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

I thought that 'open sesame' was pronounced open sea same. Having only read it and never heard it, it's not surprising.
I teach a couple of yr 3 girls who can't understand how 'I'm not married, yet have children.

Cats eyes: I thought that they had some sort of intelligent sensor so it would turn itself on when it 'saw' a car coming and then turn itself off again. My dad told me that the film 'The sting' was a catastrophe movie about giant bees; I believed that for years.
Re sex education; I found a book about 8, and understood most but couldn't work out what caused an erection. I thought that they just happened out of the blue. You'd be browsing the slacks in M&S and.....whoops! There it was.

These two not mine but always amused me. A school friend thought that one of Henry VIII's wives was Irish - Katherine O' Faragon. And a teacher who announced loudly in a busy staff room that she'd watched a TV programme about J Lo - and she looked exactly like Jennifer Lopez.

I thought there were two rivers in London. The "temms" and the Thames (pronounced "thaymms")

I only twigged when I asked mum and dad how to spell "temms" and they told me t.h.a.m.e.s. And I said no, the other one!

HaHa OldRaver

Mine is a bit similar in that my DMum would try giving us the talk and begin with "When two people are very much in love ...." but then just peter out and not get to the crux of the matter!

So, me, aged about 8, and heading towards being a good-hearted, liberal minded kid of the 70's, would think "Ahh, no wonder there are so many children of un-married mothers (still presented to me in that era as something of a problem) when all it takes is one "look of love" and bingo, there you are, up-duffed"

We did sex education pretty early on (for the seventies) when I was 8, but I was a tad confused. I thought only animals put it in but humans just lay together in bed, and the sperm wriggled across the bed. For this reason I stopped hopping into bed with my Mum and Dad in case I got pregnant.

I can remember the first year of secondary school saying something like..."er imagine if you had to actually put it in like animals, how gross" and getting some funny looks

And until I was about 9 I thought women just got to a certain age then occasionally and randomly got pregnant with babies, (ie. it just happened with no input from a man)

My parents were not big on telling us about the facts of life

Oh yeah and I thought New York was in LA. Or vice Versa. And also that New York was the capital of America

And I also thought Australia was where the South Pole is (i think the term down under confused me) ... Worst thing is I was 31 when I twigged, and only because I was on a plane looking at that virtual map thing on the back of the seats and amazing myself with seeing where places actually were in the world

I still don't get why mum says when someone is tickled they'll get worms (as in thread worms).

But I believed it, until I worked at a vet practice and I actually then understood how you contract worms (ingestion, not tickling).

My mum is really weird.

Fantastic yelwah

Now what was the date on that........

I used to think unicorns were real

And that "test tube babies" grew in test tubes ie till they were ready to be born. Then they would just be handed to their parents

I was told that tabby cats are always female and gingers were always male, when looking for a new cat a few months ago, came across lots of female gingers. So that's wrong then!

Oh yes, I couldn't work out why America seemed so backward when people on The News thought it was worth taking notice of.

I used to sing 'one two three four five once I caught a fishalive'
I never knew what a fishalive was until years later.. They meant a fish that's alive!

Also I always thought pork chops and lamb chops were the cheeks of the animal as they were called 'chops'. My dh thought that was so funny!

Dear oh dear, of course treacle comes from mines, the proper stuff, not this modern sugary muck britishfoodhistory.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/the-treacle-mines-of-england/

If I ate lots of grapes I would get drunk, they would turn into wine in my tummy. I really felt 'drunk' once after eating as many as I could.

yes letter I can relate to that. Grease and Happy Days were big when I was 10. I just assumed they were current American teenagers. I didn't get that it was set in the 50s.

I thought until recently that you only had ribs on your front.
(ribcage should have given the game away). I cannot understand how I assumed such a thing.

Oh, I have a doozy of one.

When I was little, in the US, I remember watching Tom and Jerry and other older cartoons, and for some reason a common plot would be the characters set in some historical England or France, and someone would end up beheaded (off-screen).

At 4 or 5, I had no concept of history, obviously. I thought this was present day. These cartoons, coupled with Alice in Wonderland and other media, made be absolutely certain I would never go to England or France, because if I did I ran the risk of accidentally offending the queen, say by using the wrong cutlery at dinner or curtsying badly, and she would order my head chopped off. I thought this was a normal, usual thing that happened. I would have nightmares about it.

I was absolutely terrified of England and couldn't understand why people would visit or live there, under the thumb of a mad queen who beheaded little girls if they didn't have perfect manners, and why everyone accepted this.

Much like Nummer I used to think petrol stations were built over naturally occurring fields of petroleum. Even after I learned about how crude oil was refined into petroleum etc.

I think I was about fourteen when it finally clicked

^When we were going to norfolk from London when I was little, my mum and dad would pretend it was a foreign country and tune into Dutch radio stations so we were fooled.

I was always amazed how well the locals spoke English...^

When we were going to norfolk from London when I was little, my mum and dad would pretend it was a foreign country and tune into Dutch radio stations so we were fooled.

I was always amazed how well the locals spoke English...

I used to get worried about drinking and driving because my dad would drink lemonade at the pub and then drive home

I don't get the worms one

There's a treacle well in Alice in Wonderland, I never knew what to believe in that book....

My BIL didn't know what tummy buttons were for until he watched his own daughter being born.