43. What An Eye-Opener
I didn't know pickles were made from cucumbers until my mid-20s. I thought they were two completely different vegetables and pickles were the pickled version of that vegetable. What an illuminating trip to the Gedney factory that was.
44. Try Not To Giggle
This morning at breakfast, my best friend—who is truly an intelligent woman, explained to me that the percentages on milk cartons indicate how much of the content is actually milk. So 2%, for example, meant that 2% of the carton was milk, and 98% of it contained other liquids, such as water. I just smiled and nodded throughout her lecture and then calmly, through a tremendous giggle fit, corrected her.
45. Fairy Tale Belief
Up until the age of 21 or 22, I believed a hermit was a reclusive person who lived in a tree. Not in a treehouse, mind you, which might have been somewhat more plausible, but the hollowed-out bark of a tree. I imagined them living in the woods, in gigantic trees with a small door in the bark and no windows.
It must have been something I read as a child in a fairy tale. All I can say is that I was laughed at a lot when this somehow once came up in conversation and I innocently started talking about this theory. I have no idea what I was thinking either...
46. New Discoveries
My neighbor who lives downstairs is from India. He has been in the United States for 16 years now. He is a developer for a large corporation and makes a very good yearly income. We're good friends and we talk from time to time about life. When we talk about religion, however, I always discover something new that he has no clue about.
He once asked me why, if I believed in dinosaurs did I not then believe in God. He has also made the same remarks about galaxies after I told him that billions of galaxies exist.
Today, I informed him that the gas that powers his car comes from decomposed plants and animals from hundreds of millions of years ago. He had a good laugh and then told me that I will believe anything.
47. We Can Make An Exception
Back in the mid-90s, I was trying to purchase a part that was difficult to find for a customer of mine. I finally found a place in New Jersey that had it. When I told the woman on the phone that I needed it shipped to New Mexico, she informed me that they didn't ship out of the country. I said not OLD Mexico—NEW Mexico. She countered with, "Yes, but it's still MEXICO and we only ship inside the United States".
After a face-palm moment, I spent some time explaining that New Mexico was indeed a state, where it was located, and so on. Even after that, she said, "I've never heard of it before and I can't see why they would name a state after another country". I guess the fact that she was in a state named after part of another country escaped her.
I asked her to just check with someone else in the office. So she put me on hold for a while. But the very best part came last: When she got back on the phone she sheepishly said, "I was told that we can make an exception to our shipping policy for this order".
48. Now That's Ditzy
A close yet ditzy friend of mine once proclaimed that she didn't understand how being a weather reporter could be a job since it was so easy.
After a bit of questioning, it turns out that she thought that the weather was the same every year regardless of the actual year. So if it was sunny on the third of June, then it would be sunny on every subsequent third of June after that. She had also been using this method as a way to decide when to go on holidays. I miss that girl.
49. Check, Please
There was this girl I was "chasing after" for about three months. I didn't know her name and never saw her again around campus. Then after the third month, I saw her again and asked her out.
I was a physics student and I was telling her about the cool stuff we learned in planetary physics. She said, and I quote: "How wonderful God is. He made the sun rotate the earth, in a perfect circle".
I laughed as if it was a joke. She was truly serious. I asked for the check and left.
50. Decode This
My 23-year-old girlfriend had no idea what Roman numerals were. She was designing a poster for an event I was hosting and asked me, "What's the code for this one"?
It took me a while to figure out she was talking about the event number at the bottom of all of our posters. I tried to explain how Roman numerals work and she just said she knew what they were and refused to talk about it—until she asked what the code was again...
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