Things You Took Literally as a Child

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My mom won't let me drink Coke while I'm driving.

I remember finding that confusing. I thought we were not allowed to drink and drive so it didn't make sense so I asked my dad about it. He explained to me it meant alcohol, not juice or soda or water, just beer and alcohol.

I also remember seeing those signs with a pregnant woman with a baby inside her and she have a glass in her hand and it be crossed out. I thought you could not hold a cup in your hand while pregnant. So I asked my mom about it one day and she explained to me it's saying you can't drink alcohol while you have a baby in your stomach because it's bad for the baby.

I remember mom teaching it to me when I was 12 and I learned it was another forum of lying. You say things that are not true so I started to go around saying things that were not true. But I was over doing it and some of it be hurtful. Then finally Mom told me "Beth, you know what sarcasm is now, now you can stop using it." So I stopped.

Some of these are just precious, some rather bitter, and I can relate to both of those categories, A couple of nice categories! (Yes, couple is two, if you mean more than two, choose another word).
I am 55 and still take things too literally.

When I was really little, maybe 5 or 6, got a cracker jack prize (they used to have real prizes), that was a sundial. Now, to this day, I like to think it was brilliant of me, but I thought it ran on light, any light, so I had it on a table under a lamp. Heck, it was supposed to tell time, I wasn't thinking shadows.

In about 6 grade, apparently my teacher had noticed my literal interpretation of things, once asked me to put my fingers on the paper cutter, right on the edge, where you put the paper to be cut. She laughed her ass off at me when I did.

About the same time, my dad was using a circular saw, laid it down, I asked about it, said it was scary, he said "you can't cut yourself with one of those", so there I was sticking my hand near the blade, thinking it was somehow able to cut wood, but not fingers. (I still have all my fingers, amazing though).

When I was about 13, a girl said "Vet club", I asked "veterinarians?" "NO", "veterans?" "NO, She finally spit out "Corvette Club.

About 20 years my then husband mentioned an actress, that she look like "the girl next door", I didn't catch myself and said "Carol?" (the woman who lived next door".

Things I have believed over the years, that caused nothing but confusion and/or trouble- "Call me if you need anything", "If you watch my kids, I will watch yours when you want to go out", "I love you", "Will you marry me?", "I really want to meet your kids", "Let's have a superbowl party, you can make your fried chicken", "Our company has a strong work ethic", "Safety is number one at xyz company", "We promote from within",

I am glad I believe what people say, it makes me say things I mean and not BS my way through life. It's not that great for the people around me though

When I was 10 and really getting into music, I saw this switch on the back of my portable radio and on on side it said AC on the other side, it said DC. I thought that if I listened to the radio long enough, that the DJ would start playing AC/DC.

Hope its not too rudeto be here but there was always talk about being a bummer and bumming when i were a lad. ... I never could see what ppl got out of rubbing bums together... Oh those non pc 80s so confusing

I've always found the phrases ''...so cute I could just eat you up'' or ''...so cute I could spread you on a cracker.'' incredibly disturbing. Ugh, gives me horrible images in my head.

Darla on the tv show Angel once used that line "I love children so much I could just eat them up." It was funny because she's a vampire and was going to eat one.

There were countless occasions in which Mom and Dad would have to explain that something was "just a figure of speach".

I cant call up any specifics at the moment.

When I was about 11 or 12 and started to read the newspapers I got hooked on "Dear Abby".

One lady wrote Abby about her awful daughter-in-law and said her son "shouldve known that she was a TRAMP when he married her."

That blew my mind because it never occured to me that were girls who dressed like box car willie, and hopped freight trains too!

Do they? My mom thought it was weird of me and she couldn't understand what I was doing.

Hard to remember back that far?

B

Last edited by kg4fxg on 28 Feb 2012, 8:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

I just thought of another. When I was 14, I thought "the liquidation of the Jews" meant they had been drowned in large metal vats.

I was in kindergarten. We were cutting out shapes in groups. One girl decided she was going to do the whole project. I began to take some shapes to cut and she said "no, cut this" (sarcastically) and handed me a blank piece of paper. I cut it into little pieces about the size of a pinky. She looked at me with this pile of paper on my desk like "wtf are you doing?" And I just kept cutting it smaller.

I don't understand...

I remember at one of my softball games, I see the other team mates start singing "I see a hole out in the field" and I look and ask "where is the hole" then I figure the hole in the ground at the pitcher's mound must be the hold. So I say "Oh it's at the pitcher's plate." Then I get told it was an expression.

I had a really horrible 2nd grade teacher who harassed me a lot for behaviors that I now know were either a) a nervous tick I still have, b) stimming, or c) the inability to self filter as shown through, um, correcting the teacher a lot. She used to call me up to her desk and demand to know why I was sitting there, rolling my eyes at her. I would end up crying because I didn't understand -- rolling your eyes required you to move your eyes around in a complete circle like in cartoons, right? I wasn't doing that, that's ridiculous.

And also, around that age or a bit younger, I was sleeping in my mom's bedroom and woke her up because there was a bug on the wall. She told me it was the kind that crawls in your ear at night and eats your brains, now shut up and go back to sleep. In retrospect, I'm lucky I didn't develop some kind of phobia, but I still cannot sleep in any room I've recently seen a bug in.