30 days of...day 8
Jan. 4th, 2011 12:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
askygoneonfireWrite about a ridiculous hoax that you once thought was true.
I actually stalled on continuing with the meme because I couldn't think of an answer to this. I'm quite sceptical of EVERYTHING and more often disbelieve true things than believe unlikely things. However, just the other night it came to me....
When I was 13 we went on a school residential outdoor activity trip to Wales. We kept seeing signs and road markings that looked like this;
We asked the Welsh activity instructor, and our school teacher what it meant. They told us all about the very rare Welsh wild animal, the 'Araf'. Apparently it was part of the Giraffe family but was about the size of a goat and whilst it had the same markings of the typical African giraffe, it was shade of brown. We were all told to keep a look out for these rare, beautiful animals in the bushes by the side of the road.
Somehow, it was a long time before it actually dawned on me that Welsh road signs are all written in both Welsh and English - and 'araf' is, predictably enough, the Welsh word for slow. Apparently there are no mini giraffes in the Welsh countryside, I'm gutted.
For along time being that gullible made me want to claw my face off, now I can't breathe for laughing.
And that is the story of how I became a sceptic.
I actually stalled on continuing with the meme because I couldn't think of an answer to this. I'm quite sceptical of EVERYTHING and more often disbelieve true things than believe unlikely things. However, just the other night it came to me....
When I was 13 we went on a school residential outdoor activity trip to Wales. We kept seeing signs and road markings that looked like this;
We asked the Welsh activity instructor, and our school teacher what it meant. They told us all about the very rare Welsh wild animal, the 'Araf'. Apparently it was part of the Giraffe family but was about the size of a goat and whilst it had the same markings of the typical African giraffe, it was shade of brown. We were all told to keep a look out for these rare, beautiful animals in the bushes by the side of the road.
Somehow, it was a long time before it actually dawned on me that Welsh road signs are all written in both Welsh and English - and 'araf' is, predictably enough, the Welsh word for slow. Apparently there are no mini giraffes in the Welsh countryside, I'm gutted.
For along time being that gullible made me want to claw my face off, now I can't breathe for laughing.
And that is the story of how I became a sceptic.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-04 12:31 pm (UTC)It's a shame, though, that they didn't use this as a teaching opportunity about Wales and bilingualism, etc. If you had been still in primary school I might understand it, but at 13 you'd think they should be past teaching tales like this.