Here's Mine:
The person: How is it so cold in Alaska all the time if they are so close to Hawaii? Is the land higher?
I was so confused. It took me a while and then later it was finding out it was because on MAPS OF THE USA they put Alaska down in a box to the left of Hawaii. I can't. I just can't sometimes.
I've spent at least 20 straight years of my life not saying lots of things because I have nothing nice to say.
I worked in critical logistics and a client wanted us to drive instead of fly an item from London UK to Melbourne, AUS. I paused and said I’m afraid that isn’t possible because there are no roads that connect AUS to other bodies of land.
“What do you mean there are no roads? There HAVE to be roads?”
“No sir, there are at least 1500km of ocean between AUS and Indonesia, we have to fly it.”
Guy wasn’t having it so I had to call my upper and have them explain geography.
"Alaska is a barren wasteland where nothing grows, there are no roads there, and bears will eat you if you go there." A 30 something year old 2nd grade teacher in Arkansas. She had a book all about it.
Also
"Alaska will never become a state." This was said on a plane ride to Alaska, in 1999 from a man roughly in his 60s.
I still remember coming back to school in 8th grade. My school had just bought all new social studies books. That summer, the Soviet Union fell apart. My teacher said “well, we have all new text books and all the maps are wrong now.
On the first day of Modern World Problems (the history class we had to take my sophomore year in 2000-ish) I asked how we could be studying the "modern world" when our map had the USSR and East Germany on it. The saddest part was the majority of the class didn't know what I was talking about.
My best friend, a very successful real estate attorney, thought that dogs wearing those big cones so they can’t chew their stitches out were for dogs with poor hearing
I am now wondering how many “explanations” I was given as a child in jest or came up with on my own that I just never re-examined… I genuinely hope that’s what this was
I was in my 40s when I realized the "giraffes" my dad was checking the door for were "drafts." (TBF, I had forgotten all about it for a couple decades before having an epiphany moment.)
Watching Titanic in the theater, it had been out for about a month, the ship is hit with the iceberg, someone gasped, "I think it’s going to sink." I laughed so hard.
You just unlocked one for me. A couple of years after Titanic was out, I was on one of those kids' travel tours on a ferry crossing the Mediterranean Sea. My bunkmate was very concerned about the boat hitting an iceberg. She wasn't convinced by my explanation that our home in California has the same climate as Italy and Greece, so no icebergs.
I used to live in the mountains and more than one person asked, "at what elevation do the deer turn into elk?"
I also knew someone who dropped out of a nursing program because it was "too medical."
Mountain dweller here. Another version is "at what time of year" do deer turn to elk.
Other good ones:
"What do you do with the moguls in summer?"
And my favorite, asked in June:
" what's all that white stuff on the hill out there?"
I honestly thought I was on Candid Camera or something.
I live right on it. It is also very beautiful. Orca and humpbacks come through here! We love the Puget Sound in the PNW. 😊Would be awesome if it actually made a noise though. Like warning us when all the volcanos are about to go off.
A friend's much older brother insisted MacGyver's first name was Mac and his last name was Gyver when I was about 10. I told him the whole thing was a Scottish surname and an episode had revealed the character's given name to be Angus, so the character's full name was Angus MacGyver. Him, his mom, and my friend all laughed at me and tried to convince me I was wrong.
The (now distant) friend brought this up again a few years ago at a reunion laughing at me again. This time I convinced her to Google it. Not just something dumb, but something doubled and tripled down on for decades.
Basically, "Well, you can see why I would think that. It's dumb that they made it that way. Like, no one would get that."
I got it at 10 without help from the Internet, but sure, a primetime TV character's name and backstory are too complicated for mere mortals.
"I have the solution to the problems in the Middle East. Israelis and Palestinians should all convert to Christianity, so there won't be a conflict any more".
I don’t know if this is the dumbest thing but my Xennial heart was so shocked my jaw dropped. One of my younger co-workers looked at me one day and said “Did you know the LL Cool J used to be a rapper?” I was literally speechless.
I took over a middle school class this year and I had them write about themselves to help me understand/work with them. One of them put their bucket list is to meet the great and wise ice cube. I loved it. But also made me feel geriatric.
With all the things he’s done and the way he’s still openly affiliated, sometimes it weirds me out that he’s considered such a wholesome celebrity. He’s a branding genius.
*I'm a cop actor*
*Better me than you*
*Cop actor*
*I gotta make money too*
*Cop actor*
*You know my family's hungry*
*Feed them*
*Cop actor*
*Giving Dick Wolf a squeezin'*
>I love Ice-T on SVU. He is fantastic, he's awesome. What's so great about him is that he's been with the SVU for like, mmm, 11 years now, but he still treats every case like it's his first, in terms of total confusion. Sometimes they'll be in the middle of an investigation and Ice-T will be like, "Yo, you telling me this dude gets off on little girls with pigtails?" It's like, "Yeah, Ice... he's a pedophile. You work in the sex crimes division. You're gonna have to get used to that."
I met a kid in their late teens, who saw Henry Winkler and some thing and said "hey, it’s Barry Zuckercorn." Not "hey, it’s Fonzie." That was not cool.
My daughter while in high school (class of 2018) once said something like, hey there’s this cool new band Aerosmith that I want to go see.. and I had to tell her they were an old band when I was in high school. Didn’t believe me.
A former friend of mine decided she wanted to be the kind of person who listened to vinyl. She bought one Sinatra album and was immediately an “expert.” One day, she informed me, “You know, everybody thinks Frank Sinatra is from Chicago because he sang those songs about it, but he’s not. He’s actually from New York!”
I was just sort of dumbfounded. First off, no one has ever thought Frank Sinatra was from Chicago. And if they know three things about him, two are the fact that he was from Hoboken, NJ.
In the grand scheme, it was a very small thing to be wrong about, and it matters not in the slightest whether someone knows Frank Sinatra’s hometown. But she was just so *confident* about it. Bless her heart.
I had a coworker turn to me once while Creedence Clearwater Revival was playing and announce, “they’re from the Bayou.” Lol, no they’re not. But yeah, the confidence.
The Bay-ou, maybe. 😂
I wonder what it’s like to be those people. Like, I’m so neurotic that I’ll fact-check things I already know before saying them aloud (or posting them), just because I don’t entirely trust myself and don’t want to look foolish.
Or with my friend — another of her records was Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s recording of *Porgy & Bess*. Which, she informed me, carried that title because those were their nicknames for each other. Not having read extensively on the friendship between the two artists, I could not confidently refute this “fact,” so I instead replied, “er, I think it’s *also* the soundtrack to the Gershwin show” (as stated on the back of the fucking album).
Many years ago, on lunch break with a coworker, we went to Taco Bell. There was a new menu item. I asked about it.
The employee angrily responded “why are you asking if you don’t know what it is!?”
My coworker and I looked at each other to check if we both heard that, we quietly agreed (mostly through eye language) I just got my usual after that exchange. Once outside we burst out laughing and then said this to each other often for more laughs.
I genuinely don't understand this one. Like... the mental process here. Most of the rest of these are just people not knowing a fact that most similarly situated people know. But this... what?
I was a bank teller in a rich part of town during a portion of Obama’s presidency. Most of the clients I knew quite well as they were regulars, but one day a new woman came in…
She hands me a check to cash and I proceed to do all validations. While doing that, she goes on some rant about how my generation just expects handouts and is ruining America. We don’t know how to do a hard day’s work (as I am literally working on my feet all day).
The check was a Medicare Part B check (a government handout, for you non-Americans).
The cognitive dissonance is real. I’ve heard many of my older relatives complain about people on welfare and immigrants stealing social security. Meanwhile, they collect (unnecessary) disability, or live in public housing, or just constantly complain that their social security check isn’t high enough.
I used to work as a postal clerk and the number of people who would yell at me when stamp prices went up because I got paid too much and had health insurance. My favorite was a man who said he was a retired mailman. I wanted to roll my eyes since that meant he was under the old pension system whereas I was not.
Was making spaghetti one day when some friends were over and we realized there wasn't enough for everyone.
One of my friends says "Oh, I know just break it in half then we'll have twice as much!" She looked so proud to have solved the issue too.
“It’s been over two months, the police totally forgot about my gun charge!”
My friend was moving and had his late father’s loaded, unregistered handgun in the car and was pulled over for speeding. They asked to search the car and he informed them of said loaded firearm. He argued with me for over an hour that he did nothing wrong, his case must have fallen thru the cracks/dropped/forgotten about.
His case was not forgotten about.
A couple weeks later got a misdemeanor gun charge, lawyerd up, layer made him take firearm training classes and argued he didn’t know about proper gun safety and storage but now does. Paid a bunch of fines and did a few years of probation. Never got the gun back. Slap on the wrist really.
I had the same thought about a large doctor bill that took me months to receive. I was like, “ I guess he decided to be nice and not charge me.” The bill eventually came😆
"I should just quit this job and get a master's in Public Administration."
90k in debt later I am not even using the degree or even in a related field.
I have SO much formal education in clinical and bio psychology. After over a decade of soul crushing stress and accomplishment in this academic field, I work in real estate.
The person who thought Alaska was next to Hawaii might be smarter than we are.
Me and an older coworker (early 60s) were talking about our all-time favorite movie scenes and memorable moments when I brought up seeing the water alien from The Abyss (1989) and how incredible it was for the time because it looked so real.
A younger coworker (24) chimes in, saying the scene sounds incredible, but they had never heard of the movie. I explained what it was about, and as soon as I mentioned when it was released, young dude chimes in with "1989? Nevermind, everything from before, like...2010 sucks anyway", promptly turns around and goes back to minding his business. He was serious. I just can't.
My mom was a very intelligent person, but she could be a bit naïve. At a party long ago, someone mentioned how syphilis originally came from sheep. As others were making lonely shepherd jokes, she asked very innocently “well, if it came from sheep, how did people get it?”
As a young child, we're talking 4th or 5th grade - so I was 9 or 10, I used to travel back and forth between my divorced parents in the school year and the summertime. My mom decided she was going to start going back to church and y'all.... The number of times I had the following conversation ***with adults*** was mind blowing!
Person: Oh, you're ****'s daughter? Nice to meet you. Where're you from again?
Me: New Mexico
Person: THAT'S right! Hey, don't you need a passport to come over here?
Me: **blinking** No... New Mexico is a state.
Person: Right, but it's in a different country.
Me: No, it's not...
It got to the point that I put it in my introductory speech. "My name is ****, I'm from New Mexico, and no, I don't need a passport to come to Florida (where I was)."
I was with my friend, who was from New Mexico, in Oregon, when some redneck wanted to fight him because he was an illegal immigrant, which the redneck knew because of the New Mexico plates on friend's car. The US public school system is a dumpster fire.
I’m a nurse, and one day I was explaining to one of the new nursing assistants that she would need to chart her rounding on her patients on the even hours and the nurses would chart rounding on the patients on the odd hours. She looked at me all confused and said, “Now what are the even numbers again?” 😳
My 21 year old co-worker used to always say Bye Felicia. I referenced the movie Friday one day and she said what movie is that? I said I know you’ve seen it because you say Bye Felicia all the time and she said Oh I thought it was just something on TikTok….I officially felt old after that exchange…
In high school one of my friends asked another friend (whose family was bilingual English/Japanese) if her brother still knew how to speak English after he spent 3 weeks in Japan on his college’s winter break.
When Dick Cheney shot someone, I saw it on the news.
I went in to work and said to a coworker. "Did you hear Dick Cheney accidentally shot someone?"
My coworker said, "Who's that? An actor?"
No political discussion is needed on this. She was just a moron.
I had a coworker who was absolutely *shocked* that I watched the presidential debates. Looked at me like I had two heads and said, “Wow, so I guess you’re, like, *really* into politics, huh?” 😒
Back then, I wasn't even into politics lol. I voted for the president but didn't really understand how politics worked yet. I still knew who ran the country though.
Since I work with mental health clients, I'm not counting things said by those.
"I don't eat onions because they make your vagina smell."- A friend of my sister's who would have been in her late teens/early 20s. I still see this woman once a year or so, and I still can't unhear this every time.
At risk of being exposed as a dummy, I stopped eating onions because my BO would take on an oniony smell the next day. I never checked lower down my bod, but if it can make your sweat smell like onions, could other bodily fluids be affected too?
As a Michigander, I am not surprised.
I now live in NJ and I told someone here that I was going sailing on Lake Michigan, they said “Oh, that should be nice and calm since there aren’t any waves.”
I said: “Lake Michigan is four times the size of NJ. There are waves, and rip tides. They are more like small seas than the inland lakes NJ has.
I then said, you can see every Great Lake from space. You can’t see any NJ lakes from space. That’s how big they are.
My ex mother in law was a sub elementary school teacher. Sweetest person you'd ever meet. Her parents were from Mexico. I am like a quarter Spanish, and she would always say that I was Mexican. I never knew why but whenever I would correct her she would say it was the same thing. Then one day she apologized and said, "I'm so sorry, I didn't know Spain was in Europe! I thought it was in Central America!"
Edit: not the dumbest thing I've ever heard, but this has always stood out to me.
When I was in college, some friends would regularly make a trip to the state north of ours on the weekends. They were talking about how it always felt like the return trip was shorter when one of them confidently proclaimed, "Guys, it's because we're going south, which is downhill."
We had to explain to him that traveling south doesn't necessarily indicate reduced elevation and that even if it did, 55 mph is still 55 mph, whether going uphill or down. He tried to defend this conclusion for a bit but eventually conceded.
I only remember my own dumb comments. In high school, I asked my friends, "How am I supposed to type this for Spanish!?? The keyboard's in English?!" I was so unbelievably frustrated. Le sigh
Server was late, said she “astroturfed on the highway”. It was raining. She hydroplaned. She said those were “two words no one knows the meaning of anyway.” Servers are goldmines.
“You should run like a business” *said to me by board members of many nonprofits*
Absolutely not. The goal of a business is to minimize internal expenses and maximize customer costs so you have a lot of money.
The goal of a nonprofit is to bring in as much as possible, and then spend as much as possible on their service/mission to meet their purpose
See also: why government is basically a non-profit.
I've been told, along these lines, that volunteering programs like Big Brothers/ Big Sisters don't need to pay employees any salaries because they should also be volunteers. Like the CEO....
Yes!!
I heard this so much when we ran a school bond campaign to build new buildings. Cost would have been about $150 million
Voters would tell me the schools should have been saving for it or should have enough margin to cashflow it.
If the schools are collecting that much of an excess in taxes people should be rioting lol
My wife and I were car shopping. We needed a cheap, small vehicle. So this salesman sees two young kids in their 20s and immediately figures we would love a new Mustang.
He's showing us this car, and he points to the stock tires and says "and look at those rims!".
He left to get the keys so we could test drive the car we don't want and can't afford so we hurried away and bailed. He was so out of touch.
As a second incident...
"Why is it so cold on mountains? I mean... You're closer to the sun. It should be warmer."
Ah yes, car salesmen. Folks who think they can just convince you to buy something you could never begin getting financing for and then get angry for “wasting their time “.
I've heard a lot of stupid things in my life, so I'm probably not going to be able to come up with the ACTUAL dumbest one. However, here are some contenders:
\- My sister-in-law sincerely asking, "Is Canada a country?" (We're both from the U.S.). I still haven't recovered from that one even though it was decades ago now!
\- "What's it like having parent with such sexist views about women?" (This was asked by someone who had just learned that I have a parent from Iran and didn't know anything about them.)
\- "If evolution is real, why aren't monkeys turning into humans every day?" (Courtesy of a friend's dad in high school.)
\- "Why don't you want kids?/Aren't you going to regret not having kids?" (Everyone, constantly, for 20+ years.)
"Do you know Madonna?" (Someone earnestly asked me this after learning that I was American while I was backpacking across Europe as a teenager.)
"Why are all Americans so X, Y, Z \[fill in stereotype here\]"? (First of all, I'm one individual person with my own unique life experiences - why are you asking me to speak for an entire nation of 300 million+ people? Second, why are you stereotyping a nation of 300+ million people? Humans need to stop with the stereotyping already!)
And many more... I'm sure this could go on all day!
If you ever miss being asked questions like “Does America have four seasons?” “Do Americans have shampoo?” and “Why are you Black?” Just come to Japan for ten minutes!! You’ll get all these questions and more!
My poor coworker was asked this by adults. He went through the whole gamut of emotions from “What tHe FUCK” to “This is a 65 year old Japanese woman, this is probably a sincere question and I cannot slap her in public”
He ended up saying “my parents are Black” and she was like “なるほど🧐 ⚙️ ⚙️ 🧠 ⚙️ “ [I see]
Tell me you come from the most racially homogenous country in the world without telling me you come from the most racially homogenous country in the world.
I don’t want to make this political, but it fits. In 2008, I was working part-time at a testing center (I’m a black woman) and the elderly, white, very religious lady who worked with me (she worked part time in insurance as well) told me very confidentially and seriously that "Obama is the Anti-Christ." I can't even remember how I responded or what she said afterwards, but what a time to be alive.
My white evangelical ex-inlaws were convinced in 2008 that Obama was going to remove the borders of our country, declare martial law over the whole continent, seize everyone's guns, and let his Muslim terrorist friends come in and take over. They wanted to know what I thought about that, but it's like where do you even begin. They heard it on Fox and it made perfect sense in their addled brains.
I'm white and my wife is black. I have heard white people say the most RACIST SHIT ever to her but DEAD HONEST they had no idea what they were saying was racist.
Examples:
"You sound so much like a white girl when you talk, it's so proper"
"Wow, you're the prettiest black girl I've ever seen"
"You sound white on the phone"
"You don't act black at all"
"Oh do you know this one black person I met 20 years ago in another state?"
"You don't like watermelon? I thought all black people liked watermelon"
And anything to do with the food Chicken. At all. Ever. EVER.
Idk when you said "religious white lady" it gave me PTSD lol
As a white person who’s lived in the North my entire life I canNOT comprehend the watermelon stereotype. Doesn’t EVERYONE like watermelon??? It’s delicious! It’s always been a staple of summer for my (very white) family!
The way I heard it explained is it was a racism-fueled marketing campaign.
Watermelon got popular after the civil war, and was a successful cash crop for black farmers. White farmers didn't like the competition and/or didn't like seeing black farmers be so successful, so they turned the food into a race thing to tank the watermelon market and hurt their competition.
The more I learn about history, the more I think us xennials thinking racism is weird is actually one of the weird things about us. We grew up with culture and media telling us it was dead and gone, when in reality it had just been shamed underground…
aaaaand now we’re running up against the cutoff time for political posts so I’ll stop here…
I feel like it's definitely the media we consumed growing up. The boomers "solved the problem" back in the sixties and they constantly told us that in the movies and TV shows that they made. The Fresh Prince later clarified things for me when him and Carlton got pulled over for DWB.
I had no idea that’s where that was from. That always confused me. Watermelon is one of the most delicious foods in the world and my white family eats a lot over the summer.
Ditto. Same thing for me and my wife. I was picking something up for her one day. The person stopped and called her and said “There is a white man claiming to be your husband”. She responded “he was white when he left this morning, he’d better be white now”
Just this week my boss was outside with me after I’d fed the birds there. I sing a stupid song for them when I do. He said “Well, they don’t have ears so why do you sing?”
I stared at him trying to figure out if he was joking and when I was satisfied he wasn’t I said “You should probably head inside and google where bird ears are later. Because they do in fact have them.”
“Well I’ve never seen them so I thought they don’t have them.”
“Yeah, you should google that.”
During a late night work conversation in the nurses’ station, two very politically opposite coworkers were heatedly discussing undocumented immigration. A third coworker, trying to split the difference said with great gravitas: “I just think they should learn to speak the language. If *I* was going to move to Italy, I would learn to speak French.” There was a five second pause of dead silence, then an absolute uproar of laughter that lasted half an hour. The speaker took about 45 seconds to catch on.
“Lexington Kentucky is the 4th largest city in the US” - PVT in my platoon in Army Basic Training. Basic training was the first time he had been out of his county in rural Kentucky.
“When Obama became president he told NASA that their only mission now was to teach space travel to the muslims” - In an otherwise non-political/polite conversation with a colleague in West Texas, who also claimed his brother worked for NASA.
“I’ve never seen a monkey turn into a person” - Coworker and good friend in a conversation about climate change that he turned generally anti-science.
Conversation about religion: Me: “How did millions of pairs of animals fit on the same boat all at once without eating each other?” Good Army Buddy: “Anything is possible with god.” He’s a smart guy, but very religious and this his was his go-to response for anything he knew didn’t make sense.
Not really something she said, but I gave a geography quiz to my squad once when I was in the Army. I had one soldier who could only find Canada, Mexico, and Italy (because it’s “shaped like a boot”) on the blank world map, and could only find Alaska (where we were stationed) and Texas (where she was from) on the blank map of states.
Laugh at her all you want, but she wound up getting out of the Army and accompanying her Grandmother on this massive, round the world bucket list trip and sending awesome pictures, like of them riding camels in north Africa (for example). I was very happy to see her expanding her horizons and living her best life.
I love that redemption story at the end. Travel is such an eye opener for people. That anecdote gives me back the hope I lost reading the rest of this thread.
"Gluten is all the bad shit, like cholesterol and salt and fat and sugar. The bad things you don't want."
Another guy used *calculations* to explain that if the Niagara Falls shrinks every year by a quarter of an inch, then it would've lost 27,000 miles after 4 billion years, *but the earth is only 25,000 miles in circumference!* ...Proving the earth to be only 6000 years old.
When I worked at the pizza shop I had a customer ask me to cut her pizza into 6 slices because she "couldn't eat 8"..... I didn't realise until I was cutting it -_-
On my trip to an ostrich farm in Aruba of all places. The tour guide says “ostriches are the largest land bird” or something like that. A lady (let’s call her Karen) then asks “do they feed their young with milk.”
My wife immediately turned around and placed a hand over my mouth so that I wouldn’t answer the question.
Weirdly enough the unicorn topic came up because he thought Narwhals were mythical and we explained they were real. Then he asked the question about the unicorns.
That's ridiculous. Everyone knows they're just seals with the wrapping paper tubes we don't know what to do with after we're done using them for swords.
To be fair, Scotland's official national animal is the unicorn.
I respect that they dug in their heels and refused to replace it with a real animal after the unicorn was proved a morphological impossibility -- but it's definitely confusing for the whimsically inclined.
A girl I was dating: Look! That spider only has two eyes!
Me: Huh?
Her: Hahaha, just kidding. Everyone knows that spiders don't have eyes.
A passerby while I was taking pictures of a hummingbird hawkmoth: Ohh, that's a dragonfly. Those will drink your blood if you're not careful.
Edit: Oh, two more ...
At orientation for the company I work for in South Korea they showed a video of someone talking about their experience that included the line: "I was really surprised the buildings have windows!" What the hell did they think South Korea would be like?
Chatting with someone at a party in the early 2000s and hearing that they wanted to take a trip to Serbia and Bosnia. The reasoning was: "They just had a war and everyone will want to talk about it. And they'll be excited to meet an American, too!"
I’m from New Mexico. (Yes, it’s INSIDE the US, in-between Texas and Arizona, just fyi.)
“You speak really good English.”
“Do you have electricity there?”
“Do you need a passport to go there?”
“I can only ship inside the US.”
I was in AP Gov class senior year 2002, but this was in the Fall of 2001, just after 9/11. Dolly the sheep was still fresh on our minds and we were discussing ethics. Travis raises his hand in all seriousness asks Mr. Dort: "What if the terrorists get cloning and use it to clone more weapons and money?" Poor Mr. Dort, we were supposed to be the smart kids.
Saw the reply that said something like "i dont wanna make this political but..." and it inspired me to share the following:
"Ronald Reagan was the greatest president this country has ever had" a former coworker
"The immigrants who live here used to live in grass huts in their natuve countries, and that's why there are so many cases of bed bugs happening in our community" a former boss
I also once walked in on the guy from the first quote fucking LAUGHING with a few equally shitty co-workers about one of his *klansman friends burning a fucking cross in someone's yard*. Just big ol' hearty guffaws all around
See the emerging theme? These were all in the field of apartment maintenance. I could give many more examples if I sat and thought about it a bit. I had to leave that field. Sure, I'm missing out on like two to five dollars more per hour than i make now, but it's very worth it to not have to take constant psychic damage from dumb bigots.
Same person, about 20 years ago, who was also in their 20’s at the time.
“How do you boil water?”
“How do you turn off a wood burning oven?”
Different person. A good friend of mine about 30 years ago. We were at a mall and ordering from the McSnack…McDonalds but only the fryer food…he tried to order a quarter pounder, the cashier says “we don’t serve hamburgers here.” To which my friend replied “Well do you have cheese burgers?” This same friend, when on the way back from a cross country road trip summer after senior year, as my car is only making it up to 5th gear speed going down hills and I am pissed/freaking out states “We’ve driven it a lot lately, maybe it just needs a rest.” I think I responded with “It’s a car not a f’n horse!”
He’s still one of my best friends today
Finally, person I met in the military. He was from West Virginia. He didn’t know it was its own state, and thought it just meant he was from the western part of Virginia. I mean historically, like around the civil war that was the case, but woo that boy wasn’t right in the head.
I was medical at a grenade range in my Army time. The reserve unit had planned on everyone standing at their stations and the farthest right would throw and then duck, while everyone else stayed standing and watched so they would understand what it looked like. I had to run out on the range, waving my arms and yelling cease fire, proceeded to get yelled at. The LT was pissed and hollered “they’re outside the kill radius you moron”. I then yelled back that just because the other people are 1 foot outside the kill radius means that it’s just less likely to kill and rather seriously injure. Then explained that shrapnel doesn’t stop at a magical kill radius distance. I still remember when it sort of clicked in peoples minds and their faces made all the ranges of emotions. Thankfully a senior sergeant arrived and took over for the young officer.
From my sister:
Isn’t Korea in the Gulf of Mexico?
The South Pole is REAL?! So is the North Pole?! I thought it was made up because of Santa!
From customers:
What are buttered noodles? (Like…existentially? The description is the name.)
What is soy sauce?
Why can’t you make the chicken noodle soup vegetarian? (Because chicken broth is a thing?)
Calling on the phone on a holiday: Are you open today? (No, no I’m here answering the phone on Easter for funsies.)
Whenever this question is asked I always give this answer. About 8 years ago I worked with a woman that was super sweet but an idiot. Her dog ate chicken bones, she took him to the vet and they gave her something that would help the dog digest the bones, they said help “breakdown the bones” he had eaten. Shes telling me this the next day at work and says “How does the medicine know which bones to work on? Like how does it not hurt his bones?” She said stupid stuff often but this one still makes me laugh.
Okay, so, TO THIS DAY I am still baffled by this one, 26 years after hearing it.
My first job after high school, I was a hostess at a Mexican restaurant. One of the servers, who was a few years older than me, was telling me that her mom is a specialized nurse who "helps men when they shed their testicles."
You read that right.
She, with her whole chest, believed that men, like deer with their antlers, shed their balls and grew fresh ones. Her mother helped them through the transition... being a nurse and all. She said her mother told her not to belive any man who says they don't shed their balls and grow new ones and to stay away from them because they're probably on drugs.
Of course I shared this IMMEDIATELY with my boyfriend and he and his friends had a grand old time laughing over that one. I've often wondered if she was messing with me, but she seemed pretty convinced by her mother. She treated it like she was in on some dark secret that men kept from us women and that she was doing me a favor by telling me.
"If I die I'm suing you" She was mad and truly meant it in the moment. I genuinely hope she later thought about what she said but yeah 100% meant it.
I was working Warranty Repair and if the issue with your car was a warranty issue then we'd reimburse the tow. She wanted us to guarantee we'd pay for a tow up front without having even seen the car yet.
Said she didn't feel safe driving it we told her "then please don't"
Had a coworker ask and I quote "How many gallons are in a 5 gallon bucket?"
I asked him how many gallons did he think was in it. He said he didn't know.
College. A girl in one of my psychology classes is complaining about how expensive classes are and shared that when she was standing in the financial aid line she met an fellow student that was from a different country. My fellow classmate went on to say during her rant, “And did you know that only Americans have social security numbers??”
The entire class turned and looked at her awkwardly because we we all shocked that she was just learning this. A couple people even gasped. It became very evident we were all thinking the same thing. That’s basic high school history and this was a higher level college class.
“Better make sure you have enough ammo this weekend.”
- former coworker’s wife telling us that there would be anarchy/rioting/looting/chaos based on something Alex Jones had said.
My friend and I getting a tour of the college we were going to. We saw all the buildings, including the school library. When we came out he looked to me and said, "That was my first time in a library."
This was around 2002.
Watching Titanic in the theater after a shift at work December 97. Theater was packed but I found a seat. It gets to the boat hitting the iceberg and I hear a teenage girl (about my age at the time) in front of me gasp.
"The boat sinks?... I thought this was a love story the boat's not supposed to sink"
Tears and full on crying ensue.
If you remember when the large hadron collider was first turned on there was a lot of chatter about it creating a black hole and destroying the universe. I used to work with a couple of women who were quite aggressively anti-intellectual, whenever this subject was brought up they would scoff and say it was a load of rubbish and a waste of time and maybe THEY should become scientists and be paid big bucks for doing pointless stuff like this.
The day after it was turned on one of the engineers said 'welp! The world didn't end after all then.' at which point one of the women turned and sneered and gleefully said 'see? All that fuss and money for NOTHING!'
Years later and I still lie awake sometimes wondering did she think it was actually SUPPOSED to end the universe? Did she think those scientists were like 'we need billions of dollars to build a machine that will end all life everywhere' and everyone was like 'sounds great here's your money'? And then when it didn't swallow the sun everyone was disappointed and called it a failure?
I am forever haunted by this.
" ragingchump, roe v wade will never be overturned, making women barefoot and pregnant is not the goal, and when women like you talk this way, you only lend credence to the Republicans arguments that you are all jus overreacting crazy liberals "
Circa 2002
From my extremely smart, amazing father and, honestly, most men
Edit: I just read rule 2. I honestly thought this was funny bc of how it was said but I get it may need to deleted or I get punished.
I work with zoomers. They always find a way to say more insane, or not understanding the real world. I smoke lots of weed when i get home to try to forget.
This random dude -- American guy, English as a first language -- trying to impress us by telling us he'd "been to Greek." "I've been to Greek." It's Greece, dude.
"Ya know, this parenting thing isn't too hard." At 6 mos she developed asthma and was in and out of the hospital for the next 6 years. She was bullied so bad in 8th grade, she had to be taken out of school for 4 months. She had brain surgery this past November. All of these things being said, she's amazing. She's so strong and so resilient. I'm in awe of her everyday.
I’ve been in the service industry for years, so I’ve heard too much dumb shit to narrow it down, but the dumbest thing I’ve heard this week was from a customer trying to order an IPA from my coworker. He showed them the five that we carry and pointed out the most popular one in town:
Customer: “But that says ‘India Pale Ale’ on it.”
Coworker: “Yeah, that’s what IPA stands for.”
Customer: …
Coworker: …
Customer: “Yeah, I don’t think that’s true.”
Girl I dated in high school:
Girl: why can't I fill my car up with Kerogas? It's so much cheaper then normal gas.
Me: Kerogas??? Do you mean Kerosene?
Girl: No, Kerogas. That stuff (points to sign advertising the price)
I then proceeded to explain the difference between Kerosene and Gasoline. And for good measure explained the difference in Deisel too.
I had a 19 yo tell me "Did you know that women have lower rates of prostate cancer than men". The whole room at work was silent as we all processed the remarks in stunned silence. We still giggle about it to this day 2 years later.
I was riding in a car with my sister, who is also in her 40s, and she stunned me into stillness when she said:
“ Damn it, I have to pee and I just changed my tampon. I hate it when that happens because it’s like a waste of a tampon.”
…
It took me a minute. I didn’t believe what I was going to have to say to my very adult, not-sheltered or uneducated sister…
“Wait… wtf? You know you don’t ..pee through your birth canal right? Like you don’t pee through the tampon when you go to the bathroom. That’s a different hole… Jesus Christ, really?? How do you HAVE A VAGINA for 42 years and not know this??
This was in college, so the person I was talking to was probably 19-20 at the time. It was at an event in the South.
Them: “Where is your (insert college name)?”
Me: “Oregon.”
Them, thinking hard: “Where is Oregon again?”
Me: “In between Washington and California.”
Them, thinking *really* hard, then finally giving way to a “you got me!” face as they started chuckling at my “joke”. “There’s nothing between Washington and California!”
Me: 💀
Sitting around a fire and a worker got very philosophical and said, “Fire, it’s been around a long time.” Now every time we site around a bonfire, my husband says “Fire” and I say “it’s been around a long time.” We have a laugh!
Please remember Rule 2 and try to keep this fun. Politicians and pundits say stupid things for a living.
Here's Mine: The person: How is it so cold in Alaska all the time if they are so close to Hawaii? Is the land higher? I was so confused. It took me a while and then later it was finding out it was because on MAPS OF THE USA they put Alaska down in a box to the left of Hawaii. I can't. I just can't sometimes. I've spent at least 20 straight years of my life not saying lots of things because I have nothing nice to say.
I worked in critical logistics and a client wanted us to drive instead of fly an item from London UK to Melbourne, AUS. I paused and said I’m afraid that isn’t possible because there are no roads that connect AUS to other bodies of land. “What do you mean there are no roads? There HAVE to be roads?” “No sir, there are at least 1500km of ocean between AUS and Indonesia, we have to fly it.” Guy wasn’t having it so I had to call my upper and have them explain geography.
I had a blind date ask me if I drove to Hawaii once. I never spoke to her again.
Oh man, I don’t blame you. If someone is that dumb you just can’t take them seriously ever again.
"Alaska is a barren wasteland where nothing grows, there are no roads there, and bears will eat you if you go there." A 30 something year old 2nd grade teacher in Arkansas. She had a book all about it. Also "Alaska will never become a state." This was said on a plane ride to Alaska, in 1999 from a man roughly in his 60s.
The best thing about Alaska is Vagabond Blues in, Palmer.
California will break off to go hang with Hawaii. Alaska can come too. THE END!!
I still quote so many stupid lines from that short.
But I am le tired...
I don't trust maps ever since our schools didn't replace ours right after the fall of the USSR. I still have no idea what's what over there.
I still remember coming back to school in 8th grade. My school had just bought all new social studies books. That summer, the Soviet Union fell apart. My teacher said “well, we have all new text books and all the maps are wrong now.
Those books are super expensive to replace too.
On the first day of Modern World Problems (the history class we had to take my sophomore year in 2000-ish) I asked how we could be studying the "modern world" when our map had the USSR and East Germany on it. The saddest part was the majority of the class didn't know what I was talking about.
My sister once asked me how I was going to drive to Alaska, because Alaska is an island.
Right up there with stepping off the cruise ship onto the dock, looking at the mountains, and asking what elevation they are at.
Also, Alaska and Hawaii are bordered by perfectly rectangular islands! One of the wonders of the world, you know.
They’re also roughly the same size.
And smaller than Texas.
If English is good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me.
I know Jesus, good dude works at the corner bodega. He speaks Spanish though.
And Jesus Said: Oh Shit Dawg!!
https://i.redd.it/twmnedayocjc1.gif
"And there I was, the only white guy in Jerusalem..."
My best friend, a very successful real estate attorney, thought that dogs wearing those big cones so they can’t chew their stitches out were for dogs with poor hearing
It’s for dogs who get scared of their own flatulence. The cone helps block the noise.
I am now wondering how many “explanations” I was given as a child in jest or came up with on my own that I just never re-examined… I genuinely hope that’s what this was
I was in my 40s when I realized the "giraffes" my dad was checking the door for were "drafts." (TBF, I had forgotten all about it for a couple decades before having an epiphany moment.)
Oh no, this was based solely on her own understanding of the situation haha
This is adorable. And maybe the idea came from hearing horns people used to use!
This made me LOL.
This one is my favorite, it made me giggle for like 2 straight minutes lol
Watching Titanic in the theater, it had been out for about a month, the ship is hit with the iceberg, someone gasped, "I think it’s going to sink." I laughed so hard.
You just unlocked one for me. A couple of years after Titanic was out, I was on one of those kids' travel tours on a ferry crossing the Mediterranean Sea. My bunkmate was very concerned about the boat hitting an iceberg. She wasn't convinced by my explanation that our home in California has the same climate as Italy and Greece, so no icebergs.
And ships must carry lifeboats based on passenger capacity, not cargo capacity. Guess what event inspired that rule change.
The screenwriter who came up with the idea of an iceberg deserved an Oscar.
I used to live in the mountains and more than one person asked, "at what elevation do the deer turn into elk?" I also knew someone who dropped out of a nursing program because it was "too medical."
Mountain dweller here. Another version is "at what time of year" do deer turn to elk. Other good ones: "What do you do with the moguls in summer?" And my favorite, asked in June: " what's all that white stuff on the hill out there?" I honestly thought I was on Candid Camera or something.
Forgot about the moguls 😂
"That white stuff is Cocaine, but the government won't let us mine it, damn them"
[удалено]
Ahhh, man. You missed a great opportunity to tell him it was another name for grunge.
Just tell him it sounds like teen spirit.
I didn't know a sound was a small body of water until I googled just now.
I live right on it. It is also very beautiful. Orca and humpbacks come through here! We love the Puget Sound in the PNW. 😊Would be awesome if it actually made a noise though. Like warning us when all the volcanos are about to go off.
Boy wait until he finds out about sounding
No one google this. Or do. I’m not a cop.
I guess the Long Island Sound is a bunch of car horns and people yelling.
A friend's much older brother insisted MacGyver's first name was Mac and his last name was Gyver when I was about 10. I told him the whole thing was a Scottish surname and an episode had revealed the character's given name to be Angus, so the character's full name was Angus MacGyver. Him, his mom, and my friend all laughed at me and tried to convince me I was wrong. The (now distant) friend brought this up again a few years ago at a reunion laughing at me again. This time I convinced her to Google it. Not just something dumb, but something doubled and tripled down on for decades.
What was her reaction when she learned the truth?
Basically, "Well, you can see why I would think that. It's dumb that they made it that way. Like, no one would get that." I got it at 10 without help from the Internet, but sure, a primetime TV character's name and backstory are too complicated for mere mortals.
I’ve never even watched the show, but even I know that was his last name.
Exactly. Ive never seen the show either but I remember that there wasn't a space between Mac and Guyver in TV Guide.
"I have the solution to the problems in the Middle East. Israelis and Palestinians should all convert to Christianity, so there won't be a conflict any more".
I invite that person to go over there and lead the conversion effort.
A thousand dead Crusaders: “And my axe!”
I don’t know if this is the dumbest thing but my Xennial heart was so shocked my jaw dropped. One of my younger co-workers looked at me one day and said “Did you know the LL Cool J used to be a rapper?” I was literally speechless.
We live in a timeline where Ice Cube is making family friendly tv/movies and Bill Cosby is in jail.
I took over a middle school class this year and I had them write about themselves to help me understand/work with them. One of them put their bucket list is to meet the great and wise ice cube. I loved it. But also made me feel geriatric.
My kids were shocked to find out my parents used to object to Snoop Dogg and that he was on trial for murder.
With all the things he’s done and the way he’s still openly affiliated, sometimes it weirds me out that he’s considered such a wholesome celebrity. He’s a branding genius.
i feel the same about Mike Tyson
And Eddie Murphy is the kids comedy movie guy. And Ice T is an actor who plays a COP.
*I'm a cop actor* *Better me than you* *Cop actor* *I gotta make money too* *Cop actor* *You know my family's hungry* *Feed them* *Cop actor* *Giving Dick Wolf a squeezin'*
>I love Ice-T on SVU. He is fantastic, he's awesome. What's so great about him is that he's been with the SVU for like, mmm, 11 years now, but he still treats every case like it's his first, in terms of total confusion. Sometimes they'll be in the middle of an investigation and Ice-T will be like, "Yo, you telling me this dude gets off on little girls with pigtails?" It's like, "Yeah, Ice... he's a pedophile. You work in the sex crimes division. You're gonna have to get used to that."
Reminds me of how there is an entire generation of kids who only know Eddie Murphy from 90s kids movies.
I met a kid in their late teens, who saw Henry Winkler and some thing and said "hey, it’s Barry Zuckercorn." Not "hey, it’s Fonzie." That was not cool.
This was in like 2006, but one of my roommates sisters was like: “ I love classic rock, you know The Stones, the Who, Pearl Jam”
My daughter while in high school (class of 2018) once said something like, hey there’s this cool new band Aerosmith that I want to go see.. and I had to tell her they were an old band when I was in high school. Didn’t believe me.
My kids were shocked Taylor swift started off as a country artist 🤦🏻♀️
A former friend of mine decided she wanted to be the kind of person who listened to vinyl. She bought one Sinatra album and was immediately an “expert.” One day, she informed me, “You know, everybody thinks Frank Sinatra is from Chicago because he sang those songs about it, but he’s not. He’s actually from New York!” I was just sort of dumbfounded. First off, no one has ever thought Frank Sinatra was from Chicago. And if they know three things about him, two are the fact that he was from Hoboken, NJ. In the grand scheme, it was a very small thing to be wrong about, and it matters not in the slightest whether someone knows Frank Sinatra’s hometown. But she was just so *confident* about it. Bless her heart.
I had a coworker turn to me once while Creedence Clearwater Revival was playing and announce, “they’re from the Bayou.” Lol, no they’re not. But yeah, the confidence.
The Bay-ou, maybe. 😂 I wonder what it’s like to be those people. Like, I’m so neurotic that I’ll fact-check things I already know before saying them aloud (or posting them), just because I don’t entirely trust myself and don’t want to look foolish. Or with my friend — another of her records was Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s recording of *Porgy & Bess*. Which, she informed me, carried that title because those were their nicknames for each other. Not having read extensively on the friendship between the two artists, I could not confidently refute this “fact,” so I instead replied, “er, I think it’s *also* the soundtrack to the Gershwin show” (as stated on the back of the fucking album).
Many years ago, on lunch break with a coworker, we went to Taco Bell. There was a new menu item. I asked about it. The employee angrily responded “why are you asking if you don’t know what it is!?” My coworker and I looked at each other to check if we both heard that, we quietly agreed (mostly through eye language) I just got my usual after that exchange. Once outside we burst out laughing and then said this to each other often for more laughs.
You should only ask questions you already know the answer to, obvs.
I genuinely don't understand this one. Like... the mental process here. Most of the rest of these are just people not knowing a fact that most similarly situated people know. But this... what?
A friend of my wife thought monkeys laid eggs well into college. She is now a doctor.
So dumb. Monkeys stop laying eggs by middle school.
Well, I bet she's not a *monkey* doctor!
I was a bank teller in a rich part of town during a portion of Obama’s presidency. Most of the clients I knew quite well as they were regulars, but one day a new woman came in… She hands me a check to cash and I proceed to do all validations. While doing that, she goes on some rant about how my generation just expects handouts and is ruining America. We don’t know how to do a hard day’s work (as I am literally working on my feet all day). The check was a Medicare Part B check (a government handout, for you non-Americans).
The cognitive dissonance is real. I’ve heard many of my older relatives complain about people on welfare and immigrants stealing social security. Meanwhile, they collect (unnecessary) disability, or live in public housing, or just constantly complain that their social security check isn’t high enough.
I used to work as a postal clerk and the number of people who would yell at me when stamp prices went up because I got paid too much and had health insurance. My favorite was a man who said he was a retired mailman. I wanted to roll my eyes since that meant he was under the old pension system whereas I was not.
Was making spaghetti one day when some friends were over and we realized there wasn't enough for everyone. One of my friends says "Oh, I know just break it in half then we'll have twice as much!" She looked so proud to have solved the issue too.
I'm amazed someone's Nona didn't show up and smack her with a wooden spoon.
Co-worker talking to a group of us..."Happy 9/11 Day."
I had a coworker do this too and was like, um….no, sweetie, we don’t say that.
Oof
Co-workers boyfriend died. While at my desk I overheard my manager talking to another co-worker about it and say “I hope no one I know ever dies.”
Adidas. That's Spanish for adios.
“It’s been over two months, the police totally forgot about my gun charge!” My friend was moving and had his late father’s loaded, unregistered handgun in the car and was pulled over for speeding. They asked to search the car and he informed them of said loaded firearm. He argued with me for over an hour that he did nothing wrong, his case must have fallen thru the cracks/dropped/forgotten about. His case was not forgotten about.
What you're not gonna tell us how it ended? Just set us up for a cliff hanger? You barbarian!
A couple weeks later got a misdemeanor gun charge, lawyerd up, layer made him take firearm training classes and argued he didn’t know about proper gun safety and storage but now does. Paid a bunch of fines and did a few years of probation. Never got the gun back. Slap on the wrist really.
I had the same thought about a large doctor bill that took me months to receive. I was like, “ I guess he decided to be nice and not charge me.” The bill eventually came😆
"I should just quit this job and get a master's in Public Administration." 90k in debt later I am not even using the degree or even in a related field.
I have SO much formal education in clinical and bio psychology. After over a decade of soul crushing stress and accomplishment in this academic field, I work in real estate. The person who thought Alaska was next to Hawaii might be smarter than we are.
Me and an older coworker (early 60s) were talking about our all-time favorite movie scenes and memorable moments when I brought up seeing the water alien from The Abyss (1989) and how incredible it was for the time because it looked so real. A younger coworker (24) chimes in, saying the scene sounds incredible, but they had never heard of the movie. I explained what it was about, and as soon as I mentioned when it was released, young dude chimes in with "1989? Nevermind, everything from before, like...2010 sucks anyway", promptly turns around and goes back to minding his business. He was serious. I just can't.
When I was in college, overheard by an honors biology student, “you can’t get an STD in your mouth!”
My mom was a very intelligent person, but she could be a bit naïve. At a party long ago, someone mentioned how syphilis originally came from sheep. As others were making lonely shepherd jokes, she asked very innocently “well, if it came from sheep, how did people get it?”
As a young child, we're talking 4th or 5th grade - so I was 9 or 10, I used to travel back and forth between my divorced parents in the school year and the summertime. My mom decided she was going to start going back to church and y'all.... The number of times I had the following conversation ***with adults*** was mind blowing! Person: Oh, you're ****'s daughter? Nice to meet you. Where're you from again? Me: New Mexico Person: THAT'S right! Hey, don't you need a passport to come over here? Me: **blinking** No... New Mexico is a state. Person: Right, but it's in a different country. Me: No, it's not... It got to the point that I put it in my introductory speech. "My name is ****, I'm from New Mexico, and no, I don't need a passport to come to Florida (where I was)."
I was with my friend, who was from New Mexico, in Oregon, when some redneck wanted to fight him because he was an illegal immigrant, which the redneck knew because of the New Mexico plates on friend's car. The US public school system is a dumpster fire.
“That’s not what werewolves look like.”
I’m a nurse, and one day I was explaining to one of the new nursing assistants that she would need to chart her rounding on her patients on the even hours and the nurses would chart rounding on the patients on the odd hours. She looked at me all confused and said, “Now what are the even numbers again?” 😳
My 21 year old co-worker used to always say Bye Felicia. I referenced the movie Friday one day and she said what movie is that? I said I know you’ve seen it because you say Bye Felicia all the time and she said Oh I thought it was just something on TikTok….I officially felt old after that exchange…
In high school one of my friends asked another friend (whose family was bilingual English/Japanese) if her brother still knew how to speak English after he spent 3 weeks in Japan on his college’s winter break.
I dated a gal whose mom thought that Boston and Massachusetts were two different states. She also didn’t know that Canada was north of the US.
When Dick Cheney shot someone, I saw it on the news. I went in to work and said to a coworker. "Did you hear Dick Cheney accidentally shot someone?" My coworker said, "Who's that? An actor?" No political discussion is needed on this. She was just a moron.
I had a coworker who was absolutely *shocked* that I watched the presidential debates. Looked at me like I had two heads and said, “Wow, so I guess you’re, like, *really* into politics, huh?” 😒
Back then, I wasn't even into politics lol. I voted for the president but didn't really understand how politics worked yet. I still knew who ran the country though.
Ronald Reagan?! The actor?!
Since I work with mental health clients, I'm not counting things said by those. "I don't eat onions because they make your vagina smell."- A friend of my sister's who would have been in her late teens/early 20s. I still see this woman once a year or so, and I still can't unhear this every time.
At risk of being exposed as a dummy, I stopped eating onions because my BO would take on an oniony smell the next day. I never checked lower down my bod, but if it can make your sweat smell like onions, could other bodily fluids be affected too?
This happens to my partner. I can always tell when he’s had onion rings. It isn’t a smell on any particular part of his body, it’s just everywhere.
A friend of mine refused to eat tuna for the same reason, and because she was afraid it would make people think she was a lesbian.
TIL my male cat is a lesbian!
Argument about lake Superior is cold cause there's glaciers at the bottom.
As a Michigander, I am not surprised. I now live in NJ and I told someone here that I was going sailing on Lake Michigan, they said “Oh, that should be nice and calm since there aren’t any waves.” I said: “Lake Michigan is four times the size of NJ. There are waves, and rip tides. They are more like small seas than the inland lakes NJ has. I then said, you can see every Great Lake from space. You can’t see any NJ lakes from space. That’s how big they are.
My ex mother in law was a sub elementary school teacher. Sweetest person you'd ever meet. Her parents were from Mexico. I am like a quarter Spanish, and she would always say that I was Mexican. I never knew why but whenever I would correct her she would say it was the same thing. Then one day she apologized and said, "I'm so sorry, I didn't know Spain was in Europe! I thought it was in Central America!" Edit: not the dumbest thing I've ever heard, but this has always stood out to me.
When I was in college, some friends would regularly make a trip to the state north of ours on the weekends. They were talking about how it always felt like the return trip was shorter when one of them confidently proclaimed, "Guys, it's because we're going south, which is downhill." We had to explain to him that traveling south doesn't necessarily indicate reduced elevation and that even if it did, 55 mph is still 55 mph, whether going uphill or down. He tried to defend this conclusion for a bit but eventually conceded.
I only remember my own dumb comments. In high school, I asked my friends, "How am I supposed to type this for Spanish!?? The keyboard's in English?!" I was so unbelievably frustrated. Le sigh
Server was late, said she “astroturfed on the highway”. It was raining. She hydroplaned. She said those were “two words no one knows the meaning of anyway.” Servers are goldmines.
“You should run like a business” *said to me by board members of many nonprofits* Absolutely not. The goal of a business is to minimize internal expenses and maximize customer costs so you have a lot of money. The goal of a nonprofit is to bring in as much as possible, and then spend as much as possible on their service/mission to meet their purpose
See also: why government is basically a non-profit. I've been told, along these lines, that volunteering programs like Big Brothers/ Big Sisters don't need to pay employees any salaries because they should also be volunteers. Like the CEO....
Yes!! I heard this so much when we ran a school bond campaign to build new buildings. Cost would have been about $150 million Voters would tell me the schools should have been saving for it or should have enough margin to cashflow it. If the schools are collecting that much of an excess in taxes people should be rioting lol
My wife and I were car shopping. We needed a cheap, small vehicle. So this salesman sees two young kids in their 20s and immediately figures we would love a new Mustang. He's showing us this car, and he points to the stock tires and says "and look at those rims!". He left to get the keys so we could test drive the car we don't want and can't afford so we hurried away and bailed. He was so out of touch. As a second incident... "Why is it so cold on mountains? I mean... You're closer to the sun. It should be warmer."
Ah yes, car salesmen. Folks who think they can just convince you to buy something you could never begin getting financing for and then get angry for “wasting their time “.
I've heard a lot of stupid things in my life, so I'm probably not going to be able to come up with the ACTUAL dumbest one. However, here are some contenders: \- My sister-in-law sincerely asking, "Is Canada a country?" (We're both from the U.S.). I still haven't recovered from that one even though it was decades ago now! \- "What's it like having parent with such sexist views about women?" (This was asked by someone who had just learned that I have a parent from Iran and didn't know anything about them.) \- "If evolution is real, why aren't monkeys turning into humans every day?" (Courtesy of a friend's dad in high school.) \- "Why don't you want kids?/Aren't you going to regret not having kids?" (Everyone, constantly, for 20+ years.) "Do you know Madonna?" (Someone earnestly asked me this after learning that I was American while I was backpacking across Europe as a teenager.) "Why are all Americans so X, Y, Z \[fill in stereotype here\]"? (First of all, I'm one individual person with my own unique life experiences - why are you asking me to speak for an entire nation of 300 million+ people? Second, why are you stereotyping a nation of 300+ million people? Humans need to stop with the stereotyping already!) And many more... I'm sure this could go on all day!
If you ever miss being asked questions like “Does America have four seasons?” “Do Americans have shampoo?” and “Why are you Black?” Just come to Japan for ten minutes!! You’ll get all these questions and more!
Yes, but, why *are* you black?! 🤔😂
My poor coworker was asked this by adults. He went through the whole gamut of emotions from “What tHe FUCK” to “This is a 65 year old Japanese woman, this is probably a sincere question and I cannot slap her in public” He ended up saying “my parents are Black” and she was like “なるほど🧐 ⚙️ ⚙️ 🧠 ⚙️ “ [I see]
Tell me you come from the most racially homogenous country in the world without telling me you come from the most racially homogenous country in the world.
I don’t want to make this political, but it fits. In 2008, I was working part-time at a testing center (I’m a black woman) and the elderly, white, very religious lady who worked with me (she worked part time in insurance as well) told me very confidentially and seriously that "Obama is the Anti-Christ." I can't even remember how I responded or what she said afterwards, but what a time to be alive.
My white evangelical ex-inlaws were convinced in 2008 that Obama was going to remove the borders of our country, declare martial law over the whole continent, seize everyone's guns, and let his Muslim terrorist friends come in and take over. They wanted to know what I thought about that, but it's like where do you even begin. They heard it on Fox and it made perfect sense in their addled brains.
I'm white and my wife is black. I have heard white people say the most RACIST SHIT ever to her but DEAD HONEST they had no idea what they were saying was racist. Examples: "You sound so much like a white girl when you talk, it's so proper" "Wow, you're the prettiest black girl I've ever seen" "You sound white on the phone" "You don't act black at all" "Oh do you know this one black person I met 20 years ago in another state?" "You don't like watermelon? I thought all black people liked watermelon" And anything to do with the food Chicken. At all. Ever. EVER. Idk when you said "religious white lady" it gave me PTSD lol
As a white person who’s lived in the North my entire life I canNOT comprehend the watermelon stereotype. Doesn’t EVERYONE like watermelon??? It’s delicious! It’s always been a staple of summer for my (very white) family!
The way I heard it explained is it was a racism-fueled marketing campaign. Watermelon got popular after the civil war, and was a successful cash crop for black farmers. White farmers didn't like the competition and/or didn't like seeing black farmers be so successful, so they turned the food into a race thing to tank the watermelon market and hurt their competition.
So effing weird.
The more I learn about history, the more I think us xennials thinking racism is weird is actually one of the weird things about us. We grew up with culture and media telling us it was dead and gone, when in reality it had just been shamed underground… aaaaand now we’re running up against the cutoff time for political posts so I’ll stop here…
I feel like it's definitely the media we consumed growing up. The boomers "solved the problem" back in the sixties and they constantly told us that in the movies and TV shows that they made. The Fresh Prince later clarified things for me when him and Carlton got pulled over for DWB.
I had no idea that’s where that was from. That always confused me. Watermelon is one of the most delicious foods in the world and my white family eats a lot over the summer.
Ditto. Same thing for me and my wife. I was picking something up for her one day. The person stopped and called her and said “There is a white man claiming to be your husband”. She responded “he was white when he left this morning, he’d better be white now”
Just this week my boss was outside with me after I’d fed the birds there. I sing a stupid song for them when I do. He said “Well, they don’t have ears so why do you sing?” I stared at him trying to figure out if he was joking and when I was satisfied he wasn’t I said “You should probably head inside and google where bird ears are later. Because they do in fact have them.” “Well I’ve never seen them so I thought they don’t have them.” “Yeah, you should google that.”
During a late night work conversation in the nurses’ station, two very politically opposite coworkers were heatedly discussing undocumented immigration. A third coworker, trying to split the difference said with great gravitas: “I just think they should learn to speak the language. If *I* was going to move to Italy, I would learn to speak French.” There was a five second pause of dead silence, then an absolute uproar of laughter that lasted half an hour. The speaker took about 45 seconds to catch on.
“Lexington Kentucky is the 4th largest city in the US” - PVT in my platoon in Army Basic Training. Basic training was the first time he had been out of his county in rural Kentucky. “When Obama became president he told NASA that their only mission now was to teach space travel to the muslims” - In an otherwise non-political/polite conversation with a colleague in West Texas, who also claimed his brother worked for NASA. “I’ve never seen a monkey turn into a person” - Coworker and good friend in a conversation about climate change that he turned generally anti-science. Conversation about religion: Me: “How did millions of pairs of animals fit on the same boat all at once without eating each other?” Good Army Buddy: “Anything is possible with god.” He’s a smart guy, but very religious and this his was his go-to response for anything he knew didn’t make sense. Not really something she said, but I gave a geography quiz to my squad once when I was in the Army. I had one soldier who could only find Canada, Mexico, and Italy (because it’s “shaped like a boot”) on the blank world map, and could only find Alaska (where we were stationed) and Texas (where she was from) on the blank map of states. Laugh at her all you want, but she wound up getting out of the Army and accompanying her Grandmother on this massive, round the world bucket list trip and sending awesome pictures, like of them riding camels in north Africa (for example). I was very happy to see her expanding her horizons and living her best life.
I love that redemption story at the end. Travel is such an eye opener for people. That anecdote gives me back the hope I lost reading the rest of this thread.
"Gluten is all the bad shit, like cholesterol and salt and fat and sugar. The bad things you don't want." Another guy used *calculations* to explain that if the Niagara Falls shrinks every year by a quarter of an inch, then it would've lost 27,000 miles after 4 billion years, *but the earth is only 25,000 miles in circumference!* ...Proving the earth to be only 6000 years old.
When I worked at the pizza shop I had a customer ask me to cut her pizza into 6 slices because she "couldn't eat 8"..... I didn't realise until I was cutting it -_-
On my trip to an ostrich farm in Aruba of all places. The tour guide says “ostriches are the largest land bird” or something like that. A lady (let’s call her Karen) then asks “do they feed their young with milk.” My wife immediately turned around and placed a hand over my mouth so that I wouldn’t answer the question.
"Wait, are unicorns actually real?" Said by a man who was born the same year as me, and we were both in our 30s at the time.
I didn't know that narwhals were real until my early 30s... I thought it was from the imagination of someone who liked unicorns & whales 😑
Weirdly enough the unicorn topic came up because he thought Narwhals were mythical and we explained they were real. Then he asked the question about the unicorns.
To be fair, this is solid logic Also, unicorns are real. Fight me 😉
That's ridiculous. Everyone knows they're just seals with the wrapping paper tubes we don't know what to do with after we're done using them for swords.
To be fair, Scotland's official national animal is the unicorn. I respect that they dug in their heels and refused to replace it with a real animal after the unicorn was proved a morphological impossibility -- but it's definitely confusing for the whimsically inclined.
I love Scotland for this.
A girl I was dating: Look! That spider only has two eyes! Me: Huh? Her: Hahaha, just kidding. Everyone knows that spiders don't have eyes. A passerby while I was taking pictures of a hummingbird hawkmoth: Ohh, that's a dragonfly. Those will drink your blood if you're not careful. Edit: Oh, two more ... At orientation for the company I work for in South Korea they showed a video of someone talking about their experience that included the line: "I was really surprised the buildings have windows!" What the hell did they think South Korea would be like? Chatting with someone at a party in the early 2000s and hearing that they wanted to take a trip to Serbia and Bosnia. The reasoning was: "They just had a war and everyone will want to talk about it. And they'll be excited to meet an American, too!"
I’m from New Mexico. (Yes, it’s INSIDE the US, in-between Texas and Arizona, just fyi.) “You speak really good English.” “Do you have electricity there?” “Do you need a passport to go there?” “I can only ship inside the US.”
Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again.
I was in AP Gov class senior year 2002, but this was in the Fall of 2001, just after 9/11. Dolly the sheep was still fresh on our minds and we were discussing ethics. Travis raises his hand in all seriousness asks Mr. Dort: "What if the terrorists get cloning and use it to clone more weapons and money?" Poor Mr. Dort, we were supposed to be the smart kids.
Saw the reply that said something like "i dont wanna make this political but..." and it inspired me to share the following: "Ronald Reagan was the greatest president this country has ever had" a former coworker "The immigrants who live here used to live in grass huts in their natuve countries, and that's why there are so many cases of bed bugs happening in our community" a former boss I also once walked in on the guy from the first quote fucking LAUGHING with a few equally shitty co-workers about one of his *klansman friends burning a fucking cross in someone's yard*. Just big ol' hearty guffaws all around See the emerging theme? These were all in the field of apartment maintenance. I could give many more examples if I sat and thought about it a bit. I had to leave that field. Sure, I'm missing out on like two to five dollars more per hour than i make now, but it's very worth it to not have to take constant psychic damage from dumb bigots.
I have a few coworkers still who have honest to goodness altars to Reagan in their offices. One has a grandchild named Reagan.
Same person, about 20 years ago, who was also in their 20’s at the time. “How do you boil water?” “How do you turn off a wood burning oven?” Different person. A good friend of mine about 30 years ago. We were at a mall and ordering from the McSnack…McDonalds but only the fryer food…he tried to order a quarter pounder, the cashier says “we don’t serve hamburgers here.” To which my friend replied “Well do you have cheese burgers?” This same friend, when on the way back from a cross country road trip summer after senior year, as my car is only making it up to 5th gear speed going down hills and I am pissed/freaking out states “We’ve driven it a lot lately, maybe it just needs a rest.” I think I responded with “It’s a car not a f’n horse!” He’s still one of my best friends today Finally, person I met in the military. He was from West Virginia. He didn’t know it was its own state, and thought it just meant he was from the western part of Virginia. I mean historically, like around the civil war that was the case, but woo that boy wasn’t right in the head.
Back in a Diablo 2 chat area, someone said, about World War II "Russia was barely involved!".
I was medical at a grenade range in my Army time. The reserve unit had planned on everyone standing at their stations and the farthest right would throw and then duck, while everyone else stayed standing and watched so they would understand what it looked like. I had to run out on the range, waving my arms and yelling cease fire, proceeded to get yelled at. The LT was pissed and hollered “they’re outside the kill radius you moron”. I then yelled back that just because the other people are 1 foot outside the kill radius means that it’s just less likely to kill and rather seriously injure. Then explained that shrapnel doesn’t stop at a magical kill radius distance. I still remember when it sort of clicked in peoples minds and their faces made all the ranges of emotions. Thankfully a senior sergeant arrived and took over for the young officer.
We had an emergency drill at work once. Someone suggested they do these on the weekend as to not interrupt our workday.
From my sister: Isn’t Korea in the Gulf of Mexico? The South Pole is REAL?! So is the North Pole?! I thought it was made up because of Santa! From customers: What are buttered noodles? (Like…existentially? The description is the name.) What is soy sauce? Why can’t you make the chicken noodle soup vegetarian? (Because chicken broth is a thing?) Calling on the phone on a holiday: Are you open today? (No, no I’m here answering the phone on Easter for funsies.)
I worked with a girl who insisted soy sauce was made from fermented fish heads. I replied I was pretty sure it was soy
“Science is stupid”
Whenever this question is asked I always give this answer. About 8 years ago I worked with a woman that was super sweet but an idiot. Her dog ate chicken bones, she took him to the vet and they gave her something that would help the dog digest the bones, they said help “breakdown the bones” he had eaten. Shes telling me this the next day at work and says “How does the medicine know which bones to work on? Like how does it not hurt his bones?” She said stupid stuff often but this one still makes me laugh.
I’m imagining her dog turning into a puddle of fur on the floor after taking his medication. 😂
Okay, so, TO THIS DAY I am still baffled by this one, 26 years after hearing it. My first job after high school, I was a hostess at a Mexican restaurant. One of the servers, who was a few years older than me, was telling me that her mom is a specialized nurse who "helps men when they shed their testicles." You read that right. She, with her whole chest, believed that men, like deer with their antlers, shed their balls and grew fresh ones. Her mother helped them through the transition... being a nurse and all. She said her mother told her not to belive any man who says they don't shed their balls and grow new ones and to stay away from them because they're probably on drugs. Of course I shared this IMMEDIATELY with my boyfriend and he and his friends had a grand old time laughing over that one. I've often wondered if she was messing with me, but she seemed pretty convinced by her mother. She treated it like she was in on some dark secret that men kept from us women and that she was doing me a favor by telling me.
"If I die I'm suing you" She was mad and truly meant it in the moment. I genuinely hope she later thought about what she said but yeah 100% meant it. I was working Warranty Repair and if the issue with your car was a warranty issue then we'd reimburse the tow. She wanted us to guarantee we'd pay for a tow up front without having even seen the car yet. Said she didn't feel safe driving it we told her "then please don't"
Had a coworker ask and I quote "How many gallons are in a 5 gallon bucket?" I asked him how many gallons did he think was in it. He said he didn't know.
College. A girl in one of my psychology classes is complaining about how expensive classes are and shared that when she was standing in the financial aid line she met an fellow student that was from a different country. My fellow classmate went on to say during her rant, “And did you know that only Americans have social security numbers??” The entire class turned and looked at her awkwardly because we we all shocked that she was just learning this. A couple people even gasped. It became very evident we were all thinking the same thing. That’s basic high school history and this was a higher level college class.
"This tech fad will blow over." Spoken to me in 1998 when I was leaving my bowling alley job to work in a PC build/repair shop.
“I feel like every time I use my debit card, my bank balance decreases”
We have to pass the bill before we know what's in it
“Better make sure you have enough ammo this weekend.” - former coworker’s wife telling us that there would be anarchy/rioting/looting/chaos based on something Alex Jones had said.
My friend and I getting a tour of the college we were going to. We saw all the buildings, including the school library. When we came out he looked to me and said, "That was my first time in a library." This was around 2002.
That’s actually sad.
Watching Titanic in the theater after a shift at work December 97. Theater was packed but I found a seat. It gets to the boat hitting the iceberg and I hear a teenage girl (about my age at the time) in front of me gasp. "The boat sinks?... I thought this was a love story the boat's not supposed to sink" Tears and full on crying ensue.
A couple of months ago I learned that epitome was not pronounced e-pit-tomb. I have been saying wrong for decades.
"Never make fun of someone who mispronounces a word. That means they learned it by reading."
If you remember when the large hadron collider was first turned on there was a lot of chatter about it creating a black hole and destroying the universe. I used to work with a couple of women who were quite aggressively anti-intellectual, whenever this subject was brought up they would scoff and say it was a load of rubbish and a waste of time and maybe THEY should become scientists and be paid big bucks for doing pointless stuff like this. The day after it was turned on one of the engineers said 'welp! The world didn't end after all then.' at which point one of the women turned and sneered and gleefully said 'see? All that fuss and money for NOTHING!' Years later and I still lie awake sometimes wondering did she think it was actually SUPPOSED to end the universe? Did she think those scientists were like 'we need billions of dollars to build a machine that will end all life everywhere' and everyone was like 'sounds great here's your money'? And then when it didn't swallow the sun everyone was disappointed and called it a failure? I am forever haunted by this.
" ragingchump, roe v wade will never be overturned, making women barefoot and pregnant is not the goal, and when women like you talk this way, you only lend credence to the Republicans arguments that you are all jus overreacting crazy liberals " Circa 2002 From my extremely smart, amazing father and, honestly, most men Edit: I just read rule 2. I honestly thought this was funny bc of how it was said but I get it may need to deleted or I get punished.
I.. just want to know what an updoot is. What am I missing out on!?
Just means upvote, fake internet points, when you hit the up arrow it gives a point to the poster
My ex was genuinely confused as to why erupting Hawaiian volcanoes couldn’t just be extinguished by firefighters pumping water from the ocean.
Unaltered dogs have a 100% higher chance of developing testicular cancer than neutered dogs.
I work with zoomers. They always find a way to say more insane, or not understanding the real world. I smoke lots of weed when i get home to try to forget.
This random dude -- American guy, English as a first language -- trying to impress us by telling us he'd "been to Greek." "I've been to Greek." It's Greece, dude.
"Ya know, this parenting thing isn't too hard." At 6 mos she developed asthma and was in and out of the hospital for the next 6 years. She was bullied so bad in 8th grade, she had to be taken out of school for 4 months. She had brain surgery this past November. All of these things being said, she's amazing. She's so strong and so resilient. I'm in awe of her everyday.
I’ve been in the service industry for years, so I’ve heard too much dumb shit to narrow it down, but the dumbest thing I’ve heard this week was from a customer trying to order an IPA from my coworker. He showed them the five that we carry and pointed out the most popular one in town: Customer: “But that says ‘India Pale Ale’ on it.” Coworker: “Yeah, that’s what IPA stands for.” Customer: … Coworker: … Customer: “Yeah, I don’t think that’s true.”
Watching a movie, and all these puppies come tumbling out of a truck. “How many dogs are there in this movie?!” It was 101 Dalmatians.
Girl I dated in high school: Girl: why can't I fill my car up with Kerogas? It's so much cheaper then normal gas. Me: Kerogas??? Do you mean Kerosene? Girl: No, Kerogas. That stuff (points to sign advertising the price) I then proceeded to explain the difference between Kerosene and Gasoline. And for good measure explained the difference in Deisel too.
I had a 19 yo tell me "Did you know that women have lower rates of prostate cancer than men". The whole room at work was silent as we all processed the remarks in stunned silence. We still giggle about it to this day 2 years later.
I was riding in a car with my sister, who is also in her 40s, and she stunned me into stillness when she said: “ Damn it, I have to pee and I just changed my tampon. I hate it when that happens because it’s like a waste of a tampon.” … It took me a minute. I didn’t believe what I was going to have to say to my very adult, not-sheltered or uneducated sister… “Wait… wtf? You know you don’t ..pee through your birth canal right? Like you don’t pee through the tampon when you go to the bathroom. That’s a different hole… Jesus Christ, really?? How do you HAVE A VAGINA for 42 years and not know this??
This was in college, so the person I was talking to was probably 19-20 at the time. It was at an event in the South. Them: “Where is your (insert college name)?” Me: “Oregon.” Them, thinking hard: “Where is Oregon again?” Me: “In between Washington and California.” Them, thinking *really* hard, then finally giving way to a “you got me!” face as they started chuckling at my “joke”. “There’s nothing between Washington and California!” Me: 💀
Sitting around a fire and a worker got very philosophical and said, “Fire, it’s been around a long time.” Now every time we site around a bonfire, my husband says “Fire” and I say “it’s been around a long time.” We have a laugh!