What commonly known thing did you learn at an embarrassingly older age?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How to pump gas but in my defense I am from NJ

This comment reminded me of something I recently learned:

That there is a little arrow by your gas gauge on your dashboard that tells you what side of the car the gas tank is on. Who knew!

My 12yo dc told me this a few months ago-I never knew!!! And I’m 40...

I had no idea this existed! I kind of want to go out and check my cars! (But it’s raining, so I’ll make myself wait.)

[Anonymous]

1. That Alaska is attached to Canada. It was always off floating with Hawaii when we learned it in school. I always thought it was an island off the coast of Canada until I was in my 20s.

2. That the saying is "for all intents and purposes" instead of "for all intensive purposes"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That it's astigmatism and "a stigmatism."

me too!

This raises an interesting spinoff. Do you correct your spouse when they say something like this? I do, because I don’t want others to think less of my spouse. However, I appreciate it can be viewed as patronizing. I always struggle whether to say something.

Not my spouse, but many years ago I had a coworker who thought "esoteric" meant obvious or straightforward. And it was a word she really liked to use, for some reason, so she said it a lot. I tried to let it slide, but I broke down after a couple of weeks and had to tell her it means pretty much the opposite of what she thought it means.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That it's astigmatism and "a stigmatism."

me too!

This raises an interesting spinoff. Do you correct your spouse when they say something like this? I do, because I don’t want others to think less of my spouse. However, I appreciate it can be viewed as patronizing. I always struggle whether to say something.

Do you have a super formal relationship with your spouse? I would abs. say something in private but maybe I have boundary issues.

I do not. I say something but worry a bit about offending her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Being a reader more than a talker, I grew up mispronouncing several common words based on their phonetic spelling. Misled (MYzled), Infrared (InFRAIRed), etc.

I proudly stood up to do a book report in 8th grade, and pronounced a quote with the word chaos as "chah- oss" and the teacher laughed and called me out.

I also had only ever read the word sonofabitch, and didn't really know it was 3 words ... So I got really angry at my cousin at a family reunion and yelled YOU SAH-NOFFFFA-BITCH! I had no clue it was son- of - a - bitch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This isn’t mine, but my mother’s. She is very proper. To give an example, she addresses birthday cards to male children as “Master John Doe.” That level of proper. She has never, nor would she ever, utter something as crass as the F word. That’s what makes this hysterical. At some point in her life, she heard the phrase “shot his wad,” and had no idea what that referred to. She interpreted it as “he gave his all,” so she would occasionally describe someone who had put in grueling hours at work and she would say, “He has really just shot his wad.” The first time I heard her say this, I was too shocked and horrified to respond. The second time, a year or so later, I could barely keep myself from laughing out loud, and decided it was my dad’s duty to speak up, so I didn’t say anything. The third time, a couple years later, Mom even referred to a woman “shooting her wad.” At that point, it occurred to me that Dad wasn’t correcting her (surely he knows what it means, right?!), and that she was probably uttering this phrase to people outside of our family, since she was so clearly unfamiliar with its meaning. I steeled my nerves, sat her down and explained it to her. It was so awkward for me that I don’t even remember how she reacted.

You need to look up the origin of this saying. It's NOT sexual.


NP: It's not?? I'm afraid to google for further confirmation at work...

Go ahead and Google. It goes back to the days of muzzle loaded guns.

Well that presumably explains why it has come to mean something sexual. Doesn't help much!

It hasn't, though I can see how it sounds like it. It simply means to act prematurely (of course, there's an obvious version of that in the bedroom, but...). Similar to the phrase "going off half-cocked" (which I guess also has certain connotations. I give up.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The difference between e.g. and i.e. Was blissfully using them interchangeably until my mid 40s.

Could you please educate me? I'm 43, so right on time to learn this, right?

e.g., means for example. So a list of things that are example. I like things that are red. E.g., apples, strawberries, cherries. There are many more. The list just contains some.

I.e., means in exchange. It is a complete list. My three kids, I.e., Tom, dick and Harry. There are no others. It is not a list of examples. It is another way to express the same things.

This is not correct.

e.g. is from exempli gratia, latin for "for example"
i.d. is from id est, latin for "that is"

you can use id est to give a complete list, or just to further explain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That a "yamaka" and a yarmulke are the same thing. I just thought I had never seen "yamaka" written out.

Dh thought “epitome” was pronounced ep-ih-tohm, and didn’t realize it was the same word that we all pronounce as ee-pit-oh-me.

I had an English teacher who would praise us for mispronouncing words like that. She said it was a sign that we were reading lots of challenging books

That is such a sweet and face-saving correction I will remember.

You know that's .... not how you pronounce epitome?....

It's not ee- pit- oh- me

it's uh- pi- tuh- mee

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Being a reader more than a talker, I grew up mispronouncing several common words based on their phonetic spelling. Misled (MYzled), Infrared (InFRAIRed), etc.

I proudly stood up to do a book report in 8th grade, and pronounced a quote with the word chaos as "chah- oss" and the teacher laughed and called me out.

I also had only ever read the word sonofabitch, and didn't really know it was 3 words ... So I got really angry at my cousin at a family reunion and yelled YOU SAH-NOFFFFA-BITCH! I had no clue it was son- of - a - bitch.

Ha! I remember when we were doing the dreaded reading aloud in school and it was my turn, I pronounced chaos as "cha-hos" and I legit never lived that down. That was in 5th grade and kids still remembered when I graduated high school. One of the activities leading up to graduation was that the class gave fun superlatives/nicknames to each other. We then used puffy paint to make shirts with the superlative on it and wore those to our graduation night party. Mine had my lucky number 13 on it and CHA-HOS in big puffy letter paint.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Being a reader more than a talker, I grew up mispronouncing several common words based on their phonetic spelling. Misled (MYzled), Infrared (InFRAIRed), etc.

YES! To this day, I still hear “inFRAIRed” in my head.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How to pump gas but in my defense I am from NJ

This comment reminded me of something I recently learned:

That there is a little arrow by your gas gauge on your dashboard that tells you what side of the car the gas tank is on. Who knew!

I didn’t know. I’ll check next time I’m in car!

I checked mine and don't have one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just found out two years ago that reindeer are real animals and are not make believe.

I had always assumed they were a made up animal because I only ever heard them referenced in relation to Santa who is ....

Who is what? What are you trying to say?

Santa is GAY. Didn't you know? There is no Mrs. Claus. There's Mr. and Mr. Clause.
All the elves are gay. Did you never wonder why there are no girl elves?

This reminds me of my favorite David Sedaris piece

...One doesn’t want to be too much of a cultural chauvinist, but this seemed completely wrong to me. For starters, Santa didn’t used to do anything. He’s not retired, and, more important, he has nothing to do with Turkey. The climate’s all wrong, and people wouldn’t appreciate him. When asked how he got from Turkey to the North Pole, Oscar told me with complete conviction that Saint Nicholas currently resides in Spain, which again is simply not true. While he could probably live wherever he wanted, Santa chose the North Pole specifically because it is harsh and isolated. No one can spy on him, and he doesn’t have to worry about people coming to the door. Anyone can come to the door in Spain, and in that outfit, he’d most certainly be recognized.

On top of that, aside from a few pleasantries, Santa doesn’t speak Spanish. He knows enough to get by, but he’s not fluent, and he certainly doesn’t eat tapas.

https://www.stnicholascenter.org/around-the-world/customs/netherlands/sedaris

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just found out two years ago that reindeer are real animals and are not make believe.

I had always assumed they were a made up animal because I only ever heard them referenced in relation to Santa who is ....

I had this experience with the narwhal. Who knew!?

I only learned this with the recent terrorist attack on London Bridge.

I literally thought a narwhal was a sea unicorn type of thing. A unicorn of the sea variety? I just looked them up earlier this week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:After living in Boston for 10 years, my mom still didn't know that when the radio announcer talked about the weather on the "Cape and islands", they were talking about Cape Code and Nantucket & Martha's Vineyard.

She thought they were talking about the "Capon Islands" -- she actually thought there were some chicken-shaped islands somewhere off the coast of MA.

Ha ha!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just found out two years ago that reindeer are real animals and are not make believe.

I had always assumed they were a made up animal because I only ever heard them referenced in relation to Santa who is ....

Who is what? What are you trying to say?

Santa is GAY. Didn't you know? There is no Mrs. Claus. There's Mr. and Mr. Clause.
All the elves are gay. Did you never wonder why there are no girl elves?

This reminds me of my favorite David Sedaris piece

...One doesn’t want to be too much of a cultural chauvinist, but this seemed completely wrong to me. For starters, Santa didn’t used to do anything. He’s not retired, and, more important, he has nothing to do with Turkey. The climate’s all wrong, and people wouldn’t appreciate him. When asked how he got from Turkey to the North Pole, Oscar told me with complete conviction that Saint Nicholas currently resides in Spain, which again is simply not true. While he could probably live wherever he wanted, Santa chose the North Pole specifically because it is harsh and isolated. No one can spy on him, and he doesn’t have to worry about people coming to the door. Anyone can come to the door in Spain, and in that outfit, he’d most certainly be recognized.

On top of that, aside from a few pleasantries, Santa doesn’t speak Spanish. He knows enough to get by, but he’s not fluent, and he certainly doesn’t eat tapas.

https://www.stnicholascenter.org/around-the-world/customs/netherlands/sedaris

Hahaha....thank you. I needed that.