Fun with Literal-mindedness

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Although I get the figurative meaning behind a lot of popular sayings, it's sometimes more fun to think about them literally. For instance, some generous person left a big bag of roasted peanuts out in the breakroom to share and I had to grab a pen and paper and put a sign in front of it that said, "Payday!" since it happened to be Friday and most of us here "work for peanuts".

Anybody ever "tie up the phone"--with twine?

One of my early memories was hearing my parents talking. My mom said something about Friday. The first thing that came to my mind was spending a day in a giant frying pan! I thought i was actually gonna be fried. lol
I think I was around 4 or 5.

i find sayings conjour up very vivid images in my mind. like 'pull yourself together' I have this strong image of a knitted gingerbread man with a zip down the middle zipping himself up. I think I may have made these up when I was young to understand the meaning. I can't help but repeat these little images and scenes in my mind whenever I hear the words.

I don't take the literal side of things, but I still find it funny when I picture myself actually doing something the literal way.

Every time i hear 'the door is ajar.' I say 'Doors aren't jars!' lol

Uh oh. I hope nobody ever tells the OP, "keep your eyes peeled".

In some third world countries where many people can't read, most companies put a picture of the contents on their product containers, along with the name of the item, so people who can't read will know what it is. Unfortunately, one baby food company didn't do their research on this matter ahead of time when they entered a new third world market. Their product labels contained the name of the product and a picture of a baby, instead of a picture of the kind of food inside! Naturally, not many of the non readers wanted to buy jars of baby to eat!

My PC picture folder includes funny stuff like silly signs, including one on a store front that says, "Senior Citizens. Buy One, Get One Free."

No but I tied up a person with the phone cord. Does that count?

I was just thinking back to kindergarten and a specialist came in to interview me; he had me count to 10, and then he asked if I could count higher, so I stood up in a chair and stretched my arms toward the ceiling as high as they could go and I counted "1,2,3...." in all seriousness

One of my main "stims" is to stretch all of my fingers as much as I can. Stretching a certain finger outwards without stretching any other finger is a very offensive gesture in the United States. This gesture is often known as "flipping the bird." When my classmates would accuse me of "flipping the bird," I would run to the teacher and hysterically cry, "But there's no bird in here!" I would actually search for said bird. "There's no bird! And even if there was a bird, I don't know how to flip one!" This actually happened a few times before the teacher finally caught on and had this explained to me.

"Can you believe how hot/cold/whatever it is outside?" Always gets me if I'm not paying attention I answer "Yes."

Today my mother asked me if I had a mint; without thinking I replied "yes, many" (I had a whole tin of Altoids).

A fairly common greeting around here is 'Alright?'. If I feel like messing with people's heads I sometimes reply 'No, I'm half left'

I remember when I was 5 my mom said she had a song stuck in her head and well anyway I ended up calling crying her because I thought she literally had it stuck in her head and she was going to die lmaoo

But i was 5

My grandmother says that when people say ''you all right?'' Also she says other things like that, like once when I arrived to her bungalow and said, ''Mum's coming'', and she said, ''so's Christmas.'' Also once when I said, ''shall I put the kettle on?'' and she replied, ''you can, but it won't fit you.'' Also when she phones up and I answer it, and she asks what I'm doing and I say, ''nothing'', she often says, ''you can't be doing nothing, unless you've been sitting there staring at the walls all evening!''

She's not Aspie though. It's just part of her sense of humour.