is that I always know what phase the moon is in, and roughly where to look for it. this has been true since I was a child. it never struck me as particularly remarkable (it's only slightly more interesting than knowing where the sun is) until my mid-20s, when I wrote a novel about a werewolf, who, for plot convenience's sake, could transform into a wolf any time the moon was above the horizon, but was only compelled to change on the full moon. this confused the shit out of everyone.
turns out that almost no one has an intuitive understanding that the new moon rises with the sun, the full moon rises with the sunset, and that it cycles through all points in between, every month. people say things like "the moon is dark tonight" not out of poetic license but because, in their minds, moon equals nighttime. they'd never say "the moon is on the other side of the planet, where it's daytime, tonight", that doesn't make sense. neopagans charging crystals with new moon energy leave their shit out at night.
people are also very uncertain about the moon's tidal lock, but that's kind of a separate issue and more of a linguistic gap between "the dark side of the moon (the side turned away from earth)" and "the dark side of the moon (whatever side of the moon is dark currently)".
