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

I dont really know...maybe they were taking the piss and we were right all along?

I'm still not actually sure what a pony is if not a little horse

Happy to help.

Excuse me, I have to run and stop my pet phoenix diving into the fire again. She's always so hungry after regenerating!

riskit On a related note I also thought 'ibid' was extremely prolific.

I thought Oxbridge was some red brick uni for people who didn't get into Oxford or Cambridge. I was 16 and a straight A student

As a kid I thought terrorist cells had actual cells - sort of like medieval monasteries, but with more balaclavas.

I didn't think guerrilla warfare featured gorillas but did think it had to take place in the jungle so was perplexed the first time I heard reference to it in a country bereft of such landscape

Glad you've cleared that up Garlic

In case anyone really didn't know, treacle is a by-product of the sugar refining process :) It's a good source of micro-nutrients, especially black treacle (molasses) which is high in minerals, including iron.

Cheese, of course, is extracted from the rocks at Cheddar Gorge. White cheese also occurs in the cliffs of Dover but, since reserves were depleted from too much mining, the cliffs lost their white colour and are now re-painted every Spring

Ha! Glad it wasn't just me. I was 30 when i found out, i was so certain my friends were taking the piss. Ponies and horses eh? Who knew....am still unsettled by it ten years later...

Goldface - I only found out ponies don't grow up to be horses a few months ago, I am 39!

This ones not me (honest!) but since we've had chickens, we've had to explain to lots of adults that we don't need a cockerel to get eggs from the hens. I'm pretty sure that some of them still don't believe us!

That ponies grow up to be horses.

I too thought treacle was mined (way before Terry)
and the gorillas
and the TO LET signs, I just didn't get why you would have a sign saying TOILET outside a building.

When I was little we went camping in France every year. We always saw lots of brown jersey cows, whereas in UK we only saw black and white cows. When on holiday we also bought ready made chocolate milk, ot available in the UK at the time.
Well, you've guessed it, my family (I am the youngest) convinced me that the brown cows gave brown milk. I believed it for years.

Til I was about 15 I also believed anon was a very prolific writer!

When I was about 15 I believed there was a dog that lived near us that used to go 'yap'. Just one 'yap', and usually about the point I was walking into our front garden.

Then we went on holiday to the other side of the UK. "Oh that's funny" I said "I just heard a dog exactly like the one near our house"

My dad thought this was hillarious. He had just locked the car.......

Mexican - where did you think your dad was for 8 years?

And another one, my parents separated when I was four and my dad went to live abroad. But I only realised they were separated when I was twelve and then went into a week-long depression about it.

I'd spent the latter part of my childhood feeling sorry for the children of separated parents.

I remember (probably aged about 4) saying "when I grow down little..." My parents soon told me the truth about that.

When waiting in a very long line to play pin the tail, aged about 6, I watched all the other kids having a pink scarf tied over their eyes, and I was fascinated by why they weren't pinning the tail in the right place, especially as we had been told whoever got it nearest would win. Then it was my turn, someone put the blindfold on me... and I was shocked to discover I couldn't see anything at all, not even pink! I think I assumed that the scarf would look like it does if you hold it three feet in front of you.

More recently, that "Coke and Spiriter" was slang for an accomplice (co-conspirator).

My daughter thought that anonymous was a very talented and prolific poet

Pimpf

I had nightmares about that because of the adventure game for years!!

Plastic- I also though narwhals weren't real. Until Octonauts came on cbeebies I didn't know a lot about the sea.

I thought my dad literally 'made pennies' with a hammer and tools when he went to work.

My Mum used to tell me that my Dad had to go to work to make pennies.

I could never work out what he did when he went to the BBC where he actually worked.

I could never link the two until I was about 7 and he took me to his work and I asked to see the room where the pennies were made.

Then the reality unfolded.

I only found out narwhals are real last year.

I needed to get my PhD thesis bound and so I rang a bookmaker.

Aaaaahahahahaaaaah!!!

I used to be amazed at how people always broke down on the hard shoulder

As a child I thought that the Lord's Prayer said "forgive us our trash baskets."
"Trash basket" is a common name for rubbish bin in the Southern US where I grew up, so I thought that they were a necessary evil and that we should be sorry we had to have them.

My parents got married in the 70's, with my mum wearing a long dress and a pair of massive white platform shoes (in the photo you could only see the platform bit of the shoe at the front because of the dress) I spent years trying to work out how to put my shoes on backwards so that the heel was at the front like my mums shoes in the photos.......