Being literal

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The signs on certain doors which say: Fire Door. This door must be kept closed at all times.
A door which must be kept closed at all times....

If i'm in a "thinking" mood then I'm more likely to not take everything so literally.

I have had to train myself not to take things literally. It still doesn't work all the time. Examples during one of my evaluations I was asked if I heard voices. I said yes. I mean I am obviously not deaf. They took it as in imaginary voices or something and started treating me as schizophrenic.

Another example someone told me when I was younger to "pull myself together" and I was perplexed. I was already an intact entity biologically!

Another one that really got me was sign that said "Road work ahead" but they spaced the letters wrong it looked like "Roadwork A Head" I was like how do you roadwork someone's head!"

And"Road Ninja" its supposed to be an ad for a on the road car service for emergencies I was expected to see a ninja in front of us, on the road, doing ninja things. I guess I did not TRULY expect that one, but I did think of that first.

One time a teacher handed out a test and joked that there were 400 questions on it and we had 50 minutes to complete it. I took him literally because I was taking it serious, we were about to do our final. I asked if I could take a break sometime during the test and everyone, including the teacher, laughed at me.

More seriously though taking what my parents say literally, or I'd like to say, at the face value of their words has left me a tad bitter. They like to say they'll pay for stuff they don't, they want to give me one of their houses but it's not true, and they want to leave me a good bit of money (also not true because it's going to a family trust in my cousin's name). So that caused me a lot of heartache believing they wanted to be so generous. Meanwhile I make peanuts and am constantly ridiculed for not working enough when they take extravagant vacations, donate millions to charities and live in a mansion on the bay.

Whooo sorry about that last part, kinda venting, not as much related but hopefully you all understand!

When I encounter a metaphor, I get a literal mental image, and then create a visual analogy in my mind.

However, there are times when that thought process happens when I encounter something with a literal meaning.

"Save (insert money cost here)" I thought it meant you had to save that much and that is how much the item costs. I didn't know it meant that is how much off you get on that item.

Those street signs that say "WATCH CHILDREN" -- I thought that meant you were supposed to watch them and keep watching until another sign took its place.

In the same vein as the fire door thing, escalators in the London Underground have a sign that say "Dogs must be carried". I suppose if you don't have a dog handy, you have to take the stairs...

In the less literal sense, I'm wondering how people with very large dogs handle that. Perhaps they get an exemption in practice.

"No charge for lunch after (insert date here)" and I thought it meant they won't charge you for lunch anymore after that date. My school had that sign up on their computer and I wasn't the only one who thought it meant they won't charge you for lunch anymore and even other kids thought that too so I wasn't the only who took it literal.

The most recent one I can think of is when a good friend of mine at work said that she got stuck in the bath the night before. I innocently enquired,, "How small is your bath that you could get stuck in it?" Everyone started laughing and another colleague said, "That's not what she means!" It turned out she meant that her muscles had seized up from over exerting herself at the gym and she was "stuck" in that sense. To me, that's an easy misunderstanding to make but apparently nobody else thought so. I often make mistakes like that-for example, misinterpreting the visual sense of "loud" with someone sounding loud even though I know the meaning of both. Another time, I took out a piece of paperwork that was in my tray about work relating to a student and asked my manager whether I should book everyone on the training course the paperwork was talking about and he said, "Just sit on it at the moment!" I must have looked really confused because he said, "Not physically sit on it! I mean we're not doing anything at the moment because the funding hasn't come through yet!" I also always correct people when they say "Good Morning" when it's gone noon. I get told that I'm quite a literal person a lot.