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 used to wonder how they stopped the horses from drowning during water polo.

I'm another one who thought for years that Sinn Fein was actually Gerry Adams

My friend, who incidentally is a teacher, didn't realise that reindeers were real creatures until she was around 30 She thought that because they knocked around with Father Christmas that they were make believe as well!

Up until I was a teenager, I used to think that when the news reported a "body" being found somewhere that it literally meant just the body- head, arms and legs all removed.

A while back DP asked what raisins are, it blew his mind when I said grapes 😂 He's 34.

I thought cauliflower and cabbage were the same vegetable until my twenties. I blame my nan and my mum...the only time we ever had them was on a Sunday when they would be cooked in the same pan with bicarb then served up as a pile of mush. I thought it was called colleyandcabbage.

Until about 5 years ago I also believed I was 1/4 Romanian...I even had the back story about my great grandparents original surname. I've believed this my entire life until I mentioned it in front of my mum and she said she had no idea what I was on about. To this day I have no idea where I got it from.I'm mid forties

I had a friend who firmly believed that the Haggis was an actual animal that lived in the wilds of Scotland. She even wrote about it for part of her GCSE Geography coursework

Maggie That is funny as fuck. I bought a whole Haslet and told oh I had managed to catch one ( he knew I was joking tho)

When I was young I thought constipation was a form of war, like a revolt or a civil uprising. I even wrote and performed a song call 'stop all the war and constipation'

My friend told me recently that there is no north and south. That there is no top and bottom to the planet. Its just a spinning ball in space. There is no top or bottom!!! We just made that up as humans!

But...the earth spins on an axis, an imaginary pole going through the Earth and we have defined one end as North and the other as South. Luckily (or due to physics I'm not sure) magnetism also points approximately North and South too. So I'm not sure your friend is correct really.

My DD(13) genuinely thinks that the cash point prints her pocket money out for her when she asks for it

I am very very late to this thread. But the OP about the steam on eyeballs had me actually laughing into my wineglass.

I am reading bit of this to DP and he confesses he didn't know what raisins were!!

Until this thread,I too thought women had fewer ribbs than men.

A friend once asked me 'So who is this Gaza bloke anyway?'

You used to get (back in the 80's) these plastic strips that you attached the underside rear end of your car and they were anti static strips (still not 100% sure what they actually did)

Anyway, I used to get really bad travel sickness and my Stepdad attached these to the car and said they were anti sickness strips and used to make me kneel down and press one in each hand between my thumb and index finger for 10 seconds. I'd then not be sick. However if I didn't do it, I would be sick but only because I'd worry that much about it, it made me feel and be sick!

It was only when my DS was suffering from travel sickness and I asked my Mom what they were called that she told me.....

She also told me that sprouts were cauliflowers wrapped in cabbage.

A stopem floppem is not German for a bra blushthanks Dad for that!

brilliant!!

Another one who wanted to "help police with their enquiries". I thought I could be a trainee detective, or a public-spirited helpful member of the public.

Ducknose "I only recently realised that birds have little legs like people do, and can walk about, I thought they just flew around and had a rest on a branch or something when needed."

I'm sorry, but that's really really weird! How can you not have seen that birds have legs?

When I was a kid until I was a teenager, I thought Marie Antoinette's name was Mary Anne Twanet. I had never seen it written down for some reason.

But...the earth spins on an axis, an imaginary pole going through the Earth and we have defined one end as North and the other as South. Luckily (or due to physics I'm not sure) magnetism also points approximately North and South too. So I'm not sure your friend is correct really.

Luck has nothing to do with it - I assume that once scientists discovered that the Earth was a giant magnet they called one magnetic pole "north" because it is near the physical north pole.

This might blow your mind: the magnetic poles move around. (I believe magnetic compasses point to a spot somewhere around Canada). Every so often the magnetic poles completely flip, reversing the Earths's magnetic field. Happens every few hundreded thousand yeears, I think. Could have nasty implications for life if it happens again.

But I think the point being made is that it's just a historical accident that we think of north as "top". We could equally show maps of the world with Australia at the top and Europe at the bottom, and if we'd all grown up with that, we would think of the South as being "top".

Ducknose. Its true flamingos get their pink colour from eating brine shrimp and algae (different from shrimp we eat). The brine shrimp contains a dye that accumulates in the feathers. If zoo flamingos don't get supplements with the pigment in don't stay pink.

I'm not sure I get the car heater one? You turn engine on, if you put fan onto hot, it won't get hot because the engine is cold and takes a while to warm up as the engine has been running for longer? Is that right because that's what I thought?

I also used to think the same about the channel tunnel being just in the sea and couldn't work out how they got the water out.

Also thought Sinn Fein was a person, think I was a bit young when that was all going on.

I'm sure I read somewhere that spacesuits have a small patch of velcro on the inside of the helmet to help with the "itchy nose whilst floating in the vast expanse of the cosmos" issue.

I thought gammon was old bacon. Like if you left bacon lying around enough is became gammon. Also didn't realise that (ox) tounge actually was a tongue until about 14. I liked it up until that point but haven't been able to eat it since.

The moon doesn't emit its own light

This thread just made me think of the last time we went to the Zoo.

I overheard two teenagers talking:
Teen1: "oh my god, look at that gigantic rabbit!!"
Teen 2: "mate, that's a kangaroo"

Brilliant

I was ASTOUNDED to find out that Scandinavia isn't a country. Made my ex DP roar with laughter.