This troperette believes her dad must have grown up in the Stone Age. Some of his beliefs include: #QUOTE#"The most important thing for a woman is to be beautiful. The most important thing for a man is to be smart." #QUOTE#"There's no point learning how to swim. If you think you're going to drown, there's no point trying to survive. Just die." #QUOTE#"Why would anyone love their country just because they grew up there? There's no way Singapore citizens could love their home-there's only one city there!" #QUOTE#"Why can't your teacher swear at you when he gets annoyed? There's nothing wrong with that." And, of course, he is taken completely by surprise when he realizes that other people might have different opinions.

My mother: 'If they don't like America, they can move somewhere else! Like Hawaii!' Me: -facepalm- 'Mom...Hawaii ''is'' part of America...' Her: 'Oh.'

This troper's dad might count. Currently (10/1/10), Ecuador is under a state of emergency following the police's attempted kidnapping of the President due to austerity measures, which was then followed by a series of riots. Two people are dead, 88 are injured, there are tires burning in front of the Presidential Palace in Quito and there's looting in Guayaquil. My dad--who is vacationing there--emails us, saying that there's riots going on, and then proceeds to call us an hour later and tell us he went to the mall to grab a coffee with his friend. Let me repeat this: there are people running around snatching whatever they can grab and the President was nearly deposed and Daddy decides to go hang out at the mall. My dad is a 58-year-old IT person with a bit of a paunch, so it's not like he's Rambo and this kind of thing is normal for him. I think this may have to do with his childhood watching tanks roll down the streets of Guayaquil, but my uncles sure as hell stayed inside. I'm kind of concerned now.

You know, after a while you get bored of being worried all the time and continue your life normally. It's a mental thing.

So me and my grandpa are at this state park. Beautiful place, smells like the sea, warm, slightly breezy. However, the highlight of this park is the fact that the wild birds (chickadees, tufted titmice, nuthatches, Downy woodpeckers) come to your hand if you hold out seed. So me and my grandpa and a big bunch of other hikers (strangers) are on this bridge where a particularly large crowd of birds are. My grandpa right in front of me (a foot and a half distance apart) is holding his camera up to catch a picture of a titmouse, when suddenly all of the birds scream and dart away. A flash of brown in the corner of my eye - an ENORMOUS one, mind you - and a fully grown hawk shoots between me and amy grandpa - 1 1/2 feet - to chase after the birds. In a giant crowd of people. Everyone is standing thunderstruck, and my grandpa looks up from his camera and says, ". . . What's everyone looking at?" He hadn't seen a thing.

In grade school, this troper once encountered another student who, having lived their entire life with divorced/unmarried parents, couldn't comprehend that this troper lived with ''both'' his parents. (At the same time!)

This troper may qualify; he makes every effort to avoid watching or reading news because of its horribly negative bias that ends up making him anxious or depressed. He only knows the bare basics of current events anymore, like that there's a recession and that some people are concerned with global warming, which are not even new things anymore.

Same here. Although for me it's more along the line of "the news are boring lies, and I almost always prefer a book over any newspaper and the computer over the TV". Also, to the OP: those ideas your dad has are pretty weird, except I can't really see anything wrong with the last one. - Rottenvenetic

Also, happened recently when I contacted a career consultant to help me with my unsuccessful job hunt. She steered the conversation away from my actual problem - lacking a personal income - and a few days later it hit me: For an established professional like her, my predicament is Terra Incognita, so it's only natural for her to retreat into what she knows: explaining the basics of her coaching program, recommending that I take up psychotherapy for my abysmal motivation and possible Asperger's instead, as well as jogging. All of this is fine, but ultimately secondary, and can't really be attacked properly until the primary problem is taken care of. - Rottenvenetic

This troper sometimes gets so into a book that when someone says something to her/him (not telling you my gender) he/she doesn't even know what the conversation was about. Also if I'm in a deep sleep and there's a thunderstorm I won't wake up.