Taking Things Literally

I saw the following photo in someone else's blog and it made me laugh so hard! It was taken in a cafe/restaurant in Shanghai. The couple asked for a "Summer Berries" ice cream and after the couple asked if they could split the pint-sized dessert in two, they got this:
The ultra-funny thing is it looks nothing like the promotional photograph!

Actually, idioms and slang are very difficult to translate in another language. I remember watching a Jet Li interview on Jay Leno and he said that when the first time someone asked him, "What's up?" he looked up. I also have a hard time translating some Chinese into English, like when I say a food is "hot air," only Cantonese-speaking people would know what I'm talking about. Or even between Cantonese and Mandarin -- some expressions can only be understood in one dialect. It confuses my grandmother sometimes when she talks to my dad because he uses all sorts of Cantonese expressions.

In class, I have to be careful using some idioms because a few of my students don't understand slang or sarcasm. A student once asked me for my opinion and after I gave it, I said, "That's my two-cents." She told me that I didn't give her any money.

As a little kid, I had a few favourite story characters and one of them was Amelia Bedelia.
She's notorious for taking things literally. Once she played a baseball game and the kids told her to run home after she hit a homer. I'm sure you can guess what she did!

What would the world be like if everyone thought like Amelia Bedelia! Chaotic? Blissful? Honest?