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!

Oh, this is a goodbye thread to answer a question I was pondering last night. Do they have soaps in the US? Like Corrie and eastenders? What do they watch at 7pm? I assume home and away and neighbours are the soaps in Australia?

Not a goodbye thread!!

all this talk about chickens/eggs. I have kept hens for around 10 years, even had a rooster once (by mistake). I have never understood HOW the eggs get fertilised - ie he jumps on her back, there doesnt seem to be any form of penetration (do birds have penises even?). I have never dared google chicken sex in case I find out something I really don't want to know. so HOW does fertilisation occur in chickens pretty please?

Already mentioned, but I was taken aback a few years ago at seeing how pineapples grew. Genuinely gobsmacked that they weren't hanging off a tree.

Also thinking back to the teeth-in-Coke 'demonstration' at school...

Well If chickens are anything like the poor cows upthread he probably puts it in her bum

snort at backie.... wasnt that the old advice on how not to get pregnant??

@AlphaStation We were told about this by a visiting dentist to our school. When my next tooth fell out, I begged my mum to buy some Coke and I watched that tooth disappear... It took a few days but it definitely happened.

My own bit of childish foolishness was being convinced that every time a song was played on the radio, it was the artist/band playing live in a theatre somewhere (in a Friday Night is Music Night stylee) and that radio was basically one long live concert...

Eliza9917
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?

The start is staggered so that the athletes all run the same distance, therefore the finish doesn't need to be staggered

Mind blown about pineapples!!

SnowiestMountain "I had no idea potatoes were in potato salad until my early 30's"

When I was little I used to have some stories on cassette to listen to, and I genuinely thought that whenever I played it some bloke would have to get the book out and read it live.
If it was near bedtime I always wondered if I was getting him up and he would be annoyed. He also managed to make it sound the same every time he read it

wasnt that the old advice on how not to get pregnant??

Well my mum told me it was caused by playing footsie. I didn't listen to her and took the risk.

that Mallorca and Majorca were different places (I am still a bit confused about those, I'm sure I have been to both...).

I think this is because there's Castilian Spanish and Catalan Spanish and they spell the "y" sound differently (j v ll respectively) so it depends who's talking.

Catalan culture is a hot topic at the moment so worth finding out about.

I genuinely thought that whenever I played it some bloke would have to get the book out and read it live.

Awwww!! That's really cute.

bluetongue did your stories have a little ding when it was time to turn the page?

But is that very mix up not what the whole song is about, Maisie Dotes?

So the first verse is meant to sound like that, and the other verses explain that ...

Maisie D'otes
and Dozy D'otes
And little Lams ee D'ivy
A kiddle ee D'ivy too
Wouldn't you

Now if the words sound queer
A little funny to your ears
A little bit jumbled and jivey

Sing, Mares eat oats
And does eat oats
And little lambs eat ivy

Maisie D'otes
and Dozy D'otes
And little Lams ee D'ivy
A kiddle ee D'ivy too
Wouldn't you!

But, Insomniac, don't be too harsh on Snowiest. After all, there are no caesars in a Caesar salad!

Backie Yes! I so remember the ding to turn the page!

^That reminds me of that great line in Fawlty Towers, "Well I think we just ran out of Waldorfs..."

poopy!

True DadDadDad, and I'm buggered if I could find the ingredients for Waldorf salad in Tesco yesterday. The assistant didn't seem to have any idea where the waldorfs were. She must've been new.

Oh bother, I typed too slowly.

If you google rooster clocao location and look through the images there's a diagram that shows how hens and roosters mate.
It's not that grim

Re the rectal examinations:
Since I have known the friend who told me about it for years and can't fathom why she would invent something like that, I believe her.
I don't know if it was done like that everywhere in East Germany, or if it was just in the rural area she lived.
She says the reasons cited to them was the "sterility" / risk of infection and that it was deemed "improper" to stick your fingers in another womans vagina

That some of your veins are blue because blood without oxygen is the colour blue. And that it turned red if you cut yourself because it was exposed to the air

Also that everything in a left hand drive car is mirrored, so accelerator pedal on the left etc.