I thought that there was a picture of a caboose on the back of the penny. It wasn’t until someone mentioned that you could actually see Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the penny that I realized my ignorance. I was older than I care to admit. :)

Wal-Mart is evil!

Great list, Sara. I’ve actually used a variation of this as an ice breaker for Bible studies: “What’s something stupid that you used to believe, but don’t anymore?” I think “word pronunciations/meanings” are almost a different category from “how the world works” or “everything else.” Here are 2 stupid things I used to believe concerning how the world works:

1. I used to think that the horizon–i.e., the furthest point you could see (in whatever direction you happened to think was west) from where you happened to be standing–was Colorado. This was perfectly logical to me. Colorado was the furthest place I’d ever been, and it was where we took our vacations every summer to visit family. I got into an argument with my sister about it once. She was pretty mad, probably because I was so sure I was right. We argued about it for a few minutes until she asked my mom, who was right there, “Mom, tell him that that’s not Colorado.” My mom responded: “If he wants to think it’s Colorado, let him think it’s Colorado.” That got her even madder, especially when I looked at her with all the smug, prideful satisfaction that an 8 year old can muster and said, “Seeeeee?!” (As in “See? I told you so!")

2. I used to think that you could have whatever you wanted on your licence plate, meaning no word or letter limit, and you could chose whatever font you wanted (this was before anyone knew what a font was). I remember telling my mom, “When I grow up, my licence plate will say…” Then I rambled for about 3 minutes reciting the message, and closed with, “And it will all be in really spooky letters, all squiggly like they have at haunted houses.” Her response? “That sounds pretty neat.” Why did my mom let me be so stupid! Maybe she didn’t want to stifle me. I’m just glad I eventually figured it out on my own, and not from telling my friends about it at the lunch table or something.

BONUS:
2 STUPID THINGS MY BROTHER USED TO THINK (is this ethical? Let’s say… sure.)
1. That MTV and Hit Radio KHRT 103.3 in St. Louis played the same songs at the same time. He, he, he. I remember watching TV and my brother running in saying, “Turn it on MTV! Turn it on MTV! ‘Eat It’ is on!” Even as I was switching it, I was very confused and skeptical, asking him, “How do you know?” You can probably figure out the rest of this humorous exchange.

2. The Kamala, the Ugandan Giant, was a girl. Only a couple of you will think this is funny, but Kamala was a professional wrestler, supposedly from Uganda. Since presumably he was straight off the boat (before every match!) he always still wore typical Ugandan village garb, which is apparently a cute little skirt/loin cloth with jungle-themed print on it. He was also a large individual, carrying with him what are commonly referred to in certain circles as “man boobs.” I guess that was enough for my brother to draw his own conclusions about the gender of this 300 pound giant.

I’ve got a few word meaning/pronunciation issues, too. The one that comes to mind is the phrase “Throw caution to the wind.” I used to think it was “Throw caush into the wind.” I had no idea was “caush” was, so I never used to phrase, even though I knew what it meant. I think it wasn’t until college that I figured this one out.

-Rob

P.S.–So Beth West, why didn’t you just assume that Lincoln was riding in a caboose? Seems like something he’d do.

I am looking at a penny right now, and I can kind of see the caboose. I suppose it looks more like a caboose than, say, an engine car. It might one of those “Once you’ve seen it as the Lincoln memorial, you’ll always see it as the Lincoln memorial” things. Maybe the steps instead of wheels is what makes it hard for me.

I did some research since my last post, and apparently, if you record “e plurbus unum” on a record and play it backwards, it says, “This is a caboose.” Conspiracy?

-Rob

See? Rob should have a blog. Email me, Rob, I’ll hook you up. You know you want to.

Sara-I agree with the Hastings jingle…except I got called out on it when I was singing it very loudly in the Kirksville Hastings parking lot by some 13 year old girls from K-life. Not many things that are more humbling in life than being mocked by girls in sparkles…

I also used to screw up the words to the fabulous Mr. Mister song “Kyrie"…
Me(singing badly, but confidently): Carry a LAZER down the road that I must travel, carry a LAZER through the darkness of the night!

Real lyrics:Kyrie elesion down this road that I must travel. Kyrie elesion through the darkness of the night.

I guess you take the girl out of the Ozarks, but you can’t take Ozark out of…you know the rest. (Plus, it makes SENSE that you would WANT to have a lazer in the darkness of the night).

Culture, meet Kristin. Kristin meet culture.

Yeah–I have way too many of these…
If you get into song lyrics, that’s a whole can of worms that could get pretty intense. My sisters and I used to think “Smooth Operator” was “Oom-boppa-lay-ba-a” and would sing it at the top of our lungs whenever it came on the radio. I think I learned that one in high school. Even worse, though, is up until a VH1 top something countdown THIS WINTER I thought “Little Red Corvette” was “Living Co-ed.” Yeah. I could go on and on.

But for “how the world works” things–
For some reason I always thought (without thinking about it very carefully of course) that dishes got cleaner in the dishwasher when they were loaded symmetrically. I was home on a break from college loading the dishwasher after a family meal, glass on the top right, glass on the top left, plastic cup on the top right, plastic cup on the top left, etc., when my sister said, “why do you load the dishwasher like that?” and at the same time my mom exasperatedly answered for me, “she just likes to do it that way,” I started to say, “it cleans them better this way,” when I realized the sheer stupidity of that thought.

My parents used to make us tithe from our allowances and I remember thinking hard about it and going to my mom and saying, “Mom, it doesn’t really make sense for me to have to tithe, because didn’t Dad already tithe this money? And for that matter, Dad shouldn’t have to tithe because didn’t Sundstrand (the company he worked for) already tithe that money? And for that matter, Sundstrand shouldn’t have to tithe because whoever gave them the money would have tithed it. So really, when you think about it, no one should have to tithe because whoever prints the money already tithed on it.” The funny thing is my mom didn’t even try to explain what was wrong with my theory, she just told me I still had to give 10 cents of the dollar she just gave me to church.

I was probably in Junior High when my family was doing a family Bible study around the table after dinner and we read the passage where God was going to kill Moses because he didn’t circumcise his son, so his wife did it and threw the bloody foreskin at him. My youngest sister asked what foreskin was and, for some reason, I felt the need to jump in and explained that they would take a knife and scrape skin off the back of the hand and it was a very bloody process. Fortunately, my older sister and my parents set us straight–once they stopped laughing long enough to give us an anatomy lesson.

Beth

Sara,
Here are two more you can add to your list. You used to sing along with the Oak Ridge Boys on “Elvira". But your version of the chorus was not “elvira", instead you sang “hell fire". Also, on John Denver’s “Some days are diamonds (some days are stone)” you would replace the word stone with “cold". Not bad interpretations considering you were only three years old.

Yeah, I remembered those incidents, but not the exact wordings. In fact, I could probably have a top 5 (or 10…or 20) misunderstood song lyrics list, as well.

First off, I can totally imagine young Beth arguing with her mother about the tithe thing. Sounds like a future econ major…
As for my addition to this little list, as a young child I was convinced that the 12th letter of the alphabet was “elemeno.” Luckily I figured out the mistake on my own eventually. It is the first time I remember feeling embarassed in front of myself, though.

Erika, you are in great company. Emma is convinced the same letter is “Elmo and a pea”

Yesterday I was listening to a report on NPR about Venus causing a minor eclipse of the sun. I thought they kept calling it “the transitive Venus” (which made some sense), until someone said it slowly, and I finally figured out it’s “the transit OF Venus.”

It wasn’t until I was in college that I found out that “orderves” and “hors d’vours” (or whatever) are the same thing. I actually thought that there were two different words for exactly the same thing (appetizers).

Same thing along the lines of “segway” and “segue"…

Darn French! And I was trying so hard to sound literate!

I only recently found out the same thing about “segue.” When I saw the word in print, I used to think it was pronounced [seg], and when I heard it aloud, I thought people were saying “segue-way". It was actually just in the past year that I realized my mistake. Luckily, I never embarrassed myself by writing it.

Yeah, for me it was also compounded by the fact that my dad pronounces anything remotely French-looking terribly wrong on purpose to annoy my mom. For example, the “Champs de leesie” and literally, “hors de vors” (or sometimes if we was especially punchy, “horses doovers” rhymes with Hoovers).

I thought it was more like “seg-goo” myself, but why use that word that you really don’t know how to pronounce when there’s a perfectly servicable word that means the same thing, and is pronouncable? Except you really don’t know how to spell that one. SO for years I had one word for writing (which I didn’t know how to say) and one for speaking (which I didn’t know how to write) and I honestly believed both of them existed! The onyl way I could have been exposed was if I had been asked to read something containing that word aloud. It allowed my deception to be perpetuated for years!