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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

ilovepixie · 19/04/2017 22:26

I've got a degree, two kids and a professional career, but I was 40 when I found out a kipper isn't a type of fish. Must have missed that lesson.

Is a kipper not a fish???

LaContessaDiPlump · 19/04/2017 22:27

DH was supervising a PhD student who commented that she felt sorry for the animal that kidney beans come from, because you get so many of them in a tin

I was at Tesco once, buying veg. The checkout lady picked up one of the aubergines and said 'What's this then?' I said 'An aubergine'. Her hand hovered over the 'O' button, so I then had to spell it tbf I'm sure there's loads of shit I don't know!

It's wilful ignorance that gets me. If you don't know then that is ok, but don't be proud of it - that's just deeply depressing. Every day offers an opportunity to learn something new.

CigarsofthePharoahs · 19/04/2017 22:28

I knew someone who didn't believe me that gherkins were pickled cucumbers. They thought they just grew like that. A whole separate type of plant that came ready pickled.
The thing that gets me isn't that some people have gaps in their general knowledge - nobody can know everything - but they have no curiosity to find anything out. I once worked with someone who.was proud of the fact that he didn't 'do' reading any sort of book, just an occasional magazine. No curiosity beyond the TV schedule.
I find that very hard to relate to.

ijustwantfiveminutespeace · 19/04/2017 22:31

As long as she is a nice, kind caring person does it really matter what she knows and doesn't know. Wisdom and knowledge grows with experience.

Original poster

TittyGolightly · 19/04/2017 22:32

The thing that gets me isn't that some people have gaps in their general knowledge - nobody can know everything - but they have no curiosity to find anything out. I once worked with someone who.was proud of the fact that he didn't 'do' reading any sort of book, just an occasional magazine. No curiosity beyond the TV schedule.
I find that very hard to relate to.

That's it exactly.

OP posts:

MerchantofVenice · 19/04/2017 22:34

Many posts ago someone mentioned that their child had to do a 'recount' for homework and someone else didn't know what this was...

I know that a recount is when you count something again...but...? Is it a special kind of homework task? Genuinely confused.

Also don't really know the difference between straw and hay - but, in my defence, it hasn't ever come up in any vital context in my life.

TheNoodlesIncident · 19/04/2017 22:35

It's a fish that's been kippered.

Sabine a pony has the same number of vertebrae as a horse BUT rather surprisingly, the Arabian horse actually has less vertebrae than the rest of the equine species.

And the Falabella is a horse rather than a pony, despite its size; it's down to its proportions I think?

MammaTJ · 19/04/2017 22:36

glitterglitters

Can you go and tell her this....

Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot, we'll weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether we like it or not!

TheNoodlesIncident · 19/04/2017 22:37

Hay is dried grass. Straw is the dried stalks of a crop such as wheat.

Isn't a recount where one repeats something in their own words?

Goodythreeshoes · 19/04/2017 22:38

I knew all the answers to your general knowledge questions OP - but still tried to get in the wrong car after I'd paid for my petrol this afternoon

Middleagedmumoftwo · 19/04/2017 22:39

I worked with someone who thought France was attached to England. Beat that.

stubbornstains · 19/04/2017 22:39

My friend yesterday revealed that she thought the Tories and Conservatives were different political parties. I don't think that she's thick, exactly, she's currently doing an MA in an arts based subject, it's more that she's not really from this planet .

multivac · 19/04/2017 22:40

If you don't know then that is ok, but don't be proud of it

Unless your ignorance is related to popular culture. Then, of course, you should titter with glee at just how above it all you are...

seafoodeatit · 19/04/2017 22:41

Went on holiday with a relative who kept going off to change her tampons, she said she changed it very often because she needed to pee, she thought you peed out of your vagina..

Outnotdown · 19/04/2017 22:42

I know a lovely woman, who didn't realise that dinosaurs are extinct. She thought you could see them on safari. She only found out when helping her 7 year old with homework.

Storminateapot · 19/04/2017 22:45

My dearest, most trustworthy, there in a crisis friend has similar knowledge gaps. I blame her upbringing & education, not her. I'm highly educated & know lots of things that she doesn't, but she has infinitely more common sense than I do & I would trust her with my life. She has loads of friends & is a beautiful person. My social intelligence is way inferior to hers. We all have strengths & weaknesses.

xBarbastellex · 19/04/2017 22:46

It really amazes me the way our society and education system seem to have let so many people down ~ I know a 19-year-old girl who thought that America was the capital of Europe (which is wrong on so many levels that it took me a while to decide how to start explaining it), and who asked me if Eskimos were real or if they only appeared in cartoons. She then asked if they really live in igloos and, if so, whether they had furniture and the internet in there

MerchantofVenice · 19/04/2017 22:47

Ahh. Thanks noodles - I did suspect the hay/straw thing was along those lines but now I know!

Yes, I thought about how you might 'recount' something in your own words/retell a story. But it's an odd choice of noun for the resulting account... certainly odd enough not to be immediately understood? I might ask pupils to recount something in their own words or write an account from their point of view...

pictish · 19/04/2017 22:48

You know it.

Ibelieveicanfry · 19/04/2017 22:48

My hairdresser who I see every six weeks for 10 years is a bit like this and sadly proving the cliche . She struggles to name any politician at all and has to think quite hard to even recall who the PM is, again basic geography, basic science etc only ever really wants to talk about reality TV and is disappointed I don't watch it. She views me as a real oddity because I want to discuss ideas or politics rather than who should win BB. I'm not all that myself in terms of brain power but her astonishing lack of awareness is frightening.

MerchantofVenice · 19/04/2017 22:51

I think it's quite amusing when we find out weird, glaring gaps in our knowledge... but I genuinely don't think 'people are getting thicker'. There was another thread recently about how everyone is getting less polite. These are popular, age-old fallacies, the whole 'the country's going to the dogs' narrative. That sort of thinking, my friends, is what led us to Brexit and the Americans to Trump.

Think how many people were genuinely illiterate a couple of hundred years ago!

multivac · 19/04/2017 22:52

I think if you are frightened of your hairdresser, ibelieve, then perhaps you might want to consider a less high-maintenance style.

LateDad · 19/04/2017 22:52

Orlantina I think our PM knows very well how our democracy is supposed to works, that's why she's going to stop it.

LaMereDuChat · 19/04/2017 22:53

I think I can win this thread. Mil (late 60s) was very surprised last summer to discover that the earth went round the sun... Honestly, I am not making this up. She hadn't a clue.

She blamed her mum, who would keep her off school some days as she wanted company when watching tv & would hide her in the cellar till her dad had left the house. Very sad, really.

multivac · 19/04/2017 22:53

Oh, dammit, I should have said, "Gosh, sorry, ibelieve, but what does 'BB' mean? I have no idea!"

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