Every once in a while, people shopping at places like thrift shops and antique bazaars chance upon unique souvenirs, secret notes, or heartfelt messages from strangers. These mementos encapsulate a plethora of emotions. Something similar happened with Izabela, who goes as @grandmasnosejob on TikTok. She was shopping when she found a heartbreaking tag inside a sweater in one of the alleys in a thrift store and her heart was filled with love.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Dom J
Izabela posted a video showcasing a beige jute sweater featuring large golden-brown coconut buttons hanging on a clothesstand. She wrote in the overlay, “Which one of you dropped this off at the thrift store?” The video became viral with a whopping 8.8 million views, 1.8 million likes, and more than 6,000 comments. In the short clip, the viewers noticed that the sweater came with a price tag that read $10.49. A tag was sewn into the insides of the sweater and the label on it read, “Made with grandma with love.” Besides the note, there was a cute frog doodle printed on the tag. The tag made Izabella teary-eyed, and she posted in the caption, “Made by grandma? With love?” She accompanied her caption with several crying emojis.
The heartwarming incident left people on TikTok awestruck. However, there were some who had mixed opinions about the sweater. Many of them said that it was unjust, cruel, and heartless for someone to have thrown away this sweater at a thrift shop, something that was made with utter love. @pippalovesp.nk commented, “If I saw that I'm gonna buy ‘cause if they don't want I want it.”
Image Source: TikTok | @raahosh
Image Source: TikTok | @llucylou
Others just expressed how beautiful this entire scenario was, and shared their own similar experiences. @guro_man_manga, for example, said, “I found a sweater with a ‘from mom’ label in it.” @y3llowbricks recalled how his grandma had given her a craft set with which they made some dolls, but unfortunately, the dolls had to be donated to charity for some reason. "The box even had my name on it…I cry at night thinking about it. I would literally do anything to get it back,” she wrote.
Image Source: TikTok | @austenc.15
At the same time, several people opined that the tag was just a logo of some brand and not an actual grandma’s message. “You can buy these tags on the internet! Maybe it’s not actually made by someone’s grandma and they just wanted us to be sad,” said @heyfelicia_.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Sam Lion
It is not the first time when someone has discovered a thoughtful note inside thrift clothing. From vintage jewelry boxes etched with mysterious sobriquets to antique chests hiding cryptic notes, people have been finding things like these for years. The infamous 'Silk Dress Cryptogram' is a testament to this. A secret note was hidden in a silk dress by a woman in 1888. The note was found years later by a shopper at a thrift store and after that, codebreakers from around the world were trying to decipher it. Wayne Chan, a researcher from the University of Manitoba, finally cracked the mysterious code a decade later.
He told CNN that initially he looked at 170 code books and none of them matched the message. “I worked on it for a few months, but didn’t get anywhere with it. I set it aside and didn’t look at it again.” Chan said. In August 2022, Chan published an academic paper explaining the puzzle. He started by saying that it was a telegraph code, “Since telegraph companies charged by the number of words in a telegram, codes to compress a message to reduce the number of words became popular,” he wrote.
You can follow Izabela on TikTok for more lifestyle content.
This article originally appeared last year.
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You may have missed the actual meaning behind these 5 popular songs.
'Every breath you ...' what? 5 classic songs where people totally missed the meaning
I’ve never been a "lyrics guy"—as long as the words sound pleasing to the ear, are relatively interesting, and aren’t evil or distractingly dumb, I don’t care all that much what the singer is going on about. I’m focused on the dynamics, the color of the arrangements, the rhythms, and harmonies. It’s only natural that I’d misinterpret some songs over the years, including ones that I’ve heard a thousand times while walking around malls and supermarkets.
I know I’m not alone. And I’d argue there are plenty of factors behind this phenomenon: Some people take lyrics too literally, while others only focus on hooky choruses and fail to notice nuance in the verses. Context can also blind us—if the music is danceable and upbeat, you might fail to catch darker elements in the words. Still, it can be hilarious and/or shocking when hugely popular tunes are misinterpreted on a mass scale.
Speaking of which: Let’s consult a viral Reddit thread titled "Any songs that are (or were) misunderstood by the public?" There's a mountain of suggestions—everything from '90s Latin-pop hits to '80s heartland-rock epics. But five of them felt especially perfect, so let’s dig a little deeper below.
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The Police - "Every Breath You Take" (1983)
As someone argues in the comments, "Pointing out the real meaning behind 'Every Breath You Take' has to have become so commonplace that it can't really be misunderstood anymore." Point taken. But still…this eerie Police track continues to be used in pop culture and everyday life as a signifier of romance—appearing as the soundtrack to TV slow dances and being arranged for weddings by string quartets. It’s easy to assume, at first glance anyway, that the song's protagonist is pledging their devotion—sticking around for "every breath" their partner takes. Instead, the atmosphere is more disturbing, given the whole "I’ll be watching you" thing. "I didn't realize at the time [I wrote it] how sinister it is," Sting told The Independent in 1993. "I think I was thinking of Big Brother, surveillance, and control."
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Bruce Springsteen - "Born in the U.S.A." (1984)
"Born in the U.S.A." is one of Bruce Springsteen's signature songs—but also likely his most misinterpreted. As an official explainer video notes, the words "center around America's industrial decline and loss of innocence during the Vietnam War"—a message that became somewhat diluted as politicians began using the stadium-sized track for their campaigns. "Conservative commenters praised the song, and it earned the approval of both candidates in the 1984 presidential election," the clip's narrator adds. "Despite being adopted as a patriotic anthem, 'Born in the U.S.A.' is far from nationalistic." In a deep-dive piece, NPR quotes Springsteen talking about the song on stage: "'After it came out, I read all over the place that nobody knew what it was about,' he said before performing 'Born in the U.S.A' to a crowd in 1995. 'I'm sure that everybody here tonight understood it."
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Los Del Rio - "Macarena" (Bayside Boys remix) (1995)
Most Americans probably know the bubbly Bayside Boys remix of Los Del Rio's Spanish-language hit—it became the marquee moment of many a mid-'90s wedding reception and middle-school dance, thanks to its once-ubiquitous choreography. Maybe it's because people were too distracted by remembering the dance moves, but lots of us didn’t notice the lyrics. Of course, the chorus is in Spanish, which could have been a barrier for some, but the remix features English lines like the following: "Now don't you worry about my boyfriend / The boy whose name is Vitorino / Ha! I don't want him, can't stand him / He was no good so I, ha ha ha / Now come on, what was I supposed to do? / He was out of town, and his two friends were so fine."
"My little teenage mind was blown when I learned 'Macarena' was about cheating on a boyfriend with his friends," one Redditor wrote. "[Thank you] for the correction, it was 2 friends! Was sleep deprived writing this. I just did the moves, never questioned the lyrics." Yeah, gotta admit—this legitimately never crossed my mind either. Same with some of the people who took part in a reaction video for Distracify: "It’s definitely about dancing," one person said, before learning the truth. Another added, "I have no idea what it’s about still to this day. Please tell me it’s not something really dark."
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Baha Men - "Who Let the Dogs Out" (2000)
The party was nice. The party was pumpin'.' Until, that is, some "flea-infested mongrels" got involved. Back in 2000, you couldn't escape Baha Men's booming cover of "Who Let the Dogs Out"—it became a staple of sporting events everywhere, a kind of bookend for the Jock Jams era. "I know I definitely misunderstood 'Who Let the Dogs Out' to be about actual dogs," one Redditor wrote, likely speaking for most of the listening public. There's probably a good chance most of those people chanting the chorus weren't thinking about the song's real meaning, crafted by Trinidadian artist Anslem Douglas for his 1998 original. But if you pay attention to the lyrics, "Who Let the Dogs Out" has a feminist theme, telling the story of women who stand up against crass catcalling. "This is going to be a revenge song where a woman tells men, 'Get away from me—you're a dog,'" Douglas told Vice in a 2021 video history of the track. "[Offensive] slang was everywhere. It was just degrading women and calling them all sorts of derogatory names. I tried to do a social commentary as a party song, but the party song overshadowed the social commentary aspect of it."
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Hozier - "Take Me to Church" (2013)
One section of the Reddit thread is devoted to songs interpreted as pro-religion, when the truth is... well, more complicated. "'Take Me to Church' by Hozier is often used by Churches for things, and I’m like 'Oh, that’s not…,'" wrote one user. The bluesy, slow-burning ballad may use religious imagery. Still, it's about something more human—"[It's] this idea that powerful organizations use people’s sexuality in order to mobilize people against women, against gay people," the Irish songwriter told Genius in 2023. "And the justification behind that is often religious in nature." Hozier even isolated one particular lyric that highlights this misconception: "'She tells me, ‘Worship in the bedroom' [is] something tongue-and-cheek, a bit of humor to it, also revealing that this is not necessarily a traditional worship song," he said. "I think I still see my name put into playlists for Christian music, and I’m not averse to that—I don’t think the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. But that line I would’ve thought would’ve disqualified it from something like that."