Things you used to think and now can't quite believe you did

MrsAtticus

Me too!

Oops. Now thanks to me the pools of the UK are going to be a lot warmer.

I have just learnt the red dye and pool peeling is not true....

I thought it was a special chlorine

I thought the same as Balloon and others re sex. It was only when I saw a raunchy channel 4 drama when I was almost 15 when I realised you had to move. I thought the penis made its own way in during kissing

When I was 7ish we were learning bout magnets at school and I concluded that people in Australia must have magnets on their shoes. Worrying about what happened when they went to bed and in shoe shops kept me awake at night!

*When I was little the lifeguards at our public pool told us kids that all swimming pools are treated with a special chemical which causes the water around you to turn red if you pee. So if you peed in the pool, a Red Cloud of Shame would appear around your bum.

I believed this until I was 42 years old. Someone was telling me a story about peeing in the pool and I said, "But what about the red dye?"*

In p1 at primary school we were taught in a mobile classroom with one toilet. Our teacher told us that a man came and painted an invisible paint on the door handle that turned red if someone touched it without washing their hands first and it would turn their hands red too. I beleived that for years after leaving primary school

Lololol. Didn't you wonder how the gorillas read Marx? Did someone explain it to them with sign language?

With you all on the gorilla/guerilla confusion. I did wonder why there were all these campaigns to save the gorillas when they were roaming round with machine guns taking people hostage!

I still can't quite believe in seahorses... I'm almost 40!

Unarmed civilians! I have never laughed so hard!!!!

Wi

Swimming in the public baths is a lot more enjoyable now! (Kidding!!!)

When I was little the lifeguards at our public pool told us kids that all swimming pools are treated with a special chemical which causes the water around you to turn red if you pee. So if you peed in the pool, a Red Cloud of Shame would appear around your bum.

I believed this until I was 42 years old. Someone was telling me a story about peeing in the pool and I said, "But what about the red dye?"

Whist drives are when you get several groups of four people at separate tables. they play one or two rounds of whist (each suit being trumps in turn, sometimes a round of misère, where you try not to win, and maybe a round of blind). At the end, the points are added up and the winner moves to the next table, the loser moves to the table behind and the other two stay where they are and start a new game.
there are breaks for tea, coffee, bridge rolls etc. Used to be very popular in church halls, along with beetle drives for the kids.
I was roped into playing at whist drives from the age of 8 which is why I am such an expert.

My brother convinced me that chipolata sausages grew into piglets and then pigs...

yy to gorillas/guerrillas, I'm certain even now that if 'insurgents' were referred to as guerrillas, in my minds eye a band of king kongs would be wreaking havoc.

The Arkinsaw/Arkansas thing ..... took mumsnet a year or two ago to clarify they were the same place.

Was convinced that the consumption of any seed would result in a plant/tree growing inside you heralding your early demise.

I thought that foreign languages were a kind of code, so each country had an alphabet, like ours but in a different order. And all I would have to do would be to memorize the new alphabets and I would master the languages.

Turned out, I was wrong.

Ahhhh! Thanks for that. I had no idea.

Whist is a card game and a whist drive is a group of card players getting together to play whist tournaments (i think). Very popular with the elderly round our way.

I thought an artic lorry was an arCtic lorry and they were the ones that transported frozen food. I was around 21 when I realised it was an articulated lorry

I thought the same about Arkansas.

What is whist drive? I have never heard of that.

I remember walking down a street near my house when I was about 11 and saying to my dad, "I didn't know this was called Whist Drive, I thought it was called Chichester Close". Obviously, I had never heard of a 'Whist Drive'. Oh how my family laughed at me for that for many years.

Also remember my parents getting stressed about not being able to pay for a school trip and me saying, "can't you just write a cheque?".

I thought the Rock of Gibraltar was a rock, all by itself, in the middle of the sea. Like the Bass Rock, only bigger. Much bigger
Boy, was I unimpressed when I saw it!

Segue and segway have different meanings though.

I just youtubed it too Fishstix - I knew there was a state called 'Arkinsaw' but I thought it was a different place to Arkansas... Ooops!

Ive posted before but will share for this thread.

Until a few years ago i thought the white cliffs of dover were painted white. Obviously i hadnt given it much thought, i dont think about them very much at all but for some reason, in my head, they were painted white. I only realised a few years ago when watching a programme with EXP and i said "they must cost a fortune to maintain" and exp gave me a terrified look, as if he had just realised that he had created children with a blob of unthinking jelly. Then he asked me to explain my comment (to confirm i was as thick as he feared) and as i was explaining it dawned on me just how ridiculous that was.

My kids are really smart