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What’s a notable misunderstanding from your life?
It could be something you misunderstood, something someone else misunderstood, a miscommunication, etc.
Could be funny or serious, major or minor.
Tell us the story!
It could be something you misunderstood, something someone else misunderstood, a miscommunication, etc.
Could be funny or serious, major or minor.
Tell us the story!
When someone knows you have a mental illness, they sometimes tell you that they are "there for you". They do believe it when they say it, but this is often not true. That is because most people have no idea how much work, stress, and effort it takes to "be there" for someone who is severely mentally ill, especially for illnesses that are not straightforward. I get the feeling that lots of people think it will be like unipolar depression, and all they'll have to do is, IDK, hold your hand and tell you to get better. Like you're a cute goth kid and you just need a hug.
Reality is not like that, is it? Specially for disorders that are more complicated and hard to distinguish from personality traits. If you are schizophrenic, borderline, bipolar, etc, it is sometimes impossible to pinpoint the line between disorder and personality traits. Being "there for you" means going through a rollercoaster of intense emotions, good and bad. And a lot of times you will be caught in the crossfire because, guess what, if those illnesses didn't cause pain, they wouldn't be illnesses in the first place, right?
So that is why someone who says they'll be "there for you" probably won't. That is not because they're evil, but they're essentially at boot camp in 1941. Nothing can prepare them for what is about to unfold.
There are different degrees of "there for you".
A very, very good friend will sit and listen, will help you move, may even understand when they're lashed out at, or used, or lied to. A good parent might take verbal assaults, screaming, theft, and still be there for you.
Most people though? Yeah, they'll listen, they may empathize, but they're not going to sacrifice a significant part of their well being for a mentally ill person's benefits. That doesn't mean that they weren't there for them, it just means that they have a limit, as does everyone.
I've cut off mentally ill people before myself because at a certain point it gets to be too much. I put my significant other, my kids, and my close family first. Other than that, I need to look out for myself, and if a friend or aquaintence gets in the way of that consistently, I have no problem cutting them off. Doesn't mean I wasn't there for them. I just don't want my life ruined.
This is generally my experience with mentally ill people. Their expectations of what it takes to “be there” for them is often an outrageously big demand, and they get angry when they receive anything less than everything. This is why I haven’t interacted with my parents in over a decade, and I probably never will again.
One of the issues I've run into with people with (diagnosed) mental illnesses that they acknowledge is that they treat me as an inexhaustible well of patience and energy. Just because I don't have a mental illness and am neurotypical doesn't mean I'm not human.
I have a limited amount of time, energy, empathy, and emotional capacity, just like anyone else, and just because I may be better equipped than someone with a mental illness in some aspect or another doesn't mean I'm able to take on an infinite amount of burdens. I'm trying to hang on just like anyone else, and I think for a lot of people dealing with mental illness, that's difficult to understand.
I've had a depressed person see me as someone who doesn't struggle with depression and treat me like my life is perfect, that I don't feel miserable a lot of times, and therefore I have some obligation to help them.
That's not the case though. Everyone has a hard life and things they struggle with, and just because you're floating and usually don't worry about drowning, that doesn't mean that you can be used as a life raft.
It's very tricky. It's hard to tell if someone is drowning and you need to stay away lest you also get dragged down, vs if someone's car broke down and tow truck is already on the way, they just want to text and get memes while they wait. The problem with mental health problems is that the sufferer themselves may not be able to clearly see which scenario it is, or be adequately receptive to normal amount of contact. And yes, sometimes it can be very scary to get professional help and drowning folks try to grasp at nearby friends and family instead of calling professionals well trained and equipped with their own safety gear.
From the other side, though, it can feel very isolating when I really just need some dumb memes while I wait, and a friend shuts it down with "i'm not a tow truck."
This happened to me with man I was dating in my early 20s - amazing person and a great friend, but he had crippling anxiety and depression, and it took hours to get him out of a spiral or to get him to make a decision. We dated for a little over two years and by the end of it I was a broken shell of a human, just completely exhausted. It wasn't really his fault, but I was too young to know that I needed to take care of myself, too, and I was personally not equipped to handle his needs. He's very successful now and we still keep in touch, but I really hope he sought professional help - I was not the answer, I was just a band-aid on his day to day functioning.
I wish I had gotten myself out of that relationship sooner - just because you want to be there to help and support doesn't mean it's healthy or appropriate to do so.
Yeah I've also had similar experiences. I feel awful because it's put me in a position now where if someone is mentally ill and asks me to be "there for them" I tend to decline for the very reason Lou points out, that I know I cannot commit the level of care and understanding the person expects.
The most recent case of this was quite sad, I met a genuinely nice person online and we got to actually meet IRL a bunch of times. But they slowly put more and more pressure on me to be there for them and shoulder their trauma and illness that it got to a point they couldn't stop, and got angry and upset when I tried to make it clear I was their friend, not their therapist.
I had to cut ties, but I still feel bad about it.
It feels bad but when they can't understand boundaries, and perhaps cannot stop trauma dumping, cutting them off might lead them to finally seek out professionals.
This isn't even how it works for unipolar depression either. A lot of people conceive of unipolar depression as being like... grief or something where you'll get over it over time. The actual ongoing symptoms of unipolar depression when it doesn't clear up within what that person deems a sensible time frame? People tend to tolerate that a lot less.
This hits at something I only recently figured out in dealing with unhealthy mental states: We engage with people based on how we believe they think. A lot of the time that's just another version of how we think. And you can never truly empathize if your brain has not lived that sort of reality.
People have a mental image of depression or autism or anxiety and it's framed in the context of their own life experiences and knowledge. So engaging with someone becomes an exercise in ego-projection. "I was most anxious when I needed to deliver an important document and what would have helped me was some more time." Or "I felt most depressed when my mom died but seeing everyone there for us helped me get through."
Its well meaning attempts to offer help and support. It also feels like helping because it's what you would have wanted yourself. But it doesn't appreciate that a mental illness runs a lot deeper than a single situation. An anxiety disorder could caused by crushing parental pressure in youth and more time is just more opportunity to fail. Cronic Depression could be from repeated toxic situations making someone believe that others want them to suffer.
Its one of those insidious parts of mental illness. People don't ask for help because it can just push loved ones away and after the first episode, offering help to someone suffering can be a scary prospect. And that just drags someone deeper into isolation and worse patterns.
But I think if people really want to help, they should be specific about it. "I'll be there." might as well be "thoughts and prayers" if it's 1.30am on a Sunday and you don't pick up your phone. A first step would be asking "what do you need?" or "is there anything I can do?". You are giving that person agency and letting them be heard. It also lets you set expectations. Letting someone vent for a bit is doable. Someone needing to track down and murder the person that cut them off might be more than you can handle. But now you are in a position to get the right people in place to intervene.
One of my best friends is schizophrenic, and I've seen the burden of caring for him burn people out. I've seen how his mental illness affects his ability to keep a job, keep friends, keep a church.
The irony of this story is the first time I met him, he asked me about my upbringing (upper middle class wasp) and basically told me that I hadn't had anything bad enough happen to me to be able to relate to his problems.
Now, we've known each other for almost 20 years, and we've been through a lot together. Visiting him during involuntary commitment, trying to support him and his wife when their marriage almost fall apart (due to his paranoia), dealing with his delusions, you name it.
It hasn't always been easy, but it has been very rewarding to play a role in his success. (His wife is the real champion though.) Because of it, we're close in a way I don't really experience with almost anyone else. Our wives are like sisters and our kids are best friends. We've helped each other through serious medical issues.
I don't regret any of it. But I will echo that people are saying in this thread – it's not something that's ever going to go away. His mental illness is a part of him, and it colors all our interactions, even after all these years. Now it seems pretty normal for him to tell me about his paranoid delusions, and I have a pretty good sense of what is concerning and what is just baseline behavior. I don't know if I could have two good friends with this level of issue.
And even though the mental health thing is always there, it's also not all there is to him, or to our relationship.
Because the mental health stuff (in his case at least) is so front and center, it can be hard to see past the mental health issues and see a person. But he's there. He's someone who cares deeply about others and is frustrated he has so few resources of his own to be able to help them. He's a person who will actually remember the last conversation you had, even if it's a year ago. He's a dad. A husband. A hell of a bread baker and a hell of a friend.
This rings very true for me. I suffer from childhood emotional neglect and while I've certainly learned the code of 'general accepted behavior', this doesn't mean my behavior will be consistent. I have a very hard time maintaining friendships. One such friendship spiraled so much out of control that I got labeled as narcissistic by them. I was at a low point and that definitely did not help.
Very very true. It's even difficult with physical chronic issues unless it's highly visible.
I wonder if a better alternative is to say, hey I need 5 minutes of your time and I'll say stuff, but don't think poorly of me for it, cool?" Or alternatively, "I only have 5 minutes to listen but I promise I won't try to problem solve or suggest you do anything"
Many times, I find people are distressed by us being distressed, and they auto activate a self defense mechanism to return to a "just world" model: "mental health can be solved if you just did X, which is how I keep safe / got better, and the only reason you're still suffering is your own fault". They might mean it kindly, as in, they can see us having a hard time and difficult to do X, but deeper down they do believe once we have enough self will to do X we'll be all better.
I find some mental health professionals are sometimes the worst culprits, in fact.
This is really well put.
Not sure if this counts as a misunderstanding, but it's the single most embarrassing text I've ever sent.
I had just recently gotten really serious about working out over a two year period. I had always just sort of messed around in the gym, but over this two year period I really bucked down, ate an extremely well disciplined diet, and got into better shape than I've ever been in in my life.
I was really proud, and I had this coach named Mary (named changed to protect the innocent) that helped me and encouraged me the whole way. I found an old photo of myself in front of the mirror with my shirt off, and decided to recreate it, because the change was really dramatic. I was very proud of myself, and the next time I was at the gym I showed Mary. She was really proud and excited, and asked me to text her the photo so she could show her husband (another coach at the gym).
I went to my phone, tapped share, tapped Mary, and then put my phone back in my pocket. A few minutes later, I asked if she got it, to which she replied she didn't. I thought that was weird, so went back into my phone and realized I texted "thanks so much!" along with the photo to Mary. No, not that Mary. This Mary was a woman I went on about four dates with around 5 months prior. We really didn't mesh well personality wise and I told her it'd be best if we went our separate ways, and she was really disappointed by it.
Like an idiot, I had both of them in my phone as just "Mary", and never deleted her number.
So from her point of view, a guy she was dating, ended things with her, she didn't hear from him for 5 months, then completely unnanounced, he sends two shirtless pictures of himself and "thanks so much!".
I just couldn't deal with the embarrassment. I blocked her number because if she ever replied, and I read it, I think I would have instantly imploded into a tiny little ball and burrowed 500 feet underground to live there forever.
Oh nooooooooo I have died from screen shared second hand embarrassment on your behalf
Hopefully Mary turns out to be a Tildes member and get some closure, RIP
The closest Ive come is stupidly making an appointment at my dentist's and them calling to confirm and I said I'll be there, showing up to my dentist confused and my dentist calling to ask where was I. Turns out I had stupidly put "dentist" in my phone after I moved, and called my old clinic 2 days journey away.
Edit: if it makes you feel less bad, your story will help me process rejection/ weirdness from other people a bit better. Maybe it's got everything to do with them and I'll never know why something weird was done that doesn't have anything to do with me.
Yeah. I was doing a lot of dating at the time, and the amount of weird interactions that happened which were entirely my fault kind of gave me a little perspective. People do weird things a lot, and they're usually not malicious.
It helped me kind of feel like many times someone did something off-putting to me, maybe they were just having a weird moment like I did.
Yes! This is called the fundamental attribution error.
My Quebeçoise mother went to Paris for a college course at the Sorbonne. This was well before the days of good maps, let alone GPS, and she got thoroughly turned around in the city streets.
She went up to a policeman to ask for directions, and hijinks ensued... She said the equivalent of "I'm lost, can you help me?" in Quebec French. In Parisian French, it came across as "I'm a lost woman", i.e. a prostitute. Ultimately, she didn't get arrested, just thoroughly mocked for her provincial dialect.
Oh no! "Oh thank goodness! Help me officer, I'm a lost woman!" :) how often does your family bring this up?
All the time, with the Canadian relatives. I can't tell whether they're more incensed about Francophone politics in Canada, or the disrespect their dialect gets when visiting France.
I didn't read the articles about the Coldplay concert scandal.
The phrase "Astronomer CEO Andy Byron" used in the headlines made me think the dude cheating on his wife was an actual astronomer. I finally read an article and found out that Andy Byron was only the CEO of a tech company named "Astronomer".
Ah yes we all went through that one as that story unfolded. Something something no publicity is bad publicity?
It made me realize that "Astronomy" existed, but for the sake of the company it doesn't matter if people like me know that it exists or not. :-)
Oh for sure, but even Aldi was making fun of them in ads.
I saw the CEO resigned but I haven't seen if the "CPO" also did since she was equally busted.
Good point.
I think it was a good gesture on Byron's part to resign immediately, but I have to wonder if that means he is actually cut off from an income. You know, stocks, etc. That might not be the same for the woman who was only the HR head.
I don't think he got a choice about resigning, so I don't really give him credit after the fact. Actions after one is caught weigh so much less than, the ones before. Also Coldplay lyrics in his public apology was... A choice. One that makes me doubt his apology further.
She's allegedly divorced? But like the head of HR, given this situation, should probably be let go as well.
I'm under the impression that, unlike us plebs with a couple weeks pay severance, C people get paid millions even if they quit or made a huge mistake and get fired. Leaving a job with money because he's seen doing a "bro" thing probably doesn't hurt his bank, his play time, or "professional esteem". He's making it his brand
Can't say the same would work for the woman
I think contracts usually have a difference for if they're let go, fired for cause, resign or are "resigning" in these sorts of circumstances.
She's labeled as Chief People Officer at one point, but I don't know that that's true, C Suite or just quirky labeling. Depends on the company, I guess.
No one would have cared and the video wouldn't have gone viral if they hadn't panicked, ironically being more secure in their affair would have prevented this from happening.
I was not aware of that. Sounds very dodgy.
Oh he is going to pay for sure. His wife must be livid. Public humiliation aside, it had to hurt to see her spouse so happy with another person. Byron is likely about to go through an expensive divorce.
Apparently this apology was fake so I retract that part
But still I don't actually believe folks are sorry for cheating in this sort of circumstance - this was clearly a full affair - they're sorry they have to deal with the consequences. Maybe he'll be sorry for his actions later.
Why do you think his apology was fake?
I agree, in a lot of these situations they were sorry they got caught, not that they did what they did.
I think the one I referenced is fake because it ... was fake? Which I just learned.
Multiple fake apologies have apparently circulated
I think almost any apology for an affair is disingenuous but that's not the same as me saying that apology was explicitly fake.
Ah "fake" as in fabricated by others, not "fake" as in a disingenuous apology from Bryron.
I would also have considered it (or any) disingenuous as noted, but yeah actually fake.
I never really thought about it until just now, but I guess that’s why the names and titles of things in books are usually italicised? I suspect it would have been a bit easier to understand if it was
Astronomer CEO Andy Byron
That could also be misinterpreted as
"Hey! The astronomer and CEO Andy Byron".
I've heard that sometimes journalists are encouraged to use fewer words for headlines and sometimes they just suck.
"They" should have just written:
"Andy Byron, CEO of the tech company "Astronomer" was caught ..."
Yeah I was confused too: CEO of Astronomer would have also been clear
Oh, sameish.
I figured out he was the business guy of the company, but until your comment, I just assumed the company was space-related, not tech.
"Data infrastructure".
I still don't get why the whole thing is such a big deal and practically everyone talks about it.
Agreed. A CEO cheating on his wife is not exactly a new thing.
I think people are into it because the (social) media promoted it and it is a distraction (boredom, unpleasant things, etc ) that doesn't have any unpleasant aspects for the people who are talking about it.
I think it's also just how it was outed. Not every day someone gets caught cheating on a concert kiss cam, and their reactions were pretty humorous and good for memes. Combine it with the general growing discontent for the uber wealthy, and people have even more reason to meme on them.
Agreed.
When I was, IDK, 6-ish years old, I found out that women give up their last name and take their husband's last name when they get married.
This did not seem fair to me.
I asked my mom about it. I don't recall her exact words, but I'm guessing she said something like "sometimes the wife keeps her name".
Whatever she actually said, I understood it to mean, "the husband gives up his name and takes the wife's name" ... and that seemed fair to my 6-year-old self.
It wasn't until high school (possibly even college), that I learned the truth ... and I have been disappointed in humanity ever since.
Epilogue: He did not know this story, but when my brother got married--entirely his own idea--he gave up his name and took his wife's name.
At my company, there are two employees who are married, and the husband took his wife's name because he has a poor relationship with his family. His wife also has a cool last name. I wish I had more examples of people doing this.
My partner’s brother did that, I believe mostly to make things easier with their kids in school. His wife already had kids from a previous relationship, but that guy is no longer in the picture, so my partner’s brother was like “okay I gotta be the dad for these kids, and that means being involved with school stuff, so it’s probably easier if I just take their last name to keep it simple!
My wife didn't take my name, and I can attest to the confusion at school. She didn't want to hyphenate for our kids' last name, so they have my last name.
I have the same situation. I've found it to be less confusing as time goes on. 15 years ago it seems like I was constantly having to correct people for appointments/insurance/school etc. But I can't recall a time in the last few years where it has caused a problem.
I think it has died down for us as well because we've been living in the same home, had our kids at the same school, and been working the same jobs for several years. Not a lot of new paperwork or relationships recently where naming convention is brought up.
I hadn't really thought of this before, but we've moved into a much more progressive area in the last 10 years, so it's possible that people here just make fewer assumptions. Hard to say for sure.
Ah yea, that makes sense. I grew up in a purple city in a deep red southern state where I still live now, and my bougie HS had to be corrected 3-4 times before they stopped addressing my wife with Mr. and Mrs. MyFirst MyLast in the alumni mailouts.
We send out an annual holiday card to everyone in our address book, and I always make a point of addressing people exactly how they want to be addressed. Takes me back to elementary school and learning how to write formal letters... but with a modern update. I think it shows respect to people to care about that.
I told my wife I'd take hers, or that we should just both pick a completely new last name. She ended up just taking mine. Boooooriiiiing...
:) I'm confused. If she took yours what stopped you from taking hers. Your move, bash
Damn it, you got me there 😅 Though I'll be honest, I don't think she would have went for that. She's a pretty traditional gal.
You could also just start going by a mononym. "She took my name, now I've only got the one!"
My friend, this is a rabbit hole you should not have sent me down.
Take her name, refuse to elaborate, put on an apron and make her a fancy candlelight dinner.
Just kidding of course, good marriage is about honouring each other's traditions and not following norms nor insisting on counter norms :)
Tell you what, I'll still do the latter half of those four things :)
I have a friend named Alex who is dating someone named Alix. I have told them if they get married they should swap last names and confuse everyone.
Alternatively, their child must be named Alax.
A friend hyphenated which I thought was very cool, but I do wonder what their hyphenated kids are going to do if they choose to marry. Drop or change or keep adding on?
I took my husband's because (1) racism (2) went from near back of alphabet to near front (3) rather expected culturally. When I make reservations in my own culture, I still use my own Cantonese last name though, rather than try to have them be confused or try to spell it over the phone/ask me to spell.
This was a big discussion amongst my wife and I!
I debated taking her last name, as it would be cool to "officially" be part of a huge cool family. She thought about taking mine, but didn't want to, because it sounded goofy paired with her first. We thought up new names to change our last names to, but I wasn't excited about any of them and my family was so vehemently opposed, that helped me decide against that.
Ultimately, we ended up just keeping our own last names and left it at that; it was the easiest thing to do. It wasn't exactly unprecedented, as my sister did the same thing with her husband.
But our kids are weird... We gave each of them one of our last names, deciding on whichever sounded better with the first name we chose. My oldest has my Slavic last name because it sounded good with the almost Slavic sounding first name we chose and my second has my wife's Italian last name because it sounded good with the Roman first name we chose.
As a middle name, each has the unchosen last name. People get a little confused when I say my kids have different last names, but no one really bats an eye and it's never been a problem, in spite of my family worrying about it when we first did it this way.
Possibly a side effect from blended families becoming the norm: last names are only casually linked to father or mother who may or may not be in the picture
In my wife's culture the wife doesn't take the husbands last name, but the children do.
She ended up taking my last name in the US, by keeping her name format the same and using her last name as a second middle.name, but she didn't change her last name here. This has led to some annoying questions/time wasting when visiting immigration, because the immigration officers are doing it just to waste time/be annoying to someone of a different race. They can see my son and I have previous approval and we're just renewing the visa, and as part of my visa we have to go to separate office to essentially receive a notarized document sweating our marriage is legitimate after having our paperwork reviewed by a 3rd party.
Everytime we have to go there and the officer that we like to work with isn't there it's a coin toss on if we're going to have an extra hour of our time wasted because of this.
If I ever get married, I want to do exactly that. It seems really unfair to expect only one gender to change their names and not the other.
For what it’s worth, it can sometimes cause issues. On some old government documents, I am apparently listed as an illegitimate child. My parents were married long before I was born, but my mom kept her maiden name. And since on my birth certificate, my mom’s name doesn’t match my dad’s name, they assume my parents aren’t married.
A funny one that didn't happen to me, but my favorite college instructor: he teaches a class about creature design, and he's very avid about cryptids and folklore and such. One such creature is the Yowie, an Australian creature sometimes compared to Bigfoot.
This man also has the enthusiasm and energy of a toddler, in the best way. When he geeks out, he gets really into it and can easily go for hours.
So when he heard a student mention to someone she liked "yowie", he jumped in with "I like yowies too!" And proceeded to geek out and happily ramble all about yowies to this poor, horrified girl until she managed to finally correct him. And that was how he learned about yaoi.
Unsure what yaoi is, let me search...
Lmao.
Out of context [to heavy handedly jam into context] Wikipedia article excerpts:
I was waaay to old before I realised ponies wasn’t young horses not fully grown.
I was this many years old when I leaned young hares are not bunnies, but leverets.
They’re… not?
Excuse me, I need to call my mother
This happened half a century ago, when hippies roamed the earth. I was in first grade, and the day before had been mesmerized by a pair of long-hair hippies walking down my street, specifically the amazing and casual hair flips, which I thought were incredibly beautiful.
The next day in class, having finished my work before everyone as usual, I guess I was daydreaming about having long hair and trying do those flips with my very short pig-tailed hair. Well. My very beloved 1st grade teacher saw this, understandingly missed that it was a hair flip (since no hair was flipping) and stated out loud to the class that "someone thinks she is better than the rest of the class and is tossing her head around."
I was mortified and devastated that she would think that of me. I was too humiliated to ever tell her the truth, and as you can see it has stuck with me to this day. I guess the good that came out of it is that when I was a teacher I never made a public example of any of my students, and always tried to have a private discussion to test my perceptions against their intentions.
A story: a young child tried to draw ninja stars in class because ninjas are cool. But without a good reference picture, the child drew a rotationally symmetrical figure with four straight-angled, spiralling arms. Thankfully, their Jewish teacher had a private chat with them after class.
Wow glad that story ended well!
Here's a funny story about a misunderstanding.
I was about to move across state, and was doing some final cleanup at my residence before we left it behind. I found that I had one too many garbage bags to fit in our regular bin, and wasn't planning to be back at the house after trash day. I could have just tossed the extra bag in the car, but we lived next to an apartment complex with fairly sizable dumpsters, so I just tossed the final bag in the open (and quite empty) dumpster to make things simple. I hadn't done it before, and the residents of the apartments did on occasion put stuff in our bin, so I didn't feel bad about it in the least.
But on this day, apparently one of the residents was watching and did not approve. He popped his head out of his door and said "Hey! What are you doing throwing garbage in our dumpster!". I sighed, and tried to reason with him. In the attempt I used the phrase "Is this really the hill you want to die on?"
The guy totally flipped, and his friend popped out the door and both of them started puffing out their chests and saying "WHAT DID YOU SAY?!" "YOU WANNA DIE OLD MAN?".
I'm very much not a confrontational person, and I did not engage with the intention of fighting. So the response was very surprising to me. They kept at the yelling for a bit while other people started to pop their heads out to see what was up. I should note that I was behind my fence and felt pretty safe this whole time. I just kept my own calm and tried to deescalate. I offered to remove my bag, which somewhat helped. They declined saying "Well it's already in there now!", and then went back to fixating on what I had said to them.
After a couple of more tense exchanges, it became clear that they had never heard the saying before. Additionally, I realized that the apartment in question is indeed built upon a hill. So I guess my attempt to deescalate seemed very much to them like a death threat.
Anyway, I was able to calm them down enough for us both to go our separate ways, but I could still hear them yelling in their apartment for several minutes after the excitement outside died down. I made eye contact with several of the other neighbors and we all just sort of shrugged and went on with our day.
In hindsight, my biggest mistake may have been telling my wife once I arrived at the new place. She was in tears laughing, and now occasionally blurts out "YOU WANNA DIE ON THAT HILL???" just for fun.
When I was very young, I learned an insult from a movie the extended family was watching. Having no context from it, I said it to a playmate in jest. Their reaction was utter shock, they were very clearly scandalized, and I remember them huddling in small groups whispering what the term meant and why they thought I would say such a thing. Turns out the unknown insult was "virgin", and I not only had no idea it was highly inappropriate, I hadn't known it was sexually coded. =..= I'm sorry. And thanks for nothing, 80/90s rom com.
Another mishap was from teen years using IRC to talk to strangers, and then borrowing terminology to use in ICQ. (For young people, IRC is randomly texting strangers and ICQ is for friends). It was somewhat fashionable to intentionally misspell words for a while, and a friend had to inform me not to use an alternative spelling for "come" because it, again, means something sexual. (Also, old men always wanted to chat when I disclosed I was young and female because sex. Gross)
Yet another mishap, as a young adult now, a friend and I were playing with our food and then the wider circle was scandalized, and one of them had to tell me I was being sexually suggestive and inappropriate. Ugh.
I have a ton of these kinds of stories. How are people this horny all the time?! Everything is sex!
Out of curiosity, were your parents conservative / sheltering? I feel like most of these things could have been avoided through exposure.
They were, and there were many problems from that, but the other kids from the first story I mentioned were from a conservative / sheltering environment as well, hence the extra scandalous nature of it. I would be surprised if their parents clutched pearls and complained to my mom.
In general, I just didnt get the memo / well behind the curve.
Not exactly a misunderstanding but it's funny and fits the theme. So I'll share it.
A good friend of mine once reacted with a gif of surprise on BlueSky to a French post. I was curious and used a translator. It said something like 'I refuse to believe we're getting cooked by the heat because someone wanted an image of a pope with big feedings'. (referring to genAI, if that isn't clear)
I was confused, asked what was up with that. Turns out, it meant boobs.
Okay now I need to see this gif. It actually says "I refuse to believe we're getting roasted by a boob'd pope meme?"
Oh nononono, the gif was just a surprise gif to someone saying that.
That said.
I do like the image in my head now. Mmm
Lol stupid sexy pope, it's like he wearing nothing at all
Late entry but I used to go to Yahoo chatrooms back in the day and people would be like ASL? And I’d be like 12 M and they would be like: that was a typo and you mean 21 right? And I was like nope, I’m 12. And nobody ever spoke to me again. I just wanted to chat with people my age!
In retrospect, being ignored might have been for the better.