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.

My best friend thought that women do a wee out of their vagina until I set her straight (when she was about 30).

I genuinely didn't realise that George Michael was gay until quite late in the day . A friend made me watch the 'Faith' video while saying "how could you not know????!!!!" repeatedly

But white/green grapes do make white wine?

I am ashamed to say that I too thought that we had two pipes in our throat, one for breathing and one for eating,

But we do! A trachea for breathing and an oesophagus for eating.

I thought Portugal was in Spain

Serenity George Michael was massive teen idol.in the 80,s looking back it's obvious he was Gay but I can understand why so many teen girls refused to believe it my friend still refuses to accept it despite the evidence!

@Persimmonn The Australians aren't walking upside down - they are right side up, we are the ones who are upside down

Seriously though, the Earth is a globe with a gravitational pull. It affects everyone and everything in the same way, wherever we are.

Oh, and whoever asked - dates are... well, dates. From the date palm tree.

And coconuts are massive and green. The brown hairy thing we know and love is only the small inner seed inside.

I always thought peanuts were nuts. There is a clue in the name, after all. But they are not, in fact, nuts. They are legumes, like peas and beans.

I always thought tomatoes were vegetables. They are not, they are fruits, like grapes.

Just talking about the trachea and oesophagus, for any nurses here, dd needed a mask-gastric tube when she was a baby and I watched the nurse feed it down into her stomach. My daft question is - how could she be sure it was going down the correct tube, and not into the lungs?

That should read naso gastric.

On aggregate

I feel really silly even typing this but I thought back in the day everything was black and white. I wondered when the world turned to colour until I realised it was just black and white TVs and pics....oh the shame...

I thought the expression 'the lion's share' was 'the line share' until corrected a few months ago

I can't really remember the details Takemedoewn but I had a a placement on a children's ward a s a student they put a bolus fluids down I think ,to make sure it was in the stomach ,

I mGuessing if it was in the lungs they child would have star Ted coughing etc?

And apparently on googling a bolus has to be swallowed?

Many years ago when nursing, having passed a naso gastric tube, we would attach a syringe and aspirate a small amount of liquid, then test that with litmus paper. If the paper turned red, that would mean it was acid, therefore the tube was in the stomach.

I've posted this recently, but my most embarrassing one was thinking that "Vietnam vets" were employed to look after military horses . I thought it seemed like there were rather a lot of them .

The standard response to which is “It can’t be flat. If it was, cats would have pushed everything off it by now”.

One of my best friends thinks "Louis Vuitton" is pronounced something else as I found out recently...

We were in a cafe and a woman came and left and friend said that she looked the type to have a pair of "Lewis Butons" button to rhyme with futon.

I seriously had to hide my face!

@Zoflorabore Did she maybe mean Louboutins?

I can tick off so many of these things I only learned in early adulthood.

Cottage Pie/Shepherd's Pie
Hyperbole
Red peppers/green pepper
Elgin marbles
One of mine - Preface is pronounced "prehfuss" not "preeface"
Also segue/segway

I'm making a list which I'll laminate and give to my daughters to save their future embarrassment.

I was definitely one of the people (I was about 13) who when it was announced on the TV news that the Falkland Islands has been invaded thought that Scotland had been attacked!

I had never heard of the Falklands and if I'd dredged up my small knowledge of geography might have wondered why the Argentinians had hiked all the way up to Scotland. So maybe I wasn't an adult, but I doubt I would have done much better 5 years later .....

Haffiana

That article is so badly written. It basically says it's untrue that peppers go through stages of being red, yellow and green then contradicts itself. Some peppers do, some don't.