To ask the most basic thing you never knew/misunderstood until adulthood

[ChanandlerBongsLeftShoe]

I feel like a completely ridiculous excuse for an adult but the other day I found out the difference between cottage pie and shepherds pie.

I am in my 30s and gobsmacked (also feel a bit stupid now it's so obvious). I genuinely thought they were the same thing.

Is there anything you discovered as an adult that was just common knowledge to everyone else? Or perhaps there's a phrase you've found out you have been saying wrong all this time etc...!

Help me feel a bit better.

@ANiceSliceOfCake it's actually (technically) possible for each kitten to have a different father. Search superfecundation! 😀

That percentages are symmetrical and you can just turn them round.

7% of 50 is the same as 50% of 7

Etc.

greenolive when I was about 12 I had extremely long hair which my brothers would brush with a metal brush to create static sparks. I was their entertainment!

@Hairyhat I’m so sorry. I’m in hysterics. A COW! I love you very much.

COLOUR CHANGING PEPPERS IS A HOAX.

Even the BBC shamefully spread a hoax created from a single twitter account.

Don’t just read the first google hit, people!

I used to think that guerrilla warfare involved umm - gorillas. And that a try in rugby meant someone had tried to score a goal (I didn’t understand why it scored more points.) And that trespassers would be persecuted not prosecuted.

I thought that Timbuktu and Honolulu were fictional places until my 20's I'd say (My mother was frequently going to either place whenever I asked her where she was going).

I read hundreds of books by Gnid Blyton.

I thought that Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea etc. were cities somewhere in the UK (God only knows where) until I first went on the London underground.

I'm a little bit dumb.

Drunkatthepetrolstation

@ILoveBray I loved Bray too. Was so sad when he died. Did he ever come back to life? I Always hoped he did but lost track.

He never came back in the show. After being captured at the beginning of season 4 you never saw him again, but he was alluded to a few times being alive still.

A book called A New World was written to follow on from Season 5 and he and Amber were reunited in the book

Woodhill - As a dc - The guerilla soldiers abroad. I thought they were gorillas attacking humans.

Me too!! Although to my shame I was not a child. I was in my early 20s and studying history (including military history ) at uni. When I heard it on the news I thought they were saying gorilla and didn't connect it with the written word guerrilla. To my shame I actually said to my Dad that I didn't understand why the soldiers didn't just run away from the gorillas. I will never forget the look on my dad's face. The phrase, 'I'm glad to see your university fees are not being wasted' was used. I have never lived it down!!

That percentages are symmetrical and you can just turn them round

Holy shit! I never knew that.

That percentages are symmetrical and you can just turn them round

7% of 50 is the same as saying 0.01 x 7 x 50 - because multiplication can be done in any order you can also therefore say 0.01 x 50 (to get your 50%) x 7 so they are the same thing.

Spent years singing I believe in Malcolm where you from you sexy thing, only to find out much much later it was I believe in miracles ( Hot Chocolate).

a nice slice of cake It is quite possible for a female cat to mate with different male cats, and the subsequent kittens to have different Fathers.

Cornflakes aren't made from corn as we know it in the uk but maize

Graphista ... Corn is maize.

JRMisOdious some types of duck do exclusively eat fish, in particular the family known as sawbill which in the uk are the red breasted merganser, goosander and smew. Ducks can fly too

Why did that post? Sorry Orangepot but I realised you do now know what Jaywalking means so I wiped the message but it posted anyway. Grrrrrr. System gremlins

In the UK cornfields are usually wheat, not maize. But sweetcorn...

I grew up thinking 17 was the most amazing age you could be - after all, there are so many songs about the joy of being 17 (‘Dancing Queen’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ etc.) Then one day it hit me out of nowhere that there was nothing special about being 17 - it just has an extra syllable compared to 16 or 18

No-o-o-o. I previewed my post, changed my mind about it so deleted it but it remained as if posted, but it hadn't. I've now posted apologising for the thing I said in my post which didn't post. Ha ha

Can someone tell me how we walk on the earth. Are people in Australia walking upside down, like pins in an orange? I tried to explain to my kids why they weren’t upside down but couldn’t understand why. I’d really like an analogy to understand this.

I didn’t realise there were different types of curry. Until I was 17 I only ate my grandads homemade curry on a Sunday.

I also thought you couldn’t get peppers in this country until I started doing my own shopping in the late 90’s, because my mum never bought food like that

We got lost in Wales too. We were on a walking holiday, and the first day we kept going round in circles, round and round the outskirts of the same village - which we couldn't find on the map.

Or so we thought.

Turns out all the signposts didn't have the name of a mystery village on at all, but were merely displaying the Welsh words for 'Public Footpath'

This HAS to go in classics, no?

what is the pink Duracell bunny about??

Wasn’t it just a toy that was out in the 80’s that they used for the ad? I had one

@WaddesdonWanderer you aren't that far wrong with the rugby. Originally the team had to get the ball over the line to earn a try at goal. No points were given for grounding the ball, all the points were from kicking the ball between the posts. Hence earning a try (at goal). Rule changes have brought in an increasing number of points for grounding the ball and fewer for converting your try at goal.