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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:

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Goldfishjane · 19/04/2017 20:29

OP I'm glad you started this thread
I have a colleague who is similar and it's getting on my nerves
I'm not suggesting anyone knows everything but that list you've given sounds like my colleague...
She also thinks she's very clever, so if she discovers Edinburgh is not in Portugal or whatever it's accompanied by a lot of googling and muttering and pondering how this could have passed her by.

brasty · 19/04/2017 20:30

www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-wildlife-guides/ask-an-expert/previous/robinsmigrate.aspx

FunnysInLaJardin · 19/04/2017 20:30

to be fair Kelly my DH thought that women ovulated every couple of days before we were TTC. I don't think that most folk know the ins and outs of reproduction before they try it for themselves.

Either that or DH is crap at biology!

SecretNutellaFix · 19/04/2017 20:31

The month argument depends on whether you are discussing a lunar or calender month.

bran · 19/04/2017 20:32

My husband thought there was never any sun on the dark side of the moon. He was completely unaware of the use of 'dark' meaning 'unseen'. I asked him what he thought 'deepest, darkest Africa' meant, and he said it was where the jungle was so dense that the light couldn't reach the ground. He has a doctorate (not in physics, geography or English language obviously).

shellhider · 19/04/2017 20:33

I was once talking to a teacher friend (private school) about homework and said that my DD had to do a recount. She didn't know what a recount was

Asmoto · 19/04/2017 20:33

I was surprised to find a couple of people at work had missed the news that a GE has just been called.

IAmTheWorwax · 19/04/2017 20:34

Is she really thick or is she doing that annoying thing where they pretend to be thick?
Joey Essex has made an entire career out of it.

Teabagtits · 19/04/2017 20:35

I know a guy who worked in a dairy factory (from insemination to pasteurisation) who thought calfs (or is it calves?) were born out of cows bums. I hope he wasn't moved to insemination.

The thing is mostly this lack of knowledge or even misunderstandings aren't born out of stupidity just ignorance of the fact. He saw vets with their hands up what he though but were cows bums and made an assumption.

It's unfair to judge someone based on their lack of knowledge of something you perceive to be common sense or basic knowledge because we all have different learning experiences. Case in point the belief early humans were cave dwellers which an pp has pointed out wasn't necessarily true for most nomadic tribes.

NeverTalksToStrangers · 19/04/2017 20:36

I get shocked at times at the shit my DH doesn't know. I'm quite intolerant of people-who-don't-know-stuff too (hey, nobody's perfect), so I be surprised at how little it pisses me off about DH.

And despite being what most would consider intelligent, I regularly learn stuff that i really should have known years ago.

Vroomster · 19/04/2017 20:36

I'm shit at geography.

I have been surprised when I found out that some women think that you pee out of your vagina because we only have two holes.

sparklefarts · 19/04/2017 20:37

I am 29, mither of one. Know all of the things she didn't but have no idea what you mean by IACGMOOH..??

KC225 · 19/04/2017 20:37

Actually, the Bee thing is a bit if a myth. True, number are declining but many other animals and insects pollinate. Married to an entomologist

sparklefarts · 19/04/2017 20:38

Oops just rtft, it's I am a celebrity.
Not so bothered that I didn't know that

VestalVirgin · 19/04/2017 20:39

I work with a young lady, 18 so has just left school - she did not know that trying to conceive was a thing. She thought that you just decided to have a baby, have unprotected sex, and you get pregnant first time.

To be fair, sex ed at school does focus on how to avoid pregnancy. And from what I remember what you are taught is the normal process of conception. That there could be something that prevents this from happening other than a condom or hormonal contraception, isn't really dwelt on.

The problem with some people is that they neither read much, nor travel and experience much in the real world.

A world where people who drink milk are even able to not know how cows are caused to produce milk all the time, would have been more or less unthinkable some decades ago.

LouisevilleLlama · 19/04/2017 20:41

4 weeks is a month? unless you mean calendar month ?

FunnysInLaJardin · 19/04/2017 20:42

KC the bee thing tugs on the old heart strings innit

KellyBoo000 · 19/04/2017 20:43

To be fair, sex ed at school does focus on how to avoid pregnancy

No definitely, I agree - I just don't think it should! She knew nothing about a menstrual cycle at all. Also said she had to be extra careful with her boyfriend and contraception because her periods are every 29 days so it's an extra day she could get pregnant she went to a very good school to!

VestalVirgin · 19/04/2017 20:43

Actually, the Bee thing is a bit if a myth. True, number are declining but many other animals and insects pollinate. Married to an entomologist

Um, but the other insects that pollinate are also declining. They aren't magically immune to poison, are they?

Also, they pollinate different plants. Bees have their ecological niche.

We could probably do without humans keeping bees. But killing off wild bees and other pollinating insects? Not a good idea.

Of course, the bee thing is a somewhat political debate, as every case of humans messing with the environment. And I wouldn't expect people to know about the declining number of bees.

I would, however, expect them to know how pollination works and that we need bees for some plants, and other insects for other plants. But that, again, is something people in the modern world can afford to be ignorant of.

KellyBoo000 · 19/04/2017 20:43

*too

BuggerOffAndGoodDayToYou · 19/04/2017 20:44

My step mother (who thinks she us better than everyone else in the world) told me I was stupid when I said something about the tide level being connected to the phase of the moon. "You stupid child (I was 45!) what on earth would the moon have to do with tides on earth? it's a planet with its own tides."
I didn't have the energy to say the moon isn't a planet!

informedchoice · 19/04/2017 20:44

Louise

Nofunkingworriesmate · 19/04/2017 20:44

People who are naturally gifted at spelling could look down ( and have done ) their noses at my dyslexic gibberish but I have an Ma and work in education
We don't know why the bees are dying , that Is Just one theory
We are doing cows a favour by milking them ( kinda)
There are 4 weeks in a month
I'd rather work with a nice kind co worker than brain of Britain selfish meany

SailAwayWithMeHoney · 19/04/2017 20:46

Glad I'm not the only one who didn't know what IACGMOOH was!!

I'm 25 and I know alot of random general-knowledge shit - I thank my Dad - but I'm shockingly bad at geography. I took a road trip from Kent to Bristol and discovered that all these places were in the West and not at all where I thought they were I genuinely thought Chippenham was in Essex. It really, really isn't.

NeedMoreSleepOrSugar · 19/04/2017 20:47

On the four-week month thing, I had a conversation about this with a woman at work recently. She reckoned that pregnancy lasted ten months. I asked why she thought that. "Forty weeks - that's ten months - duuh!" Came the reply. She's had two kids herself! (To be fair, I think I've been pregnant with dc2 for about four years already, so she may have a point! )

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