I'm sure it's happened to you. Someone says, "Providence is the capital of Rhode Island." And then you go, "Well actually, it's Carson City. I thought everyone _knew that." And then they pull out their phone and Google it, and you have to eat a cement mixer full of humble pie. _
These Redditors share the stories of the worst corrections they've ever seen. Let us know yours in the comments.
Helicopter parents.
We were at the beach and my wife was putting sunscreen on our toddler. A woman sitting close to us rolled her eyes and said to my wife, “That boy doesn’t need sunscreen. Helicopter parents raise soft kids. Ridiculous.”
We are pretty far from overprotective parents, so it caught us off-guard for sure. Apparently, you can’t raise a tough kid unless you give them the chance to develop skin cancer.
Situational awareness.
My friend and I were at the zoo, looking at the penguins. I said, “It’s crazy that there are penguins from South Africa.” My friend said, “You’re wrong. There aren’t any penguins in Africa because it’s way too hot.”
I replied that the only reason I mentioned it was because we were standing in an exhibit that was literally labeled “African Penguins.”
The shape of things.
About one year into our marriage we bought a dining table and chairs. It was our first piece of ‘real’ furniture.
My wife was so happy that she posted pics on Facebook and wanted her mom to take a look. Her mom called us up and commented that it was a nice oval-shaped table.
My wife became upset. “You didn’t look,” she said.
“Yes, I did!”
“It’s not oval, it’s rectangular.”
“No, it’s an oval, I looked.”
My wife finally gets her mom to go look again, and her mom comes out with this gem: “Well, that’s what I call it!”
“You’re telling me that you call rectangles ovals?”
This has become a running gag for us. Whenever we lose an argument we always end it with, “Well, that’s what I call it!”
I’m your biography.
I was in a class once, and my classmate said that his last name was Osburne. But some other guy kept arguing, “I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced Osbourne.” My classmate became enraged and yelled out, “I’m pretty sure I know how to say my last name!”
Meese’s pieces.
I said, “It’s funny that ‘geese’ is the plural form of ‘goose’ but the plural form of moose is not meese.” This guy said, “Uh, actually, the plural form of moose is meese. You didn’t know that?”
He wasn’t being sarcastic. I said, “No, it’s not.” But he just kept nodding his head with a smug smile on his face.
I looked it up and proved him wrong.
I looked it up and proved him wrong.
Past imperfect.
My 9th grade English teacher had us do an exercise on homonyms. Here was one of the sentences where we had to pick the correct word to use: “Jack and Jill walked __ (passed or past) the gas station.”
Naturally, I put past, only to be marked wrong. I inquired about it, and my teacher said, “No, Jeff. That’s like the past, present, and future.”
How this moron became an English teacher I have no idea.
No business bureau.
I was a stay-at-home dad for my two daughters. My youngest was a toddler at the time. I had a lady tell me that I had no business bathing my children because I was male and they were female.
I welcomed her to the 21st century and told her to mind her own [expletive] business.
Delusions of geography.
My mum had mental health issues and would express and insist on bizarre ‘truths’ when she was unwell.
My boyfriend at the time came over once. He said that his parents were going to Hawaii. I said that I always wanted to visit an island in the Pacific. My mum asked if I was stupid. “Hawaii is in AFRICA,” she said (she sounded the letters out extra long for emphasis).
I just said I must have forgotten that and did my best not to laugh. My boyfriend became indignant and despite my frantically waving ‘no’ proceeded to correct her and say that I was right. That didn’t go over very well.
I spent the next half hour, in private, trying to explain to him what delusions are.
Fake news.
I had a really self-assured science teacher once. Here are some highlights:
She told us Harambe was shot for trying to eat a child.
She told us gorillas are carnivores. When asked why she said that ‘no animal that big can survive off of plants’. Lady, you taught about dinosaurs!
She told us that people in Florida don’t have basements. My aunt actually lived in Florida at the time and had a basement.
She told us that the school handbook prevented us from having our phones not shut all the way down. It said no such thing.
A student asked how fast the Earth revolved. The teacher said flatly, “One year.” The student rephrased his question, realizing what he was asking and what the teacher thought he had asked was different. He asked at how many miles per hour the earth spun on its axis. “One year!” barked the teacher. Three or four different people tried to explain the question, and one got sent to the hall.
This lady was in her mid forties and was adamant that we were not allowed to fact-check her. A student got detention for trying to do so.
Our lady of assumptions.
Someone corrected me on my gender once during a phone call.
I have a gender neutral name, so people screw it up online all the time
“Could I speak to [name], please?”
“This is she.”
“No, [name] is a man.”
I gave him a moment of silence to sort himself out while I wheezed, trying to hold back laughter.
Shoop, there it is.
I was the person who needed correcting. In grade 2, I explained to my entire class, as pretentiously as a 7-year-old could, that the singular of sheep is shoop. My logic was that the singular of ‘geese’ is ‘goose’ and that the rule applied to sheep too. I still remember the other kids looking at me like I had two heads.
I have Conversate shoes.
I was arguing with my ex, and I told her that I’m allowed to converse with anyone I’d like. She stopped the argument to tell me that the word is ‘conversate’ not converse.
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Read my ‘lips.
In kindergarten, we did an activity for Mother’s Day to color some pre-printed cards with three tulips on them. The teacher told us to color them red, yellow and orange. 6-year-old me colored one purple because I didn’t like orange. My teacher told me I was wrong, and to redo it because “purple tulips don’t exist.”
I told my mom when I got home. She cut a purple tulip out of our garden and I took it to class the next day to prove my teacher wrong.
Judge not lest ye be judged.
I ran into our local vet and her very fundamentalist younger sister. As the vet and I talked, her sister looked out into the store parking lot and saw an older man staggering to his truck.
Little sister said, very primly, “There but for the grace of God go I.” I said, “Actually, he is a very well-respected man.”
She replied, “He is obviously drunk before noon.”
“No,” I said, “He has MS. He’s my father and your sister’s pastor.”
Big sister just looked embarrassed.
The dye is cast.
I bought curtains with my girlfriend. We later decided we wanted to do other windows the same so we went back.
“I don’t think these are the same color,” I said.
“Of course they are!” she replied. And then later, in front of friends, she made fun of me because men don’t get colors, see? They all laughed at me.
Later we looked at them side by side. Different dye lots. Whoops
But hey, what do I know?
In eighth-grade history class, I was talking about shtetls and my teacher corrected me and said that the villages Jews lived in were called pogroms. I told her that pogroms were actually the violent raids taken against Jews.
She went on to say that I was wrong. How dare I talk back to her? I’m the student and she’s the teacher and she is therefore correct, and what could possibly have moved me to believe I could be right?
I answered that maybe it’s because I’m a Yiddish-speaking Jew.
Scared straight.
In 9th grade, I had a health teacher who was talking about the dangers of smoking. Very useful topic if you ask me. However, he stated that, “More people die in one year from smoking than in all the wars ever combined.” Several students tried arguing with him, but he wasn’t having any of it. He said all sorts of stupid stuff, in retrospect. I wonder what percent of his lessons were just made up.
Alt-Dad.
“Well, actually the slaves didn’t have it all that bad. The plantation owners took pretty good care of them because they paid good money for them.” My father-in-law said that.
Both my husband and I were speechless. I kind of still am.
Quit being a BABY!
A few weeks ago, I was stung by a bee in a theme park and the stinger wouldn’t come out. I started getting a really bad rash from the venom, and the first aid lady laughed at me and said it wasn’t coming from the bee sting because “bees don’t have venom!” She refused to give me any tweezers to help get the stinger out because I was “acting like a baby.”
Flatlining.
My husband and I were having a party at our house. I am a historian and have tons of old and unique things from around the world. A woman was looking at my collection of maps.
I have a copy of the first map of the world and she asked why the edge was wavy.
I told her the mapmaker knew that the Earth was round and decided to make the edge wavy for accuracy.
“But the Earth is flat,” said the lady.
We are not friends anymore.
Kicking it.
I was playing a pick-up soccer match, and I said something about scoring a goal directly from a corner kick.
This guy immediately corrects me and says that goals directly from a corner don’t count. He was absolutely adamant, and talked about how he’s played the sport his whole life, and that it doesn’t count at any level of the game.
He’s completely wrong.
You are not allowed to score directly from a throw-in (someone else has to touch the ball after the guy throws the ball back into play). But you are able to score directly from a corner kick or a goal kick, without anyone else touching it.
Let me tell you about where you’re from.
My girlfriend, who is from Singapore, was at Universal Studios Orlando. At the park gate, the guy who was scanning tickets asked her where she was from. After she told the guy she was from Singapore, he said, “Singapore’s in China, isn’t it?”
She said no, it’s its own country. But the guy at the gate kept insisting that he knew more about her home country than she did. At the end she gave up, and the guy said to her, “Yeah, well, China runs everything down there anyway.” Great customer service.
Just keep swimming.
Me: I prefer vacations in more mountainous areas than tropical since I’m pretty scared of the ocean. Sharks especially
My sister: Just go somewhere where sharks don’t go, like Hawaii. Duh.
Plurality.
I had a teacher once ‘correct’ my spelling of wolves (plural noun) to wolfs. This was an English teacher, and also the editor of the school paper, for which I was writing. She was the regular English teacher, while I was in AP, so I wasn’t familiar enough with her to realize that she was a blithering idiot. She also preferred to spell the plural of ‘elf’ as ‘elfs’ rather than ‘elves’.
Can confirm.
I was my little sister’s sponsor at her confirmation. I was 18, and she was 14. The woman sitting next to me got all nasty because I was nodding off. She said I should be ashamed and that I was being disrespectful.
What she didn’t know was that I had an end-stage liver failure and a hepatic encephalopathy. Plus I was on a lot of pain meds. Afterwards, I told my mom about it (sponsors were seated separately from parents) and she was furious.
She cornered the woman in the bathroom and just reamed her out. The lady skulked out very quickly after that.
I’m glad to say that a year later I got my transplant and I’m now healthy.
Man on the moon.
My ninth grade science teacher told me there was no gravity on the moon.
When I explained that everything with mass has a gravitational pull and that the moon does have gravity, it’s just less than earth because it has less mass than earth – her response was, “No, that doesn’t sound right. Otherwise, things would be sticking on to me.”
Facts are facts, people!
My mother-in-law is convinced that The Hobbit is a two-book series. I tried to disabuse her of this notion, including by showing her Wikipedia and copies of the book available on Amazon. She wouldn’t have it. Eventually the argument became heated and we had to “agree to disagree.”
I still bring it up sometimes to my wife because it bugs her.
So arrogant.
This happened two months ago. We were talking about planets in school, and my teacher said the nearest terrestrial planet is a thousand lightyears away from us, and the rain there is molten glass.
I said she was wrong because Mars is a terrestrial planet. She looked me dead in the eyes and said, “Oh, so you know more than the scientists.” I said, “Um, no. I’m reading a lot about planets in my free time.” Then she said that she reads scientific articles and that she is more educated about the topic than I will ever be.
Where did you come from? Where did you go?
I was at work, and I started absently singing the song ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’ to myself when an older coworker in her 40’s chimed in. “Honey, don’t embarrass yourself. You’re singing the words all wrong.”
I was confused and asked her to clarify. At this point, several other coworkers stopped what they were doing to pay attention. “‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’ doesn’t even make sense. It’s actually called ‘Cutting My Dough.’ I thought this was a big joke. But she was deadly serious. “Oh honey,” she said, “at least you’re pretty. Trust me, I’ve been around a lot longer than you, and I’m quite familiar with the song.”
Reserve judgement.
I made a comment during a middle school History class that I was part Native American on my mom’s side. My teacher proceeded to rant about people who gloat over being .0000001% percent Iroquois and how they’re terrible people who only want Native recognition because it’s cool.
He tried for at least twenty minutes to explain how I was wrong for using the plight of native Americans “for my own superficial gain.” I tried to explain that my grandmother grew up on a reservation in New Mexico before she moved East and met my grandfather and that I still have family there. He kept referencing my light skin tone and reddish hair but ignored me when I explained that my grandfather was Irish. His face priceless the next day when my mom showed up to tear him to bits verbally.
Less is Moore.
A dude at a party once told me that the Mary Tyler Moore in the Mary Tyler Moore show was a different Mary Tyler Moore than the actor who played Laura Petri on the Dick Van Dyke show. I told him he was wrong, and he bet me $20 that he wasn’t. I asked, “are you SURE you really want to make this bet?” He insisted. Then we checked IMDB. Of course, he was wrong, but he refused to pay up.
Anonymous
Kids having kids.
I was having dinner with a couple of friends. A gorgeous (very) pregnant lady walked by, just glowing. I was like, “Oh wow. Pregnant or not, I’d still love to, well, y’know…”
One of my friends said, “Oh, so you can get her pregnant again? You’re sick.”
We were like… “what are you talking about? That can’t happen.”
He said, “Dude, you can’t have sex with a pregnant woman. She’d get pregnant again, and then it’d take her even longer to have the babies. Or you risk getting the baby pregnant if it’s a girl.”
He was dead serious.
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Answers have been edited for clarity.