years old; just learned that.

haha I had to send a bunch of screen prints of stuff at work recently, and the receivers would a) complain that they were too big (I have 2 monitors) and b) supervisors commented on how many IM windows I had open...then a friend who was on email group I was sending them to finally told me the alt-print secret

I learned Alt+Print at work too, but we use SnagIt so for the most part I don't need it...

Still can't tie my shoelaces properly. I mean I can tie them and everything but they come undone about 10/15 times per day. Found out a couple of my friends call it 'doing a Dan' when someone's shoelace comes undone.

http://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_how_to_tie_your_shoes.html

^ He has a trick to fix your problem.

I learned stupidly late that the Nazis were the first to send a rocket to space & that Sputnik was really just the first orbiting satellite. they didn't teach me about V-2's in grade school, although there was plenty of talk about local (central Massachusetts) rocketeer Robert Goddard, who never made it to space and wasn't a Nazi.

I just showed my 44 year old wife CTRL Z. But she doesn't post here so I'm having to tell you.

I only learned that FDR sent Japanese-Americans to concentration camps about five years ago; never heard this in high school.

Now apparently it's ALL high schoolers know about WWII.

Gah, I hate it when that happens.

Wait though, what other kinds of satellites are there?

Well, there's the moon...

pretty much everything after wwii i had to learn on my own. i don't remember a single history class that actually made it past that point. way to schedule, school district.

that's true for me, too. odd, huh?

lol OTM

basically, everything I know about the Korean War I learned from "M*A*S*H"

Haha xps, no-one's convincing me that Sputnik's place in history is as the second satellite.

(yes I know there might be a couple of others, and anyway for that matter isn't the moon an orbiting satellite too?!)

hello?

the best was that in 11th or 12th grade we took a "current events" course (called something else) (this would have been around 1994-1996) and it was like WHAT ABOUT THE 50 YEARS IN BETWEEN.

basically, everything I know about the Korean War I learned from "M*A*S*H"

^rejected Odgen Nash manuscript

I took a class my senior year in HS -- this would have been 1986-87 -- called "20th Century America," which basically covered the Depression up to about Watergate.

That's not including most of the last verse of Billy Joel's "We didn't start the fire" then.

I think if I were teaching US history I would start with a 1- or 2-day "state of the union" address and close it with "how did we get here? starting tomorrow we'll back up 300 years and work it all out."

^^^ That's how I've always thought US history should be taught!

i would love to sit in on a history class now, actually

I think I would have been a good teacher.

I for one demand the teachings of the rock and roller cola wars.

if i was a teacher i'm pretty sure i'd be saying "i can't take it anymore" on a daily basis

Ha!

/Mrs Crabapple

people have told me i'd be a good teacher too but i'd be afraid i'd turn into either r. lee ermey in full metal jacket or the guy from beavis and butthead who just wants to sit down and rap with y'all a while

bah, I worded (or really just italicized) the Sputnik thing badly. Sputnik was the first man-made satellite to orbit the earth. some German V-2 rocket was the first man-made object to reach space, but it wasn't a satellite because it didn't go into orbit. point is, for a long time I thought Sputnik was the first man-made object to reach space when it was preceded by various German and American lower-altitude rockets.

that alt-print screen allows screen capture of only the active window

my years of loafing on ILX have suddenly paid for themselves.

... that Michael Jackson wrote "Do the Bartman" for the Simpsons.