How can you not know?!

[TittyGolightly]

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!

Pineapples grow out of the ground, not hanging off trees. So there you go.

People have gaps in their knowledge because they have gaps in their knowledge. A poster last year said she'd never heard of the Suffragettes until the film came out - some piled in with outrage! Poor woman. If it wasn't covered at school and family members don't talk about this kind of stuff about the past, I can imagine how things slip through.

I have a great wealth of general knowledge crap floating about my head. I can name each US state in alphabetical order plus their capitals. I can point to Andorra, Luxemburg, Lichtenstein, San Marino on a map. I can tell you the order of the planets. I can tell you how Easter is calculated (thanks Guardian online quiz circa 2002). I can tell you the names of all the different dickeads types of bullfighter. I know where the Azores are. I know the after effects of the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in Indianesia in 1886 created the novel Frankenstein and lead to the Great Depression of 1921 and the Dust Bowl.

But fuck me i cannot get my head around Spanish i still manage to balls it up after 12 years. I invented 'digestiar' yesterday! I'm a hoot at parties.

I used to work with a woman who had a good degree, who didn't know that tuna had got expensive because stocks had collapsed due to overfishing. I was so gobsmacked I said 'Don't you watch the news? Read news sites?' No she didn't. She simply thought of everything in terms of how useful it was to her.

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.

Not that far fetched, since it does actually work like that for some people. OK, so having unprotected sex at the right time of the month tends to be a factor, but some people know when their fertile window is, fairly accurately without having to measure and track and some others just accidentally get it right. Probably less than accidental, though, since mother nature thought to make sure that we're hornier while we're ovulating.

that reindeer are real

One of my friends has a law degree and thought seahorses were mythical creatures.

Orlantina a pony is under 14.2 hands high, and ponies also have fewer vertebrae than horses (I think, but don't flame me if I'm wrong).

Ever since I learned the truth about kippers you can't pull them out of the sea I've been amazed at how many other educated folk didn't know either.

I didnt know a kipper wasnt a type of fish until reading this. I also have been avoiding the news due to having bad anxiety and depression recently so got some very funny looks for not knowing David Cameron wasnt priminister anymore .

I did have a friend at college who couldnt see why i stopped her trying to unfreeze her petrol cap with a lighter!

I honestly thought badgers solely ate potatoes until a few years ago....Bodger has a lot to answer for.

On a flight to Florida a few years ago I was looking through a window in a door as we flew over Manhattan. A man who was also looking helpfully pointed out what he said was the Golden Gate Bridge.

I so wanted to tell him that he must have good eyesight to see that as it's over on the other side of the country. He'd been pointing at the Brooklyn Bridge.

Elquintoconyo: "I know the after effects of the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in Indianesia in 1886 created the novel Frankenstein "
erm, Krakatoa erupted in 1883 and Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in 1818. Sorry.

@MarcelineTheVampire 😂😂😂 Well.... everybody knows Badger loves MASHES POTATOES. He makes them into shapes and eats them very day 😂

And the great depression was 1929. Elquintoconyo you were teasing us weren't you?

So...if I eat a kipper, aren't I just eating herring that's been smoked in a special way?

I wouldn't be eating mackerel that's been smoked in a special way, would I?

(Kipper makes me think of Fawlty Towers)

A conversation around vegetarianism also mentioned the organisation PETA. "Who's Peter?" one of the group asked. "No not Peter," someone else explained - PETA, P - E - T - A." "Ah yeah," he said, "Like the bread" !!!

Ok im 40 ish and last year learnt after having dd i have three holes. I did a level biology too and slightly further for my job! Dh knew nothing about woman anatomy until me and hence why we did a birth class and i leArnt about the three holes. Two other females in our class of six didnt know either!!! Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Dh is a mastermind level on geography. Seriously im shocked what he knows but then lacks basics. Im still waiting to find my mastermind topic but apart from the three holes have things mostly basically known (i hope) 😂🙄. I couldnt tell you anything about any eastender etc or reality program though.

I have a friend like this. I love her. She is fab. Not v good at general knowledge but is a far better mum than I can ever hope to be.

She laughs about it too before anyone tells me off for slating her.

One of my favourites was when she went to a favourite local restaurant of ours with some friends. I asked her how it was and she said that she was dissapointed that they no longer served her favourite mushroom risotto. She said they had artichoke risotto but she doesn't like fish! Think she had got confused with anchovies. Also didnt know where Africa was on an atlas.

Worryingly, we attended the same school...

Frankenstein was inspired by Mary Shelley seeing / hearing about the development of electricity and Voltaire's experiments with dead prisoners and electricity (I think). According to Radio 4 show I heard.

The TTC thing is fair enough. Think of all the unplanned pregnancies that happen that way. When I found out I was pregnant first time I was shocked (in a happy way) as I'd been a bit careless but hadn't been TTC.

Whilst we all have our blind spots, there are a couple of shockers in that OP... and throughout the thread!

Am sure I have my own but can't think of them right now. I do, however, have a friend who was alarmed to learn that astrology isn't universally accepted as scientific fact (she thought 'do you believe in astrology?' was a stupid question, because surely everyone does...).

Mary Shelley was troubled by her recent miscarriages when she wrote Frankenstein, as well as Voltaire and blood transfusions. It was the science/nature/creation thing that inspired her.

that reindeer are real
And very tasty!

And very tasty

Not Rudolph

A few years ago I had cause to hide very badly my shock when a young co-worker declared Cost Per Mille (a standard phrase in our industry) to be 'cost per million'. You know, because 'mille' is short for million. Not latin for thousand.

I realise now that pales in to total insignificance on the scale of youth ignorance.