Things that you've thought that were in fact absurd

[Pacificplaza]

Inspired by another current thread: what things have you thought to yourself, and accepted as true, which on telling someone else have quickly transpired to be completely ridiculous?

E.g: I always thought that when drinking a hot beverage, that the misty effect observed should you happen to glance down into the cup was your EYEBALLS getting STEAMED UP in the manner of a pair of glasses. When I casually mentioned this at work everyone kindly pointed out that I was just... seeing the steam.

My car is an old banger with no air con, just the air blower. For my entire life until my ExDP corrected me, I thought you had to 'run' the hot air until it turned from cold to hot eventually in the same way you do the tap. Rather than just turn it on once the car's warmed up. The hours I must have spent grimly tolerating a stream of freezing air in winter .

I'm not normally a simpleton by the way, I've got degrees and stuff and mostly manage to function.

So please tell me I'm not alone!

I thought Hawaii was 'near Glasgow' because my sister and my evil next door neighbour told me so when i was about 5.

I'm not sure when i realised that wasn't true....probably....late teens early twenties.

I was astounded by the fact that the actual lyrics to "Oh dear what can the matter be?" have no mention of 'three young ladies locked in a lavatory'.

Yes, three OLD ladies locked in the lavatory.

Please tell me that's right...

When Jessica Simpson waa mocked on her reality show eating buffalo wings and saying she didn't want to eat buffalo, I realised I'd thought the same... never thought about them not being buffalo and buffalo not having wings

Many many years ago as a 13/14-year-old, I was once stood in a busy Chinese Chippy when a strange man in the queue whispered in my ear that women from China were made differently from English women as their Fannies went sideways. It seemed strangely logical at the time until I told my mother.

I was astounded by the fact that the actual lyrics to "Oh dear what can the matter be?" have no mention of 'three young ladies locked in a lavatory'.

Mind blown cos I've just looked up the lyrics.

I thought it was

Oh dear what can the matter be
Three old ladies stuck in the lavatory
They were there from Monday to Saturday
Nobody knew they were there.

Sorry, because I always always bring this up on these threads, but it's the Centre Parcs being under a dome thing. Not just the swimming pool, the whole shebang, woods, lake and all.

I know it's been done to death, and I know why I thought it - the 80s ad made it appear so to the hard-of-thinking like me, especially "the holiday the weather can't spoil" - but I continue to be amazed at myself for believing it until I was in my 30s and actually went there. Because I am not unintelligent, and I can't really understand how I actually thought it was possible.

Oh so many!

My db told me when I was just a child that the egg white in eggs was bird poop. Cue me never touching an egg again until my late twenties, still can't eat the egg white.

And I only found out through here recently the channel tunnel isn't underwater but actually built under the sea bed.
That one blew my mind

Restless, don't worry, I think we all heard variations of 'three young ladies locked in the lavatory' when we were children - in fact I just had to Google the lyrics to see what they really were

I am so glad it's not just me! I had to google the lyrics too!

Mind. Blown.

And typically my mischievous grandfather took this one to the grave.

I just assumed that the rail network only ran around the edge of the UK everywhere in the country until I was quite old, because that's what it does in the coastal area I live in.

I need to know which cartoon character Paranoid wanted to have babies with.

Mine was that 'subterfuge' was not pronounced 'sub-ter-fudge'./ DH laughed all the way home at that one and then told EVERYBODY.

I thought this too OP!!! Now I feel really stupid...

The car thing I mean not the eyes!

Ha, you beat me to it table Its definitely 3 old ladies!

My one: I was 19 and in university when I read in a book realised that the song is

Mares eat oats
And does eat oats
And little lambs eat ivy.

I had always thought it was a little ditty that my GM had made up about some distant relations down the country-
Maisie Dotes (hence my MN name )
and Dozy Dotes
And little Lamsy D'ivy

In fairness to me, my extended family is full of very oddly named people, nicknames are standard and there genuinely are people with names like Lamsy.

So I'm not just thick

My (educated and passed English Lit) friend asked me once what Shakespeare's last name was. She didn't believe me for ages when I told her it WAS his last name. She is 36.
My cousin believed that the sea was all one depth level 😂 like a swimming pool. So shallow end by the beach and then dropping down to one flat floor of one depth. Brilliant.

Idontevencare What? I thought it was just a giant tunnel sort of plonked on the sea bed. Under the sea bed? But isn't there all lava and inside-the-earth type of things under the sea bed?

My sister wouldnt eat jam for years as a child because I'd told her it was made from octopus babies and she was convinced that was the truth.

This really made me laugh

I still cant work out why people in Australia arent upside down, and being held on to the ground by their feet because of gravity. I know its something to do with the curvature of the world but my mind wont let me understand it. I am 56 and cope reasonably well with every day life.

I was always impressed that Bee Gees encouraged men to learn to cook if they wanted to impress women. As in:

"You can tell by the way I use my wok, I'm a woman's man........"

My nearly 13 year old* had his 'mind blown' last week when he realised glass isnt a colour called seethrough I do worry about him sometimes!!

*He's actually very clever so I don't know where the belief came from!!

My mother told me when I was a child that the blood speck that one often sees in the white of an egg is there because the chicken got a fright when she was laying the egg.Somehow this came up in conversation when I was a twenty something and I divulged my information to the group.Everyone just stared at me and burst out laughing.I honestly had believed it.

Embarrassing. I've just been educated on the channel tunnel from this very thread.
In other news I didn't realise gay people lived outside of America until I went to university. Yes I said university.

My first husband, who was a professional in motocross, told me that BP stood for "Better Petrol"!! I believed that for years.

I genuinely used to pronounce "angst" as "an-gust". I made it all the way to university before anyone corrected me on that one.

I also used to believe that my shadow was my soul, and the darker it was, the naughtier I'd been. I have no idea where this idea came from - I'm not religious or superstitious. I think Peter Pan influenced it somehow, but heaven knows why I thought this. It was my mum who disabused this notion by explaining to me how light works...

My sister used to think flamingos weren't real. She thought they were a Disney invention. Her mind was blown by Planet Earth on the TV one night...

There's a wee place in Banffshire, Scotland, called Canterbury. It's not even a village, just a couple of farms and some houses. I assumed it must have been a lot bigger in earlier times, because it had an Archbishop.

I was in my teens before I discovered that there's also a place called Canterbury in England.....