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.

The petrol cap, the toaster and the fridge temperature always come up on these threads and none are universally true.

It depends on your car, toaster and fridge, there is no standardisation although I do wonder that anyone would think a setting of 5 on a toaster would mean your bread is in there for 5 minutes.

DH thought it was undermimed not undermined (still slips and says it sometimes) gives me very strong visuals of a half arsed mime artist 😂

ZippyBungleandGeorge

My DH always says supposebly instead of supposedly.

I have always loved it though since we met so don't always correct him when he slips up

Prick stick. It's my mum's fault.

If you want more of this stuff, there's this thread...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/3418716-Pineapples-dont-grow-on-trees-and-other-misconceptions-that-MN-has-revealed-over-the-years

@KC225 love your 'magic cream'!

I really used to think "scorchio" meant a very hot weather in Spanish English isn't my first language though, that is my excuse.

wrt 'magic cream'

my dd had a lot of operations as a child. They put numbing cream on her hand about 20 minutes before the injection/canula was put in. The nurses call it 'magic cream'

So it is a thing!

Apparently mer-Ing-goos are pronounced as meringues

Mine are that Mallorca and Majorca are the same place. I'm not going to admit my age when I found that out.

Also, that when birds die they don't just fall out of trees and land on the ground. I concluded this must be the case because we had recently moved to a house with a big garden full of trees and regularly came across the occasional dead bird.

Funnily enough, when we reluctantly rehomed one of our cats because it was bullying the older one, we stopped finding the birds.

I've found out in my 30-s that women can be pregnant and not know about it till late stages or even till birth.

I was the ripe old age of 25 when I realised that puffins are not fictional birds.

How did I realise this? I was on holiday in Iceland with my DH and saw a sign for puffin burgers. OH how I laughed! Look babe! I said, they're selling fictional meat!

It's been nine years and I have yet to live this down. My friends are constantly showering me with puffin related things.

You can get numbing cream - it's called Emla Cream.

@steppemum it is yes but not in the mouth/gum for a filling

Didn't know for a long time you can use the toothpaste or the tomato tube cap to poke the hole through.

steppemum
Swifts are the birds that don't land not swallows

Sharks always move.

Piglet89 my sister sang the exact same lyrics and finally realised this year!

@hannonle

The caretaker one was from me. I couldn’t ever hear where “Mr” ended and his surname started. So whether he was Mr Rusby or more growly Mr(rrr) Usby. When he joined the school nostalgia FB page (school is no longer there) I found out - Mr Alan Rusby.

@chipsandgin thank you for your explanation even though I'm just as confused! I understand what you were doing but not about the stitching etc making it obvious which way to put the king sized duvet in the cover.

@steppemum - it's swifts who don't ever land on the ground once they are airborne. It is incredible to think of them mating, sleeping, eating, etc all on the wing. They only stop to perch briefly on their nests to feed their young (and presumably to lay and sit on the eggs before hatching). Their feet are consequently very small and weak.

Swallows, on the other hand, like to have a nice communal perch on telephone wires and the like before migrating back to Capistrano Africa for the winter.

Goldcrests can force warm blood into their feet and keep it there. They then tuck them amongst their eggs while they're sitting on the eggs. They can keep their eggs at the optimum temperature for hatching by using their feet as heaters!

I was an actual adult when I discovered that the Lord’s Prayer was the prayer that Jesus taught us and not the prayer of Jesus’s tortoise. 🤦‍♀️

I was an actual adult when I discovered that the Lord’s Prayer was the prayer that Jesus taught us and not the prayer of Jesus’s tortoise. 🤦‍♀️ actually crying!! This is perfection

Oh just thought of another. It's 'you've another think coming' rather than 'you've another thing coming'. As in "if you think that, you've another think coming".

Was in my 30s when I realised my error! I heard it on the radio, was questioning it, then it was (by coincident) in the book I was reading the same day.

Ah, gotcha @bikerunski
I was trying to think of a pun on his name.