If everyone misunderstands what you said in the exact same way it may be because you either weren't clear, or (in this case) you seemed to be clear enough but arguing for something else entirely.
"Everyone" didn't, though. After this argument started I ran everything I said by some people I know elsewhere, and got a 100% rate of understanding.
I'm more inclined to put my argument not making sense to "a few people in one particular place" down to cultural problems.
And you can keep repeating your insistence on "normal" having a connotation of "right", but that's just not consistent with my experience with an
awful lot of people. If anything, when I'm talking to real people, "normal" usually comes up in the context of a
bad thing that's "normal" so you just have to deal with it when it happens. Certainly,
some people equivocate between the two, but it's
not something you can safely assume, at least until you know what the speaker means.
I'm saying not to assume this, and you're just telling me that you
want to assume this so it's my fault for not letting you assume it. Look, you can assume what you want but
you're going to have problems like this if you do. Now, you can certainly say the same thing to me — although I don't seem to have that problem
anywhere else — but I'd like to think that "not making assumptions" is a better null hypothesis than making them.