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!

My dad told me doner kebabs was made from donkey meat when I was 14 . I was fuming he would eat one . He only confessed when I tried to tackle one out of his hands a few months later . I'd been telling everyone not to eat them 😳

I thought that Australia was 24 hours ahead of us in UK (as in time-wise) ...

I used to think that a goat was a baby sheep up until a few years ago

Ilovecoleslaw what did you think lambs were?

We had a hymn which we sang in primary school, we didn't read the words from a hymn book, we just had to pick it up by ear in assembly. One line was "save me from the foe malign". I used to sing it as "save me from the foam - a line!" As I thought it was about drowning, and calling out for a rope to cling to.

not all cars show the arrow for the fuel filler side but it is getting more common.

Many cars also have the preferred grade of oil printed on the oil filler cap, so if you ever need to buy some, you take the cap into the shop and ask for that grade.

For example my car takes grade 710.

pigletjohn

I used to think that fire engines held water to put out fires.

About men, women and ribs: I read somewhere (can't remember where) that the bone in the story about Adam and Eve isn't really a rib. Many species of mammals have a baculum (a penis bone), but humans don't. So instead of explaining why women have fewer ribs (since that's not true), the story actually explains why male humans don't have a baculum.

I'm not sure we need this explanation because I don't expect ancient stories to make perfect sense, but it's sort of interesting to have another perspective.

Frankie, many of them do carry some water, but will look to hook up to nearby fire hydrants where possible. Their onboard supply might not always be enough for bigger fires.

Pigletjohn, useful information there as ever.

I will look the next time I am doing my car engine fluids. I've not had any problems though, so hopefully I have been getting it right.

DD(7) told me she was going upstairs but got distracted. I ran up to the loo and she was amazed to see me coming out.
I told her I'd teleported, that all grown ups could do it to varying degrees and it started from puberty.
I then forgot all about it.

Cue very puzzled teacher 2 weeks later after Lifeskills...

@FrankiesKnuckle the fire engines one has reminded me of a friend of mine who didn't know about ambulance stations. She thought ambulances all started at the hospital. It's not a particularly strange thing to think, but she persisted even after seeing an ambulance arrive within minutes at a location that was about 30 miles from a hospital. She just thought they went really, really fast.

I still kind of think she's right 😳I remember looking out of my bedroom window as a child and noticing that a rainbow ended right beside next door's shed.

No it didn't, it might have appeared that way.

Rainbows are circular, if you look down on one from an airplane it is circular.

Just discovered you don't have to have the "wrap of the day" at McDonalds, you can have any of the wraps. Mind blown.

Good to see PigletJohn on the ball with useful info as always.

@PigletJohn!

Rainbows are only circular if you have enough rain there for you to see the full effect. You must have seen part-rainbows where there is only enough cloud for a fraction of a bow, Sashh? No rain to your front left means no rainbow reaching your eyes from there.

(I love pondering refraction and reflection and even diffraction by raindrops while cycling along. Yes, I do quite often fall off my bike.)

I always thought the name Niamh was pronounced Nymph. God knows why.

When I was about 10, I thought that Glenn Hoddle (Spurs) was the best looking man in the world. My brother told me that Glenn was short for Gwendoline and that he was a woman. I believed this for longer than I should have done.

As a teenager, I went out with a lad who thought that a woman's period came out all at once - in that you went to the loo and voided the blood in much the same way you'd go for a pee. I discovered this because he was amazed I was on day three of my period and he couldn't understand why.
For years I thought that jellied eels were jelly deals.
My mother always said you should never cough or sneeze while peeing in case your bladder bursts; she had known it happen to someone, she said. Consequently I never do, just in case!

maddie I thought it was pronounced Nee-am-huh. Then when I realised so many names I knew by ear were spelt weirdly e.g. Siobhan, Sean, I decided Niamh was actually the name Naomi, Nay Oh Me.

When I was little I thought the umbilical cord connected directly to the large intestine (because I knew the intestines carried food), and if I pushed my finger too deeply into my innie belly button I could pierce my intestines.

I once said (and I was in my late 20s) - "it's funny how a pig is called a porker yet pork comes from a cow" - only to be told that no, it came from a pig. I genuinely believed it couldn't come from a pig because bacon was pink and pork was white!! The fact that cow's meat is red clearly escaped me.

Lancelottie

I've only ever seen one from the air, but it was a double rainbow.

I thought the partial ones had other names - quick google and there do seem to be a few non rainbow rainbowy things

www.wwu.edu/depts/skywise/a101_rainbows.html