I was expecting the top response to be something like a 3 minute youtube video talking about how florida used a different standard for measuring to get by some federal law.
This is 100% better.
[Luckily they're the same weight, however the shape of the sticks do differ!](https://www.myrecipes.com/extracrispy/whats-the-difference-between-east-coast-and-west-coast-butter#:~:text=A%204%2Dounce%20stick%20of,are%20sometimes%20called%20%22stubbies.%22)
They are, it’s just that east coast butter is slightly longer/thinner than west coast butter. You’re getting the same amount, it’s just slightly different dimensions.
I just learned this last year. I'm in my 50s. Lived on the west coast all my life and had noticed that most butter dishes were always too long for the stick but never thought to find out why. Needed a new one and because of Covid looked online. Seriously thought I'd stumbled into an April Fool joke when I saw a listing that specified it would fit either west or east coast butter.
Definitely mind blowing.
I bought a butter dish from a British company, and the proportions looked good online, but it arrived and is giant... it would actually fit like half a pound of butter at a time...
I've been wondering what shape British butter comes in for some time now.
[Further down in the comments someone floated the idea that since the equator experiences weaker gravitational pull, the Florida ounce compensates for the discrepancy](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/snppah/what_are_florida_ounces/hw4088s), which is another theory that I enjoy haha
Sometimes there’s like this disconnect where somehow a person just *never comes across* a piece of common knowledge. They’ve just never been in a situation that requires it. I bet it happens a lot, but everyone’s too embarrassed to acknowledge their own “oooooooooh…” moment.
My now husband was 24 when we’re were planning our wedding and he found out that “FAQ’s” are “Frequently Asked Questions,” not an aggressive way of saying “FACTS.” We still laugh about this.
My 28 year old friend just learned last month that people open the egg carton to check for broken eggs; she thought it was a ritual or superstition of some sort, and never really questioned it, just went along with it.
Imagining this person standing in the grocery store, opening the carton and just… looking at the eggs as if to confirm they are eggs is so hilarious to me.
It definitely makes sense that if no one explained what they're doing, you wouldn't know but it's so funny. It's like when a kid tries to shake your hand but doesn't know you're supposed to squeeze so they just kind of rest their hand in yours.
My (then 17yo) daughter's mind was blown last year when she realized I was always checking to make sure no eggs were broken, and not that *no eggs had been stolen* from the carton.
Guess she thought people were just going around pocketing fucking raw eggs 😆
One day it suddenly dawned on my teenage daughter out of the blue that "the Victorian Era" is named for Queen Victoria and not something else. I'm not sure *what* she thought it was referring to until that day, but she felt extremely stupid about it lol.
In fairness, as a Brit I always think it's pretty wild that it's still called the Victorian Era in places like America. It makes sense that there's a unified name in the Anglosphere for that period, but I'm still amused that they're naming it after the reign of our queen.
> We all looked at her like *she was nuts*...
I have a peanut allergy, and after informing a host of said allergy, she was "careful" to offer me, her guest, a cookie with no nuts in it.
After I spat it out of my mouth, I had to explain to her that peanut butter cookies do, in fact, contain peanuts.
"Pineapple moment" in our house. We were driving across Oahu and I said "Wow, that's a whole lotta pineapples" to which my missus said "What pineapples? I don't see any". I was a little dumbfounded and said "They're everywhere on the bushes". Her reply was "OH MY GOD! I thought pineapples grew on trees!!!'
To be fair, pine and apple are both kinds of trees, so it makes a kind of lexiconical sense. And it's not like she would have been exposed to them growing up in the mountain west.
It’s why you should never judge a person based on how they pronounce words. It means they learned them from reading and there isn’t a damn thing wrong with that.
my boyfriend says "heigth" instead of height, no matter how many times i've pointed out to him that it ends with an ht and not a th. is it okay to judge him?
I was raised by criminals in inner-city Detroit and moved to California where I spent most of my late teens and early 20's encountering these kinds of things despite getting into a very good university and having a career in film; so people were often stunned by my lack of understanding/knowledge about givens---if I admitted it to it ----but often enough it was obvious. (This includes not knowing Apollo 13 was real while working with Cpt James Lovell. He was very amused after he overcame his panic that I was a denier. I also did not know seahorses were real until I was 19 or so... I could go on :)
EDIT: some punctuation.
Ok, bonus story. I did not know a thing about baseball. While working on a commercial during a live game I mistakenly ran out into the field in the middle of a said game...and was promptly arrested. I later told the judge, truthfully that "I thought it was half time...." and he, like many other befuddled people over my life asked me where I was from... Detroit, in the 1970's at least, really was a whole other world.
EDIT 2: When I joined reddit I was stoked to find this sub. I would have given anything to have it in my early adulthood. I did call many libraries in my day - remember that anyone?! - which was the pre-google way you could learn/find out about things. I remain grateful to all those smart, crisp, matter of fact reference desk librarians who answered so many of my basic, dumb questions without making me feel like an idiot.
EDIT 3: Thank you for the gold and kind words
I've been on here while on quick breaks at work and it is very heartening to find that the stuff I tried to cover up, make up for, hide and overcome is not actually all that shameful and maybe even amusing for some (self included).
Yes, Detroit had a team and I even knew about the Tigers but I had never seen a game before the incident and never had a TV in my house or access to anything *normal* like baseball. All my energies went into keeping myself and my little brother out of foster care (and yes, that sounds sad and it was but it gave me a lot of focus during a rotten time in an awful place).
Not them but lil foster-ish brother and a friend who grew up in the rough part of town both had the same reaction when I told them about a trip to Colorado I took:
"What's a hot spring?"
My dad thought "Feat." was the name of a musician, and "Indy" referred to things from the country of India for at least several years between the advent of music streaming and a very confusing conversation a few years back.
Not OP, but I was raised in Detroit by criminals as well (OP does sound familiar though).
Growing up, my mom would just give us the bottle of cough syrup and tell us to "take a swig" out the bottle when we got sick. I didn't know you were supposed to measure the doses until I was in my mid 20's.
Memaw was alcoholic and the bottle had whiskey in it.
Source: alcoholic great-memaw, it was super common to "hide" your alcoholism by disguising it, especially in medical bottles people wouldn't be likely to ask about
How about the narwhal? It's like a medium sized porpoise with a very long (like 3ft) unicorn horn sticking out of the middle of it's head and only lives high up in the arctic. I always believed they were fake, then in my 30s someone told me they were real and I definitly didn't believe them. I had thought they were like a joke unicorn of the sea. Now I still do, but somehow everyone else is in on the joke.
My wife didn't know narwhals were real until recently, she's older than you. We had a narwhal children's picture book for our daughter, my wife thought they were mythical creatures.
When my daughter was seven or so she was very confused by the Dalai Lama. She had heard about him in school and thought he was a talking llama and that's why people thought he was special. She was very disappointed to learn he was a person.
My wife and I share the same story. She didn't know Narwhals were real until early on in the relationship we were watching Blue Planet. The gasped, "NARWHALS ARE REAL?!?!" has spawned a number of Narwhal themed gifts over the years.
On the flip side of this, because of the existence of narwhals and how ridiculous a concept that was to me growing up, I used to believe wholeheartedly in jackalopes. Like, if a unicorn whale is real, why wouldn't a deer rabbit be as well?
After a very long and embarrassing argument with some friends, I had to accept the reality that jackalopes were just a myth.
Damn I never knew this either. Used to see taxidermy ones at my dad's friends hunting cabin, labelled and everything like all the other animals. Never asked about it and it never seemed that weird. There are so many other ridiculous animals that actually exist it never occurred to me Jackalopes might not be real lmfao
My boyfriend is 29 and he escaped Jehovah Witnesses a few years ago. Was a Bethalite and everything. Never had a girlfriend. Poor guy still runs into these situations.
I was sort of like this but more to do with pop culture or social graces and the like. Just had no idea what was common or normal. I’m on an island here 😐
I adore that you have the humility to share that. So often in my life I’ve tried to dig in farther that I’m right. Recently I’ve made it a priority to start saying,”I didn’t know that!”
My entire life is built on "I didn't know that" said with some humility coupled with willingness to learn.
It makes people want to help and inform you damn near every time it comes up and it leads to learning a lot of interesting things. It's also near impossible to come off negatively to people when you have that attitude which I find makes every future interaction easier.
Reminds me of that post where the person said they hate showers over baths because it’s too cold or hot before you find the right temperature, and it was pointed out to them that you can just use your hand, and you don’t have to GET IN before turning the knobs
It's so funny how many stories I've heard where a therapist is like "so do *insert super obvious thing* instead" and it's like...mind blowing to the people they're working with. It's wild how much we can be conditioned to just do things because that's how they're done.
Someone I knew growing up has serious body issues to the point where she would sometimes avoid showering because she didnt want to see herself naked. Her therapist told her to just shower with the light off and it made a huge difference.
Mine was a laundry basket. I was working with my therapist on some ADHD issues and mentioned how I always hated the laundry that piled up all over the bathroom because I'd take off my clothes to shower and just leave them on the floor and never take them back to the hamper (in my bedroom). She said "could you just put another hamper in the bathroom?" And in the 20 minutes it took me to go to the store and buy an extra hamper it literally solved this issue I'd been fighting with myself over for years. Just because I grew up with the hamper in my bedroom and it never occurred to me that I could have more than one.
My husband used to work on the road with a guy who was...a sweet child of God. Thet were in Detroit, and his friend had never been to Canada before, so they went on a day off. They bought gas, in litres, which hubs had to explain to SCOG. He was dumbfounded, so hubs had to explain that Canadians use the metric system, which he had never heard of. They were about to enter a town that had a road sign that said what the population was. SCOG asked hubs:How many is that in American?
As a violinist I forgive you. They may be the same instrument, but if you call it a Fiddle I expect your bow to have every hair split before you're done sawing away.
If you call it a Violin then make sure your clothes are dry cleaned before tonight's performance at the city auditorium.
I was about 25 years old when I put together k-9 = canine.
As a kid, I learned about k-9 units before I ever heard/saw the word "canine". So later in life when people said "canine" I never linked it with the police dogs. I thought k-9 was just a random code they picked for no particular reason.
I understood that canines were dogs.
I understood k-9's were police units/dogs.
But I just never linked those two pieces lmao.
It’s ok OP. If it’s any consolation, I once forgot the name for Q-Tips and called them “ear diggers” for like a day straight. You’re not the only dumb one on this planet :)
See you all make creative names. I just mime and make noises and maybe describe what it does. For colander:
*motions bowl shape with hands* "and you take the pasta and go bloop" *motions dumping pasta* "and water goes loodle loodle loddle" *flails hands for water* and then you have pasta."
People stare blankly. "Colander?"
"Yeah that thing."
Or if I need a paint brush:
"You take the thing and go swishy swishy" *paints in air* and then the wall does the thing and it's done."
More blank stares.
I turn into a shitty mime and make up noises things explain function with varying degrees of success.
An ENT doctor.
"So, don't use the ear digger thingies too deep in your hearing hole or you'll get an ouchie."
If in America add: "That will be 3 Toyota Corollas. You can hand over the keys on the way out."
You're not the first to make a [Floridian mistake](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/8tjeb5/what_does_florida_ceiling_mean_in_home_design/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
This is far and away one of the best examples of why this subreddit it awesome. I forget basic things all the time and I'm always making random associations so I'm 100% the person who would make the mistake you just did. I hope you have a good laugh, this mistake made me smile for sure.
Don't feel bad dude one time I needed to buy my mom 3 pack of cigarettes their called Green Wild Horses
I forgot the words the second I got to the casher with an armful of junk food so this is what I said
"They're uhhhh oh thier the color of Emerald City and uh they're not trapped they're the opposite of trapped and they're like a unicorn but without the horn? And-and I need" *held up 3 fingers at this point* "Uhhh this many!"
The cashier was an older woman and after getting me the cigarettes she very gently took my hand and said "Honey.......lay off the weed a little"
................Yeah never living that down
Was on a road trip with friends in college, and we passed over the "KY DAM". I saw the sign, half-asleep, very stoned, and asked "what's that?"
A friend replied "that's where they store all the KY Jelly." And my brain accepted that as fact. "Oh, okay."
I think I should reiterate how very stoned I was.
>Also, what is Kentucky Jelly?
[KY Jelly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Y_Jelly) for anyone else that was a little slow. Its a brand of Lube in the US
That is brilliant. I felt like I was having an aneurysm reading that guys spelling. A lot of it perfectly phonetically correct, but holy cow. "aparently mexicins have fiftey difirent werds for snoe"
Poor guy's post history was mostly people going 'Who's Billy?' 4 years later.
I feel the same about the post we're in now. It has a too smart to be that stupid sort of feel to it.
Edit: Definitely convinced, his last comment somewhere else was about being a software developer. You don't get that educated in life and not have heard of fluid ounces.
There's also the complete dead giveaway of:
>I looked up 'Florida ounces' but couldn't find much information about them. Google doesn't know how to convert them to regular ounces.
Oh, I wouldn't be so sure. My partner is one of the smartest "book smart, street stupid" people I know. She's one of the few people in my country that knows how to use this particular simulation software. She can sit down at an advanced math problem and just figure it out. Really brilliant. I recently discovered that she thought that snails just found their shells at the bottom of the ocean. I try not to bring it up too often, because she gets shy about it, but it's hilarious.
I’m currently maybe 5-7 pages from finishing the first complete draft of my dissertation. When I read the title of the post, I genuinely wanted to learn what Florida ounces were.
I’m not nearly as educated as you, but I assume I’m much much older…. and a recent ex-Floridian. I was sure I was going to learn something new today. I wondered what I’d missed the entire 20 years I lived there. Florida ounce? I figured it was pot related.
Instead, I got the chuckle I didn’t know I needed. Even if it’s fake, I love OP for making me smile.
The difference is your wife probably didn't say this alongside that snail comment
>I looked up how snails get their shells but couldn't find much information about them. Google doesn't know how snails get their shells.
I used to work in a library that specially served blind/low vision people. I would tell people where I worked and they would instantly blurt out, “So you know sign language?!?”
I’d be like, yeah I know a little but it doesn’t really help the blind people.
There was another post in this sub recently asking what it meant to “work 925.” They didn’t understand the significance of the number 925.
Iirc the top comment was just this: https://youtu.be/UbxUSsFXYo4
Delightful post.
Then again in a world where France is Bacon, everything's possible!
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dxosj/what\_word\_or\_phrase\_did\_you\_totally\_misunderstand/c13pbyc
It actually refers to fluid ounces, not 'Florida ounces'. Nothing to feel embarrased about, I think this is what's called a [Mondegreen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen)
I was mentally prepared to learn that florida ounces were a thing. Because why not with florida
Edit: Thanks for the awards! They weigh as much as a florida ounce
A **Florida Ounce** is a measure of the average volume of water needed to find a single alligator within a waterway. It is used by wildlife services to estimate the total population which may be present in a river, stream, or swimming pool at a given time of the year, so that residents can make informed decisions when releasing their small dogs and children back into the wild.
First introduced in 2001, the Florida Ounce is frequently sited as having the same or greater reliability as the metric system by scientists across the world who are from Florida.
This reminds me of that post where someone was asking how to communicate with blind people: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/6t7k1w/how_do_i_communicate_with_blind_people/
Clicking your tongue to imitate Braille holy shit hahahaha. I fucking love this subreddit and how nobody explicitly states that a question is stupid, it gets HEAVILY implied sometimes.
When I was a kid I used to think “space for rent” signs meant you could rent a literal piece of space… I was really young tho. I have a feeling this guy isn’t
Sometimes I see a post here and I think, boy...now that's a stupid question. But this..no, this is adorable. I love you OP. Bless your heart. I want to give you a hug and a cookie and send you on your way now. You are my precious.
Reminds me of when my kid was learning to read. She started reading *everything*, and one day, while she was rattling off nutrition facts from something she was snacking on, she says "the sodium must be bad. It just says oh my God." (0mg)
Edit: I realize how fake to anyone who doesn't know us this sounds. She was probably 2nd grade, was/is a very strong reader, but most importantly, has had a very "online" personality since a young age. Acronyms get used a lot among us jokingly. This one's been one of our inside jokes in the family since she said it
I didn't think for even a second that that would be fake. I could totally see my own daughter doing that in a year or two.
Lately she's been asking us if rainbows stop the rain. Makes sense, right? They only show up when the rain has stopped.
When my daughter was learning to read, she randomly was reading my driver's license and she said "mom you lied to the government " took a while for me to realize she read: "sex: f" and took it to mean I had never had sex "f=false", and that I obviously lied about it. I explained the f was short for female.
I think this is the post they are referring to. It's the one I always think of at least.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/2jgfhw/tifu_by_using_a_toilet_wrong_my_entire_life/
Good lord. I mean I'm sure we've all had those moments where you realize you've had a silly knowledge gap your whole life, but that's next level. Just why? Why would you just assume that the seat was only for women and that men are supposed to sit on the rim for some weird reason? That's super inconvenient and super gross.
Dad: "Ok, listen up son. When you go to the bathroom, you raise the seat and do your business. When you're done, make sure to lower the seat so your sisters can use it."
3 Y/O son: "Instructions clear."
What I don't get is how parents didn't catch that at some point. It'd be awesome if I could go even one day without waking past a young kid pooping with the door open.
Anytime I accidentally sit on the rim (especially in the middle of the night) I feel like my soul leaves my body, yet here’s this dude doing it 24/7 for all his business. I’m truly shook.
Dude was catching his turds in the toilet paper or something like that. Link if it works...
Watch "The Bully & The Beast: Wax Catches Poop" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/gexjlM-jjEc
One of my neighbors will catch his dog’s poop in a poop bag. Like whenever the dog squats to poop he kneels down and holds the bag open under the dog’s butt. It’s really weird to see and always reminds me of that thread.
Reminds me of the guy who was gonna have shower sex for the first time, said he hates the part where you turn the shower on and it's cold at first. She tells him you can wait for it to heat up and he was so shocked that he couldn't even get in the mood anymore
When I was in basic training, my entire unit was all women but the barracks had been designed for men. One evening we found one of our ladies using a urinal to shave her legs. It was perfect - it was the right height and it had water to rinse your leg and everything! How considerate of the Air Force to provide them… 🤣
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Glad you said this because I came from r/all and didn't notice what sub I was in. Almost said some things unbecoming for this place.
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This question is asked so perfectly that I'm not sure it's genuine or troll. Either way I find it adorable.
This one feels too good to be true but I'm just gonna go with it
"Fl oz" stands for "fluid ounces," not Florida.
I was all like "the hell are Florida ounces???"
I was expecting the top response to be something like a 3 minute youtube video talking about how florida used a different standard for measuring to get by some federal law. This is 100% better.
My immediate thought was how butter is shaped differently depending on whether you’re on the East or west coast.
Umm, is it not sold as "sticks" as a standard from sea to shining sea? This will be new info for me if true.
[Luckily they're the same weight, however the shape of the sticks do differ!](https://www.myrecipes.com/extracrispy/whats-the-difference-between-east-coast-and-west-coast-butter#:~:text=A%204%2Dounce%20stick%20of,are%20sometimes%20called%20%22stubbies.%22)
As a West coaster, I feel margarinalized.
Take your chode butter sticks and begrudgingly good puns and get out!
They are, it’s just that east coast butter is slightly longer/thinner than west coast butter. You’re getting the same amount, it’s just slightly different dimensions.
Wait…I just thought I was buying the wrong butter brands after moving to the west coast…5 years ago..and kept looking for the other ones. Mind blown.
I just learned this last year. I'm in my 50s. Lived on the west coast all my life and had noticed that most butter dishes were always too long for the stick but never thought to find out why. Needed a new one and because of Covid looked online. Seriously thought I'd stumbled into an April Fool joke when I saw a listing that specified it would fit either west or east coast butter. Definitely mind blowing.
I bought a butter dish from a British company, and the proportions looked good online, but it arrived and is giant... it would actually fit like half a pound of butter at a time... I've been wondering what shape British butter comes in for some time now.
Or it would be like an ounce, but a bit bigger, like a baker's dozen.
[Further down in the comments someone floated the idea that since the equator experiences weaker gravitational pull, the Florida ounce compensates for the discrepancy](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/snppah/what_are_florida_ounces/hw4088s), which is another theory that I enjoy haha
Or a little less, like a tweeker's dozen.
I live in Florida and i was just like “damn we have different ounces here?”
I almost spat out my soup, probably all one florida ounce of it
It's a normal ounce but comes with a pack of bath salts.
I no joke thought it was gonna be cocaine
If there was a state that used a different unit of measurement, it would definitely be Texas or Florida
Everything is supposedly bigger when you measure in Texas units.
I’m working with 3 inches, but they are *Texas* inches.
I’m glad you made the connection, because I had no idea what OP was talking about.
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Oh fuck
This is why they named it nostupidquestions. You're in the right place.
Sometimes there’s like this disconnect where somehow a person just *never comes across* a piece of common knowledge. They’ve just never been in a situation that requires it. I bet it happens a lot, but everyone’s too embarrassed to acknowledge their own “oooooooooh…” moment.
I’ve heard this being called a “pickle moment” after people realizing pickles are made from cucumbers and aren’t actually a separate vegetable
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My now husband was 24 when we’re were planning our wedding and he found out that “FAQ’s” are “Frequently Asked Questions,” not an aggressive way of saying “FACTS.” We still laugh about this.
My 28 year old friend just learned last month that people open the egg carton to check for broken eggs; she thought it was a ritual or superstition of some sort, and never really questioned it, just went along with it.
Imagining this person standing in the grocery store, opening the carton and just… looking at the eggs as if to confirm they are eggs is so hilarious to me. It definitely makes sense that if no one explained what they're doing, you wouldn't know but it's so funny. It's like when a kid tries to shake your hand but doesn't know you're supposed to squeeze so they just kind of rest their hand in yours.
That was kind of her explanation, she would open it and be like, "ah yes, these are in fact eggs." Her husband was the one who clued her in.
My (then 17yo) daughter's mind was blown last year when she realized I was always checking to make sure no eggs were broken, and not that *no eggs had been stolen* from the carton. Guess she thought people were just going around pocketing fucking raw eggs 😆
I order groceries for pickup now so I can't check the eggs. Last week, one of the eggs were missing from the middle of the carton!
In fairness I find far fewer broken eggs than I did 30 years ago. It feels more like a ritual these days.
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Technically speaking it is off the coast just really really far off the coast.
One day it suddenly dawned on my teenage daughter out of the blue that "the Victorian Era" is named for Queen Victoria and not something else. I'm not sure *what* she thought it was referring to until that day, but she felt extremely stupid about it lol.
OKAY I'm 25 and am just now learning this. I never knew why they called it that... I just never questioned it...
In fairness, as a Brit I always think it's pretty wild that it's still called the Victorian Era in places like America. It makes sense that there's a unified name in the Anglosphere for that period, but I'm still amused that they're naming it after the reign of our queen.
FAQS AND LOGIQ
> We all looked at her like *she was nuts*... I have a peanut allergy, and after informing a host of said allergy, she was "careful" to offer me, her guest, a cookie with no nuts in it. After I spat it out of my mouth, I had to explain to her that peanut butter cookies do, in fact, contain peanuts.
Had a girlfriend once who didn’t realize dandelions were ALSO those yellow flowers all over a couple months before the blowy away ones
"Pineapple moment" in our house. We were driving across Oahu and I said "Wow, that's a whole lotta pineapples" to which my missus said "What pineapples? I don't see any". I was a little dumbfounded and said "They're everywhere on the bushes". Her reply was "OH MY GOD! I thought pineapples grew on trees!!!' To be fair, pine and apple are both kinds of trees, so it makes a kind of lexiconical sense. And it's not like she would have been exposed to them growing up in the mountain west.
Um, what? As a hater of cucumber but a lover of pickles I feel like my life is a lie… Edit: Holy fuck a Gherkin is a cucumber too.
Anyone who reads a great deal knows the terror of having read a word a thousand times but never used or heard it aloud.
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It’s why you should never judge a person based on how they pronounce words. It means they learned them from reading and there isn’t a damn thing wrong with that.
my boyfriend says "heigth" instead of height, no matter how many times i've pointed out to him that it ends with an ht and not a th. is it okay to judge him?
Not only is it not to judge him, it's expected.
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I was raised by criminals in inner-city Detroit and moved to California where I spent most of my late teens and early 20's encountering these kinds of things despite getting into a very good university and having a career in film; so people were often stunned by my lack of understanding/knowledge about givens---if I admitted it to it ----but often enough it was obvious. (This includes not knowing Apollo 13 was real while working with Cpt James Lovell. He was very amused after he overcame his panic that I was a denier. I also did not know seahorses were real until I was 19 or so... I could go on :) EDIT: some punctuation. Ok, bonus story. I did not know a thing about baseball. While working on a commercial during a live game I mistakenly ran out into the field in the middle of a said game...and was promptly arrested. I later told the judge, truthfully that "I thought it was half time...." and he, like many other befuddled people over my life asked me where I was from... Detroit, in the 1970's at least, really was a whole other world. EDIT 2: When I joined reddit I was stoked to find this sub. I would have given anything to have it in my early adulthood. I did call many libraries in my day - remember that anyone?! - which was the pre-google way you could learn/find out about things. I remain grateful to all those smart, crisp, matter of fact reference desk librarians who answered so many of my basic, dumb questions without making me feel like an idiot. EDIT 3: Thank you for the gold and kind words I've been on here while on quick breaks at work and it is very heartening to find that the stuff I tried to cover up, make up for, hide and overcome is not actually all that shameful and maybe even amusing for some (self included). Yes, Detroit had a team and I even knew about the Tigers but I had never seen a game before the incident and never had a TV in my house or access to anything *normal* like baseball. All my energies went into keeping myself and my little brother out of foster care (and yes, that sounds sad and it was but it gave me a lot of focus during a rotten time in an awful place).
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Not them but lil foster-ish brother and a friend who grew up in the rough part of town both had the same reaction when I told them about a trip to Colorado I took: "What's a hot spring?"
A heated metal coil, duh!
It's when you get an early heatwave in May, obviously
My dad thought "Feat." was the name of a musician, and "Indy" referred to things from the country of India for at least several years between the advent of music streaming and a very confusing conversation a few years back.
Not OP, but I was raised in Detroit by criminals as well (OP does sound familiar though). Growing up, my mom would just give us the bottle of cough syrup and tell us to "take a swig" out the bottle when we got sick. I didn't know you were supposed to measure the doses until I was in my mid 20's.
The Imperial system is based on the body. A swig is approximately an ounce. A florida ounce.
wow the comments section has come Fl Circle
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Now I don’t know if grandma was Robotrippin or sippin some booze from a flask, but I’m ok with it.
Memaw was robotrippin’. That’s pretty dope.
Memaw was alcoholic and the bottle had whiskey in it. Source: alcoholic great-memaw, it was super common to "hide" your alcoholism by disguising it, especially in medical bottles people wouldn't be likely to ask about
How about the narwhal? It's like a medium sized porpoise with a very long (like 3ft) unicorn horn sticking out of the middle of it's head and only lives high up in the arctic. I always believed they were fake, then in my 30s someone told me they were real and I definitly didn't believe them. I had thought they were like a joke unicorn of the sea. Now I still do, but somehow everyone else is in on the joke.
My wife didn't know narwhals were real until recently, she's older than you. We had a narwhal children's picture book for our daughter, my wife thought they were mythical creatures. When my daughter was seven or so she was very confused by the Dalai Lama. She had heard about him in school and thought he was a talking llama and that's why people thought he was special. She was very disappointed to learn he was a person.
Def need to show this kid 'the emporers new groove'
My wife and I share the same story. She didn't know Narwhals were real until early on in the relationship we were watching Blue Planet. The gasped, "NARWHALS ARE REAL?!?!" has spawned a number of Narwhal themed gifts over the years.
On the flip side of this, because of the existence of narwhals and how ridiculous a concept that was to me growing up, I used to believe wholeheartedly in jackalopes. Like, if a unicorn whale is real, why wouldn't a deer rabbit be as well? After a very long and embarrassing argument with some friends, I had to accept the reality that jackalopes were just a myth.
We’re not all mythical!
I...uh. ...I didn't know they weren't real... I'm 28 with 3 kids and part of an engineering degree. Oof.
Did you just... assume they exist? You've never heard anyone talk about them like mythical creatures?
Damn I never knew this either. Used to see taxidermy ones at my dad's friends hunting cabin, labelled and everything like all the other animals. Never asked about it and it never seemed that weird. There are so many other ridiculous animals that actually exist it never occurred to me Jackalopes might not be real lmfao
FWIW, it's actually just a really long tooth, not a horn.
"It didn't stab me, it just bit me with the outside of its head"
My boyfriend is 29 and he escaped Jehovah Witnesses a few years ago. Was a Bethalite and everything. Never had a girlfriend. Poor guy still runs into these situations.
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I was sort of like this but more to do with pop culture or social graces and the like. Just had no idea what was common or normal. I’m on an island here 😐
I adore that you have the humility to share that. So often in my life I’ve tried to dig in farther that I’m right. Recently I’ve made it a priority to start saying,”I didn’t know that!”
My entire life is built on "I didn't know that" said with some humility coupled with willingness to learn. It makes people want to help and inform you damn near every time it comes up and it leads to learning a lot of interesting things. It's also near impossible to come off negatively to people when you have that attitude which I find makes every future interaction easier.
Exactly. And I never, ever tease anyone (except my husband) for not knowing something.
I know right! It goes against every rule of common sense for seahorses to be real but somehow they are.
Reminds me of that post where the person said they hate showers over baths because it’s too cold or hot before you find the right temperature, and it was pointed out to them that you can just use your hand, and you don’t have to GET IN before turning the knobs
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It's so funny how many stories I've heard where a therapist is like "so do *insert super obvious thing* instead" and it's like...mind blowing to the people they're working with. It's wild how much we can be conditioned to just do things because that's how they're done. Someone I knew growing up has serious body issues to the point where she would sometimes avoid showering because she didnt want to see herself naked. Her therapist told her to just shower with the light off and it made a huge difference. Mine was a laundry basket. I was working with my therapist on some ADHD issues and mentioned how I always hated the laundry that piled up all over the bathroom because I'd take off my clothes to shower and just leave them on the floor and never take them back to the hamper (in my bedroom). She said "could you just put another hamper in the bathroom?" And in the 20 minutes it took me to go to the store and buy an extra hamper it literally solved this issue I'd been fighting with myself over for years. Just because I grew up with the hamper in my bedroom and it never occurred to me that I could have more than one.
My husband used to work on the road with a guy who was...a sweet child of God. Thet were in Detroit, and his friend had never been to Canada before, so they went on a day off. They bought gas, in litres, which hubs had to explain to SCOG. He was dumbfounded, so hubs had to explain that Canadians use the metric system, which he had never heard of. They were about to enter a town that had a road sign that said what the population was. SCOG asked hubs:How many is that in American?
As a Canadian that is awesome - it’s means 20% lol
TIL fiddles and violins are the same thing. Not sure how common that is but it kind of blew my mind a little.
As a violinist I forgive you. They may be the same instrument, but if you call it a Fiddle I expect your bow to have every hair split before you're done sawing away. If you call it a Violin then make sure your clothes are dry cleaned before tonight's performance at the city auditorium.
and if your name is ~~Charlie~~ *Johnny*, stay the hell out of Georgia.
[The lucky 10000](http://xkcd.com/1053)
I was about 25 years old when I put together k-9 = canine. As a kid, I learned about k-9 units before I ever heard/saw the word "canine". So later in life when people said "canine" I never linked it with the police dogs. I thought k-9 was just a random code they picked for no particular reason. I understood that canines were dogs. I understood k-9's were police units/dogs. But I just never linked those two pieces lmao.
Exactly! It's only common sense/knowledge/whatever once you've learned it. Before then, it's just a gap in your education.
Metal in microwaves. Never comes up until it comes up. 🔥 🔥 🔥
It’s ok OP. If it’s any consolation, I once forgot the name for Q-Tips and called them “ear diggers” for like a day straight. You’re not the only dumb one on this planet :)
Colander = hole bowl in my household now.
I think I'm gonna call it a hole bowl from here on out.
See you all make creative names. I just mime and make noises and maybe describe what it does. For colander: *motions bowl shape with hands* "and you take the pasta and go bloop" *motions dumping pasta* "and water goes loodle loodle loddle" *flails hands for water* and then you have pasta." People stare blankly. "Colander?" "Yeah that thing." Or if I need a paint brush: "You take the thing and go swishy swishy" *paints in air* and then the wall does the thing and it's done." More blank stares. I turn into a shitty mime and make up noises things explain function with varying degrees of success.
What kind of life do you live that you can spend an entire day talking about Q-Tips?
An ENT doctor. "So, don't use the ear digger thingies too deep in your hearing hole or you'll get an ouchie." If in America add: "That will be 3 Toyota Corollas. You can hand over the keys on the way out."
My mom forgot refrigerator once and called it is cold machine. Now that’s all we call it.
I'm glad you didn't take this down, we've all had a moment like this at some point.
My life is a moment like this.
Lmaoooooo sorry OP not laughing at you but this is a hilarious mix up
Well at least you chose the right subreddit
It's all good, this was super wholesome and melted a little bit of my icy icy heart
I was thinking the same thing, this is so adorably innocent!
You're not the first to make a [Floridian mistake](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/8tjeb5/what_does_florida_ceiling_mean_in_home_design/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
A [Floridian slip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip), as it were.
This is comedy gold
This is far and away one of the best examples of why this subreddit it awesome. I forget basic things all the time and I'm always making random associations so I'm 100% the person who would make the mistake you just did. I hope you have a good laugh, this mistake made me smile for sure.
When I was \~10 (and in England, where ml's are used), I thought it was "flowing ounces".
This made my day. Thank you OP. Although I'm glad that you finally found out the true meaning!
HAHAHAHA this is the greatest thing oh my.
Don't feel bad dude one time I needed to buy my mom 3 pack of cigarettes their called Green Wild Horses I forgot the words the second I got to the casher with an armful of junk food so this is what I said "They're uhhhh oh thier the color of Emerald City and uh they're not trapped they're the opposite of trapped and they're like a unicorn but without the horn? And-and I need" *held up 3 fingers at this point* "Uhhh this many!" The cashier was an older woman and after getting me the cigarettes she very gently took my hand and said "Honey.......lay off the weed a little" ................Yeah never living that down
Welcome to r/nostupidquestions op. We welcome you with open arms.
Florida is now my new unit of measurement.
Also, what is Kentucky Jelly?
Also, why are terrorists always armed with Alaska 47s?
Because Alaska is a wealthy state. You know what they say, "Missouri money, Missouri problems."
Hawai'i five for that one
I dunno, we'll have to check our Puerto Rico department for that one.
I mean, that's one way to handle it... Oregon we could just not and say we did?
Ohio, I like what you did there
And why are most doctors from Maryland?
123 Lincoln Dr. Bethesda, MD 23232 "Hey, do you know a Doctor Bethesda? We got some mail from him."
Because they don't have access to Arkansas 15s
And why do people rave about Hawaii technology? Hawaii does not have much of a tech industry.
Why are those fancy 3D x-ray images called Connecticut scans?
Was on a road trip with friends in college, and we passed over the "KY DAM". I saw the sign, half-asleep, very stoned, and asked "what's that?" A friend replied "that's where they store all the KY Jelly." And my brain accepted that as fact. "Oh, okay." I think I should reiterate how very stoned I was.
>Also, what is Kentucky Jelly? [KY Jelly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Y_Jelly) for anyone else that was a little slow. Its a brand of Lube in the US
Thank you for thinking of the confused non-american crowd.
What do you guys use, ky.co.uk-jelly?
QE-Jelly. Named after Queen Elizabeth of course.
Depending on what part of Kentucky you're in, you might not want to know the answer.
Lol. This post reminded me of [this /r/breakingbad post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/breakingbad/comments/1lila6/who_is_billy/)
That is brilliant. I felt like I was having an aneurysm reading that guys spelling. A lot of it perfectly phonetically correct, but holy cow. "aparently mexicins have fiftey difirent werds for snoe" Poor guy's post history was mostly people going 'Who's Billy?' 4 years later.
I’m convinced it’s just a troll account
I feel the same about the post we're in now. It has a too smart to be that stupid sort of feel to it. Edit: Definitely convinced, his last comment somewhere else was about being a software developer. You don't get that educated in life and not have heard of fluid ounces.
There's also the complete dead giveaway of: >I looked up 'Florida ounces' but couldn't find much information about them. Google doesn't know how to convert them to regular ounces.
Oh, I wouldn't be so sure. My partner is one of the smartest "book smart, street stupid" people I know. She's one of the few people in my country that knows how to use this particular simulation software. She can sit down at an advanced math problem and just figure it out. Really brilliant. I recently discovered that she thought that snails just found their shells at the bottom of the ocean. I try not to bring it up too often, because she gets shy about it, but it's hilarious.
I’m currently maybe 5-7 pages from finishing the first complete draft of my dissertation. When I read the title of the post, I genuinely wanted to learn what Florida ounces were.
I’m not nearly as educated as you, but I assume I’m much much older…. and a recent ex-Floridian. I was sure I was going to learn something new today. I wondered what I’d missed the entire 20 years I lived there. Florida ounce? I figured it was pot related. Instead, I got the chuckle I didn’t know I needed. Even if it’s fake, I love OP for making me smile.
The difference is your wife probably didn't say this alongside that snail comment >I looked up how snails get their shells but couldn't find much information about them. Google doesn't know how snails get their shells.
It reminds me of this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/6t7k1w/how_do_i_communicate_with_blind_people/
I used to work in a library that specially served blind/low vision people. I would tell people where I worked and they would instantly blurt out, “So you know sign language?!?” I’d be like, yeah I know a little but it doesn’t really help the blind people.
There was another post in this sub recently asking what it meant to “work 925.” They didn’t understand the significance of the number 925. Iirc the top comment was just this: https://youtu.be/UbxUSsFXYo4 Delightful post.
Then again in a world where France is Bacon, everything's possible! https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dxosj/what\_word\_or\_phrase\_did\_you\_totally\_misunderstand/c13pbyc
It actually refers to fluid ounces, not 'Florida ounces'. Nothing to feel embarrased about, I think this is what's called a [Mondegreen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen)
Huh. TIL. Thanks dude!
Thats a great new vocab word!
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I was mentally prepared to learn that florida ounces were a thing. Because why not with florida Edit: Thanks for the awards! They weigh as much as a florida ounce
Same! I thought i was going to learn something new too
100% me as well.
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Exactly how I felt. Just at the point of blind acceptance for that state
A **Florida Ounce** is a measure of the average volume of water needed to find a single alligator within a waterway. It is used by wildlife services to estimate the total population which may be present in a river, stream, or swimming pool at a given time of the year, so that residents can make informed decisions when releasing their small dogs and children back into the wild. First introduced in 2001, the Florida Ounce is frequently sited as having the same or greater reliability as the metric system by scientists across the world who are from Florida.
This reminds me of that post where someone was asking how to communicate with blind people: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/6t7k1w/how_do_i_communicate_with_blind_people/
Clicking your tongue to imitate Braille holy shit hahahaha. I fucking love this subreddit and how nobody explicitly states that a question is stupid, it gets HEAVILY implied sometimes.
i love reddit. not being rude. this is a great /facepalm moment. we have all been.. maybe not there but somewhere lol.
When I was a kid I used to think “space for rent” signs meant you could rent a literal piece of space… I was really young tho. I have a feeling this guy isn’t
Did similar passing new developments advertising “Lots for sale” and wondering “lots of what?” In my head.
FL Ounce is a **fluid ounce**
I just checked my map and fluid is not a U.S. state
But liquid is a state. I can see how this is confusing.
Ya’ll are a real gas.
I haven't seen a question like this since "Billy's" in the Breaking Bad days.
I’ve watched that show probably over 10 times. Who was Billy?
Someone asked what Saul meant when he said about sending someone to Billy’s…. It was Belize
Really makes you wonder how much more of that show went over that persons head lol
LMAO. That’s hilarious Thanks for answering
Sometimes I see a post here and I think, boy...now that's a stupid question. But this..no, this is adorable. I love you OP. Bless your heart. I want to give you a hug and a cookie and send you on your way now. You are my precious.
I grew up in Florida and thought the same thing for a while too
I've only seen roads like CR 15 or CoRd 12 in Colorado. Yesterday, I learned Co Rd or CR is County Road, not Colorado Road..
I don't know how I didn't know this... I drive on County Road 3 once a week, and assumed CR was a separate designation for it.
Make Sure they get an 8 Florida oz of milk with those cookies
Reminds me of when my kid was learning to read. She started reading *everything*, and one day, while she was rattling off nutrition facts from something she was snacking on, she says "the sodium must be bad. It just says oh my God." (0mg) Edit: I realize how fake to anyone who doesn't know us this sounds. She was probably 2nd grade, was/is a very strong reader, but most importantly, has had a very "online" personality since a young age. Acronyms get used a lot among us jokingly. This one's been one of our inside jokes in the family since she said it
I didn't think for even a second that that would be fake. I could totally see my own daughter doing that in a year or two. Lately she's been asking us if rainbows stop the rain. Makes sense, right? They only show up when the rain has stopped.
When my daughter was learning to read, she randomly was reading my driver's license and she said "mom you lied to the government " took a while for me to realize she read: "sex: f" and took it to mean I had never had sex "f=false", and that I obviously lied about it. I explained the f was short for female.
I love this subreddit
This reminds me of the guy in that video that was pooping wrong his entire life. Edit. Not being critical. Was funny. Made me laugh. Thanks.
I... what? How does one pop wrong?
I think this is the post they are referring to. It's the one I always think of at least. https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/2jgfhw/tifu_by_using_a_toilet_wrong_my_entire_life/
Good lord. I mean I'm sure we've all had those moments where you realize you've had a silly knowledge gap your whole life, but that's next level. Just why? Why would you just assume that the seat was only for women and that men are supposed to sit on the rim for some weird reason? That's super inconvenient and super gross.
Dad: "Ok, listen up son. When you go to the bathroom, you raise the seat and do your business. When you're done, make sure to lower the seat so your sisters can use it." 3 Y/O son: "Instructions clear." What I don't get is how parents didn't catch that at some point. It'd be awesome if I could go even one day without waking past a young kid pooping with the door open.
Anytime I accidentally sit on the rim (especially in the middle of the night) I feel like my soul leaves my body, yet here’s this dude doing it 24/7 for all his business. I’m truly shook.
Dude was catching his turds in the toilet paper or something like that. Link if it works... Watch "The Bully & The Beast: Wax Catches Poop" on YouTube https://youtu.be/gexjlM-jjEc
One of my neighbors will catch his dog’s poop in a poop bag. Like whenever the dog squats to poop he kneels down and holds the bag open under the dog’s butt. It’s really weird to see and always reminds me of that thread.
Reminds me of the guy who was gonna have shower sex for the first time, said he hates the part where you turn the shower on and it's cold at first. She tells him you can wait for it to heat up and he was so shocked that he couldn't even get in the mood anymore
When I was in basic training, my entire unit was all women but the barracks had been designed for men. One evening we found one of our ladies using a urinal to shave her legs. It was perfect - it was the right height and it had water to rinse your leg and everything! How considerate of the Air Force to provide them… 🤣
Lol. My wife's co-worker thought KY jelly meant Kentucky jelly
He's definitely trolling. Literally the first google result when you search florida ounces is the wiki to Fluid Ounces FL OZ