Years later you figure out what it means.........

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I remember when I saw Home Alone 2 in theaters, they got to a scene where Kevin says "Jeez, don't flash these babies around here, there could be girls on this floor." I thought that was weird and it didn't make any sense because I didn't understand why girls be lying on the floor and why it was an issue for Cedric to be carrying Kevin's boxers which I thought were shorts then. This scene confused me until I was 11 when I figured out Kevin meant there could be girls who are on the same floor as him and they can see the underwear as Cedric was taking them to his room, not them lying down on the floor. I also remember another scene in that movie where the pigeon lady mentioned her heart getting broken and I thought her heart actually broken and she had to get it fixed or else she wouldn't be alive if it never got fixed. I also remember thinking Harry saying he would commit suicide because he said he crosses his heart and hope to die. I was in my preteens when I figured it all out what they were really saying. One phrase I still haven't gotten is "My have the tables have turned." I know it's a figure of speech now but back then I didn't know that so I was confused.

It means someone who originally had circumstances/factors in their favor don't anymore, and the "other person" who used to have the disadvantage now has the advantage. I don't know the origin of the phrase, though....

I don't know the origin of the phrase, either, but I always assumed it was an analogy related to games, where the cards/game pieces on the table in front of you are yours. So if you're winning, and the table is "turned"... well, uh, you're not winning anymore (derp). So I always pictured something like that lol

A lot of figures of speech tripped me up for years, despite asking people what they meant. One of the worst "A stitch in time saves nine". For years I thought this was something to do with the "fabric of time" expression that I'd also heard (in other words literally stitching time). I also had no idea what nine referred to. I still maintain that the phrase should be properly punctuated in order to make sense, thusly: "A stitch, in time, saves nine" (stitches). Lots of other common ones like "you can't have your cake and eat it too" I thought had to do with someone else having to eat it (probably as I was mislead when actual cake was present).

I think I was fairly old when I figured out what sarcasm meant. I remember having a discussion with my mother about it in the kitchen and finally grasping the concept that people were actually saying the opposite of what they meant, and then trying to determine how you could tell... I could tell from the conversation she thought I knew full well what it meant.

Another time I remember, my mother had a jar of walnuts in the shell. They had been sitting around for a while when she got out the nut basket and asked me to crack them. She came back in quite some time later to find me, slightly ill, with a pile of shells and about 2/3 of the jar empty. I told her I wanted to stop because I didn't think I could eat any more. Unbeknownst to me, she had actually wanted me to crack them open and collect the meats, not sit and eat them all. (In retrospect it doesn't make a lot of sense that she would tell me to eat the jar of nuts, but that was what I thought she meant at the time). She wasn't too happy with me about that...

Growing up I didnt understand a lot of "sexual references"

My mom was constantly breaking down expressions so i would understand the meaning...so no problem there although I have a hard time....still....explaining them even though I say them.

For the longest time I thought an "undertow" was "undertoad" and I truly believed it was some kind of monster. It was a long time until I was finally corrected on that one.

I remember when I was 14, I was playing the game of Sequence with my mom, brother and uncle and he gives me the deck of cards and tells me to cut. I stare at them and hold thme trying to figure out what he means by cut. I couldn't understand why he was telling me to cut the cards. My uncle kept telling me to cut and my mom finally told him I don't know what it means. So he took the cards from me and told my brother to cut. He took half off the deck and my uncle picked them both up and continued shuffling them. I figured out that was what cut meant.


I also remember the hilarious scene in The Amanda Show called Meet the Literals. (shame they only did that one scene) and the family took everything so literal; jokes, sarcasm, and idioms. I got it but this one part would confuse me. Amanda Bynes introduced herself as Leslie and one of the girls asks her whats up and she looks up and says "Oh just a beautiful beautiful ceiling" and the girls had a weird look on their faces. I knew something was wrong based on their expressions but I couldn't understand why. Months later I learned in school "what's up?" means "whats happening" when someone told me because I took it literal. When I saw that skit again, I finally understood their weird facial expressions.

When I'd first heard the phrase "straight edge" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_edge I'd thought it was when someone cut themselves - I'd heard that many teens were doing that and I'd associated it with a straight edge razor. Then I came to find out what it actually meant later.

When I was very young I'd thought that "horror" and "whore" were the same word, which caused my parents to enter hysterical laughter one time; they made extra sure that I understood correctly so that I wouldn't say something bad or misunderstand something in public.

I actually had no idea straight edge meant anything like this in my vocabulary it's just another word for the object that's basically like a ruler, but metal (you use the edge to draw a straight line with... sometimes it has the "T" crossbar to make a right angle too).

I can't think of a story to add unfortunately. Your story though, reminds me of behaviors I encountered a lot in school, and that my kids encounter from time to time. They are the kind of behaviors that really steam me.

What she did is obvious. I think she knew damned well you didn't know what it meant and asked the question like setting a trap, KNOWING you would say no, and laughing hysterically because she now had something she could go tell everyone else on the playground just to make fun of you. It was all about making you look stupid. I'm positive she did tell the others, who then came to you asking you the same question, and even though you gave the "right" answer to them, they already knew you didn't know what it meant. That's what they were laughing about. It's despicable behavior.

When I heard people refer to "beer gardens," I imagined outdoor ares with lots of foliage and troughs of beer running through it (or at the very least, an actual garden seating area with beer served). Imagine my surprise (and disappointment!) when I found out that simply meant someplace that just serves beer.

When I first heard if the word bootleg, I looked it up online and saw it meant making illegal alcohol so I went back to the person and told him there is no alcohol in that photo. The person said back to me I really am a dummy. I learned later bootleg also means illegal copies of DVDs and CDs and it also means fake photos.


I remember I thought cheap, frugal, and inexpensive were the same thing and I thought it also meant not spending lot of money. Like if I didn't want to spend five dollars on a drink, I was being cheap or if I didn't want to spend all my money to travel, I'm cheap. I had to learn the hard way that is not what cheap means and also buying things on sale or clearance isn't being cheap or staying in inexpensive hotels which I called cheap hotels because they cost under 60 bucks to stay. I am sure some of you remember that thread. I even found out my dad had been insulting me for all these years and I didn't even know it so no wonder I would call my aunt and uncle cheap and also the fact he called them cheap too behind their backs. Plus my mother calls herself cheap but I didn't know she was using irony and she has also called me a cheapskate before and cheap while we were in Europe.


I also thought drop and dump were the same thing when you take a person somewhere and leave them there such as work or home or at a bookstore or mall. My dad had also been telling me he will dump me off here and there so one day I said it to a mother online at Yahoo Answers about how it was a good thing she checked the daycare out first before dumping them there. The place was a dump because of cat s**t everywhere, broken glass, no grass in the yard, scissors buried in the dirt and her home was filthy and she had good reviews? So it was a good thing she checked it out first before leaving her kids there. Heck even I would say to dump me off so I didn't know dump had a different meaning and that it changes the whole meaning of the sentence.

You nailed that perfectly, that girl was a bit of a jerk. Most other kids knew what it meant, she definately liked to start trouble. But I have the last laugh. She has 3 kids, a measly high school diploma and a cockroach filled apartment. I have a degree and two dogs. ( I know that's mean but it goes to show you bullies usually turn out to be losers later on)

Think of Gerry's game or that little scene from Mulan.

A stitch in time and all that. Did anyone ever stop to think why these phrases exist in the first place? They are nonsense if you don't know what they mean. Even when you do know what they mean they are nonsense. I've never encounter a teacher at school who learnt us about them. They are not funny or amusing in any way. I say we banish them from society.

Until recently I struggled with the concept of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I am not an American, so to me jelly is a dessert food which is slippery and wobbles. I could not understand how eating such a sandwich would even be possible, and imagined amusing scenes where someone grabs the sandwich to eat it, and the jelly shoots out the sides and skids all over the table!

Well, it's natural to take the cosmic needle and stitch together the fabric of space-time in order to bring two time points closer together to save time. It's not nonsense, I do it all the time! ;p

Anyway, I guess I was lucky to have a few teachers who explained the background of some expressions like that. The person who gave me the above explanation was a 4th grade teacher who was reading Madeleine D'engle's "A wrinkle in time" book to the class. The book has A LOT of phrases/idioms like that, and one of my favorites that I saw in that book was "The road to hell is paved with good intentions.".