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!

FruBayerischOla

No, I thought that's how you pronounce gaol. Until just now

when I was a child I pulled really hard on the bathroom light cord so that electricity would pour out and flood the bathroom. I thought it would be like some sort of crazy goo. Instead all that happened was my dad bought a new cord.

Someone I worked with truly believed when butchers cut open a cow you just pulled mince out. Took a long time to explaine to her.

When I was very young (no older than about 7) I believed that the faces on Mount Rushmore were a natural phenomenon and the presidents had been chosen for their resemblance to them.

Bilbodog Reading your post a penny has dropped about why its called a tow path. I knew that horses pulled the barges along, but never made the connection with the name.

I also believed if a man penis was cut off it would grow back. Not sure why I thought this.

I've just learnt always known that humans have the same number of ribs.

I used to think that Syria was in Africa despite my ex being a not very good geography teacher.

@pennygirl26 I also believed if a man penis was cut off it would grow back. Not sure why I thought this.

Because so many men are lizards and their tails grow back when they come off?

AlpacasPackOwls Yes, I think you're right, but my parents lead me to genuinely believe the police would arrest me if I had the internal light on.

And I only realised this wasn't true when I was 27.

doctorcunty so did I!

I also thought the Blackpool illuminations where like the northern lights. Why the help would anyone go on a coach trip to see a bunch of electric lights?!

Interesting. I was going to correct something in the OP and say the white "mist" rising from a hot drink is not steam but vapour. But then I've just done some googling and realised my own misconceptions.

So, is the OP seeing steam, vapour or something else?

I am still confused by how pineapples are grown I am convinced they grow on trees like coconuts... We went to Disney a few years ago and in Epcot they show you then growing from the ground I spent the remaining holiday arguing with DP about how it must be Disney magic...

My favourite so far is the Run DMC one. I think the third person should be Vaclav Havel.

There are tunnels like that though - the "immersed tube" type. There's one near me.

Wow. You live and learn! I don't think I'd fancy travelling under the channel with nothing more than a foot of concrete between me and the sea though!

Another one: I had a university friend that was convinced that drinking booze through a straw increased the alcohol content.

A friend told me he was moving to Skegness, I asked how he was going to cope with the cold in Scotland (I also thought Billericay was in Oreland, and that the Outer Hebrides was the Caribbean)
I got an A* in Geography
Went to a Catholic school near Lake District, til I was 17 I thought that the words to "Kum By Yah" (that we would sing at mass, assemblies etc) were "Cumbria My Lord, Cumbria" and that it was a local song
No one ever corrected me

So, is the OP seeing steam, vapour or something else?

It's little water droplets. It's neither steam nor vapour, though you have to be particularly pedantic to try and swim against the commonplace description of it as 'steam'.

If you look at the spout of a boiling kettle, then the real steam is the invisible bit in the gap between the end of the spout and the visible cloud.

Some of this thread has amazed me (though not particularly the steam bit, which is (was?) often wrong in "how things work" sort of books).

When I was little I thought that Lulu was a job, rather than a person. It seemed like she'd been around for such a long time that there must have been quite a few Lulus, sort of like Doctor Who or the prime minister.

Just remembered a moment of realisation I had only last week.

On the radio, they were talking about the Winter of Discontent (the media's label for a series of strikes in 1979 that helped bring Thatcher to power). I only then connected that with the opening of Shakespeare's Richard III: "Now is the winter of our discontent...". Should have been obvious .

i thought "push me pull me" the two headed llama was real and i had seen it when i was a child, i was adamant! turns out i had just seen Dr Doolittle!

@catsarenice I've been sterilised and my Fallopian tubes have clips so nowhere for the egg to go. The doctor told me they just get absorbed back in to your body as they cant go anywhere. I assume that's the same if you don't have a tube at all.

Billericay was in Oreland

Where?

I used to think a left hand drive car was for left handed people.

In my defence I was young with a left handed older brother so heard a lot about the suitability or otherwise of things for a left hander.

GoldenFlipFlop - I agree, having now read a couple of Wikipedia articles.

Although... I was originally going to say the kettle thing, but it may not be steam emerging at the spout - it could be vapour below 100degC, because that's invisible too (still hot enough to scald). Steam is emerging from the surface of the boiling water but it will have cooled a little by the time it reaches the spout.

Wow. You live and learn! I don't think I'd fancy travelling under the channel with nothing more than a foot of concrete between me and the sea though!

Lots of tunnels (including some bits of the Channel Tunnel) are in completely waterlogged ground, and would flood very quickly indeed if they weren't waterproof. So don't imagine that the tunnel being below the sea bed is enough by itself to stop some horrible disaster-movie-drowning scenario if something went sufficiently wrong.

It's really sad how little people know nowadays about all the fantastic engineering which goes into modern (i.e post industrial revolution) life.

When I first flew with my parents in the early 80's (aged 4) my mum told me that the button on the side of the chair (to push the seat back) was an ejector button and I'd go flying up through the roof. Obviously I never touched this button. We flew about 3 times a year and I believed this up until my early teens.

I tried the same trick on my own two daughters this summer (flying for the first time) unfortunately they aren't as robust as I was and both burst into tears at the thought. Bad mum moment.