What dumb thing has taken you forever to realise?

[muchalover]

Nights in white satin song was playing in the car today. A favourite song of mine so I was singing along and it dawned on me that the word is "nights," not "knights".

Whole song makes much more sense now 😳

I had a similar issue with "Toyota, the car in front" but it's a Nissan I'm behind (or other car brand).

And in the film Winnie the Pooh where the gopher says "I'm not in the book" and I thought it was the phone book😬 for decades!

I promise I'm intelligent.

I grew up thinking this road sign was deer grazing 🤣

34 year for me 🥲 I always thought Uncle Bulgaria looked a little rough around the edges and that was enough of an explanation for me

Omg is this true?!!

We skipped a light fandango. A fandango is a lively Spanish dance.

Ah. So they did a dance. I understood skipped as in they missed it out - whatever 'the live fandango' was.

How on earth can you use a tin opener incorrectly? We need more information!

I have to ask... How come so many people thought it was 'he's got his trombolese' in the song Freed from Desire, when the word trombolese has never existed....??? (And it has no meaning.) How can anyone think she is saying a word that doesn't exist? (Let alone so many people!)

I was just coming on to say the same thing.

The song came out when I waa at primary school, I'm not a Londoner and I had never heard of Wimbledon Common. I had no idea that it was the name of a place.

The misunderstanding is all to do with the rhythm of the song.

"Wombles of Wimbledon," sounded like one line.

Then a pause

"Common are we," sounds like a new line and so a new idea.

I didn't realise until decades later. Probably on a Mumsnet thread like this as it's one of the things that always comes up.

In the Dirty Dancing song, "I've had the time of my life" there is a line which goes... "now we take each others hand, coz we seem to understand, yeah Justine." So having watched the film hundreds of times I eventually wondered which of the characters is called Justine? I was well in to my thirties when I learned those last words were not "yeah Justine" but are actually "the urgency." 🙃

I thought Neanderthals were from Netherlands and were Netherlandals. Sorry everyone - I still have to rehearse this word before I say it as it went on for longer than it should have.

I once found out my MP was Lord Sainsbury. My MP working for me in government! So I thought every person in the country had their own MP. My logical child brain worked out this must mean I was somebody’s MP and that I wasn’t doing a very good job as I hadn’t known about it. I was worried for a bit until my mum explained. I was about 8 at the time.

What?! 😱

Thanks for asking this, because I was trying to work it out too. Guessing people think of clouds as being solid masses?

Get out of town!! Makes more sense than a "trombolese" but I just accepted that too.

Took me a hot minute to figure out Will. I. Am from the black eyed peas was most likely called William. I thought it was just a strange proclamation.... Like.... Susan. I. Am.

I haven’t read the whole thread but the “Police follow this van” on cash in transit vans are requests/reminders for police to follow the vans if they aren’t doing anything. So people aren’t wrong if they thought this. We were often reminded of this if there had been any cash in transit robberies/suspicious incidents. Never had time to follow one round for long but would occasionally follow one for a short time on the way to something non urgent.

As a child I thought that I wasn’t allowed to go to a CofE school because I drank tea!

Surely it would be Police, follow this van of the instruction was for the police to follow the van.

Vs Police follow this van

*See Wombles of Wimbledon, common are we vs Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we.

Wait!? What!!!???? 🤯🤯🤯🤯 It's definitely Trombolese!!!! Isn't it!!!!?????

Some of these are brilliant and have reassured me I'm not a dimwit at all!
My mum always used to say if people got her name wrong 'call me what you like, just don't call me late for my dinner'. It took me until well into my 20s to realise it meant basically 'don't call me for dinner too late' rather than 'call me John if you like'.
And as for song lyrics, well I am just hopeless!
Guilty as a girl can be = guilty as a cocoa bean. Obviously Bananarama got it wrong.

I also heard trombolese. And I shall continue to sing this for ever.

I also heard trombolese. And I shall continue to sing this for ever.

Yes! Sadly my parents used that one.

DH only realised this a couple of years ago.

For me, it was "only smarties have the answer" for years and years I thought that you could write to the company that made smarties if you had a question that you couldn't find the answer to and they'd answer you 😭

Whenever I read the word fatigue, I always read it as fat-I-gay, not fatigue like it should be pronounced. It's only when I said it to my friend in ealry pregnancy that she was like.......whattttttt

Thank you!

Haha… I’ve always sung trombolese too 🤣

just assumed it was some niche wind instrument 🎺 🤦🏼‍♀️😂