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!

Not RTFT so I'm sure this has been mentioned because it's pretty common.

Thinking Centerparcs is encased in a giant glass dome, a bit like the Eden project.

ThisIsntMyUsualName Tue 19-Sep-17 14:17:34
If you're on the inside track it's a shorter distance eliza.

That's what I thought. So how do they make it fair so they all run the same distance if the finish line is not staggered?

I don't really watch sports or athletics and avoided it like the plague at school.

This is totally ending up in the daily fail ffs

I've just been in Australia with my children visiting their grandparents. I had an interesting discussion with my 12 yr old about why the months need to be the same in different countries. He also suggested at one point that it would be easier if we kept the time the same everywhere rather than having all different time zones.

In the mountains west and south of Sydney the idea of "Christmas in July" has been further developed into "Yulefest" so you can have all the fun of a winter celebration. We stayed a night somewhere that had all the Christmas decorations up - my daughter took photos as she said none of her schoolfriends would believe her otherwise :)

I prefer to be in the UK over winter as I find Sydney summers too hot / humid.

Eliza9917 the runners are staggered no? You start behind the others if you are in the inside lane, then it goes further staggered so they start in a diagonal line, not a straight line

@Eliza9917 they are only fertiluzrd if the mummy and daddy chicken have hot chicken sex. THEN the egg is fertilised when it comes out and they all live happily every after!!! No hot chicken sex = no baby chicks!!!!

Until I was about 5 I thought everyone lived to 100 for some reason.

FakePlasticTeaLeaves

Ahhhhh lolololol, ok, i get it now

Your body absorbs it

gingergenius

Ok thanks, I suppose I never really thought about eggs in much detail before.

I remember asking my Dad when I was small how anchors stopped ships from sinking... He looked at me like I was insane

I did have a tape recorder that taped our sounds though. We used it to tape the Eurovision Song Contest off the tv.

To pps who seem to think planes reverse, no they don't. If they are nose to stand they have to be pushed back by a tractor like vehicle which attaches itself just under the nose. It is called pushback.

Many passenger planes are actually capable of reversing off the stand, using the same thrust reversal they use to help slow down when they land. They don't actually do it much nowadays because it's expensive in fuel and noisy and blows every bit of loose crap on the apron all over the windows of the terminal building. It's called "powerback".

A tug is cheaper / quieter / safer which is why it's pretty much universal now. But the PP's son who thought planes reversing was some kind of absurdity that only a mother could come up with is just plane (-:) wrong.

Chickens lay eggs regardless of whether they've mated with a rooster
Only eggs that happen after mating are fertilised and become chicks

I too thought for a long time that the yellow was the chick! I've never talked about it with ds but he thought the same too

Two geographical embarrassments from me:

I thought that Scotland started at Hadrian's Wall (well it did once I suppose), and that Mallorca and Majorca were different places (I am still a bit confused about those, I'm sure I have been to both...).

When my English (not my first language) and my knowledge of Anglo-Saxon culture was still basic, I thought that mince pies were filled with minced beef. So when people were offering me mince pies around Christmas time I always declined politely and shuddered at the weird and disgusting English habit of eating a pie filled with beef. I never questioned this habit verbally as I didn't want to be impolite and rude, so I accepted it as an odd cultural thing and taste, just like you accept that for example in Iceland people eat rotten shark meat.
It took me a couple of years to realise that the filling in above-mentioned sodding pie is indeed a very tasty thing. Hell! I missed out on YEARS of mince pies!
The realisation occurred as a friend of mine was making these pies in front of me, and I saw with my very eyes that instead of meat she was filling them with yummy stuff.

GoldenFlipFlop
Please wind your neck in. Your referring to my son. He found it amusing because I'd given him the impression that the trainee pilots would have to do a reversing manoeuvre (like you would a three point turn) on the runway and when I added the part about the rear view mirrors he found it comical.

Besides, you didn't know yourself either how planes reverse safely did you? Judging by your first response until you obviously googled it

Many years ago, Mine Pies were indeed filled with 'real' meat (I saw it on a cookery show once).

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?

Crude oil (the stuff they pump out of the ground) is black. It is distilled into different fractions - that is, different lengths of hydrocarbon chains. These have different uses - the lightest (shorted) ones are for things like lamps, the heaviest (longest) are used to make things like tarmac. The fractions vary from colourless gases and liquids, through the yellows to black.

The planes usually CAN reverse, but it's safer to use a tug.

Nazdarovye

They were originally made with spiced beef mince.

Like a previous poster I thought whichever way I was facing was north.

Had an argument with my mother that our new kitten could not be a boy as it had nipples. Eventually she said something like "have you ever seen your dad with his shirt off" at which point I assumed she'd gone completely mad...

For years I could not understand why women went on and on about the menopause, because it only lasted 15 minutes.

I thought bacon was made from crabs, I don't know why. I love bacon too.
I'm another who thought gammon was fish and didn't eat it till I was in my 20's.

Also thought corrie/eastenders advertised for new people to live there (be on the show) in local post offices.

I think I was a confused child

I knew someone who could not understand why she shouldn't plug in her curling iron and use it while she was in the bath. We all told her it was dangerous but she couldn't see why...

DistractedByAFatDog I'm Australian! If you asked me to name a summer month I'd say January. We do have summer themed Christmas cards but also heaps of traditional snowy, robin type cards. And fake Christmas trees with pretend snow. So still very much a northern hemisphere theme. We do sometimes get snow on the mountain in the city where I live at Christmas time, even though it's technically summer!

Think of chicken eggs like human eggs. When we have our period we are getting rid of an egg. (It's just very small and we can't see it. It's also golden which just tickles me ) chicken eggs that we eat are just like them having a period to get rid of the u fertilised egg. They probably think we are absolutely bonkers to want to eat their waste