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.

It's definitely no more tears (crying) - in Germany the Penaten stuff (owned by Johnson's) say "Keine mehr Tränen" which translates to no more (crying) tears, not rips/tears.

I only found out recently that envelope neck vests for babies are so you can pull them down the body in event of a shit explosion to stop getting poo on your babies head! Who knew? My 3 were all grown up when I found this out, and yes they have all been unnecessarily subjected to shitty hair!

Sorry - Keine Tränen mehr - is the exact wording.

There are an awful lot of people who think that "can't be asked" to do something is a thing. When it's "can't be arsed" obvs.

Hair doesn't tear anyway. It's a complete no brainer.

I don't think they are designed for that, they are designed to go over massive baby heads. It's just a coincidence that you can pull them down as well.

I thought for 38 years, those plastic things you put in the wall when you are putting in a screw was a raw plug.

Turns out its Rawlplug

RockyFlintstone what was her name?

i always thought it ment no more tears as in it took away all the tugs in hair so not sore when brushing hair... i didnt think it ment no tear as in not sting eyes whwn washing.

Johnson's baby shampoo is definitely no more tears as in crying. The label even says gentle to eyes. It comes from when people used to wash baby's hair with bar soap and it would get in their eyes and sting.

Mum thought it was 'can't be asked' instead of 'can't be arsed'. Til very recently (she's now 68!). Me and my DB and DS cried!!

The town of Schengen is in Luxembourg, not Switzerland.

“No More Tears - kind to eyes”

The day I realised the Dutch pronounce 'ij' like 'eye', Dutch pronunciation made a lot more sense. Still can't understand spoken Dutch though, fuck me that language is fast.
For the longest time I thought Ella Fitzgerald was called Ellafitz Gerald
I also only just worked out that porridge is actually the cooked grain and water or milk combination, and the difference between porrige and oatmeal is oatmeal can only be made from oats but porridge can be any kind of grain.
I'm sure there's more.

My fridge dial is definitely actual temperature. I do not have -8 settings.

I remember listening to a woman on the bus telling her boyfriend that the ‘no artificial colours’ label on her Haribo didn’t make any sense because there was no such thing as artificial colours. Her logic was that ‘if they were artificial, they couldn’t make them’. He tried for a worryingly long time to explain that artificial didn’t mean fictional and the difference between artificial and natural ingredients, but eventually he lost the will to live.

I was mid 30s when I found out that birds don't sleep in nests. I knew they roosted on trees, phone wires etc but thought they then flew home to bed haha

@GetStrongKeepFighting Yep - the duvet thing, although I think it's probably so obvious it is just me who didn't get this!

Basically a single duvet is a rectangle - so clearly the long sides go from the head to the foot and the short side across the bed, a double is a square so can't be done wrong - but a kingsize and up is a rectangle which goes longer sides across the bed with the head to the foot being the shorter sides of the rectangle...(again, clearly most people get this, it's not rocket science!).

What I had been doing for thirty years is using the cover as it should be used (head to foot) and stuffing the duvet in as I would a single, so using the longer part of the rectangle head to foot with the stitching running head to foot- therefore meaning flappy bits of unfilled cover at the edges and bunched up duvet inside at the head/foot.

Boring I know (sorry!) but a revelation when I worked it out and suddenly it looks like it should when I make the beds up!

Grid Blyton has reminded me that as a child I thought it was Walt Disnep.

I'm only half way through this thread, but; although not an adult yet, DS (10) recently discovered the electric toaster, in his defence we have an AGA so he makes toast on the hot plate, he was completely blown away when visiting some friends and they put the bread in a metal thing and toast came out.

bertiebots that's just coincidental, it really is so they can be pulled down.

was mid 30s when I found out that birds don't sleep in nests. I knew they roosted on trees, phone wires etc but thought they then flew home to bed haha

Omg. So the nests are just for the chicks? Every day’s a school day.

My fridge control is definitely temperature. If I set it to 6 that would be 6 degrees C.

have told this before on here, but I was planning a big family holiday, we were saving up for a couple of years for this. Booked an Alaskan cruise from Vancouver to Anchorage. All OK. started looking into flights, London-New York was massively cheaper than London-Vancouver, so I bought those, and thought we could have a few days in NY, then pootle up the coast to Vancouver, maybe go by train, stop off at Niagra etc, and couldn't work out why the train was taking two entire days.

Then I looked at google maps, and realised that Alaska is not Greenland, and isn't attached to the New York side .

Savings plan needed a bit of a boost to add in the cost of flights across to Vancouver, on top of everything else . Was an amazing holiday though in the end. And despite everyone taking the piss out of me for being talked into a whale watching tour by a nice young man in a stall at the port, we did see at least a dozen whales bubble net feeding, which was pretty spectacular.

At least I did know that Alaska and Russia were almost joined up, I just didn't realise that was "round the back" of the globe, rather than at the UK side .

Anghared.