Things that are actually pretty weird when you think about them?

[PutItInYourPocket]

I've just been thinking about this as I've been lay in the bath.

I'm currently pregnant and baby goes mad when I'm in the bath and I was watching him kicking and squirming inside me and just thought... This is actually pretty odd when you think about it. I have a living thing that's moving around inside me!

A friend had to have a blood transfusion not so long ago and she can't think about that for long without feeling squeamish that someone else's blood was inside her!

What other things do you find strange when you really think about them?

Language is both wonderful and weird. When I was a child I thought that English was the only language and that people from abroad spoke gibberish to try to fool us. So, sometimes I'd speak gibberish with an accent - I totally accepted different accents - and say, "I'm talking French!" or whatever accent I was currently speaking gibberish in.

I read somewhere recently, a woman was with her husband and grown children, and suddenly thought 'everybody in this room has been in my vagina.'

@Raspberryboom but even weirder, there are factories making the parts to build the other factories!! I had this conversation only a few weeks ago.. mind blown.

@LilyLongJohn

I think kissing us a really odd thing to do.

Absolutely with you on this. I'm not into kissing at all.

The one that sticks in my head is that nobody has left the earth.. so I used to watch horrible history's and stupid dead's and just think but those people are still here on this planet, the Victorians, the vikings, the tudors.. all still here. All the wars, all the dead, still on this planet, how is it not heaving with bodies.

It's a really bizarre gross thought process but the fact we will always exist in some form or other.

@LedaandtheSwan and others on religion

I was raised Catholic so really struggle with this.

Part of me would like to think there is a kind higher power who cares for us all and an afterlife...then I watch lucifer and think, maybe not such a good idea if hell is a real possibility! Especially if it's personalised the way it is in that show.

Another part thinks it's probably all nonsense, that life is it! Depressing in terms of no afterlife but also comforting in that I won't be forever reliving the worst things I've done/thought!

I also always think of that Simpson's episode where Ned (a devoted Christian for those unfamiliar with the character) dies and Buddha appears and he says something like "boy I got that one wrong!"

I mean how the hell would it work with people who converted? Do they go to their "original" god/heaven or the new one?

On the food side again I had chips tonight, who the hell thought sprinkling sour wine (vinegar) on food would be a good idea? I feel sure that's likely one that came about by accident!

Regarding modern vs “caveman” diet yes we’ve developed farming and processing food, but I don’t think we’d be healthy eating now as humans did then because our bodies have changed too including our digestive processes and chemicals

Do other animals experience time?

I grew up with dogs as pets and they certainly seemed to know when it was dinner time, walk time etc even with no cues from us and the clock changing buggered them up! So I think they do. Plus of course there are nocturnal and diurnal animals, hibernating animals...

@Allmyarseandpeggymartin names completely fascinate me I’m always looking up meanings and origins. Plus the connections to other relatives we aren’t even aware are our relatives. I recently came across someone on Facebook with an unusual spelling of a common surname same as a relative of mine, turns out they are related but didn’t know of each other.

@autumnleaves1220 - back to the Romans again I believe. Names linked you to different parts of your family but of course richer people had more knowledge of and connection to their relatives than the poor certainly than slaves who might barely know their parents names! The more names you had the posher you were - carries through to this day look at how many names nobility have!

I’ve said this before on here but my mum’s one of 6 only ONE of them actually goes by their full, given first name! Of the other 5, 1 goes by a shortening, 2 by nicknames that pertain to their physical appearance and 2 by their middle names! Bonkers! I never questioned this and happily called them “uncle stringbean” (not a real nickname) or whatever and it only occurred to me in my early teens to ask my mum what their real names were - which was when I found out her real first name! Yep didn’t know my own mums first name until I started high school! She hates it, never uses it and goes by her middle name and doesn’t even use it on official documents if she can possibly avoid it. She’s afraid of flying so we never went abroad on holiday and she’s never held a passport and I hadn’t seen her driving licence until that point which she used to persuade me as I thought she was winding me up! Her bank cards, post, chequebooks etc all just said “mrs surname”

This thread is ace. It's like having a big chat with Bill Bryson.

LOVE Bill Bryson

I always find it weird to think that other people now live in houses I used to live in, places that were my home are now their home

Omg! My ex boyfriend from decades ago’s house recently went on the market and someone gave me a heads up (we were together a few years and I spent a lot of time there. The person who gave me the heads up lived in the same street) and I went on the estate agents page and there was a virtual tour! It was SO WEIRD as it looked completely different not just decor wise but someone has done things like changed what was a shower room into a utility room etc (which I got irrationally very annoyed about) such an odd experience!

Theatre is really weird, and if it's well done, you can believe you are there, in the world with the actors.

There’s an odd Nicole Kidman film which exemplifies this well I think. “Dogville” there’s no scenery as such it’s filmed on a stage with gaffer tape marking our characters houses etc hard to explain. The subject matter is possibly triggering for some but as an example of powerful theatrical storytelling without the need for a proper set or scenery it’s pretty damn good!

@oldqueen1969 I have dx ocd I think way too much about thinking itself! But yes I find people who don’t think deeply (my ex wasn’t given to thinking beyond meeting basic needs!) totally alien!

BUT what if it was time travellers tweaking stuff for shits and giggles?

I think it’s far more likely just glitches in their machines - like when your streaming buffers!

@eckhart - the 1st is a party horn the 2nd is a divider

@eckhart yes I understand there’s a current recognised (broadly speaking” prescribed correct English (or indeed french or Russian or whatever) but that usage, generally influenced by cultural inc tech changes means that the rules change gradually. We’ve seen this more in recent years with text and sm language influencing changes

Zoom meetings. It’s like the intro to the Muppet Show.

I bloody love this!

Speaking of which I’ve just realised the muppet show is unavailable to stream in Uk?

@nildesperandum I am apparently the personality spit of my mothers gran who I never met. I’ve been freaking her out since I was little with mannerisms, habits (eg how I hold my knife is weird) and turns of phrase (even saying some phrases wrong in a particular way) that are EXACTLY the way she did them, yet we never met or conversed and nobody else in the family does this weird shit! 😂 I even on one occasion met a child of hers and addressed them straight away by the nickname she used for them despite never having heard it before or being introduced to him that way. Wtf!

On sleep - that there’s an ideal amount of sleep! If you have too little you’re knackered but if you have too much you feel rough too!

@FastFood loving the “god-teenager” Theory

Love this thread. Find teeth very odd and found the idea I had a skeleton and teeth inside me while Pg very odd.

That my babies can sleep for hours but the minute I lie down they cry.

HAH! If the lot of you think that Donald Trump is weird, try him from my side of the Atlantic! "Weird doesn't begin to cover it!

Hmmmmmm...weird. American English. We drive on parkways, and park in driveways. We send cargo by ships, but shipments come in cars (well, trucks, but you get what I mean). We say, "house/houses," but we say "mouse/mice." I mean, shouldn't be "house/houses" and "mouse/mouses" OR "mouse/mice," "house/hice?"

Walking. I know that sounds weird but when I think about it I feel odd doing it

Humans being the only animal that drinks another animal's milk, that's weird.

Why no one cares that September, October, November and December are respectively the 9th,10th, 11th and 12th months when their names clearly indicate that they should be 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th?

People only don’t care because they know Julius Caesar added July and August to the calendar when he reformed the Roman Calendar.

That we are seeing the stars as they were hundreds of years ago.

The size of the universe - as pp have said.
I once spent a bizarre few hours ‘working out’ relative size and distances of the earth moon and sun. I then used an olive in my sink (Our moon), walnut on my draining board (earth) and central London main line station (the sun) to visualise everything - both relative size and distance. I sometimes think of kings cross as the sun and the tiny walnut as the earth - it blows my mind.
Mind you my poor iPhone calculator struggled with the figures and I have no doubt that my workings may have been spectacularly inaccurate !!!
Great thread op.

@jentinquarantino20

Walking. I know that sounds weird but when I think about it I feel odd doing it

I know exactly what you mean! I’m usually in my own little world when I’m walking but every so often I end up thinking about how I’m walking and I feel like I’m doing it wrong and that my body is moving strangely. It feels a bit like a PP said about words, when you look at a word too long it looks weird.

Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but smell.

The fact that if someone does a poo in the loo and I smell it from the hallway, basically tiny little particles of that poo have got into the air and have made it into my nose... TINY BITS OF POO IN MY NOSE.

Losing weight, where does the weight go, does it dissolve, do we pee it out, I can't get it right in my mind of how it works, does it happen when we sleep it during the day, can someone explain this to me.

Best thread ever. I'm glad I'm not the only one to have weird thoughts and wonderings. The sleep thing has always got me, lying in a flat square bit of wood and not only my neighbours doing it, but celebrities and royalty and even terrorists etc do it too. And thinking randomly that everyone else has a whole life going on and it's totally different to mine. Like my siblings are guest stars in my life, but I'm a guest star in theirs. And do I look and sound how I think to other people? When I hear myself talk, does it sound the same to others? This whole thread is blowing my mind and giving me much to ponder!

How d'you nominate a thread for the MN classics?

@Graphista Yes, language is changing so much faster these days, with communication being so much freer than it was even just a few years ago. I guess we'll never be able to see quite how much difference it made, because you'd need hindsight, and we're all too old!

@WizWoz

Anaesthesia/surgery. Someone gives you a cocktail of drugs that renders you temporarily unconscious
How do you know that’s what happens? Maybe you’re awake throughout and in terrible pain, then they give you a drug that wipes your memory so you don’t remember anything

That's sedation.

@Lorddenning1

theconversation.com/how-does-your-body-burn-fat-97813

Disturbingly, we are just machines...