Of COURSE I Knew That....

The majority of my posts have been of the "lengthy diatribes on serious social issues," and I've been snowed in for the past five days, so I think it's time to lighten up a bit.  (Don't worry, we'll get back to the social commentary soon enough.)  With that in mind, here's a brief list of pretty obvious things I didn't realize until well after I should have, along with the age of realization.  Note that they are all from my late teens or later.

1. "The Beatles" is a pun, not just a creative misspelling.  I remember realizing this, and thinking back to the old episode of The Simpsons where Homer is in a barbershop quartet.  The whole story was a reference to the Beatles, I understood that at the time, but when they were thinking up a name and Professor Skinner said they needed "a name that's witty at first, but that seems less funny each time you hear it," and Apu suggested "The Be Sharps" it sailed right over my head.
   Approximate age of realization: 18
2. The lead singer of Rush is male.  All right, to be fair about this, I never really listened to Rush all that much.  Honestly, they kind of annoy me.  Not that big of a deal.
   Approximate age of realization: 19
3. My grandmother has a New York accent.  And boy, do I mean a strong one.  It's not like it's subtle or anything; it's full-on New Yawker.  She's just always talked (tawked) like that, and I never really gave it a second thought.  She just had Grandma voice, that was all.
   Approximate age of realization: 22
4. The song "Black Velvet" is about Elvis.  This one was really more a case of never actually listening to the lyrics outside of the chorus.  I do that a lot, actually.  I usually have to make an effort to listen to lyrics, and not just drift off during songs.  I was driving home one day and the song came on the radio for the billionth time during my lifetime and I thought "Hey, I wonder what the rest of the song is about?"  Turns out it's obviously and blatantly Elvis.  Huh.
   Approximate age of realization: 25
5. The word "segue" is pronounced "segway."  See, okay, I knew the word pronounced "segway," and could use it properly in a spoken sentence, and I knew the word spelled "segue," and could use it properly in a written sentence, but I thought the former was spelled "segway" and the latter was pronounced "seeg" (long "e", hard "g").  I guess I thought they were synonyms or something.  I finally realized it when someone else mentioned to me that they were once confused on that point.  I kept my mouth shut.
   Approximate age of realization: 26
6. The term "upwards of" a number means "more than," not "almost."  I have no excuse for this one whatsoever.  This is also one of the few where I was caught out by someone, and had to be convinced of my error, because my version was so ingrained in my head by that point.
   Approximate age of realization: 27
7. The old joke "I don't trust anything that bleeds for three days and doesn't die" is talking about women. This is one that I first heard long before I knew what a period was, and by the time I did know had long since relegated it to the back of my mind, in the "weird crap that makes no sense" bin.  It was revived years later while watching Mel Brooks's High Anxiety, but since the joke in the movie is that the guy had actually been bleeding for several days without dying, it didn't help.  It only popped up in my head and clicked into place for no apparent reason I can remember maybe a year ago.
   Approximate age of realization: 27 
8. The cookie brand "Chips Ahoy!" is a pun on the phrase "Ship ahoy!"  Nothing special triggered this one.  A commercial came on TV, and it just suddenly clicked.  This was maybe a few weeks ago.
   Exact age of realization: 28

So there you go.  All minor things, to be sure, but still.  So what sort of things did you not realize until embarrassingly late in life?

Jack Chick Is My Inspiration

If you know or live near some seriously conservative Christians, or have a predilection for snarking on crazy conservative paraphernalia, then you very likely have, at some point or another, stumbled across the Chick tract.  If you aren't familiar with them, check that link to their Wikipedia page for a brief introduction or, better yet, read a few at random from the official website, where they are all freely available.

Briefly, they are small, short booklets containing a comic-book-style story that usually tells how a certain thing (such as Halloween, Harry Potter, Catholicism, and homosexuality) is horrendously evil, will make you go to hell, and that Jesus is the only salvation.  Now, as you can surely guess, these things are pretty much completely antithetical to my personal philosophy.  As such, it would be easy for me to write a post here making fun of a specific tract, decrying how horrid his strawmen and stereotypes (used for "humorous" effect, of course), or going point-by-point through one to show how inaccurate it is.  Many people online and off have done so, much better than I can.  So instead, I want to tell you why these tracts, and by extension, their creator. Jack Chick, are an inspiration to me.

Let me tell you a story.