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?! 😃

@LoveLarry
No offence taken !
I am enjoying this thread and learning lots.

I was also well into adulthood before I realised it wasn’t eyes and nose but ayes and nos

I thought Brussel sprouts grew in rows like little cabbages until my early twenties when I moved to Rural. I grew up in urban and had never seen them on the stalk. Mil hadn’t ever seen raw carrots until her twenties as tinned were the only ones available in her city.

It’s definitely another Think. After the first think. And a tenterhook. Also the channel tunnel is under the rock of the sea bed not a glass tunnel like an aquarium. And center parcs only has the pool under a dome not the entire site.

Oh dear!!! The animal you may have seen in Scotland are not Reindeer but Red Deer. We have a country park near where we live with herds of Red Deer and Fallow Deer. It irritates me intensely when I hear parents telling their kids that they are reindeer.

The Instagram icon is of an old fashioned camera lens.

It's Liz Truss, not Liz Trust (I had to explain this to a member of my team at work).

It's called Coca-Cola Classic because it was reformulated in 1985 and marketed as New Coke. Consumers were outraged and New Coke was removed from shelves 3 months later and the original Coke (aka Coca-Cola Classic) was reinstated.

Dodo birds were real.

Also, Spaghetti doesn't really grow on trees.

I would think these are all pretty common knowledge - Liz Trust? 😂

And who the hell thinks spaghetti grows on trees??

I've owned 7 or 8 vehicles in my life, and not one has had the mythical arrow indicating which side the fuel tank is on.

Oh yes, and that gherkins are just pickled cucumbers!

Spaghetti growing on trees was a famous BBC April Fool’s.

I’m amazed we’ve got to 15 pages and no-one has yet said, “Gibraltar isn’t an island but Portsmouth is!” - that reliably comes up on these threads.

You'd think they were all common knowledge lol, but given this thread.... 😂

The spaghetti one was a joke obvs. But it was believed by many Brits once upon a time... amp.theguardian.com/theguardian/2015/feb/03/weekly-notes-queries-april-fools-spaghetti-trees

Same here! I couldn't work out how the test would work if someone who had had their tonsils removed was supposed to swab where their tonsils would have been - in my head this meant waving the swab round in mid air in the spot where the dangly bit would have been.

On my one and only attempt at taking a covid throat swab I was aiming for right at the back of my throat by the dangly bit and just couldn't manage to get anywhere near without touching teeth/tongue/roof of mouth. I was stunned when I googled a few months ago and found where they actually are, and also felt massively stupid. I've often wondered if everyone else just somehow automatically knew where the tonsils were.

And who the hell thinks spaghetti grows on trees??

It's a reference to this hoax by the BBC.

there are plenty of reindeer in the Cairngorm reindeer centre.

agree that most farmed/wild deer will be red though

DS was very horrible to me about 10yrs ago when I said I'd had a qwin-oh-a in a salad. Quinoa.

Was at at a fat club nutrition class on Tuesday and the leader recommended 'kino', 'kwinu'...''grains" (!) Quinoa! I didn't want to say anything! I embarrassed myself enough in front of DC in private, I didn't want to subject that to anyone in public!

Not mythical because all my cars have had it…

This thread is great. I also seem to think I thought Lapland was a made up place at one point. I didn’t know the word bunting until relatively recently either. Carabiner is a new word I’ve learned within the last few years.

It’s pronounced keen-wah.

I learned about 3 years ago that moles are very small creatures. I had a Jack Russell sized image in my head until my dad sent me a picture of one he’d found in his garden. I think my Jack Russell sizing came from the size of mole hills or possibly animals of farthing wood

I never knew this until tonight! 😃

Haha, only realised that this summer 😂😂

I don't know about an arrow, but whichever side of the icon the pump handle is on indicates which side of your car the fuel cap is. Genius!

I was in a bookstore where authors were organised alphabetically.

I asked a member of staff why I couldn’t find the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole in “M”.

I also said, aged 20, “If you asked me what Sir Alan Sugar’s first name was, I just wouldn’t know”.

Sorry last attachment didn't work but this is the fuel indicator arrow I mentioned upthread ..

Thank you everyone and OP, I can’t count how many of these have made me laugh aloud. Although Billericay and albeit might be my favourite so far.

I was an embarrassing age when I realised the 'air guitar' was just an imaginary guitar... I thought it was a type of guitar, like Fender for example.

Also, the noise when you click your fingers is actually your middle finger hitting the base of your thumb, and not by the friction of the finger/thumb being pressed together.

Aaaannd... that Lieutenant is not two words. It's pronounced Loo-tenant if you're American, and Leff-tenant if you're English.