I had no idea how few people know what the word "memoir" means until I wrote one, and had about fifty conversations in which I said that I'd written a memoir, and five minutes later the person I was talking to said, "Oh! So all that really happened!"

Then I began saying, "A memoir, that is to say a true story..." Every now and then someone haughtily replies, "I know what a memoir is!"

But I think my favorite example of unexpected things people don't know was when it was revealed over dinner that my agent, who is a very educated and smart person, and also older than me, thought that a pony was an adolescent horse.