Confession time

_redbird_ · 01-11-19 07:13:34

Until approximately 5 years ago I didn't know that limes weren't just unripe lemons. I found out when I was in the supermarket with a friend and was complaining about the fact that limes are more expensive than lemons despite just being an unripe version of the same fruit. My friend thought I was joking at first and ended up having to burst my bubble and blow my mind with the knowledge that they are indeed two different fruits.

Also roughly 5 years ago (wow what a year of discovery) I found out that the names "Ellen" and "Alan" are pronounced differently and apparently I can only say it the "Alan" way. I can BARELY hear a difference though and I still wonder if the people who have told me that I say it wrong aren't just messing with me...

What things did you only recently discover that you almost definitely should have already known? Please let me know so I feel like less of a donk.

Molly_f · 01-11-19 07:25:10

Hahahhaah

I can't beat your lime discovery but up until very recently I thought the idiom was "nip it in the butt" instead of "nip it in the bud"... I don't care though I still prefer butt.

_redbird_ · 01-11-19 07:30:54

Bahahaha oh Molly that is glorious. I love it when people mishear sayings. My partner thought it was "You're the apple of my pie" until I told him otherwise two years ago. His logic was that the saying means that without the filling, you are just a crust.

I really like "Nip it in the butt" and will start saying it that way from now on.

troyforyou · 03-11-19 07:39:39

I think limes are distinct fruits.

viva · 06-11-19 00:12:40

The whole point of Red's post was that limes are not unripe lemons hehehehehehhe

_redbird_ · 06-11-19 03:02:57

Haha rushaus, sorry I worded it strangely. They are indeed two different fruits though.

For years I believed that the HIV virus came to Earth on a comet after seeing a documentary stating this and I repeated this as fact for a shockingly long time (it also said that every few hundred years a virus that wipes out millions of people comes to Earth, and that before HIV it was small pox). People would question my very improbable "fact" so much that I stopped mentioning it and just put it down to a dream or confabulation I must've had. It wasn't until a friend (Bathory actually!) said that she remembers a conspiracy theory type show in the 90's that had a segment on viruses that came to Earth via comet that I realised that little kid Red had been had by a tacky conspiracy show and somehow carried that on into adulthood.

viva · 06-11-19 05:03:38

I used to think approximately meant exactly and I still do.

_redbird_ · 06-11-19 07:50:01

rushaus wrote:

_redbird_ wrote:
Haha rushaus, sorry I worded it strangely. They are indeed two different fruits though.

....actually, upon rereading that, I have no idea how my reading comprehension has gotten so bad. So, no need for an apology, I'm really just a silly dick

So I guess one of your contributions to this conversation is....this? Haha.

Come on people, I have so many more I could share but I want to hear more from others first. A lot of my "Fuck, I should definitely have already known that..." moments are from songs that I didn't know were covers. Some of them were sliiiightly more obscure but some are ridiculously well known by the original artist and I absolutely should have known that they were covers (*cough*smoothcriminal*cough*).

Molly_f · 06-11-19 08:00:06

Well in high school I still had not had sex or really watched that much porn so I really had no idea what consistency semen was, but I wanted to keep up with the other kids and their sex jokes. One day at work everyone was laying it on thick with sexual innuendos and so when someone splattered mayo all over the counter and wall I compared it to semen and everyone looked at me blankly then were like OMG you dummy you don't even know what cum looks like!!!! I was so embarrassed :'(

viva · 06-11-19 23:39:21

What!? that is a totally legit comparison. white stuff that splatters, come on.

Miriam_R · 07-11-19 04:58:16

I think thats a totally valid comparison! Compared to other innuendos that I heard, and still hear (especially from men) it's only the tone of their voice that lets it pass hahaha

Howland · 07-11-19 05:11:49

Okay, okay, here’s one. I used to think that the word “misled” (which is actually, as everyone knows, the past tense of the verb “to mislead”) was the past tense of another, um, non-actual verb, “to misle” (pron. MY-zull), meaning, I guess, the same thing. But one day I suppose I read a sentence like “He tried to mislead her but she was not misled” and the penny dropped. D'oh!

Also, I have some thoroughly mindblowing facts about limes to share, but even though I know I have the book I read them in around here somewhere, I can’t find it, and since I want to get them right, I will have to order the book from the library, which will take several days. Or maybe I’ll keep looking around here. Anyway, holy crap, you are not going to believe this … !

viva · 07-11-19 06:05:28

first of all, howland, you have me and redbird giggling our heads off in our office chairs over "mislead" (pron. MYZ-uld). so bravo for that, you win post of the day.

and secondly, I'm pretty equally chuffed about the idea of you clickbaiting us for facts we cannot know until you go order and then check out library books. so that's a double win, poster of the month, Howland everybody.

will be eagerly awaiting those lime facts.

Howland · 07-11-19 16:07:57

Thanks Viva! I'll get right on it.

Howland · 14-11-19 23:20:01

OK, just got back from the library with the book I was talking about: John McPhee, Oranges. “Oranges?” you say? I thought we were talking about limes! Pull up a chair, then, and listen …

Let me break this up so the post doesn’t get too long. The first thing you need to know is this [p.22]:

“Most citrus trees consist of two parts. The upper framework, called the scion, is one kind of citrus, and the roots and trunk, called the rootstock, are another. [These are called “budded” trees, as opposed to “seedling” trees, which are grown entirely from a planted seed (that is, with no grafting like the budded ones have) – H.] Seedling trees take about fifteen years before they start bearing well, and they bristle with ferocious thorns. Budded trees come into bearing in five years and are virtually free of thorns. In Florida, most orange trees have lemon roots. In California, nearly all lemon trees are grown on orange roots. […] A single citrus tree can be turned into a carnival, with lemons, limes, grapefruit, tangerines, kumquats, and oranges all ripening on its branches at the same time.”

Now, as if that weren’t wild enough, on p. 34 we hear:

“Citrus scientists have difficulty finding the property lines between varieties and species and between species and hybrids. One astonishing illustration of this came as the result of an attempt, at the United States Horticultural Station in Orlando, Florida, to grow a virus-free Persian Lime. This is the kind of lime, almost perfectly seedless, that goes into everyone’s gin and tonic. About fifteen years ago [that is, about 1950 – H.], many Persian Lime trees in Florida were affected by a virus that was drastically shortening their lives. The most common way to create a virus-free strain of a citrus fruit is to plant a seed, since a parent’s virus is not transmitted to its seedlings.”

I guess that would mean, as per above, that they would have to wait the extra ten years before they got their limes, but maybe that’s the only way to avoid the virus. In any case, they ran into a little problem …

Howland · 14-11-19 23:21:49

Limes, pt. 2:

“Persian Limes contain so few seeds, however, that the researchers—Philip C. Reese and J. F. L. Childs—cut up eighteen hundred and eighty-five Persian Limes and found no seeds at all. So they went to a concentrate plant and filled two dump trucks with pulp from tens of thousands of Persian Limes which had just been turned into limeade. Picking through it all by hand [!], they found two hundred and fifty seeds, and planted them. Up from those lime seeds came sweet orange trees, bitter orange trees, grapefruit trees, lemon trees, tangerines, limequats, citrons—and two seedlings which proved to be Persian Limes.”

What. The. Freaking. Frack.

Now, the botany lesson:

“Ordinarily, a citrus seed will tend to sprout a high proportion of something called nucellar seedlings, which are asexually produced and always have the exact characteristics of the plant from which the seed came. The seeds of the Persian Limes, however, sent up a high proportion of zygotic seedlings, meaning seedlings which arise from a fertilized egg cell. If zygotic seedlings come from parents which are true species, the seedlings will always quite obviously resemble one or the other parent, or both. If zygotic seedlings come from parents which are hybrids, they can resemble almost any kind of citrus ever known. The Persian Lime itself is probably a natural hybrid. The trees which grew from Reece’s and Childs’ lime seeds are still young [or, again, were in 1966 – H.] and they copiously produce their oranges and lemons, grapefruit and tangerines every year. The lemons are a type that are not grown, except perhaps in a laboratory, within three thousand miles of Orlando.”

And the punch line:

“However, most pomologists who are familiar with this story think that it has only one truly remarkable aspect. They think it is fairly phenomenal that, out of two hundred and fifty seeds, Reece and Childs got two Persian Limes.”

How about that!

_redbird_ · 14-11-19 23:47:38

So....what you're basically saying is that I was right all along

viva · 14-11-19 23:49:05

THIS IS PREMIUM CONTENT.

I may not be a pomologist, but I'm working on my PhD in pornology.

and finally, this line is so beautiful

a single citrus tree can be turned into a carnival

_redbird_ · 15-11-19 01:41:45

Joking aside, thank you Howland for such great content. It was really interesting, and I'm absolutely keeping an eye out for that book now. I found this about it - "Oranges was first conceived as a short magazine article about oranges and orange juice, but the author kept encountering so much irresistible information that he eventually found that he had in fact written a book."

Truly excellent.

Howland · 15-11-19 02:21:17

_redbird_ wrote:

So....what you're basically saying is that I was right all along

Yes, exactly! Only not exactly exactly; no individual lime can "ripen" into a lemon. But other than that, yes.

Glad you enjoyed that. But now: moar confessionz!

viva · 15-11-19 03:27:57

howland I have a crush on you.

_redbird_ · 15-11-19 04:21:27

Haha Viva, I love your literal take on "Confessions", you dang cutie.

I recently found out that I'd been singing What I like About You wrong my entire life. I thought the line was "You keep me warm and nice" rather than "You keep me warm at night". That is a rather minor offence though.

My partner is from New Zealand and was talking about Kea birds and how they have warning signs up everywhere near where they live because they are known for destroying people's cars and I said "Oh yeah, they're those birds that you have to kill. Like, it's some law where if you see one you are expected to kill it because they're such a pest, yeah?" I wish I could bottle the horrified look on his face because it was glorious. This again is something I SWEAR I saw in a documentary, but apparently that never happened and there is most definitely no existing semi-official law that requires New Zealanders to kill a specific breed of destructive parrot.

Last edited by _redbird_ (15-11-19 04:36:23)

Howland · 16-11-19 03:22:05

viva wrote:

howland I have a crush on you.

Ha, excellent taste in men and women both, has our Viva. But as Red says, that's not exactly the kind of confession we're talking about here!

I like that one about the nonexistent law. "Sorry mate, you're under arrest for not killing that bird." "??!!" Also, I would totally buy a bottle of that horrified expression. You never know when such a thing would come in handy.

I'm sure we all have a lot of misheard lyrics. I used to hear the line in "Live and Let Die" as "the ever-changing world in which we live in," and went around thinking Sir Paul mangled the grammar of this line just to get it to scan; but then I realized it was "in which we're living," which makes more sense. Sorry Sir Paul!

_redbird_ · 19-11-19 07:57:32

Howland wrote:

viva wrote:
howland I have a crush on you.
Ha, excellent taste in men and women both, has our Viva. But as Red says, that's not exactly the kind of confession we're talking about here!
I like that one about the nonexistent law. "Sorry mate, you're under arrest for not killing that bird." "??!!" Also, I would totally buy a bottle of that horrified expression. You never know when such a thing would come in handy.
I'm sure we all have a lot of misheard lyrics. I used to hear the line in "Live and Let Die" as "the ever-changing world in which we live in," and went around thinking Sir Paul mangled the grammar of this line just to get it to scan; but then I realized it was "in which we're living," which makes more sense. Sorry Sir Paul!

Haha my partner asked "How did you imagine people would kill them?" and I had to admit that I just imagined them picking them up and breaking their necks like you do when you catch a fish. Or possibly smashing them with rocks? I don't know what I thought you were supposed to do with the bird corpses after though. Maybe there was a special bin provided?

Your misheard lyric is comically minor but I can see how you would notice it, given that it was from Sir Paul.

_redbird_ · 21-11-19 04:07:17

Until 2013 I thought that if you didn't have hayfever from birth you just never got it. It wasn't until it was a really hot and windy day at the cafe I used to work at that I found out that the uncontrollable sneezing and itchy red eyes I was experiencing was hayfever. I thought I had a cold that just came on really suddenly and a coworker had to break it to me that I do indeed suffer from allergies now.

#1 01-11-19 07:13:34

Confession time

#2 01-11-19 07:25:10

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