Things that you've thought that were in fact absurd

[Pacificplaza]

Inspired by another current thread: what things have you thought to yourself, and accepted as true, which on telling someone else have quickly transpired to be completely ridiculous?

E.g: I always thought that when drinking a hot beverage, that the misty effect observed should you happen to glance down into the cup was your EYEBALLS getting STEAMED UP in the manner of a pair of glasses. When I casually mentioned this at work everyone kindly pointed out that I was just... seeing the steam.

My car is an old banger with no air con, just the air blower. For my entire life until my ExDP corrected me, I thought you had to 'run' the hot air until it turned from cold to hot eventually in the same way you do the tap. Rather than just turn it on once the car's warmed up. The hours I must have spent grimly tolerating a stream of freezing air in winter .

I'm not normally a simpleton by the way, I've got degrees and stuff and mostly manage to function.

So please tell me I'm not alone!

presspaws - well, I'm sure I've seen things that are dark blue that are called "petrol". This is the first time I've wondered why! Plus petrol comes from oil, which is pitch black (literally). So not entirely an illogical association, is it?

user GameOldBirdz that's really worrying, I am glad my offspring aren't doing politics at your university

I'm not actually a Politics academic thankfully but I teach a social science subject which touches on politics/political issues. So, not great but could be worse

I still don't quite understand how seasons and months work in Australia.

So their Xmas is in the summer. So if you asked an Australian to name a summer month they'd say December?

Do their Xmas cards have snowmen and Robins on or beach scenes?

It's "Petrel Blue" isn't it??

I still suspect the the tall wall that runs alongside some parts of the M25 is to keep London contained. Like a safety wall for the rest of the UK.

Last week I realised that Warren Buffett and Jimmy Buffett are different people.

My DH thought that the song Lord of the Dance contains the line "I am the Lord of the Damn Settee."

I'm not actually a Politics academic thankfully but I teach a social science subject which touches on politics/political issues. So, not great but could be worse grin

Oh, it could be much worse I am living proof of that

Just remembered we also told my young cousin (he was about 4) that our granny's friend who was coming to stay with us was the queen (to make sure he behaved himself and was polite to the old lady visiting). He completely believed it and went round bowing to her all week 😂 Was all fun and games until his teacher at school told him off for making up fibs when he wrote about the queen coming to stay in his "what I did over the weekend" essay!

once you pressed the 'record' button and the LP was playing/recording onto the cassette, that you had to be silent, because otherwise your voice would also be recorded!!!

Ohh this has reminded me! When I was a child I got a double cassette player for Christmas. There was a 'mic' hole and I thought I was going to be the next Whitney. So I pressed record and started hollering into this mic hole. Right into it. With barely a hair's breadth between it and my mouth. Played back my recording and it was silent. So I got louder and louder. Still nothing. I was so gutted. It was only years later I realised you hadn't to plug in a microphone in the 'mic' hole

user Do tell...

The car pedals thing I believed until last year. That's why I would never drive abroad....

distracted - apparently, that's a myth!

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/petrol_blue: 'Many people erroneously believe that this is a misspelling of petrel blue, and that the term refers to the sea bird. However, the OED gives only this spelling. The term may originally have pertained to petrol-derived compounds such as paraffin, which is often coloured blue.'

I like petrel blue better, though. Stormy petrel would be a good name for a clothes shop with Danish colours and architectural cutting...

😮😮😮😮😮

Petrels appear to be white.

When are egg fertilised then, if not before coming out?

PantPlot Tue 19-Sep-17 13:49:13
I was out of uni and in my first job when a colleague patiently explained to me how the staggered start in track athletics works. Up to that point, I genuinely believed that they drew straws or something to decide who got to do the shortest distances.

Umm, how does it work? Surely the finish line isn't staggered too?

I used to think the town of Rugby had an enormous bus station. We lived flipping miles from Rugby, I had never been there and my hometown has a pretty successful rugby club. I was in my 20's when I realised that all the busses I saw with Rugby on the front weren't actually going to the town of Rugby but we're going to watch/ play rugby

Umm, how does it work? Surely the finish line isn't staggered too?

The track isn't a straight line though, it's an oval.

If you're on the inside track it's a shorter distance eliza.

So I have just read the first page and found out that the lavatory song isn't right, I dread to progress to page two!

It wasn't too long ago I found out pirates were real. It was when people got taken captive near Somalia on the news and then Captain Phillips came out. I was at my mums and was gobsmacked. I always thought they were just make believe, like Peter Pan style.

I also thought that Crocodile Dundee and Indiana Jones were the same thing/person.

My housemate at Uni didn't realise that the lady on the £10 note was OUR queen. She knew it was a Queen though.

She was English and attending an English University.

Ika I kind of thought that too, my logical brain tells me to stop being silly but it reminds me of doomsday type films where people are held behind a wall in quarantine.

Distracted - that's right. I'm getting depressed now as my Australian friends keep posting that summer is on its way.

I'm definitely sending Australian Christmas cards this year. www.australian-christmas-cards.com.au/tablet/index.html

Until I was about 25, I believed that the M25 clockwise / anticlockwise thing depended on where you were in the country and so was different for different people. It was only when travelling with a friend and hearing the traffic news that I said "but how do they know where we are" that my idiocy was revealed! I still secretly wonder about it...

My DH thought that the song Lord of the Dance contains the line "I am the Lord of the Damn Settee.

GrumpyOldFucker - I thought exactly the same thing when I was a kid. But I thought it was the 'dance settee'. I had an image of this cool God having a party round his house, jumping up and down on the settee. Really wanted to be at that party.

petrol comes from oil, which is pitch black

Really? I thought oil was a light golden colour (like cooking oil)? Thought it only went black when it had been in an engine and then it needed changing?