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

Obviously they just stopped buying take out coffee and eating avocado on toast.....

Bowbligo

Genuinely laughed and woke the dog

It's not really "short for" as the words are unrelated etymologically, but Tory is a nickname for Conservative.

Have none of the people who think the 'Tory Party' is short for the 'Conservatory Party' never voted? It's written on the ballot paper as Conservative. And on billboards. And there are party political broadcasts on behalf of the Conservative Party, on the telly, and news items about the Conservative Party Conference. I get misreading it, maybe, but it gets said out loud too

That people on the TV could see you. On Swap Shop, Noel Edmonds said something like, 'Joe, from Birmingham, I can see you in your pyjamas'. I didn't understand it was just a mention to someone who'd written in. I worked it out fairly quickly, but for a brief period of time I always sat up straight just in case Noel Edmonds would tell me off for slouching...

Bills was an old name for posters. So "Bill posters/stickers will be prosecuted" meant you could be prosecuted for sticking up illegal posters. My husband and I used to joke that poor old Bill Stickers was being picked on!

Ah! You weren’t in the Tufty club then…

I was an avid Enid Blyton fan as a child and absolutely devoured Famous Five stories especially. The road sign “concealed entrance” had me convinced that there was a range of secret places around my hometown that nobody had yet discovered. I’m not sure how I found out that the signs were actually to warn drivers, but I was rather disappointed that the secret passageways I’d been picturing didn’t exist!

I taught English as a Foreign Language abroad and most of my students were 6-9 years olds. There were 12 boys and 4 four girls in the class and the boys could be a bit excitable at times, but one day when they were being especially noisy I put on a Mary Poppins voice and said 'Settle down at once or I shall have to call a policeman!' and they went as quiet as mice. They were nice kids but could be quite tiring.

JFC

For some reason my brain has made this link and I've not clicked until now that it's not even the right word!

I do know that the Conservative party and double glazed home extensions are quite separate things!

I was a similar age when my mum and my aunt overheard me call my younger sister a "twat" when using our toy telephones. My aunt asked me if I knew what it meant and looked shocked when I said "Yes" until I continued ".....it's a cross between a twit and a prat". On another occasion, I must have been six or seven, at school I was always a bit of a daydreamer and one day I sort of half heard a teacher's question "What do cows have four of, that humans only have two?" I stretched my hand up high, thinking this was my chance to impress, especially as I knew the correct terminology, and blurted out "Teats, miss!" - because I knew they weren't called breasts on cows or udders on humans and was so sure I had astounded my favourite teacher as well as rest of the class with my anatomical knowledge. I was dutifully crestfallen when she told me that the correct answer was legs.😞

@Motherofatruck In Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, there's always the enigma of "how do you explain to children why Joseph was in prison"? You don't tell them "for shagging Potiphar's wife". I remember thinking that the story was a bit... odd. The adults seemed to love this story, and kept on telling it, but it didn't really make sense in lots of ways; for example, why were there no sisters among the brothers, and Jacob had TWELVE sons? My school had the version illustrated by Quentin Blake, but it just wasn't like other children's stories.

There was another "eyes covered" enigma that puzzled me as a child, when I was five. For a game at school of guessing who was speaking in a funny voice,
each child in turn had their eyes covered with the teacher's "magic" flowery scarf, and was asked "can you see?", and they'd reply no. I thought, surely they can see the flowers? Then it was my turn to be blindfolded, and I found I could only see black! I asked why I couldn't see the flowers, the teacher replied "I told you, it's a magic scarf". I believed it for a while. I tried it with a thin scarf at home, and found I could see the pattern on that. It didn't occur to me to try with a thick scarf!

I just assumed it was at a dinner party and they'd all been drinking (child of the seventies)....

Very very early on... I thought the truth were (bear in mind I was 2 or 3 and seen too much TV!) were serious men in a portakabin type thing up the road.

So if you had to tell the truth, you'd have to go up there - The Truth.

I don't recall ever being much of a liar!

Oh and little white spots on end of your tongue were lie spots, so your Mum knew you'd been lying (even if you hadn't).

Fucking hell, never passed any of these down to my kids, but recollections are something else!

Sadly a Mum and friend died from cancer when our boys were 4 and had just started school.

My son now an adult insists to this day that I told him that she was shot!

Just why?

I'm going to put myself as thick and I'm not ashamed!...

What does that mean?

Tory is short for Conservative, not conservatory.

I couldn't fathom who Eunice was. It wasn't until my late teens that I saw the phrase written down - "rise in newness of life".

If there was a thunderstorm, my gran would cover the mirrors and open the windows.

The windows open let the lightning out the house and covering the mirrors was so it didn't get lost on the way out. 🤣

I really thought everyone did this and my mum and dad were bad because they didn't. I was very young at the time.

Looking back, how did the lighting get in if the windows were shut. One of life's mysteries.

And the song Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep made me really sorry for the child whose momma was gone and also worried that I would wake one morning and find mine was gone too.

Were they called Dr. Jakes and Dr. Smith as in the characters in 'Ballet Shoes'?

I used to think signs on a local high wall around a nice big house saying Post No Bills meant the posting shouldn't deliver bills and the residents lived with no financial obligations as a result. I couldn't figure out why everyone didn't do it.

my mum used to think golden syrup was made from lions (because of the dead lion on the tin) and she used to cry when she was eating it, because she loved it, but didn't want lions to be killed

I had some some strange idea that banks made their money from a pound that you left in an account to keep it open and they kept it when you closed it.

Early 70s and me and my brother asked our dad if he was the best driver in the world and he confirmed he was. We used to get excited and rush to the TV every week to see if he was on This is Your Life. We were 4 and 5 at the time.

.... Is that not the reason?