Things that perplexed me when I was a kid

[sasha_feather]

--I thought the moon was a planet.

--People seemed to pronounce wind chill as "windsheel", all blended together and soft, so I couldn't parse it and thought they were maybe saying "wind shield," even though that did not make sense.

--I thought that tourist meant someone who led tours (tour guide).

--I couldn't hear the difference between picture and pitcher.

--I didn't understand why "I" in the middle of a sentence should be capitalized.

--I didn't understand the subtle nuances that differentiated dinner and supper (this is still difficult because dinner means different things to different people).

What did you have a hard time understanding as a kid?

Comments

[owlectomy]

I moved to France when I was six and came back when I was seven, and so I had to go through two separate phases of "everything you know is wrong": I started 3rd grade not knowing to capitalize "I" because you don't capitalize "je," I wrote "7" wrong when I got to France, learned how to write French "7," and then when I came back that was wrong. (I also had to learn two kinds of cursive! Which is why I can't do cursive now.)

I'm kind of embarrassed at how old I was when I learned that the ATM isn't an infinite magic money machine (especially considering that I heard "Oh no, we're overdrawn" from my mom a million times).

I didn't understand that I was supposed to be embarrassed (or at least quiet!) about the fact that I was born to unmarried parents.

I didn't understand that I couldn't be Catholic just because all my classmates were. (I also kind of wanted to be a nun, but that was because boys were terrible and I didn't want to marry one.)

I didn't understand why my mom was weird about me reading the Jehovah's Witness magazines at my grandma's house.

[sasha_feather]

Maybe not embarrassed, but circumspect? About the unmarried parents. I don't think kids do circumspect well.

What is French seven??

[davidgillon]

Continental sevens are generally drawn with a crossbar at mid-height, so not exactly difficult to recognise whichever continent you're on!

[rhivolution]

I picked up writing the continental 7 at about age 13 or 14, in German class, and now can't imagine writing it any other way!

[gabbysilang]

I still don't understand the difference between dinner and supper. Is one like...like brunch?

[dogstar]

-I didn't understand why the word "unique" wasn't pronounced yoo-ni-KWAY (uni like unicorn, que like 'what' in spanish)

-When I was very little, I didn't understand why, if the bit of your face above your eyebrows was your forehead, the top of your head wasn't your fivehead and your face from like, chin to eyebrows your threehead, numbered sections to indicate PARTS of the head seemed very reasonable to me :P)

[j00j]

This will probably not disambiguate at all: http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_96.html

I remember thinking this was weird as a kid too. Some people around us (mostly mom's family, who moved to more rural IL from Germany) used "dinner" to mean a larger midday meal. Others didn't use "dinner" for that and would just say lunch regardless of size. I think my parents use dinner and supper interchangeably? I don't think I say "supper" at all?

[king_touchy]

When I was a kid, the day's meals were breakfast, dinner, supper. Most people I know now say breakfast, lunch, dinner. I still call the evening meal supper, and I call the midday meal lunch. Unless it's Sunday or a holiday -- then the midday meal is dinner.

What the difference is -- I have no clue.

[lauredhel]

There are still quite a few people here who call the evening meal "tea". That confused me quite a lot going from the USA back to Australia around age eight.

[davidgillon]

If I'm in Durham: Breakfast, dinner (lunch), tea (dinner), supper
If I'm in Kent: Breakfast, lunch, dinner (tea), supper

There's a definite locality/class element in here historically, with, in the UK, dinner+tea being Northern/lower class, and lunch+dinner Southern/upper class.

And given your icon, should we mention second breakfast ;)

[king_touchy]

We have elevenses on Sunday. Thank you, Tolkien! ;)

From reading British-based fanfic and fiction, it seems 'tea' is a meal, when I thought it was just an afternoon snack of tea and something sweet. Or tiny sandwiches.

[davidgillon]

Tea and dinner in the large evening meal sense are completely interchangeable, with regional preferences.

Tea the drink and tiny sandwiches (and usually cakes) is generally referred to as 'Afternoon tea' or 'High Tea' (though that usage may be historically incorrect).

If we delve back to when I was a teen (late 70's) one of my great aunts had been a cook while 'in service' in her younger days. If we went to visit, then she would produce, on the spot and with little if any warning, a tea which consisted of several varieties of sandwiches (and tiny they weren't!), several home-baked cakes - and she was a magnificent pastry cook, and as much tea as anyone could drink.

[king_touchy]

she would produce, on the spot and with little if any warning, a tea

...that sounds like a super-power. ;)

[davidgillon]

I suspect decades of practice, and a large and well-stocked pantry :)

[jesse_the_k]

Dinner is the everybody-sits-together, highest-calorie, longest meal of the day.

Supper is the last meal of the day.

If dinner happens in the daytime, then the meal after sunset is called "supper."

One hundred years ago, "luncheon" was a snack between breakfast and mid-day dinner.

I'm hungry now.

[davidgillon]

If dinner happens in the daytime, then the meal after sunset is called "supper."

Stared at this for a while then realised there may be a geographical discontinuity, with the UK being further north than the US, then there is space for two meals after sunset in much of the year, with tea as the evening main meal and supper as a further meal before bedtime.

[laceblade]

I was in college before I realized that the mitt of the Milwaukee Brewers logo is actually an m and a b.

[jesse_the_k]

I realized this four years ago when we went to Miller Park. :(

There were many rules about secrets in my family, and I never learned them. Sometimes it was okay to boast about how much one earned, others times it was Just Not Done. Sometimes it was okay to speak whatever languages you knew, sometimes one had to speak in a particular flavor of English. Sometimes it was okay to talk about where my father worked, sometimes that was wrong. Sometimes it was fine to be proud about my mother's piano skills, sometimes that musn't be mentioned.

[sasha_feather]

I didn't know that! Of course, I don't pay attention to sports. I'll look closer next time.

[rhivolution]

Yeah, it took me about that long as well, and then I couldn't unsee it ever again.

[maevele]

I have just realized this now, and had to google the image to look. holy crap

[cantarina]

I was sort of a lazy reader as a kid and for years, I pronounced "caretaker" as "crackertacker".

[sasha_feather]

Ahahahhaahah!

[rhivolution]

I thought 'hallelujah' in church was a kind of peach, for some reason.

I pronounced words the way they were spelled out on the page (there's a Prairie Home Companion piece about Garrison Keillor doing this as a child which always comes to mind), as I often encountered them first on the page. I still get grief from the family about 'man-yer' for manure, 25 years later.

My brain mixed up Carly Simon and my aunt, and they're still irrevocably linked in my head.

In second grade, I told a classmate that he was going to hell because he was Catholic. (Should anyone wonder what conservative Lutheran rhetoric does to the young mind, I have plenty of anecdotal evidence.)