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

710 replies

Airconfan · 21/09/2026 00:36

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.

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idkbroidk · 21/09/2026 14:52

Thewonderfuldollypartonsbra · 21/09/2026 10:00

Not me,but my ex

He really thought we peed from our vaginas and asked 'why don't you women just clamp it shut while on your period?'

He genuinely couldn't understand why we used any form of san-pro

He didn't know what a cervix was and didn't 'get' the connection was between giving birth and a woman's milk kicking in

At the time,he was 34 and a father!

I had to give him a birds and bees talk and then he got his mother to finish us because I told him to pay for his dd who wasn't his bio dd but she had called him dad almost from birth

I asked if he'd paid any attention to sex ed at school and got grunted at

My (now adult) dd thought that if you gave a lad a blow job and actually blew,you could get pregnant

I did put her right (and explained how to give a bj!)

She was only 13 at the time and had read about it and got a bit confused (which was fine)

As a child,if you asked my mother where she was going,you'd get 'to hell and back to see how fair it is'

I thought she really was going to hell and was a teen when I worked out it meant 'keep your nose out'

I did not know that about rainbows-everydays a school day

u explained HOW TO GIVE A BJ to your 13 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER??? Hmm

girljulian · 21/09/2026 14:52

Mourningmorningsleep · 21/09/2026 13:52

I only found this out just now, from you 🤣 now I'm not sure what's going on with ox tail soup, it's just cow tail soup?

I just had to look this up...

"Oxtail soup is made with oxtail, a cheap cut of beef. In English usage the term "ox" reflects the social divide in England after the Norman Conquest: beef (boeuf) referred to the superior cuts served to the Anglo-Norman ruling class; the less favoured parts of the animal were referred to with the Saxon prefix "ox". The soup has been adopted in French cuisine, and there are examples from several other parts of the world. Being made with tough meat, oxtail soup requires slow, gentle and long cooking."

So it sounds like no tails are even involved!

Oxtail - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxtail

Munchie1965 · 21/09/2026 14:53

SoupSoup · 21/09/2026 09:41

Didn’t they ever blow up, when the contents/steam expanded past the capacity of the tin’s seal? 😃 The only person I know in RL who did this (other than tragic or awful longtime bachelor characters in novels) was a friend of my father’s, now in his 80s, who prided himself on ‘not knowing anything about cooking’ and did it when his wife was in hospital.

The reason I remember it is ( it’s probably 30 years ago) that not only did he blow up a can of soup once, he also once, on another occasion when his wife was visiting her sister, put an unopened tinned steak and kidney pie in the oven, and blew the door off the oven.

Not blown up as we had the fail safe method of "only boiling it until the label came off" 😅

Although I do remember one time when some the contents ended up on the ceiling when trying to open the can!

scalt · 21/09/2026 14:55

Someone sent me this rainbow photo, taken with a drone. Although it does not show the full circle, you can see that it might be from higher up.

What obvious adult discoveries made you feel a bit of a plonker?
Dryrobe45 · 21/09/2026 14:55

Whilst on the subject of human anatomy, when I was younger I thought that the bowel was an organ like the bladder. I knew about intestines, obviously, but in my mind the intestines emptied into a round ‘sack’ (the bowel!) before moving into your colon to be pooped out. It was genuinely not until adulthood that I realised the bowel is just a collective term referring to both intestines/colon etc and is just one long tube.

KatyKan · 21/09/2026 14:56

Off topic: A word to enjoy more in future. "Saunter". Thank you for giving us I appear to saunter through life totally unaware of some obvious facts!

ERthree · 21/09/2026 14:58

SweetnsourNZ · 21/09/2026 13:35

I always thought that unicorns were real and lived in the Black Forest thanks to my dad. Funnily enough I thought seahorses were mythical.

They may be mythical but they are the official animal of Scotland.

KatyKan · 21/09/2026 15:00

ERthree · 21/09/2026 14:58

They may be mythical but they are the official animal of Scotland.

No jokes about the SNP please.

Thewonderfuldollypartonsbra · 21/09/2026 15:01

idkbroidk · 21/09/2026 14:52

u explained HOW TO GIVE A BJ to your 13 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER??? Hmm

She knew (sort of) what to do

I've always had a policy of 'if they are old enough to ask,they are old enough to know the answer'

I did NOT get on my hands and knees to give her the practical

You'd be amazed at what a 13 (almost 14 at the time) year old does know (friends/the internet/magazines etc)

She's a lot older now and doesn't seem too scared of my 'abuse' of her

But i'll do me and you do you

Elsvieta · 21/09/2026 15:04

SweetnsourNZ · 21/09/2026 13:35

I always thought that unicorns were real and lived in the Black Forest thanks to my dad. Funnily enough I thought seahorses were mythical.

I thought dire wolves were an invention of Game of Thrones

SabreIsMyFave · 21/09/2026 15:06

SecondFromLastInTheSackRace · 21/09/2026 14:32

Ahh, Timbuktu….

When I was very young, 6 or 7 maybe, we used to stay in a caravan in Aberystwyth. There was a hill to the one side, and I was always pestering about finding out what was on the other side.
To keep me quiet, my Ddad always said on the other side was “Timbuktu” which obviously I believed.

I was many, many years older when I found out where Timbuktu really was!

Gobsmacked. Utterly convinced it was in Aberystwyth.

If Timbuktu was in Aberystwyth, it would be spelt Twmbuktw. Grin

FizzingAda · 21/09/2026 15:06

When I was little ai asked my mum why we had belly buttons. She answered that it was where the baby was joined to the mother in her tummy. That made me think that the mother's tummy opened up and the baby came out through the belly button. I remember being horrified at 14 years old when I discovered at school how it really got out 😂. ( This was sixty years ago)

Elsvieta · 21/09/2026 15:06

Sparrowlass · 21/09/2026 14:13

And a baby grows in your bladder?

Some animals, eg the platypus, do have one hole for everything. They're called monotremes and the hole is the cloaca.

SabreIsMyFave · 21/09/2026 15:07

@scalt Thank you! That rainbow photograph is awesome! 😍

Elsvieta · 21/09/2026 15:08

HoppingPavlova · 21/09/2026 14:19

Not as an adult, but a teen in high school science/biology when I learnt how the digestive system worked. Until then I had been taught by mum that liquid went down one pipe and food down another and it was all processed separately until it came out the end separately. Amazingly, I went on to become a Dr🤣. Never corrected her either, she seemed so sure of it😆.

ETA - mum was definitely not up there with her medical knowledge in any other way, such as putting butter on burns, toothpaste on cuts and 101 other things that belong in a ‘wtf’ book. Upside was this prepared me for the many bizarre people that would cross my path in a medical capacity, nothing surprised me 🫤.

Edited

I recently discovered that my mother didn't actually understand what blood is and does...

leavesinthebreeze · 21/09/2026 15:09

I still don’t understand how you can get waterfalls under the sea (deep down in the sea?)

ERthree · 21/09/2026 15:10

SabreIsMyFave · 21/09/2026 13:11

Quite a few people thought that for a while. Grin Some people had this image. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it was like this?!

I knew it was under the actual sea bed personally.... However ... there are quite a few hooters on here (that people didn't know,) that I was fooled by by too. Including thinking you pee out of your vagina. I thought that til around 18-19 years of age........ Blush I did Biology at school too, and enjoyed it, and was quite good at it. So I thought! 😂

Also, I used to think submarine was pronounced sumbarine. 😆

I also thought HOLLAND was a country til about 10 years ago (my late 40s!)

Holland is a country. Brits call it Holland or The Netherlands. The Dutch call it Nederland.

GordanoServices · 21/09/2026 15:10

It’s maybe not obvious but I only recently realised Tucson is not pronounced Tuck-sun

Additup · 21/09/2026 15:11

Bargarran · 21/09/2026 13:38

Oh, really? Along with the skeletons of whales, mice, tigers, house flies, and kangaroos? 😂

😂😂😂
I'm sure I remember reading about the ancient remains of a boat being found and it being linked to noahs ark.....maybe i dreamt it 😂

SabreIsMyFave · 21/09/2026 15:12

Checklistchecker · 21/09/2026 12:15

That bees do not in fact make the inside of a Cadbury crunchie 😂

This one is so cute. 😆

Bargarran · 21/09/2026 15:13

Additup · 21/09/2026 15:11

😂😂😂
I'm sure I remember reading about the ancient remains of a boat being found and it being linked to noahs ark.....maybe i dreamt it 😂

Yes, no doubt the ancient remains of a boat, just not a massive fictional vessel that carried two of every living animal plus food during a worldwide flood...😂

Elsvieta · 21/09/2026 15:13

grinandslothit · 21/09/2026 14:32

I've seen it done on certain television shows it is never one tablet is they take a handful out of a bottle and swallow them with no water 🤣

Often used to denote "our heroine is too stressed and too busy and probably self-medicating in harmful ways (that's what comes of letting women have important jobs, you see)"

SabreIsMyFave · 21/09/2026 15:13

ERthree · 21/09/2026 15:10

Holland is a country. Brits call it Holland or The Netherlands. The Dutch call it Nederland.

Errrr, Holland isn't a country. It's 2 provinces in the Netherlands. Google it.

Takethehuntingquiche · 21/09/2026 15:14

viques · 21/09/2026 14:23

She was right! According to my Granny eating your bread crusts makes your hair curl, so they must have something extra in them.

Edited

No, that is not right. As far as I'm aware, there's nothing you can wat to make your hair curl

BrezhnevsLuxuriantEyebrows · 21/09/2026 15:14

Datgal · 21/09/2026 11:00

It wasn't too many years ago when I discovered rice Krispies were actually made from rice 😂. I just couldn't believe it. The person who had expanded my knowledge that day, just said 'well, what did you think they were made from?'. Hmmm

I don't think this one is all that unreasonable to conclude, as it could have just been a name to refer to the form of the food: i.e. you have a bowl containing lots of grains of rice and you also have a bowl containing lots of these 'crispy things' in a similar way.

Bin men call maggots in bins 'disco rice' - and they most certainly aren't the same thing at all!!