Things I'm embarrassed to have realised so late in life...

[OrangeFlowersAreLovely]

Those ID necklaces? I had absolutely never heard of the word "lanyard" until around 3 years ago. All my friend's children learnt this way before I did. If you had told me "Lanyard" was a European city - I'd have believed you.

That little press send arrow in the top right hand corner? It only occurred to me in my mid 30s that it is in fact a paper aeroplane. I just thought it was a dodgy triangle.

I was absolutely stunned to find out the woman who plays Amanda in Motherland is not Catherine Tate.

Any confessions to console me I'm not the only one failing at life?! 😃

That babies eyes don't actually change colour from blue to say brown, rather a brown film starts to cover the blue and the eye underneath remains blue forever.
Which is why often, you see very old people with brown eyes but with blue outer edges.
Fifty some years I spent not knowing this!

That the word segue is pronounced segway. I hadn't connected that they were one and the same.

An awful lot of things that people think are nuts aren't.

Almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, macadamias, pecans, pistachios, pine nuts, walnuts - none of these is botanically a nut.

I only in the last couple of months understood the 'why did the chicken cross the road' joke.

And that's only because I saw someone explain on Twitter.

They smell too.

Really?! 😮

Nods.
My optician explained it to me last week.

Wadsley Bridge

My son also thought this, and as he has never been to Edinburgh there are obviously more people who think the same. 😂

Carolean I think.

I thought when people have a hip replacement they were donated hips like they do with organs such as kidneys.

I said to my friends mum ‘if I ever need a hip replacement it’s really sad that they would have to get them from a child’ ( because I have a small frame) she laughed her head off, then explained… I was about 26 at the time 😳

Ctrl + Shift + T restores 'accidentally' closed tabs on your browser... Your welcome 😂

There's a Welsh one too. 😀

@BellaTheDarkOverlord

Those getting confused with Pontefract being in Wales, maybe getting confused with Pontepridd which is in Wales.

Or Pontypandy which is also in Wales.*

*I assume it is, I have just realised, I don't think I've ever seen an episode that actually verifies this! 😮

Talking about Elizabethan, Carolean and so on, I remember a Coronation Street episode from years ago.

Kirk was helping someone with his homework - a young Chesney, I think.

”I can’t understand how there was a Jacobean era”, he said. “There’s no King Jacob anywhere in our notes!”

And that was when I learned Jacobean described the reigns of James I and James II. 😳

Up until his recent death - last Month? - I thought Issey Mayake was a woman.

That a peanut is not a nut, it's a legume. Only found that out last week 😀

I never knew this either!

I adore Canon in D and listen to a version regularly. I also love Memories by Maroon 5 but had to have it pointed out to me by some random internet article I stumbled upon that they are essentially the same piece of music! Mind blown 😆

I was absolutely baffled by a history programme on dinosaurs that had clouds in it.... I was 29 at the time and was adamant that clouds were man made through pollution ect.... ended up sitting through countless hours of youtube and been the laughing stock while they tried to convince they've been around since the very start.

I dont think that is true at all.
The blue outer edges in old people are a build up of cholesterol called arcus senilis.
The colour of eyes is determined by how much melanin is produced

No way!!!!!????? 😯

Another one :-

A friend of mine used to think that people who were “cut out of their cars” by firemen, in the aftermath of road traffic accidents, would actually be chopped to pieces - not their vehicles.

She was in her twenties at the time.

I was in my forties when my mum told me that Al Capone wasn't called Alan.

This is my entire mumsnet experience now. Quite pleased with some of my answers in 2007 😂

It's not totally self-explanatory is it? Ok right I'm definitely not feeling quite as bad about this now!

But the university challenge split screen thing?! Whaaaaat?!?!