When you're a child you often think of adults as having all the answers. However, as you age you realize age is just a number - and stupid people grow up too!
Here is a list of 33 things someone never thought they'd have to explain to an adult.
“Elbs”
That “lbs” is pronounced “pounds” and not “elbs”.
“But….it’s red.”
In 6th grade we had a substitute teacher talking to us about the solar system.
Teacher: Is Mars hotter or colder than Earth?
Me: Colder
Teacher: No, it is actually hotter
Me: No it’s not, it’s further from the sun. It is definitely colder.
Teacher: But….it’s red.
The Magic of Faxing
That when you fax something, the paper doesn’t actually go anywhere. They thought it sends the paper, and not a copy of it.
“Didn’t look like me.”
A waiter was confused once when the name on my credit card “didn’t look like me.”
I’m Asian, my name is not. I was adopted and I had to explain adoption, why adoption is a good thing, and that it’s not, as he put it, “some guy raising another dude’s kid.”
Symmetry
Once when I was 10, I had to explain to a 30 year old teacher that a circle was infinitely symmetrical. i.e. it had an infinite amount of lines of symmetry.
He was convinced it had 360…
I started drawing lines of symmetry between the degree lines…
Cubed Ice
My friend had lived a pretty cozy life in a suburban mansion up until he rented a small NYC apartment with me. He had NO idea how to use an ice cube tray, and believed that you had to just crack it in half to get the ice out. Thankfully we only lost one, but watching him shoot ice all over the place in utter confusion will always be one of the funniest things I’ve seen of late.
A Finite Difference
Girls do not menstruate and urinate from the same place.
I was required to take sex ed in college (LOL North Carolina school system) and there were a ton of girls that didn’t know this. All of the out of state students had to be told to stop laughing.
Drycleaner
During the first few weeks of college, I did my laundry, and was told by one of my roommates that she needs help because she didn’t know how to do hers. I went down to help her, and I guess other people found out, because pretty soon I had an audience of like 20 college freshmen in the laundry room, teaching them, step by step, how to wash their clothes. I swear, I thought everyone knew how to operate a washing machine by the time they turned 10.
Sword Battle
My brother had a history teacher who sent him to the Principal’s office for arguing with her that they had guns in the Civil War. She was convinced that they still used swords only, and got really mad when this 8th grader disagreed.
He had no idea.
Had to explain to a twenty-five-year-old what a clitoris was. He had no idea.
“After Dinosaurs”
My good friend, now an Ensign at flight school in Pensacola, thought the A.D. after a year (like 2017 A.D.) stood for “After Dinosaurs” until he was 21 years old.
A nice Italian-sounding name.
My friend had to tell me what the word fellatio meant at the tender age of 25.
Before this conversation I just thought it was a nice Italian-sounding name.
Math Skills
In the Army I spent an hour trying to convince my battle buddy that 1/4 and a quarter were the same thing.
Live Albums
Why there are no ‘live recordings’ of Mozart from when he was still alive.
Not even joking
Not even joking:
That you can breathe through your mouth. Not even that they just never realized they did, but that in all their memory they never breathed through their mouth before. Unfathomable.
Magic of Childbirth
I’m pregnant and due in October, so I was shopping for baby clothes with my mother. She kept holding up light, sleeveless onesies and outfits in a size 12 months. I kept telling her it would be too cold for the baby to wear those kind of outfits when she’s 12 months.
My mom asked how I knew. I looked at her, dumbfounded, and explained that 12 months from October 2013 is October 2014 and it gets mighty cold in October in these parts. She looked amazed that I was able to figure out what 12 months from a certain date was, as if I were some kind of wizard.
A-level maths
I had to try and explain to my A-level maths teacher that a square is a type of rectangle, just one where all sides happen to be equal. She refused to accept she was wrong for about 20 mins until head of department came in for a book and ended up agreeing with me.
But how about Winnie
Bears don’t make honey…
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Independent Nation
That Canada was its own, separate country and not part of the United States.
Income Tax.
Income tax. Making more money will never result in you having less money after taxes, barring very unusual circumstances which are not related to taxes. It’s all about proportions, people.
Sheltered
Just recently, I had to explain to a friend that the September 11 attacks were actually real. He grew up in a very sheltering household, so his parents never told him what 9/11 was. When he first heard about 2 planes being crashed into a building, he though that someone had made it up. After showing him footage and news reports from the attacks, he was forced to conclude that it actually happened.
Pluto
I had a conversation with my cousin about Pluto:
Me: “I remember when we were kids, it was considered a planet.”
Him: “Yeah it’s wild they found out it was actually a star.”
Me: “W-what, no, they just reclassified it as a dwarf-planet.”
Him: “No, that was the whole thing, they realized it wasn’t a planet at all, but in fact a sun.”
Don’t read, just do
Had a patient tell me I should try a medication before I’ve prescribed it. I had to explain that taking meds I don’t need could be detrimental to my health and that there are thousands of meds I’d have to “try”. He asked how I knew what the meds did and I said we learned in pharmacy class. He then told me a good practitioner doesn’t learn from reading, they learn by doing, and I’d never be good at my job.
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Fabric Store
I work at a fabric store. I frequently have to tell adults that a yard is 3 feet, which means that there are 36 inches to a yard. I’ve also had to explain basic fractions, like that 1/3 is bigger than 1/4.
Also, that there is not a standard size for windows, so telling me you want to make curtains that are “window-sized” doesn’t really help me figure out how much fabric you need.
Spork
My roommate thought he invented the spork, both the word and the design. He was devastated when I brought him to the store and showed him a whole box full of them.
Tissue?
How to blow your nose. My wife (gf at the time) kept rubbing her nose with a tissue when she had a cold so much that her tissues would be bloody. She thought that was normal.
In her defence her mom has no parenting skills and I’m shocked her kids survived.
Like Humans Do
That only female cows produce milk, and they only produce milk after giving birth.
New Languages
‘Why did those people keep inventing new languages? They only made communication much more complicated.’ — Yesterday, I had to explain to my mother that great majority of the languages was not invented by one single individual.
Quarterly reviews
A friend of mine is a teacher and was being interviewed by the principal during quarterly reviews. Typically they just ask how things are going, which classes they’d like to teach/stop teaching, whether the students are learning the curriculum. The principal informs her that a large number of students are failing her classes – “20% in one class and 30% in another and 10% in another”
She explains that these numbers are quite normal since a lot of students just don’t show up to class – much less school – and that there’s nothing she can do about that. The principal counters with “No, you don’t understand, you’re failing 60% of your students! This means you need to adjust your teaching methods”
It took her a few seconds to comprehend what the principal had done (yes, he added percentages). She didn’t want to embarrass him, so she just agreed and said “yes, I’ll see what we can do about this” and then told one of the district managers. I really wish she had explained it to him.
Makes me wonder what would happens when the percentages are even higher “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to let you go. You’re apparently failing 130% of your students.”
Toy Store
I worked in a toy store that had a giant children’s map hanging on the wall, and one day a woman and her friend were arguing:
Lady 1: Excuse me, Miss, do you know what’s the capital of Africa?
Me: I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
Lady 2: The capital city of Africa, it’s Egypt right?
Lady 1: No, it’s Kenya.
Me: I think you’re both actually confused. Egypt and Kenya are their own countries. Africa doesn’t have one single capital, each country has its own.
Lady 1: No, no, no, you don’t understand! Like, Washington for the US or Ottawa for Canada.
Me: Canada and the US are their own countries. Africa is not a country. Africa is made of many countries.
Lady 1 & Lady 2: blank stares
Me: Africa is a continent, like Europe. You know how Europe has different countries, like France or Spain? Ladies nod And you know that Paris is the capital city of France? Nods And Rome is the capital city of Italy? Nod And that Europe – the continent – doesn’t have one single capital city, but lots of them? One for each country in the continent? Nods Africa is like that. Africa the continent is made of many different countries, each country in Africa the continent has it’s own capital city. Egypt and Kenya are African countries, and each one of them has their own capital city – Cairo is Egypt’s capital, and Kenya’s is Nairobi. There are lots of different capital cities in Africa the continent, Africa itself has no one single capital as it is not a country.
Lady 1 & 2: Ohhhhhhhhhhh.
We are literally standing in front of a world map. These women are in their 40’s. They had no idea that Africa was not a single country. Again. We are standing in front of a world map.
100th president
My wife is working as a teacher’s assistant in an elementary school, and the other day she had to correct the teacher by telling the kids that no, Barack Obama is not the 100th president of the United States of America. Not even close.
Oh and she’s also had to correct her teacher’s assertion that “There are 9 planets– although some people say that Pluto isn’t a planet, that it’s a star.
God has us covered
I know a very religious couple who had to call their friend on their wedding night and asked him to explain how to consummate their marriage. Because of their religion, nobody had ever explained how the process worked.
Apparently they just got naked and laid next to each other holding hands, and waited for “God to make something special happen.”
About 30 minutes later, they called this guy for help.
Quite the swimmer
I got to explain to a grown man that it is perfectly safe for a pregnant woman to go swimming, and the baby will not drown.