Do you ever take things literally or too seriously?

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Yes, sometimes. Or sometimes, I sit there wondering when "I'll call you back" means exactly. It bothers me because I'm afraid I wouldn't be there or prepared for it.

I take sarcasm literally too...can get irritating after a while for me.
When I was younger and my mum was going to vacuum the floor, I asked her "What are you going to do now?". She replied..."Feed the pigs". I said..."We don't have any pigs,".

I understand what she ment by that now...she was meaning that it was obvious that she was doing the vacuuming so she said she was doing something else to try and make a point!
I don't understand why she did it still

A tendency to take things too literally? Yes, this happens to me very often.

Last edited by Silver_Meteor on 14 Oct 2007, 11:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah that reminds me of something that happened to me when I was working at a private club house dining hall. This old woman gave me the remains of her meal and said "the rest can be fed to the gerbils" or something like that. Apparently that meant that I can just get rid of it. Has anyone even heard of a saying like that?? I really thought that she was going to feed it to her gerbils so I packaged it for her and she made fun of me after Like all the other ungreatful wealthy bastards who went there.

Feed the Gerbils?! Never have I heard of such a horrific thing, hehe.

Had someone said that to me I woulda been like : WTF!?

Indeed, I dont register sarcasm (tho i can dish it out) and also used to have a hard time with jokes, tho as I got older, that improved.

I don't think to the point of severity, but quite often throughout my life people have told me I take things too seriously. I interpret jokes as serious. I have a tough time telling the difference sometimes.

very true for me, sometimes i don't get jokes or metaphorespecially (i still think it's impossible to rain cats or dogs)

I never understand jokes.
& I tend to take things literally too. Like the time thing. If my mom says she'll be in at 3, & she comes in at 3:15, I'm like "you're late"
When I was jounger, I had trouble understanding a lot of things my grandma would say. She says sayings like "let the cat out of the bag" I would pick up the cat & say "He's not in a bag"

Yes all the time but I have learned not to listen to the "Call you right back" part and "I'll be back in (insert number here) minutes."

Yes people always are telling me "That was a joke" or "I was kidding" etc.

With a few people it's easy to tell because they are laughing after they say it so I assume they were kidding, joking, or teasing.

All the time!
I once rang someone and they answered "Battersea Dogs' home" as a joke, I apologised and went to put the phone down, they had to explain that it was a joke.
People are always having to explain jokes and sometimes phrases or common words to me, it make me feel a bit idiotic tbh, it's like my brain can only process the words and not the meaning, for example, for a long time I couldn't figure out what Jay Walking was, and I actually thought it had something to do with a bird, at the same time I guessed it might not have anything to do with a bird, but my brain had decided that that that was the only logical explanation.
I just get all embarrassed when people have to explain things further, it makes me feel stoopid, ah well, them's the breaks I guess.

Bugs

I understand jokes, but I don't care for scripted jokes out of a joke book. Most aren't funny and some deal with subject matter I don't consider funny, such as abuse, violence and making fun of people who are different.

I prefer humor that comes from observations of daily life.

That happened to me once, I was calling from a pay-phone and hung up thinking I had dialed the wrong number and gotten some asylum's answering machine on the other end....wasted my coin.

I take things very literally. The other problem I have is that I'm a very visual thinker, so I end up getting hilarious mental pictures of my literal interpretation of whatever I hear.

Also, if someone says the wrong word by accident, everyone else knows what they meant and moves on... I get stuck, again on the mental picture, of what they actually said. One day at church the pastor was talking about a disoriented person in his sermon. He meant to say that the person was so lost, they were like a ship without a rudder. He said the wrong word though, and it came out "He was like a ship without an udder." Good thing I was alone in the sound booth, because I was giggling over the picture of a ship with a cow's udder for the rest of the service.

Another day at church, someone was talking about a missions trip they went on and they were thanking people from the church for clothes and other items that had been donated for the people in that other country. The guy said "If any of you sent small baby clothes, those are at the hospital over there now for the babies who are born without any clothes." Aren't all babies born naked??

All the time! Thank gawds there are those little emoticons on WP or I'd take seriously 3/4ths of the stuff that people say in jest.

im busy now, so here's a quick one..
yea i almost always do, and people make fun of me and it's not nice at all.
i really dislike it, but, yea sometimes i can handle the situation, sometimes not so well.

it also depends very much on who the person is you're dealing with - their character etc.

i'd like to add some more to this thread when im free.

cheers,
skribble.

p.s. i'm new here.. i JUST registereed. pretty happy to have found the site. asp is lonely/bored.. mmm..