Sayings that you never understood or misinterpreted growing

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The sound of one hand clapping is silence.
No it's not. As an expert hand-flapper, it's possible to make sound clapping one hand by doing so. You know you want to try it.

It's not really an idiom, but when I was little and the teachers at school were trying to get me to eat food that I wouldn't touch, they always said something like, "you should eat your food because the poor starving kids in Africa don't have any." First, I could never figure out how that was related to whether or not I ate my lunch. And if there were somehow a relationship, if I ate it, then the food is not there and the kids from Africa can't have it. It would make more sense to not eat it - I would gladly have given them my lunch! It took me several years to figure out why the teachers always said that to me

When someone says something bad about something they can't have or because they're jealous, people might say "that's just sour grapes", which comes from an Aesop fable where a fox tried to snatch a cluster grapes off a vine but they were too high up to reach, so eventually the fox gave up and left, saying, "Anyone can see those grapes are sour".

You know, even though the fables were meant to teach lessons or give warnings about human behavior, Aesop sure gave animals a lot of stereotypes long before cartoons ever did. Foxes were sly, wolves were evil, and so on...

"Glued to the T.V."-You sit on the couch watching T.V. as if your butt is glued onto it!

'He wears his heart on his sleeve'

That one used to confuse me, and also it sounds gross

Well, I would take certain things too literally, like when I was 7 I didn't understand that when other kids meant when they said "You look like a monkey, and you smell like one too" I didn't realise that it was meant as a joke, I always thought they were literally insulting the birthday boy/girl.

On my 7th birthday I punched a girl when she said this to me, because I thought she was being deliberately mean and serious, I didn't realise she was just teasing me. Yeah, sorry about that random girl at my birthday party. Good thing I know how to be calm these days.

Wearing your heart on your sleeve means you have a hard time concealing your love for someone, or your feelings in general. I once read that wearing your heart on your sleeve comes from a time when people would wear something shaped like a heart (a Valentine heart and not a realistic one, likely) on their sleeve to show that they were in love. I guess it was something like a mourning band, but a little nicer.

But when I hear about someone wanting to give you their heart, I go, "Eww, you're going to give me a slimy, pulsating internal organ? And besides, won't you die without it?" I know they don't mean it literally , I'm just trying to be funny.

That also reminds me of a time I gave my parents a thank-you card that said "Thank you from the bottom of my butt." and inside the cad said "It's a lot bigger than my heart."
True enough. The gluteus maximus muscles are not only much bigger than your heart, they're really the biggest muscles in your whole body.

(I'm not feeling very mature today).