What do you remember from your childhood that you now realise you really misunderstood?

Despite being married to an avid F1 fan, in my head I still always read it as “Grand Pricks”

I thought yellow cars were free! 😵‍💫

I remember a news story about 3 armed guerilla’s and I thought it was about a gorilla with 3 arms!

True and so sad about your old friend.

One day I was sitting colouring with the news on in the background and there was a feature about fertility treatment. I looked up at the TV and it was showing a chef preparing leeks... obviously it had moved on to the next item. But I spent the next several years thinking sperm looked like leeks... and telling my primary school friends the same.

Yes my mum used to say this.

When I was around 8 my Mum told me that when adults have sex they make animal sounds....I genuinely thought for years that they moo'd like cows and baa'd like sheep 🐑 😳

I am showing my age a little, but when I was about 10-11, the word paedophile was not used very much, and papers used to use the expression "sex with a minor". At that age I had some idea what sex was, but I thought a minor was a coal miner. In my head I thought the problem was that you might get very dirty being close to the miner who would be covered with coal.

I use to think that buses made a noise when moving because they were unwell. It only twigged that buses had engines when a bus broke down.

Angels playing bowling I was told as a kid.

Lol. If you open the door once and tell them you want to be on their "no call list" you get left alone.

In the infant class my teacher used to walk round saying Miss Wright over and over. I used to wonder why Miss Wright never appeared. Years later I realised she'd been saying miss, write, to remind us to write on every second line.

OMG! You’ve just reminded me! At a sex education lesson I learned that when you started your periods the ova (egg) would come out with the lining of your womb.
I was absolutely terrified about that — seeing the egg on my sanitary towel. On my first period I closed my eyes when going to the loo as the idea of the egg in my pants made me feel so ill.
It was about a year later that I realised the egg was microscopic 😂

Yes, me too. Similarly, I thought pubs with Free House on them were giving away beer.

I've just remembered that one of the things that terrified me about the idea of sex when I first knew of it was that I knew of sperm but not semen, and thought it would be a sort of mass of very tiny but perhaps visible wriggling tadpoles that came out...

I had to say the intro to myself just now, before I realised what bowbligo was!

for years and years i thought a cheetah was a monkey thanks to fucking tarzen

We had a real "Bug Day" when I was at school.
It was when "Nitty Norah" came to inspect our hair !!

Oh. My. GOD...

That ladies don't just decided they want a baby and hey presto, it's there in their tum and ready to get growing. Also that ladies don't just get to a certain age and happily wake up one fine morning pregnant.

I did not have a single clue that men were involved. To be fair, I went to a Catholic primary and there was a lot of talk about the Virgin Mary, who kind of did conceive like that, according to the teachers. Well, OK God may have helped, a bit. Ineffably.

I was a tad disappointed when the truth finally dawned.

My dad used to let me make cigarettes in his special rolling tin, it later transpired said tin contained tobacco AND cannabis. My mum also used to burn a 'special rock' into her cigarettes.

Im actually fine as an adult

I thought the equator was an actual radiator that ran around the centre of the earth.

I was also a very literal child so this and @ElsaMars "pull your socks up" really resonate.

I was always getting told off with no idea why, despite being a very quiet and keen to please child. I remember standing in a large circle at Brownies being asked to name types of parties. By the time it got round to me all the obvious ones had gone, but I remembered hearing people on the news talking about the Labour Party, so I went with that. I was shut a small, dark kitchen as punishment for... for what I'm still not sure to be honest! For being disrespectful perhaps.

I thought that if someone was "Helping the police with their enquiries" that they were actually helping the police like Poirot, or Sherlock Holmes.

Me too!!