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

I thought something along these lines too, they were always talking about guerrilla warfare on tv in the 70s!

My parents took me to church and I thought God's name was Peter because there's a part in the service where they say "Thanks be to God" and i heard "Thanks Peter God".

I thought "moving house" meant you picked up your flat/house and moved it somewhere else. Couldn't understand how they were going to move my gran's flat (top floor of an old flat building in the grassmarket).

As a young child I was convinced that the 'Ark' in Noah's Ark was actually a reference to the arc of the rainbow that always seemed to be pictured appearing once the rain stopped. It was mid 70s and there seemed to be lots of children's books, pictures and toys featuring the story. To me it made perfect sense that someone who was forced to build and live on a boat with loads of animals would be really happy when he saw an the arc of a rainbow in the sky and knew that he would be able to get off soon.

I was aware that people often referred to the boat as Noah's Arc but was convinced that my version was right and this was just a common misconception (probably from people who were not as clever as me and did not know that an arc was part of a circle). I quite liked feeling smug about knowing this. At infant school we sang a song about the story and I was certain that the words were 'Who built the Arc? No-one, no-one' and that this was a reference to the fact that people often thought that the boat (ie the thing that was built) was the arc but actually it was the rainbow so no-one built the arc. I thought I was in on the joke with the song writer. I think I may have been a bit of a twat as a child!

I thought my mum was the best in the world until.
Around 8 i took a dislike to her for telling a lie and it never changed at 9 i just could not stand her at all and left at 14 went no contact at 16.
She was and still is the biggest lier on two feet.
Its been over 20 some odd years and i still dont like her shes my mum but i dont have any feelings towards her shes more of a stranger.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER no, would have been late 70's. Things from my childhood often pop into my head now days and i have a d'oh moment

What? I really thought that it was a real cheque book and pen. Wanders off muttering to self.

When Louise Brown, the world's first IVF baby was born.

She was often referred to as the "test tube baby"

I just couldn't understand how they managed to grow a baby in a test tube 😂

When I was very young, there was an advertisement which said “Don’t be vague, ask for Haig” I read this as don’t be vag u and thought it was silly it didn’t rhyme! I mentioned this to Dh when we were talking about old adverts and he had done exactly the same!

When I was about 5 (40 years ago!), my dad's car was stolen. It was actually recovered a couple of days later and was returned to us. The only damage was that orange juice had been poured all over the seats/interior.
It was only decades later that I realised it wasn't 'orange juice', but that the thieves had urinated all over the inside of the car.

Ser-am-ic I did it with the standalone a.ser-a-mic . Hard to explain, but I do say it correctly now.

I thought testicle was something that came out of a spider’s head. I had a very sheltered childhood.

The town I grew up in was a 'twin town' (ie there was a sign up as you entered saying something like "Cardiff: Twinned With Nantes" - for example - I didn't actually grow up in Cardiff).

I genuinely thought 'twin town' meant that the other town was an identical twin of ours. So that somewhere else in the world there would be a town that looked EXACTLY like ours. Identical buildings, shops, schools, road network, greenery, everything.

I don't think I worked out that this wasn't actually true until I got to university.

My Gran had a tablespoon that she said was specially shaped for her saucepans.

It wasn't until I was about 40 & my own tablespoons were wearing away I realised !

🤣😂🫶

Not after that seriously cold winter of around 63, was it? I well remember going to see whether my two had woken up yet (hibernating in the shed) and finding them both dead. I was so distraught. 😰. DF buried them in the garden.

I could totally have written this. My dad was also a drunk and a show-off: not nasty exactly but totally self-centred and didn't give a shit about anyone else.

He was successful and briefly famous in a low-level way (getting recognised in supermarkets famous, not Hollywood famous) and it made him self-satisfied to the point of narcissism.

He spun this narrative about how creative and brave he was by ignoring convention and taking risks in his life. Which predisposed me to think that people who focus on doing normal jobs well to provide for their families were "boring". He was always slagging off my mum's siblings because they had normal, average jobs and couldn't afford expensive holidays etc.

In the fact the reality, which I didn't learn until decades later was that he had a drinking problem, he was hopeless with money, we nearly got foreclosed on during the 80s and the reason we moved house so much was that he had no savings (and in his late 70s he still had no idea what his pension provision was). My mum was completely in thrall to him and she didn't work so she lived at the mercy of it.

It's also why I would never ever rely on a man for money.

I grew up in the Troubles - a common belief for little ones 5/6/7 ( encouraged by older kids!) was that the reason soldiers walked backwards was because they had extra eyes in their back! They looked totally alien to us - big, full uniform, funny foreign accent, really loud, angry shouty sounding and pointing big rifles at us - we all totally believed it.
It was as if they’d been dropped down from Mars into our streets, because 10 of them would just appear from nowhere ( out of a land rover or helicopter out of sight actually) and fan out …

I thought the Michelin man was Father Christmas. Imagine how exciting I found it to pass a tyre place.

Driving from London to Ireland (13hrs) 4 kids under 6 in the back seat by my 28 year old uncle and him chugging back cans of larger throughout (after having propped the bar up on the ferry) ... and thinking he shouldnt be drinking and driving.

Well, I only realised that "the little piggy went to market" didn´t mean he´d gone shopping while reading mumsnet a couple of years ago. I´m 50.

God so many things. I was brilliant at misunderstanding.

For some reason I was petrified of the tide. Whenever we went to the beach, I would hang around at the high water mark fretting that the tide would turn and get us. I didn't realise it was predictable - thought it went in and out at will.

Freezing fog - I was terrified when this was forecast. I thought it meant that fog froze in the sky and fell to the ground in big boulder sized chunks.

Two examples.

When my dad told us the pet tortoises had "run away" he meant they had died and not physically run away. Worst still i was in my 40's before I realised it.

I had something similar with "façade". When I said it alound as fuck-ade my uncle nearly wet himself.
Also I didn´t actually start writing in English until I was 12. That was when I realised that "queue" wasnt read kiwi. No wonder I thought the text was weird.

The difference loving parents can have, even when you don’t have much money, is astonishing. I ended up in a scholarship to Uni, now in a profession etc.
My life couldn’t be more different to that of my old friend.