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?! 😃

PMSL
though there should be no shame here
Safe place for our confessions.

@BalloonSlayer I thought (until now!, ie your post) that the inept son of the sherif in Dukes of Hazard was called…. Inez

it made sense to, as what chance did he ever have with a name like that!

so not Inez? You sure? Am going to Google now

In a similar vein to Niamh/Neeve -

Our WI was talking about organising a Kaylee Dance one year.

How confused was I when the email went round inviting us all to a Ceilidh Dance

I recently learned that Tolkien is pronounced Tol-keen, not Tolk (silent l as in 'folk') - i - en.

There’s a Hillsborough in N Ireland and also in Sheffield (where the football stadium disaster happened).

I feel like I've even been there.
And it was north Wales😊

Oh my god! I've been trying to figure out how to get the degree symbol for years & always thought it was stupid that phones didn't have it 🙈

I've been reading it as "shit the bed ex husband" and never even questioned it !!!

If you tell people that two of the four UK capitals are virtually on the same line of longitude and ask them which two, they will almost always think of the map we're all used to and say Edinburgh and London. Nope - it's Edinburgh and Cardiff.

I always forgot this until I see it mentioned and I instantly have to check it on a map and it still messes with my head a bit

I remember when I was at school maps of the UK were shown with the south coast almost horizontal which may explain the deception but I come across a small number of people who think Brighton is further South than Cornwall which blows my mind considering we share a latitude with Prague.

That an outside water tap screws on and off like a bolt

Ours was leaking and we were planning to get it fixed until the plumber told us that we could just buy a new tap and screw it on. Who knew! 🤷‍♀️

That green, yellow and red peppers are not separate types of peppers, but the same pepper at different stages of ripeness. Hence why green peppers are bitter, they are unripe and turn red when they ripen.

Was 44 when i found that out!

⁸

Dandelion sap is a diuretic so if you consumed it you would need to go to the loo more!

Looking last night for the perfect seahorse bath mat for my new home, I found evidence that this girl was perfectly correct. 😅

www.redbubble.com/i/bath-mat/Awesome-seahorse-in-the-deep-ocean-by-nicky2342/45875546.EVFTZ?country_code=GB&gclsrc=3p.ds&msclkid=337036c44fd51a5483e255da16da8da5#&gid=1&pid=3

Not me, DH. He was genuinely astonished to learn that raisins were in fact dried grapes. This is a man with a PhD in Economics. When DS asks him “What did you THINK they were?”, he was stumped. “Um…. Like a fruit or something….” 😳

Maybe he liked his dogs so much that he grew his hair out to look like their ears. You may have something there.

My XH thought that tampons were graded according to the size of your fadge. For example super plus tampons were for very large ladies’ fadges and mini tampons were for small fadges..

For a man so keen on other women’s fadges that was a massive misconception

Re places not being where they should be a poster called amicissimma posted years ago.

When I'm Queen of the World there is going to be some serious Tidying Up.

For starters Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana are going to be in Africa; South America can have Senegal and Somalia.

Djibouti is going to be where it belongs with the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar, and Kuwait can move down to be with them.

Burundi is going into SE Asia with Brunei.

All the Guineas are going to be together - they can choose whether the African ones join the Papua New one, or they all get together in West Africa.

The Gambia's in the wrong place, but I'm not quite sure where it should be. Off the coast of Scotland, perhaps.

The Falklands and the Faeroes can swap.

Israel needs an island to itself; maybe it can have the Falklands, but that leaves the Faeroes homeless, unless they fancy the Middle East?

Georgia goes to Europe proper, maybe the French could spare a bit of Normandy so we could keep the St George's flags together.

A bit of land-dragging will be needed to put Hawaii just off the USA and Bermuda and The Bahamas together.

After that I'll need a little lie-down, so other people can have a go ...

Nearly forgot the Most Important:

The isthmus of Panama is going to get put right: there is no way that Colòn, on the Caribbean side of the canal, should be to the northwest of Panama, on the Pacific side. Panama west of Colòn. If You Please.

I only realised yesterday that epitome is pronounced ep-it-oh-me, I’ve been reading it like epi-tome (tome sounding like an old book)

When spoken correctly I knew what it meant but I never connected it with the written word, I thought they were two separate ones. It was having the subtitles on the tv that made me twig, seeing it written and spoken together!

I can't believe that Pontefract is not in Wales. If I was a phone a friend I would say Wales 100%. But I think I'm getting mixed up with Pontypandy. Is that a real place or just in fireman sam? Off to Google...

I thought reindeer were a made up animal, like a unicorn. I thought this until my mid twenties.

Another one along the same lines as albeit, awry & hyperbole is segue. When I heard ‘segway’ I assumed that was how it was spelt. And I used to think meme was pronounced memay as though there was an accent on the last e 😬.

I think the Pontefract confusion is definitely linked to Pontypandy 100%.

It's a bit like sailing through the Panama Canal.

East is west and west is east in the Canal due to the curvature of the isthmus, one must travel west to get to the Atlantic Ocean, and east to get to the Pacific side.

That if your washing up brush has a flat edge at the top you can use it for scraping dried-on food off the plates. Took me a stupidly long time to realise that - I was just using the bristles... :)

The people (plural) seeing the "loose chippings" sign car as a hammer are blowing my mind!
99% of these i think "how can you not have realised? " (apart from Pontefract- It totally should be in Wales) but 2 years of doing regular covid tests on myself and my kids and only today did I realise those weren't our tonsils

My DP confessed to realising this tonight when watching a David Attenborough programme 😂