Potato Peeler

I still remember the time when I was 21 and I didn’t know what a potato peeler looked like. The woman I admitted this to (she was in her fifties [not that age even mattered]) was more than astounded — she went so far as to say that ‘everyone my age knew what a potato peeler looked like, even people younger than me’. She also told me that I was naive and how couldn’t I have known something so ubiquitous?
I hardly ever cook. Growing up, my family didn’t stock the kitchen with many appliances. They weren’t passionate about cooking and they used a knife to peel produce. My mother was nothing like a fifties housewife. She used to improvise a lot and wasn’t particular about how the house looked (as long as there weren’t stains and spills).
I still remember what that woman said to this day because I don’t think that it’s fair to structure life that way; to organize life into what people ‘should know at a certain age’. There’s no such thing as common knowledge in my opinion that everyone should know at a certain age.
We learn everything at a different pace. It doesn’t matter if someone has learned about something late or has never heard of something. We aren’t naturally set to know anything at any time. In my eyes, every individual discovers any thing at any point in time. It’s that simple.
It’s okay not to follow political and financial information. It’s okay not to be up to date on the latest technology. When we learn something, we learn something.
I don’t think that not knowing what a potato peeler looks like or how to use a certain machine is connected to naivete, in fact.
In life, there are some things that everyone hasn’t used. That’s it. No need for ridicule. No need for incredulity.