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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

How can you not know?!

423 replies

TittyGolightly · 19/04/2017 19:52

I work with a woman (29 and a mother of one) whose lack of general knowledge I can't quite believe to be normal. Ask anything about TOWIE or IACGMOOH and she knows it (unlike me) but the following are just some of the things she hasn't known in the past couple of weeks:

that we aren't "doing cows a favour" by milking them
that tea grows on bushes (or that it's a leaf)
that coffee comes from beans
that bees are being threatened by modern farming practices and that if there are no bees we will have no plants (inc fruit and veg)
that reindeer are real
that early humans lived in caves
that a month isn't 4 weeks

She "has no idea" how anyone can know this stuff.

Is this normal now? My 6 year old knows most of this!

OP posts:

Thread gallery

BillSykesDog · 20/04/2017 17:29

Has anybody pointed out yet that coffee comes from a seed not a bean?

IloveBanff · 20/04/2017 17:29

What is that for DameSquashalot?

Goldfishjane · 20/04/2017 17:34

Dixie - why did you tell them that?!

LakieLady · 20/04/2017 17:40

A man I used to know reckoned he wouldn't need much spending money on holiday, because he had 200 Euros left from a trip to Germany.

He was going to Florida.

Mind you, I thought rugby was absurd until someone explained that they're not allowed to pass the ball forward. Suddenly, it all made sense

pictish · 20/04/2017 17:41

"I thought rugby was absurd until someone explained that they're not allowed to pass the ball forward."

I never knew that either!

2017SoFarSoGood · 20/04/2017 17:55

I have been asked multiple times - admittedly much less since the referendum which had great media coverage in the US - questions like this:

You speak quite good english. Do they teach it in the schools in Scotland?

What part of England is Scotland in?

How many rivers do you have to cross to get from London to Scotland? Note tha London is a startlingly common replacement name for England apparently.

None of these questions came from anyone under 21.

DGS(5) did ask on a recent road trip 1) are zombies real? When told no, 2) well, are monkeys real? If you think about it, makes as much sense for monkeys to be as fake as zombies in his little universe. Even though he has seen many types of monkey at the zoo.

cellorama · 20/04/2017 17:58

Muncheys your milk float story made me snort. (Partly because it reminded me of the amazing Father Ted episode where Dougal does Speed but driving a milk float.)

Tinkerbec · 20/04/2017 17:59

.. A work client who was querying getting unicorns for a photoshoot as "they would probably be out of our budget". Didn't seem to understand they were a mythical creature and we'd ress horses up instead!

Unicorns aren't real. No way! You will be saying the same about the Easter bunny next!

My Dsis thought in parliament when it said Aye's to the right and no's to the left that to vote MP's had to put their eyes to the right ( ie look right) or put their nose to the left ( ie look left to vote).

I was always surprised that people didn't know about the three holes too. Maybe I was too curious as a kid .

My friend who teaches Maths . Not sure how she teaches bearings does not understand direction. She knows we live in the North so will follow any road sign North even if she has gone further North. So say we lived in Durham and she went to the metro Centre . She would leave the Metro Centre following the Motorway North because she is from the North.
Clever with numbers though.

Orlantina · 20/04/2017 17:59

There's a story - might be an 'urban myth' where biology students at Uni don't realise that wood comes from the air. It's somehow hard to associate the carbon dioxide in the air with wood.

DixieNormas · 20/04/2017 18:06

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

IloveBanff · 20/04/2017 18:09

DixieNormas surely if they had an iota of interest they would have known "who was pm, that the Tories are in and that we are having another ge."

DixieNormas · 20/04/2017 18:18

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

NotCitrus · 21/04/2017 11:50

GoldfishJane They would buy a holiday that guaranteed a hotel and a beach, from a travel agent or Teletext, pay for whatever rating of hotel, and then meet the rep at the airport to be given place tickets to their allocated place. More commonly people would buy holidays to a known place, hotel allocated on arrival, but if you weren't fussed where you went, there were bargains.

Turned out to be a resort in Croatia.

CoughingForWeeks · 21/04/2017 12:30

I worked with someone who thought the sun and the moon were the same thing

IloveBanff · 21/04/2017 13:10

CoughingForWeeks So what the hell did they make of moon landings?

CoughingForWeeks · 21/04/2017 13:25

Banff If she failed to notice in 29 years that the sun and the moon are occasionally visible in the sky at the same time, I doubt she was aware of the moon landings

The80sweregreat · 21/04/2017 14:20

I think it was on Coach trip once that somebody thought that each country in the world had their own sun ..
( in which case, the UK didnt want the 'hot' sun all the time..)

I have often read things on here though that has made me go ' well, i never knew that' so we live and learn every day. I know more now i;m older than i did when i was young and the internet is brilliant too.

carbuncleonapigsposterior · 21/04/2017 14:26

George Bush allegedly turned to Charlotte Church when she sang at something or other, asking where she was from and, in response to her reply, asked what state Wales was in. Some other high profile American politician on visiting somewhere in Latin America aplogised for not speaking Latin I know an Australian girl who visited mid west America a while back, a couple of Americans asked where she was from when she replied Australia their response "Gee you speak English really well"

The80sweregreat · 21/04/2017 14:31

Unicorns 'out of the budget 'is the funniest thing ive read on here!

(There might be a geezer down the old kent road who could do Dodo's instead. )

SpitefulMidLifeAnimal · 21/04/2017 19:15

My OH has only just recently realised that he can log into his Gmail from any computer, not just his own laptop.

Orlantina · 21/04/2017 20:00

My OH has only just recently realised that he can log into his Gmail from any computer, not just his own laptop

I had that conversation with DF recently. He didn't realise he could receive an email and check it on my computer. Not his home computer. It was a painful conversation (he wanted to email it to me and check it with my password).

SnailsEverywhere · 22/04/2017 05:18

I worked with someone once who was in her mid 20's and didn't know what the holocaust was...... when we told her she said something along the lines of "well I didn't need to know because it didn't affect me". Unbelievably ignorant and really annoyed me

PoochSmooch · 22/04/2017 07:44

A friend of mine was recently astonished when she learned that I don't have periods any more. She knows I've had a hysterectomy.

The scary part? She might be doing your next smear She's a GP practice nurse! Where she thought the periods might come from, I have no idea - and it turns out, neither did she. She's fab, but she can be super ditzy.

I don't think you can compare not knowing what happens on a TV programme with not knowing who runs the country that you live in. They're not at all equivalent pieces of knowledge.

Westfacing · 22/04/2017 08:13

I know someone who takes the deliberate-but-fake ignorance to quite a level, to the extent she gets right up herself about certain things in general popular culture awareness. While it is blindingly obvious to everyone she is desperately Hyacinthing about it.

I worked with someone just a couple of years ago who claimed not to have heard of David Beckham! He read a newspaper, every day, no way did he not know.

IloveBanff · 22/04/2017 08:16

PoochSmooch that's unbelieveable! For any woman to be that ignorant is amazing, but for a member of the medical profession it's actually unacceptable.

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