The stories follow Amelia Bedelia, a maid who repeatedly misunderstands various commands of her employer by taking figures of speech and various terminology literally, with comical results. For example, she interprets a request to “put the lights out” as a request to physically put the light bulbs outside. Other examples include “tag a player out” when playing baseball resulting in her placing an actual tag on the player and then picking up the person to ask how far out they should be.
Okay yes. This was what I thought it was. My second grade teacher read this to us once, and the thing about drawing the drapes has stuck with me for most of my life. She’s a complete fuckup who ruins everything, but she’s good at baking pies so that makes it okay.
Her whole thing was she didn’t get figures of speech or euphemism. If you tell her to “draw the drapes” she’ll get out a pencil and paper and start sketching the curtains. Which means she should be useless at baking, the second a recipe tells her to separate the eggs she’ll put one in the bedroom and one in the parlor.
I bet that whoever taught her how to bake gave her specific instructions without figures of speech, and maybe even rewrote recipes to be absolutely literal, then gave her the book of literal recipes. Which she follows with precision. Alternatively maybe she just memorised the recipes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Bedelia
Okay yes. This was what I thought it was. My second grade teacher read this to us once, and the thing about drawing the drapes has stuck with me for most of my life. She’s a complete fuckup who ruins everything, but she’s good at baking pies so that makes it okay.
Baking is a rather exact science, I’ve been told, so it makes sense she would excel at it.
It’s simultaneously an exact science but also vibes like “it’s warm and humid today so I need to adjust for that by feel”
Her whole thing was she didn’t get figures of speech or euphemism. If you tell her to “draw the drapes” she’ll get out a pencil and paper and start sketching the curtains. Which means she should be useless at baking, the second a recipe tells her to separate the eggs she’ll put one in the bedroom and one in the parlor.
I bet that whoever taught her how to bake gave her specific instructions without figures of speech, and maybe even rewrote recipes to be absolutely literal, then gave her the book of literal recipes. Which she follows with precision. Alternatively maybe she just memorised the recipes.