What obvious adult discoveries made you feel a bit of a plonker?

[Airconfan]

What’s something you learnt as an adult that made you think that’s completely obvious and yet I have never considered that….i feel like a bit of a plonker?

Mine was when taking tablets, the more you drink with it the better it will dissolve. I think alot of tablets are testing with the assumption people will drink 250ml alongside it.

Are you sure about that? I would have thought your stomach acids make much more difference than a few extra gulps of water.
Obviously with aspirin, if you chew it gets in the blood quicker. Which you should do (or make someone else do) if you suspect a heart attack and they're not allergic. I always have one in my pocket!

You need to drink the water to make sure the tablets get into your stomach and not dissolve in your oesophagus.

That, despite a comprehensive education, women don’t piss out of their vaginas. And yes I am a woman.

Yes, I worked in pharma development for a while and the standard test method involves dissolving the tablet in a standard amount of fluid (some mimicking acid and water). It might be 125ml water etc. in any clinical trials the consume had to drink a set amount too.

I just remember thinking me dry swallowing some ibuprofen might not be the most affective

I remember wondering this as a teenager when using tampons, you most definitely won’t be alone

That the sun doesn't rise. Morto!!

Very low brow but only this weekend discovered that a UV light supper charges any glow in the dark item. It is plainly obvious now that the glow item absorbs UV.

Years of tuning lamps upside down to get stuff to glow better for the children and myself as a child solved with a £6 USB UV light.

Still can’t quite believe it 😳

That you dont rinse your mouth out after brushing your teeth

For a while as I child I thought I only had 1 hole, like a bird's cloaca, as my mum referred to everything as your 'bottom".

I taught 16 - 19 year old, anatomy and physiology. You are not alone.

Having had to self-catheterise for a while, I realised my urethra is not where I thought it was. The fact that you can get a UTI from PIV sex makes so much more sense now!

I never knew until fairly recently that rainbows are circles and not arcs.

Again makes complete sense but I hadn’t thought about it! Google said planes / helicopters can sometimes see the whole circle if they are high enough 🤯

Mind blown! 🤯

I think I learnt the truth before becoming an adult.. but I remember spending a lot of my childhood in the car needing a pee and not understand why my parents wouldn't not stop at the 'to let' signs that seemed to be everywhere at the time!

What is a UV light supper? And what is turning lights upside down?

Whatever this is is totally unknown to me even now I've read your post😁

I'm as baffled as you are. I'm assuming some typos here, but I still can't work it out.

Washington D.C isn’t in Washington state. Not quite as practical as some of the above but still a bit of a “who knew!” age 30-odd. Apparently most people.

My dad, an intelligent and well-read person, somehow got to adulthood thinking that it was 'chimley' not chimney.

That’s worrying ? You thought you bladder was plumbed into vagina?

I didn’t know until a couple of years ago you could adjust seatbelts on cars. In my defence I learned to drive decades ago when they were set at fixed points so hadn’t ever noticed that newer cars had more sophisticated technology. I was chuntering to DH about being strangled by a seatbelt and why do all car manufacturers think we’re six foot tall? And he said well why don’t you move the thingy lower down…

I think she means using a UV light will “super charge” a glow in the dark item so it will be much brighter when in darkness.

And I assume she was turning lamps upside down because she thought a normal light bulb would “charge” them, so was trying to point the fat part of the lightbulb towards the glow in the dark item by turning the lamp upside down and pointing it at the thing? But I really don’t understand the logic behind that part. Lamps aren’t torches, she could have just sat them on the table underneath the lampshade if she thought a normal lightbulb would work.

A huge number of women and girls do. Don’t shame people for that, you’re being awful. Just make sure any girls in your life know how it all actually works.

I was an adult when I found out silicon valley was related to tech, for years I thought it was related to plastic surgery

I’m not - I’m just puzzled. Where did they think the uterus came into it?