Examples of Taking Things Literally

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When I was a kid (around 6-8), I remember a day where my mother had promised to reward me and my little brother with a TV dinner that night. All day I was so excited! We had never been allowed to eat dinner while watching TV before! When dinner time arrive my mom said to sit down at the dining table and she plopped a small tray with chicken nuggets and small sides that were in separate compartments. Confused and sorely disappointed, I asked why we weren't having a TV dinner. My mom said we were, and she pointed to the tray in front of me. When she realized what I'd meant, she must have felt badly, because she let me eat it in the living room with the TV on.

My most embarrassing one was immortalized in my 5th grade yearbook. They did a special book for the entire 5th grade and for one section we were each given a questionnaire to fill out. One of the questions asked "Who is your favorite composer?" I answered "Beethoven." Well when the yearbooks came out and I was reading through my copy on the last day of class, I began to get this sinking feeling. I was noticing that everyone else had answered with pop stars and boy bands. At first I felt bad for them, thinking that they were the confused ones....then I realized I'd gotten it wrong...not a single other person had answered with the likes of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, or any of the others we learned about in music class. I still cringe when I see that book.

As far as the tomorrow question goes, I think he must have meant, tomorrow I will be able to set up that shadowing experience. Not that I will be able to set it up for tomorrow. It's a word order thing, I think.

My son has a big problem with sarcasm, dry wit, and literalism. His PE teacher said at the end of the school year that by standards, second graders should be able to jump rope for a full minute by the end of the school year. So, he said jokingly, we better get practicing so you can go on to third grade ha ha! Well my son was in hysterics because he can't skip rope for more than two times in a row. He took it totally literally that he HAD to jump rope for a full minute straight or else he couldn't pass the grade. He also would not take my word for it. The coach had to sit and talk with him. Poor sweet kid. I him!

I'm not exactly literal minded, I consider myself very specific. By that I mean that I usually know what people mean when they use abstract language but when someone is talking about a movie ( lets say Casablanca for example), and they say that it came out "sometime in the 40's" I always feel compelled to be more specific for them, often going down to the day and month. Is anyone else like that?

When someone tells me to "try" a math problem, I occasionally eat the paper. Get it?

When I was in elementary school, when someone told me to "knock it off", I'd knock the books off my desk.

As a child, I sometimes stole things from the other children.
I took things literally.

A lady once stopped me on the street and asked me what was the quickest way to get to town.
I said, "Walk quicker."

^ Oh, and then there was the one where the guys at work would say, "I'm hanging out for a piss." And I literally thought they were going to hang their penis out and urinate right there. They couldn't understand why I kept walking off.

When I was about 10 my family was getting ready to go on a picnic at a lake with neighbors.
The neighbor was on his porch doing something and I was standing near his car and the trunk was open.
He called to me to bring him the box that was in the trunk.
I looked in the trunk and didn't see a box. All that was in there was a picnic basket.
He kept saying over and over "the box, the box" but I didn't know what to do because there was no box.
Finely I heard him murmur "stupid kid" and he came over and took the picnic basket.
Then I realized he was calling the picnic basket a box. I think he was stupid.