learned_late epitome of incomprehensibility I was probably around 15 when I realized that "indie" in "indie music" was short for "independent." What did I think it was before? This is a little embarrassing, but music from India. Or in an Indian style. As in movies: the Bollywood to U.S.'s Hollywood. Memory of the local paper from when my school did "The Gazette Challenge" when I was 11 or 12, showing a picture of an indie band with a South Asian guy. And so the association was formed or reinforced. But maybe this is a reconstruction in the present. Maybe it was just about the word. 240708 ... e_o_i For years I thought the phrase "a day that will live in infamy" (it's actually "a date which will live in infamy") was something George W. Bush said about 9/11. It was only in my twenties I learned the actual origin (though probably Bush or someone referred back to it): Franklin D. Roosevelt said this about the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. My dad remembers learning this in school, but then he's from the U.S. 240916 ... e_o_i I learned the literary allusion of 42 before the sexual one of 69. In high school, I asked Samantha or Emma to explain the latter number, but I couldn't form a clear picture of what they described. Simple reason: when one of them said "sex position" I thought the genitals had to meet each other, not encounter mouths. (Maybe the real heteronormative_synechdoche was the friends we made along the way?) 250419 ... e_o_i edits ...Or maybe the real heteronormative_synecdoche is that I can't spell. 250419 ... raze i spent most of my life assuming the word "banal" rhymed with "anal". evidence of this survives in a song. same deal with "rustic", which i thought had more breath in its belly than it really does. i always saw it as more of a root than a rut. i didn't really know what "upshot" meant until two years ago. there are so many things i came to later than i should have. for decades i was afraid to make a salad. i was sure i would screw it up somehow. there's still so much left to learn. 250717 ... ovenbird I'm embarrassed to admit that I thought it was lead (present tense) and lead (past tense) like read and read until literally just a few weeks ago. How did I get this wrong? I only JUST discovered that the past tense is "led" and this seems like a horrifying thing to have overlooked for so long. I immortalized "lead" as past tense in a blathe. This is VERY recent history. 250718 what's it to you? who go blather from