Hmm
Whilst on holiday once I saw a little boy point at a palm tree bearing several large coconuts and ask his father "What kind of tree is that Dad?" His father glanced up and replied "It's a palm tree". The lad looked at the tree in wonder and then added "What kind of fruit is that growing on it?" In a masterpiece of idiocy his father informed him "I dunno son, I think it's bananas."

One nice sunny afternoon I marched out of the back door with a bucket of soapy water to clean my car with in one hand and a portable stereo in the other. My mother called after me "Be careful not to put the stereo in the bucket" Eh?
( naeonlite, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:29, Reply)

Dumbass Attenborough
A friend of mine thought that horses ate rabbits. Stupid, yes, but only gets to the really incredibly retarded stage when, on further questioning, he admitted that he thought the horses ate cooked rabbits. Uh...okay. How?
(mookroolz, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:23, Reply)

at work
one of my colleagues just came out with:

"after work I'm going to Asda and then I going to watch the entire 2nd series of 24 - I'll probably be up for hours!"

followed by, to our Canadian colleague (who has been in our team for ages)
"what kind of foreign person are you?"
( Not just a hatstand inflamed in the membrane inflamed in the brain, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:23, Reply)

This is for Not Just a Hatstand
Not doubting the stupidity of your landladyhousmate (I really must learn to read) for one second but most washing machines do plumb to hot and cold water if required, it saves money. This one obviously didn't, hence you being correct, but she probably learnt it somewhere else...
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:21, Reply)

Discussing films in the pub
we were talking about the brilliant Ben Kingsley and how he was great in such films as Sexy Beast and Gandhi. My friend Gabby piped up "Ben Kinsgley didn't play Gandalf it was the fella with the long white beard"

She then argued that Gandhi and Gandalf were in fact the same person.
( Hankster, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:17, Reply)

i overheard myself asking a friend "so what age do you stop being a teenager, then?"
i honestly had no idea that "teen" meant "sixteen, eighTEEN, ninTEEN" and so on.

i pity myself :(

(i'm 18 too!)
( stevierar, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:17, Reply)

Oooooh, another airline one
Whilst flying to Milan with a planeload of football fans, the fella behind me attempted to chat up the stewardess.

"So, what do you do for a living?"

stunned silence

"No, sorry, I meant who do you work for?"

In the most cutting tones imaginable ...

"If you just step out of that door there you'll see the name of the airline as you go past"
(Throbbe, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:16, Reply)

During my school days...
During break time one day a friend suddenly came out with the comment: "Learning Chinese is like learning a whole new language"

After the couple of seconds silence as we let it sink in we spent the next 5 years laughing at him!
( sudo is bored, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:16, Reply)

My sister, when asked a question about planes
"When the co-pilot is sat behind the pilot, they are in tandem. What is it called when the pilot is sat next to the co-pilot?"

My sister, ever the brainy one- "On his tod!"
( Noit happy baby orangutan, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:11, Reply)

In a graduate school philosophy course...
"I think a lot of Isaiah Berlin's views reflect his being German." Guess the last name is kind of misleading?
(chadofborg, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:10, Reply)

Party for the geographically challenged
Just thought of some more...conversation I had at a party:

Idiot: "You look Chinese. Where are you from?"
Me: "Well, my mother's from Hong Kong..."
Idiot: "Oh really? Whereabouts in Japan is that?"

Another person at the same party thought Iraq and Iran were the same country, just with different spellings.
(qwghlm, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:09, Reply)

And one from a thick chavette I once worked with...
I was talking about a Babylon 5 convention I was going to, and she told me she wouldn't watch that because she hated science fiction. Being a sad obsessive fan, I tried to convince her with over-simplistic arguments.

Me: Well, it's not all bug-eyed monsters like Star Trek. There's a big story to it - it's a bit like Lord of the Rings (this was WAY before the LOTR movies came out)
Her: Oh, I like Lord of the Rings
Me: So, you should try Babylon 5
Her: But it's science fiction. I don't like science fiction.

I gave up after that.
( b3th Not shit. Not mod., Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:06, Reply)

Near legendary status
A guy I used to work with was so bad he got his own website. It also contains some contributions from other work colleagues.

www.hanleyisms.com/All.htm
(Plaz, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:05, Reply)

Go on - have one of mine...
I once told my brother to take a short walk off a long pier...

i still hear about that one.
( b3th Not shit. Not mod., Fri 7 Jan 2005, 14:02, Reply)

Castles
...pulling into Windsor station a sign hove into view: "Welcome to Windsor" underneath the castle on the hill. Tourists next to me "Wow, which castle d'you think that is?"

Or at work more recently:

Colleague 1: [reading from website] My god! jumbo jet narrowly misses famous Tokyo tower.

Me: How?

Colleague 3: Well it is really high

Another one at work

Colleague 1: [reading about the tsunami from website] My god! 1,500 swedes missing!

Colleague 2: My god, Swedes!? Oh...right...they were in Asia?
(peludodan, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:57, Reply)

apparently
"If you wear contact lenses you don't have to blink."
(kimothy, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:55, Reply)

Not a ignorant statement, more a state/country of the ignorant
Was at Baltimore Airport and had a hour to waste before making a connection. Toddle off to finds me a newspaper, but could only see American newspapers. Me, wanting to read a english paper (cos thats where I live), asked "Do you have any international papers around?" to which the attendent said, "Yeah, there's the international section in the corner"
The international corner had the La Times & all the other West Coast AMERICAN papers as "International". Nothing else. And you wonder why they think Scotland's in England? Numnuts....
( -:Coop:-, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:53, Reply)

Missing the point!
After seeing the Bayeux Tapestry I overhear a fat American women tell her friend all about it, apparently 'it was marvelous, and it had these Romans or something on it'.
( HornO, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:53, Reply)

in Hot Water
A (now, thankfully ex) housemate called Julie, who was inflicted on us by my (now) exlandlady, produced a cracker one day.
I was just about to run a bath after a long and tiring day at work, when she ask me if I could put my bath on hold while she ran some clothes, which she needed for the next day, through the washing machine.
I blankly asked, why?
well, she said, if I had a bath I would use all the hot water in house up and she would have to wait for the boiler to refill.
I tried to explain that machine filled from the cold water and had an element which heated the water, but she insisted and insisted and said that her dad's machine did this and I was completely wrong.
I gave up in the end and let the baby have it's bottle.
She was so convinced, that after she buggered off back to her room, I actually had to check the pipes going to the machine to assure myself she was talk shite.
I still wince when I hear a drunken female Glasgow accent, just in case she has returned to Norwich.
( Not just a hatstand inflamed in the membrane inflamed in the brain, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:49, Reply)

Chat up lines
My flatmate's bosses son came to stay with us in Bermondsey, South London - he was an 18 year old from Los Angeles. He was unbelievably cocky, and told us that his chatup lines never failed.
He decided to try one in a pub near the Millwall ground, against our advice, on a girl at the bar. This was the conversation:

"Hey there! Is your dad a thief?"
"What the FUCK did you just say to me?"
{flustered} "..because he stole the stars and"
"Do you want me to break your fucking neck?"
"hey, hey, sorry, I just...."
"FUCK OFF".

He almost cried.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:49, Reply)

Counting
In my local post office, there are three service windows and one queue. They have a single digit display thing, the type that resembles a number '8' and different elements of it light up depending number you're meant to go to. One day when I was queuing with a parcel, I heard a posh but dippy girl behind me ask her friend "Why does that thing count up to 8, when there are only three windows?"

Also, oblig. American story - friend of mine was once asked the way to "Loogabarooga" by Yank tourist. They meant Loughborough.
(qwghlm, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:47, Reply)

Not really overheard but....
Donna Air once asked The Corrs how they met.
(Boney N left a cake out in the rain, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:43, Reply)

Not exactly overheard but...
...I worked on a cruise ship for 2 years and got asked by passengers

- does this lift go to the front of the ship?
- do all the staff live on the boat?

and my personal fave

- I didn't have enough time to do all the shopping I wanted. Any chance we could turn around and go back there for half an hour? (in all seriousness, having been at sea for over an hour after leaving dock).

Some people are total fuckwits
( iwannabeabonobo has been buying lots of gadgets this weekend, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:36, Reply)

Blondes
1. Got told my an american girl that i sounded like the beatles. Me with a gloucestershire accent supposedly sounds like a fucking scouser

2. Was telling a girl in work about a wine tasting i was going to that evening where all the wines where from tuscany, overheard her later telling someone else about it, explaining it was wines from Tesco.
(loquis, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:34, Reply)

C u n t
I was in an office fixing a printer recently when someone used the "c" word in casual conversation.

"Oh!" said the office matriarch crossly. "I really really don't like that word. It leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth."

(pause)

"What? WHAT?"
( Ptolemy the man with the silent pea, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:33, Reply)

Valencia
One of my colleagues was offered a trip to Valencia, which he gratefully accepted as he'd "never been to Italy before". The buffoon.
(JamScones, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:33, Reply)

In Tesco Metro
a young girl standing in the vegetable section, shouting to her mates at the other side of the shop:

'what do onions look like?'
(Scary, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:29, Reply)

Wheres Rome
When discussing traveling with a friend of my (now ex) girlfriend, we got talking about Italy and places we would like to one day see.
My girlfriend joins the conversation saying that she would love to see Rome, the discussion is quickly brought to a halt my said girlfriend piping up with...

"So where is Rome then..?"
(Fishbone-didi, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:27, Reply)

Chav Grandmother who works with my Dad:
"Is the moon I saw in Lanzarote the same moon we can see here?"
(Nefarious Tim, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 13:25, Reply)