MetaChat - Common knowledge.

How the word erudite is pronounced. I thought it was
"Eee-rude-ih-tay".

posted by Divine_Wino 05 October | 16:31

My most jarring memory of this sort has to do with my first day in parochial school, having been raised in a completely irreligious family. Everybody started reciting what I later discovered to be the Lord's Prayer, and I was entirely at a loss.

Also, how to tie a tie, until midway through high school.

posted by killdevil 05 October | 16:31

I still can't tie a tie, dude.

posted by jonmc 05 October | 16:33

Still trying to figure out where babies come from.

posted by agropyron 05 October | 17:44

I can tie a tie. Used to have to tie my ex husband's ties.

I can't think of an instance where my lack of common knowledge made me feel dumb, but I know there have been times. I'll get back to you.

posted by Specklet 05 October | 17:45

I can't tie a tie, either.

posted by Wedge 05 October | 17:47

Washington apples come from Washington state, not Washington, D.C.

posted by PinkStainlessTail 05 October | 17:55

It's supposed to be that color.

posted by nickdanger 05 October | 18:17

I learned how to tie a tie from a Reader's Digest book called "How to Do Just About Anything."

posted by goatdog 05 October | 18:26

I thought that if you had an acoustic guitar, that it meant that you were a protest singer. I smile about it now, but at the time it was terrible.

posted by Quartermass 05 October | 18:48

That Alaska was not an island. (It was always in its own little box on the map!)

posted by jrossi4r 05 October | 18:52

That suppositories aren't supposed to be taken orally.

Just kidding.

posted by fenriq 05 October | 19:05

See Oh Bahn
For Siobahn.

posted by seanyboy 05 October | 19:29

See the comments in this thread for mine.

posted by Specklet 05 October | 19:37

There's too many to put here. I'm fairly culturally illiterate as a result of never having a TV. I can easily count the number of films/movies I've seen. I fall asleep if i try to watch TV or a movie; I've been told that the act of viewing is something that needs to be learned. My eyes literally blur, get watery, then shut.

Because of this, (I'm not PROUD of it, it's just how I was raised and how my life happened) I'm forever thinking that people I meet are exceptionally clever and say the most witty things. There've been so many embarrassed moments after I comment, when I'm told I've mistaken some common meme or catchphrase for a person's creative speech.

Books and music, now.... :D them I know.

posted by reflecked 05 October | 19:42

Oh, I've just remembered a doozie:

I'd been away from America for most of '94, and when I returned, everyone was making OJ Simpson jokes. The name sounded vaguely familiar (I kept thinking about the Naked Gun movies), but I didn't get any of the jokes. When I finally asked "Who's OJ Simpson?" everyone looked at me like I'd grown a second head.

posted by Specklet 05 October | 19:49

One of mine was the mirror image of Divine_Wino's. I thought "crudite" was pronounced "crud-ite"

There was someting else very recently but I can't remember exactly what it was.

posted by Carbolic 05 October | 20:27

When my wee self called my little sister Ig-NORE-ent. And apparently I also pronounced Napoleon, Napa-leon*. Yes, my mother still brings this up. Often.

*I was a bizarre, if well-read, child.

posted by kalimac 05 October | 20:28

I thought that meteors surviving long enough to make it to the ground (meteorites) were fairly common, say, a couple thousand worldwide a year. Turns out the number is closer to something in two digits and maybe the low end of two digits.

posted by kmellis 05 October | 20:41

In the summer of 1974, right in the middle of Watergate, I was nine years old. On a family vacation to DC and thereabouts, while driving by the Watergate hotel I said, "Boy, this whole Watergate thing is so famous that they actually named a hotel after it." In the car, much hilarity ensued.

posted by kmellis 05 October | 20:45

I didn't realize that Quartermass was a Morrissey fan, but apparently it's common knowledge to everyone else.

posted by Jimbob 05 October | 21:07

I didn't know what a "jam session" was until I was about 12, and when my friend's big brother (who I had a huuuge crush on) said he was off to a jam session - leaving with his guitar, mind - I asked what type of jam he was making.

*cringe*

posted by gaspode 05 October | 23:17

Not exactly public meltdown, but when my godparents died when I was almost five (gf after operation, gm suicide) I thought EVERYONE died by falling out of windows (defenestration to me implies murder).

posted by brujita 06 October | 00:32

Quartermass -- DUDE, I thought yours would be the whole Quartermass/Quatermass thing.

A fair number of mispronunciations from book-learnin', but they all escape me for the moment. I'm always the last to get play-on-words jokes. I recall one substitute teacher letting people go in the order in which they got the joke concerning what this butcher weighs (and of course they don't give you his weight -- the answer was MEAT). And I, a class smarty, sat there stunned for about 45 minutes.

Ones I remember from others in my life:
- ex-gf thought that Joachim was "Jo-a-kim" and she loved the name and made a point of telling people so (until corrected, aghast)
- I remember a friend in early school reacting to my interest in Buddhism with stunned silence. Then "... isn't Buddhism... EVIL?!"

posted by dreamsign 06 October | 01:09

I led a sheltered young life :) and managed to make myself look like an ass on more than one occasion, especially in my college years.
* widely read since age 5, vocabulary the size of a planet, but liable to mispronounce words as I'd never once heard them
* thought "Man from Snowy River" was the first movie made in Australia (well, not actually, but it came out of my mouth that way)
* offended people with my disaffected attitude toward Lennon's murder ("He was that guy in the Beatles, right?"), and later offended still when I unwisely tried to make this tale into a self-deprecating story (really, I listened to nothing but folk and classical until I was about 19)
* managed to tell Asian-Americans who grew up in Wisconsin and Ohio how good their accent was

Some of this is callow youth, some just foot-in-mouth disease, but I don't really have an example of the posted question.

There was also the time in junior high when I was given the graded test papers to hand back out and I only knew about half the class by name. The teacher didn't catch my demurrals and I had to admit that out loud.

kmellis: Nope, it's definitely more than two digits.
A statistical study of the rates of meteorite falls suggests approximately 17 meteorites >0.1 kg fall in Arizona, or an area of equal size, each year.
But only about 5% are recovered.

posted by stilicho 06 October | 01:14

dreamsign: Ha! My take on that was going to community college, chit-chatting with another student waiting for the city bus. I said I was taking a philosophy course, and she tentatively asked, "But isn't philosophy ... atheist?"

posted by stilicho 06 October | 01:15

"kmellis: Nope, it's definitely more than two digits."

Boy, I wish I had access to that page when I was arguing with my astronomer ex-girlfriend.

posted by kmellis 06 October | 01:22

Until high school, I thought Sylvia Plath killed herself by sticking her head in an electric oven, thereby slowly cooking herself to death.

posted by scody 06 October | 01:52

The first time I had sex (with another person involved), I thought I was peeing in her when I had an orgasm.

posted by DeepFriedTwinkies 06 October | 02:21

Hang on, stop the tape, stop the tape. DFT. Dude.

posted by Jimbob 06 October | 05:52

I was properly horrified when it happened.

posted by DeepFriedTwinkies 06 October | 10:07

I was eight when we moved and I went to a new school in the south, and after the Lords Prayer (we still did it then) I crossed myself, and the entire class looked at me like I was a martian.

I use to say "acrost" instead of "across", and never even knew it 'til someone finally pointed it out in my 20s.

I thought misled was pronounced "mizzled".

I didn't know anything about "Jewish names" until I was about 18 or so... I didn't know that certain surnames were more likely to be found in Jewish families.

Here's one I still don't get: Every Greek person, evidently, can tell by looking at someone if they are Albanian. How? How? How?

posted by taz 06 October | 10:28

Oh - of course there is lots of U.S. pop culture stuff that I don't get. Like that "talk to the hand" thing? What was that all about?

posted by taz 06 October | 10:30

The first time I peed in someone, I thought I was having an... YEEECH! Never mind! I can't even touch that one.

Most of those "talk to the hand"-type things I miss, because I'm not a rude person, I don't really have rude friends, and I don't watch rude people on teevee.

For years I thought "mistrial" rhymed with "industrial" and was a mountaineering term or something. There are many others, but I can't think of them.

posted by Hugh Janus 06 October | 11:16

Oh yes, and also until high school, I thought "Yeats" and "Keats" rhymed.

Yes, I realize that most of my misunderstandings revolve around literature. Yes, I really was that much of a geek.

posted by scody 06 October | 11:26

Having the social awareness of a good size mushroom, I almost always miss that people are an "item"/ married/ divorced/ pregnant together/ brother-sister/ dead/ whatever unless it is explicately pointed out to me.

Which has resulted in much embarassment for me and hilarity for others over the years until I finally just stopped making any kind of relationship small talk.

posted by Mitheral 06 October | 11:42

How to get out of a chinese finger trap.

posted by Homeskillet Freshy Fresh 06 October | 11:57

Oh yeah. I thought it was Quartermass, but in fact it is Quatermass. Which was embarrassing the first time I argued otherwise.

and yeah, I am a huge Morrissey fan. I am going to get a tattoo of his face on my shoulder. (my above comment is actually a Smith's lyric, so I didn't actually think that if you had an acoustic guitar that it meant you were a protest singer, though I have always loved that particular lyric).

posted by Quartermass 06 October | 12:10

Oh yeah - song in question is "Shakespeare's Sister"

posted by Quartermass 06 October | 12:11

- Didn't realize birth control pills were taken orally until asked, "well, how else would someone take them?" when I said someone took them wrong when I was watching a play.

- Pronouncing "intrique" the first time: in-tri-gew. I'd heard intrique pronounced correctly but didn't connect the written word to the verbal.

- Same with misled (hi taz!) - didn't connect the pronounced version with the written word.

Sadly, I was in my 20s when my "mizzled" confusion was cleared up.

posted by deborah 06 October | 21:44

Hahahahhahaha. Thanks for that one, stilicho. Actually, from your comment on for about a half dozen more, I couldn't stop laughing. DFT. Man.

Ok, here's one from last month. On the way back from grocery shopping, my sig other and I always pass by this little pub. Well, the place is always crawling with fairly muscular guys, hanging out on the stairs, patio and whatnot, and drinking and talking. So... I assume this is a sports bar. "Ah, must be another big game" I say to my sig-o, on several occasions, until she points out the obvious. Now a running joke. That's pretty typical for me.

Also recently had a girl coming on to me about as obviously as possible, in front of tables of people (at various dinner events), even going so far as to say that she was interested in this "street performance guy". I fail to realize that this is me, so for the next time or two that I see her, I ask how things are going with this clown. Egads.

posted by dreamsign 06 October | 23:24

05 October 2005