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Original poster

What dumb thing has taken you forever to realise?

734 replies

muchalover · 26/08/2023 19:45

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.

OP posts:
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20
Threenow · 29/08/2023 07:40

VictoriaVenkman · 29/08/2023 06:45

I had no idea there was a place called Wimbledon Common as a child. So if you listen to the theme tune in that context including how it is sung, it comes across:

The wombles of Wimbledon,
Common are we

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Well, we are different then as I had heard of Wimbledon Common so assumed that's where they were from. It would never have crossed my mind that anyone would refer to themselves as common, not even wombles!

Juced · 29/08/2023 07:45

I’ve always been a reader and in American novels their was always the phrase spelt this way ‘sonofabitch’ it only dawned on me recently that it’s actually the phrase ‘son of a bitch’ what a thick twat 🤣

Catsmere · 29/08/2023 08:30

SinnerBoy · 29/08/2023 07:04

Catsmere · Yesterday 22:47

Same - perhaps because I only saw it written, never heard the song

Did nobody actually watch "The Wombles"? I'm from Newcastle and knew that they went out collecting rubbish from the common, at a young age.

It's probably an age thing - I was ten when the series started, and I don't know when it aired in Australia, so I was too old to be watching it.

sashh · 29/08/2023 08:33

SinnerBoy · 29/08/2023 07:04

Catsmere · Yesterday 22:47

Same - perhaps because I only saw it written, never heard the song

Did nobody actually watch "The Wombles"? I'm from Newcastle and knew that they went out collecting rubbish from the common, at a young age.

Did no one read the books?

You all know that the Wombles pick their own names out of Uncle Bulgaria's atlas don't you? Madamme Cholet isn't French, she picked her name because she heard all the best chefs were French.

LyndaSnellsSniff · 29/08/2023 08:34

That it's "OPPOSABLE thumbs" and not just "posable thumbs".

Presumably, for many, many years I thought that human evolution was based entirely on us developing the ability to give a thumbs up. 👍

Pam100127 · 29/08/2023 09:34

Quite often I would see a question posed online with ‘Tia’ at the end.
At first I thought there were a lot of people called Tia.
Eventually I realised that it was short for ‘Thank you in advance’ 🤷🏻‍♀️

ImBoilingJackie · 29/08/2023 09:35

Pudmyboy · 29/08/2023 04:42

I thought it was a hammer hitting the road!

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I can't see either of those things, can anyone enlighten me? Nothing on there that looks deer-like to me.

Catsmere · 29/08/2023 09:37

UnctuousUnicorns · 28/08/2023 22:25

Surely thunder is God rearranging the furniture in Heaven? That's what we were told, anyway. 😜

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Isn’t it Thor tearing around in his goat-drawn chariot?

UnctuousUnicorns · 29/08/2023 09:50

ImBoilingJackie · 29/08/2023 09:35

I can't see either of those things, can anyone enlighten me? Nothing on there that looks deer-like to me.

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Me neither. The sign just looks to me like... chippings flying up from the road under a moving vehicle's tyres. 🤷‍♀️

DenaJT · 29/08/2023 09:57

I only recently found out it’s not ‘my love has got no money, he’s got his tambourine' - I thought he was with the Salvation Army band!

VictoriaVenkman · 29/08/2023 09:59

Threenow · 29/08/2023 07:40

Well, we are different then as I had heard of Wimbledon Common so assumed that's where they were from. It would never have crossed my mind that anyone would refer to themselves as common, not even wombles!

Show quote history

Common as in there were quite a few of them.

Atsocta · 29/08/2023 10:05

Coffee Nero …I thought it was Coffee Nerd
oh well back to Costa …

toadasoda · 29/08/2023 10:16

happychops · 28/08/2023 20:51

I grew up thinking this road sign was deer grazing 🤣

Oh I see it now! I get it

MNetcurtains · 29/08/2023 10:34

Straightomyhead · 28/08/2023 21:50

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

Maybe she was just shocked that you speak French!

SinnerBoy · 29/08/2023 10:55

Catsmere · Today 08:30

It's probably an age thing - I was ten when the series started, and I don't know when it aired in Australia, so I was too old to be watching it.

Ah, fair enough! I was 3 when it started in the UK.

sashh · Today 08:33

Did no one read the books?

I do remember reading a couple when I was 7 or 8, but don't remember much about them!

NumberFortyNorhamGardens · 29/08/2023 10:56

Ladysamantha · 26/08/2023 21:26

I always heard it as "drum police" not trombolese

I heard Strombolese, as in the Sicilian town Stromboli (got that one from Journey to the Centre of the Earth - I was a bookworm as a child) and thought, well, it figures, he’s probably involved with the mafia 😂

ChristmasKraken · 29/08/2023 11:09

sashh · 29/08/2023 03:47

It's a sort of shorthand. Like everyone from outside the UK tends to call us 'English'.

I once spent a few mins at passport control in Chile while the immigration officer tried to find 'Inglaterra' on the computer and asked several colleagues what it was on the system.

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I visited the US a fair few years back to see my brother who lived there. When I was checking in to my hotel (not a tourist area), the receptionist asked for my address, and I gave it, with the country 'UK'. She looked at me baffled and asked me to spell it... Still none the wiser, I handed over my passport and she looked at the front and said 'so... Ireland?'. Despite me trying to explain, I still got signed up to their Ireland mailing list (it was a Hilton I think, or similar chain) .

AllProperTeaIsTheft · 29/08/2023 12:33

Just popping back to say thank you very much everyone- I've now had that bloody 'trombolese' song on the brain for three days solid! Angry

UnctuousUnicorns · 29/08/2023 13:02

It took me far longer than I care to admit, that to work out the price per unit of an item (if the label in the shop didn't tell you), you simply divided the price by... the number of units. 🤦‍♀️ Maths never was my strong point... 😳

Mushroo · 29/08/2023 13:16

AllProperTeaIsTheft · 29/08/2023 12:33

Just popping back to say thank you very much everyone- I've now had that bloody 'trombolese' song on the brain for three days solid! Angry

Same 😂 wish I’d never brought it up, it’s driving me mad!

islamann · 29/08/2023 13:24

Echio · 26/08/2023 22:24

Was far too old to realise all of these are wrong:

We three kings of Orientar
Life is butter dream
To all intensive purposes
And Jamiroqaui 'got canned heat in my heels tonight, Big Ben'

Also discovered too late in life...
Capers are nasturtium seed pods
Timbuktu exists, as does Tipperary (I thought they were both fictional places)

Capers are from a caper bush, aka flinders rose, not from nasturtiums.

Angrymum22 · 29/08/2023 13:25

Kept seeing miniseries in TV listings and thought it was a new word because my brain reads it as “min-eye-serees ”. A hyphen would make so much more sense.

LylaLee · 29/08/2023 13:30

ImBoilingJackie · 29/08/2023 09:35

I can't see either of those things, can anyone enlighten me? Nothing on there that looks deer-like to me.

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I guess the circle is the deer's eye. The line bits are antlers. The flying chippings are the grass it's eating.

PoshHorseyBird · 29/08/2023 14:45

When people write something asking a question, say on Facebook for example, and at the end they put TIA...it took me far too long to realise this was short for 'thanks in advance ' and not someone called Tia constantly asking questions. 🤣

JohnnyYenSetHimselfOnFireAgain · 29/08/2023 17:49

toadasoda · 29/08/2023 10:16

Oh I see it now! I get it

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How? I've been trying to figure it out for the last 21 hours and I'm still none the wiser!