How much can really be told when eyes meet from across a room? That is the question. I will say that I've been pretty spot on from what I was able to immediately deduce from my past paramours. Most of them were who I thought they would be, and, for the most part, that was a good thing, until it wasn't. Let's see who can relate...
Ouch
Romance Love GIF by Hike Sticker ChatGiphy"I just know this guy is going to be a GIANT pain in the butt."
We were coworkers. I was right.
Say Cheese
We found each other on Tindr (yes, I'm aware we were using it wrong). I ran into him on the way to the restaurant we were supposed to meet at and the first thing I thought was "Wow, he looks so much better than his profile pics. Thank God he can't use a camera well or else he'd probably be snatched up already".
Hooked
"Wow, that guy is cute and quiet. He's so mysterious! I have to talk to him!". My husband and I met working in a bookstore. I asked him if he ever talked, he looked me in the eye, nodded, then walked away. I was hooked! We had lunch at the same time about a week later, so I asked him if he wanted to get lunch together. We started talking about elementary school and discovered we went to school together from 3rd grade until sophomore year in high school, although we didn't know each other. It's a small world!
The Eyes have It
GIF by Vulture.comGiphyShe has beautiful eyes and she was so pretty (still very much so).
I was so nervous, I went to bathroom and gave myself double finger guns and said don't screw this up. Still married 5 years!
Edit: thank you for the award!! Also, we met on tinder and yes she looked like her picture.
That Guy
"Oh hey, It's that guy I met in the cafeteria. He seems smart. I'll sit by him so I can cheat on tests." We started to become good friends so I felt guilty and ended up telling him. From then on out, he made sure to not flip to the next page or turn his test in until I was done copying. :,)
It was a required health class & not at all relevant to our majors. I had a hard time with those tests for whatever reason and he aced them with no effort... So he didn't mind.
I drew him funny pictures and comics as thanks and we hit it off from there. :)
Now see there, love does still exist in this cruel, cold, mad world. Not only must we open our eyes, but also our hearts and minds. (I should write for a lesser version of Hallmark. No?) If only we were aware of the impressions we're making ourselves. I also forget, people are watching.
"Hairy" Situation
The very first impression was pleasantly surprised.
For context, it was my first day at my first (student) job, and my boss was showing me around and introducing me to everyone by going to all office rooms, one after the other.
My now-husband was in the very last room, and I was "warned" that that team was a bit "special", mainly because of their very direct and sometimes weird/harsh sense of humor. What surprised me was his hair color, as my now husband was the only one in this department of ~50 people with brightly colored hair.
So while I didn't get to talk to him much that day, I remembered him for his hair color alone. It took us a few more weeks getting into contact and to eventually start dating, last weekend was our ten year anniversary (and third wedding anniversary), and he still rocks his brightly colored hair.
Not so Scary
I thought he was an ex-convict. He's super muscular, tattoos covering every inch of his body; all around just a very threatening looking guy. He came up to me and told me "I think you're adorable. Can I have your number?" I was petrified because I have never dated or attracted anyone of this type. But he charmed me. Turns out he's a huge softy with a goofy personality. He cracks up at the smallest things, he loves sweets like a little kid, getting tucked in at night and is scared of the dark. I love him to bits!
A Lasting Impression
mandy moore love GIF by This Is UsGiphy"OMG she's beautiful when she's annoyed" Good for me, cause I annoy her a lot. 9 years in and I can't imagine annoying anyone else.
Coming Back
I was a bartender and he was one of the first to get a drink from me that day. So I didn't think much, I was still trying to screw my head on and jump into the shift. He kept coming back tho, not always to get a drink sometimes just to stand near my bar while I made drinks. His friend brought him there for his birthday, yet he spent most of his time with me. Once I noticed him, I thought he was a lovable dork. I needed to a have a conversation with him where I could be myself and not in working mode.
Same Mindset
Lovers Kiss GIF by NETFLIXGiphyI thought he was so cool. We had talked online for a few days but it wasn't until I saw him walking towards me when we met for our first date that I realized he was way out of my league. Luckily he thought the same thing about me.
So from now I''m going to enter every room with my eyes forward and bulging. I want to put forth a grounded presence and also I want to survey for connection. Hopefully I can add to this thread years from now after an anniversary. In a good way.,
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What our history teachers tell us isn't always accurate. For example, I remember being told that Henry VIII executed all of his wives. Now, I've seen Six the Musical and know better, and while that show SLAPS, it's sad when I learn more from Broadway musicals than I did in history class. Looking at you, Hamilton.
Whether by pop culture, the media, or just our own research, sometimes we learn that our school curriculum was kind of BS. Here are some tales from history class.
U/info_cellar asked: What did you learn about history that turned out to be a complete lie?
Let’s start out with some more weird ones, shall we?
That was a good Simpsons episode.
That Edison was a brilliant inventor.
Edison was a cheat, a thief and a con and TESLA DESERVES JUSTICE.
And took credit for Homer Simpson's automated hammer.
Australia is wack, man.
emus GIF
Giphy
The Great Emu War wasn't the only war that Australia lost to the Emus.
They also lost the Second Great Emu War.
Ok, now that we got our token Simpsons reference out of the way, let’s get angry.
That does get played down a lot.
That "The Japanese mistreatment of POWs was exaggerated, what it is that they fed them the same ration their own soldiers got and that was not an adequate diet for the larger Americans."
I had a teacher in highschool who actually said that! Tell that to the guys who somehow survived captivity by the Japanese! The guys marched for hours in sweltering heat and marched right past wells that they were forbidden to drink from and were beheaded on the spot if they drank from them anyway.
BTW, they did not feed the POWs the same ration their own men got, not even close!
Sooo many kids were misinformed.
That Christopher Columbus discovered America. How the hell do you "discover" a place that already has over six million people living there?
I'm not sure if the lie about Columbus "discovering" America is worse or is it the sanitization of Columbus' monstrosity. We start our children out with these lies and complete fabrications around the first Thanksgiving and Columbus and it makes it easier for them to fall for lies about slavery, American empire, the purpose behind wars, ongoing racial issues, etc..
My teachers definitely said this.
Martin Luther King Jr Mlk GIF by Identity
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That Martin Luther King ended racism in America.
"Once upon a time white people were awful to black people for hundreds of years, and then one day MLK gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech and was shot, and then there was no more racism.
Nope.
The freed slaves in America were given 40 acres of land and a mule. No, they did not. But it's still talked about as if it happened...
Those were white freed slaves in states with a charter. Virginia and Pennsylvania are two of them. The slaves were transported criminals and indentured servants who were sold to colonists for a fixed period of time. When that time was up they were granted "40 acres and a mule".
That charter did not extend to black slaves.
No, we definitely existed.
LGBT+ people are a new thing and didn't exist in history. (they absolutely did exist, but homophobic/transphobic historians do all in their power to cover it up).
I remember watching a documentary on Pompeii. If I remember correctly, the queen had these bath house things where massive bisexual orgies would take place.
"Homosexuality is a modern 'issue'". Tell that to a kinky queen who lived almost 2,000 years ago.
A lot of these cases, however, are just plain misinformed.
You mean Hamilton lied to me?
King George Broadway GIF by Hamilton: An American Musical
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This is a fact that a lot of us Americans like to deny, King George didn't tax us just to be an a**hole. We technically were at least one of the reasons the French and Indian war and by extension at least part of the 7 years war happened. King George put taxes on us because he wanted the people who caused the war to pay their debts.
Also George Washington's army was not completely made up of white people, native americans and free black men were a part of the army too and the guy who turned George Washington's ragtag group into an effective fighting force was a gay man. Also only 1/3rd of the colonists actually wanted independence, the rest were either loyalists or didn't care. Also we would not have won the war without help from the French and the Spanish.
Very similar to recent events.
Ronald Reagan.
Although I consider myself a liberal I actually grew up in a conservative family and I was taught growing up that Reagan was one of the greatest presidents America ever had. As I grew older and did more research on him I came to realize how destructive his policies were and how much damage he did to liberal ideology. He pushed the Republicans to the far right and the Democrats pushed themselves further right as a result.
He also had the most corrupt administration in US History. 138 people were either indicted, convicted or had to resign due to involvement in one of the many scandals his administration had. That's right his administration was more corrupt than the GW Bush or Trump administration.
All notable tidbits.
Native people couldn't build boats, and the underestimation of the trade network between them. If they were just like us who says that they couldn't do those things? Polynesian artifacts have been found in California.
And this isn't a lie but there was a Chinese voyage that basically described the coast of California and the local flora and fauna. There's also those Japsnese people that sailed to South America after a volcano erupted, seriously, there's genetic evidence.
And speaking of Asian people, Asians were present in the west when it was a Mexican territory. There was a Filipino presence as well. They all just didn't show up when we needed people to build the railroad.
There is, or there was, I don't know if they're still there, a noticable Jewish population in Charleston. The oldest synagogue in America is there I think. I don't know why they chose Charleston though, but hey.
It’s amazing how much actual history is neglected in history class.
Not how that works.
Oh My God Omg GIF by CBC
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That lack of sunlight is why humans in Europe developed white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes.
One, all those things developed at different time periods for different reasons
Two, sunlight or lack thereof had nothing to do with skins turning white. Europeans were still mostly black / dark skinned in 10,000 B.C....this is after they had already been living in Europe and its lower sunlight levels for 35,000 years.
Interesting.
That the parties in the USA switched.
People portray it as the Republicans becoming evil and the Democrats becoming the good guys, but it was more of a relative switch. The Republican positions basically stayed consistent in absolute terms and the Democrats finally got over the Civil War and went really far to leave their past behind. It's an unpopular opinion, but just look at the platforms now vs. today. Some examples:
Republicans back then: free trade, small government, and cut taxes (Coolidge), segregation is bad, women and minorities should vote, buy American (Mckinley's protectionist tariffs), National Parks & strong military (Teddy Roosevelt). Those are all still pillars of the Republican party today.
Democrats back then: segregation is good, states rights from federal power, and the KKK. Compared to the nowadays Democratic party that favors a bigger federal government over state powers, seeks out voter suppression like a hawk, and is largely supported by minorities.
I'm no Republican, but you'd have to be trying not to notice that one party was more consistent while the other just changed a lot from it's awful past. This isn't to mention issues that both parties moved on like prohibition and gay marriage, for example.
Yikes.
Not sure if this counts because I already knew the correct version of history when she tried it, but my 10th grade world history teacher gave a long winded presentation about how the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.
It was about how no matter what it looked like, it was actually the Germans who were 100% to blame for the tragedy. It was a confusing week for my entire graduating class.
Regrettably a few of them weren't quite as capable of agency as others and took her misgivings for facts and the rest is small mid-west town history.
Ummm who is teaching this?
horrible histories gym GIF by CBBC
Giphy
Cavemen had to fight dinosaurs.
I was 10 when I found out dinosaurs were long gone when the cavemen arrived.
Well, I hope you all learned something today. And hopefully in the future we won't get all of our historical facts from Hamilton.
Goes to show that a lot of school curriculums are really misguided, and hopefully with future generations of teachers, that will be fixed.
Let’s start off with some super weird facts that you probably never even considered. These are the best.
Trees are honestly really effing cool.
For 60 million years trees didn't decay.
When they died the just fell over and laid there.
For 60 million years trees existed before the enzyme that broke them down when they died.
So tons of massive trees in the oxygen rich environment just laid on the ground. Until they burned. That's how we have coal.
Did they believe her though?
disney bambi GIFGiphyIn 1726 there was a woman called Mary Toft who tricked doctors into believing that she gave birth to rabbits.
There was another woman who would take the eggs from her chicken, etch "jesus has come" into them and shove them back into the chicken who would then lay it again and people actually thought the chicken was a prophet.
A whole river.
Some time in around the beginning of the 1500's Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli conspired to try to steal the Arno river.
They both lived in the city of Florence and at the time there was hostilities with the city of Pisa which was nearer to the mouth of the Arno river and controlled trade on it. Da Vinci came up with the plan to create a canal to divert the river so it no longer flowed to Pisa which would allow Florence to dominate the whole region. Da Vinci drew up the plans and Machiavelli put them into action. However Da Vinci didn't oversee the project and instead the engineer who did decided to do it his own way which would take longer and need more people. In the middle of the project war broke out and the project had to be scrapped due to attacks from Pisa so it never came to be. Still a great historical footnote though.
Some of the most stunning facts come from assassinations for some reason. Especially the ones that survive.
Beast mode.
Roosevelt was shot in the chest during a speech and just continued on like nothing happened.
He was shot just before his speech and he knew it hadn't pierced his lung since he wasn't coughing up blood, so he bandaged it and went to give his speech.
In another timeline, things might have been different.
John F Kennedy Democrat GIFGiphyIt is very possible - and some consider likely - that JFK could've survived the assassination had he not been wearing a thick, girdle-like back brace that kept him stiffly upright when in public.
Kennedy had terrible back problems since serving in WWII that were continually worsening. The back brace began as early as JFK met Stalin for the first time and wanted to appear tall and strong since it was at the height of the Cold War, however his pain was so bad he often walked around the WH hunched over and looked decrepit.
JFK continued to wear the brace to keep himself upright and portray the strong youthful image he crafted. When the first shot was fired, the brace made it nearly impossible to move, much less crouch down in the back seat to get out of the line of fire.
He was then struck with the infamous shot to the back/throat which rendered him more immobile and finally the headshot that killed him. Parkland doctors testified to the Warren Commission how surprised they were at the size and tightness of the brace and how long it took to get off. One remarked it likely made him a "sitting duck" because of how immobile it would've rendered him.
Good to know before she was beheaded.
When King Henry VIII was still married to Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard(his future fifth wife) was one of Cleves' ladies in waiting. They were close, even after Cleves' divorce. With all the tragedy and abuse from the men in her life, I'm just glad that she at least had one friend to trust.
Here’s the part you’ve all been waiting for- the facts about famous animals. You’re welcome.
The student teaches the teacher.
Benjamin Franklin had a pet squirrel. As a little girl, I dressed as him, with a squirrel beanie-baby on my shoulder. My teacher had to look it up on the internet to check if I was right. She was amused.
Sounds on-brand for Jackson.
happy dr pol GIF by Nat Geo Wild GiphyWhen Andrew Jackson died they had to remove his pet parrot from the funeral because it couldn't stop swearing.
He also had a comically large cheese wheel.
Lastly, we gotta shout out the presidents. Sometimes they actually did weird sh*t.
I guess we’ll never know.
Abraham Lincoln once gave a speech which was so good that all of reporters forgot to take notes, still to this day we don't know what exactly he said.
Well-portrayed in the Hamilton musical.
That George Washington was known as this Really Talented Dancer, and was very in tune with the dances at the time of his being... Idk why I just never woulda thought this at all but it's dope to hear that dancing/socializing was always a thing!
Like from the passage I read it seemed like Whenever George was in attendance at the function, everyone knew he was gonna cut a rug and tear the house down.. and the ladies considered themselves lucky to be his dance partner.
As for me, my favorite weird historical fact is that Anne Boleyn had an extra finger. That fact is frequently overlooked in favor of her identity as Henry VIII sixth wife. I could go into that, but they already made a whole musical about it.
Anyway, I hope this made history a little more fun for you. It's not all memorizing dates- sometimes you never know what you'll find in a history book