Silly stuped things your younger self thought was true 🤪😳

[Justjackie]

I will go first...first job after leaving school..thought you paid tax then at end of year got it all back! I thought it was some kind of loan to the government 😳 heard mam and dad mention getting '-tax-back' over the years and thought that was what happened!

It's only recently that I discovered (along with a lot of other people) that having the back light on in the car is actually not in fact illegal.... .

I wasn't going to admit this one but what the hell. My older sister used to tell me that Queen Elizabeth 1st wore that stiff ruff thing around her neck so that she could eat crumbly biscuits and it would catch the crumbs so that her gown would not get dirty. I believed it.
I also believed that men's codpieces had a fish's head in them. Gawd my imagination was bloody warped!

@Lockdownbear “On the same vain I can't ever imagine MDs and other top bosses starting out at the bottom.”

Same! I work at a law firm and I can’t imagine any of the partners as legal assistants or junior associates. Doesn’t help of course that I don’t know what they looked like at that age so I’m picturing men and women as they are now in their 50s doing the junior stuff

@callmeH

I thought the Snake Pass was covered in slithery creatures, I kept my eyes closed all the way across as a child. My brother used to wonder where Random was, the place they went to pick a winner 'at random'. I never realised that INXS and In Excess were the same thing, one I'd seen written down and one I'd only heard.

In Excess!! 😲🤯

I was brought up Church of England. I remember a hymn we used to sign that went "oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer". That terrified me because I thought it meant God would punish me if I didn't tell him everything in a prayer. Every time we sang this I'd have a few days of long prayers telling God what I had for lunch and stuff, then this would fizzle out until the next time we sang the hymn. I didn't figure out that there was no "needless pain" when I hadn't told God what I got on my maths test 😂

@TheMarzipanDildo

Until very recently (University Challenge yesterday) I thought Strasbourg was in Germany.

It should be in Germany.

Ha ha! Me too. I was very surprised!

Hearing on the news that someone had been ‘remanded in custardy’... what! Like, in custard??

I cried when told my big sister was going into the Scholarship class (11+). I thought it was a real ship and she was going away.

@VEGAS2016

I was 37 () when I found out that dragons aren't real!

Also another one who thought dunkirk was in Scotland. Also thought Everton was in London (sending a theme here!)

Of course dragons are real. My brother has a bearded one

I didn't realise people could change hair colour and exposed my lack of knowledge to older girls in the playground by trying to instigate a discussion into whether the brown haired Madonna of Like A Prayer was better or worse than the blonde one of the song Cherish, and wasn't it odd that there were two artists with the same name. I don't think they laughed at me as I was younger but they did put me straight that there was only one Madonna so I tried to style it out with something like "I knew that... That's not what I meant" before leaving swiftly!

I thought there was a place called Malaguff and another one called Maguluf. I was so surprised to find out that Malaguff didn’t exist 😂 I also only found out that mixed race was the preferred term and was still using half caste until about 8 years ago. Still quite embarrassed about that

Oh and I also thought that during the World Wars people were literally all out in the street having a fight with their neighbours all the time. For 4 and 6 years 😬

@LunaNorth

Glamorgan was in Scotland. It still trips me up, to be honest.

It just sounds Scottish to my ears.

I agree! Although Mid Glamorgan somehow sounds very Welsh.

I thought Pontefract was in Wales until I was in my 30s. It’s got no business being in Yorkshire, it should be in Wales - it sounds Welsh! Sorry to those who live in Pontefract and happen to like living in Yorkshire.

I also thought Timbuktu was a made up place until I saw a question about it in a Geography exam at school and I finally realised it must real.

For WWII...
I thought the air raid sirens were on the Bomber planes. Like an ambulance I suppose. Advance warning!!

@Iwantacookie

One of my teddys said a few random phrases and my dad convinced me there was a little man sitting in there speaking. I used to place him upright so he wouldn't spill his coffee.

I love that. Not only that there was a little man but that he had a cup of coffee.

Adding to the sex misconceptions, I have another. Regarding gay sex between men, I didn’t realise until I was about 25 (yes really) that the men do more than just rub their willies together. I honestly couldn’t think what was so exciting about that. When I found out about anal then penny dropped and I was like ahh, gotch. That makes a lot more sense

I was an adult when I realised Glamorgan wasn't in the Highlands. It just sounds like somewhere the Queen would go to watch Highland games. (I am Scottish 😬)

Also, same confusions as many here with Strasbourg, Penrith. But not Dunkirk!

I believed that it was illegal to drive with interior lights on until my 40s.

Which means my poor kids grew up reading by torchlight/the glovebox light on long car journeys.

@LunaNorth

I believed that it was illegal to drive with interior lights on until my 40s.

Which means my poor kids grew up reading by torchlight/the glovebox light on long car journeys.

Do you mean that if you'd thought it was OK you would have driven in the dark with the interior light on

Well, if it wasn’t illegal, I would assume that it was ok to.

But I thought it was, so I didn’t, and nobody died.

So it’s all good.

My DB, at about 4 or 5, started to get very excited about my upcoming wedding. No such thing was planned, given 15 year old me didn't even have a boyfriend! Further questioning revealed that he thought you had to get married at 16.

@110APiccadilly

My DB, at about 4 or 5, started to get very excited about my upcoming wedding. No such thing was planned, given 15 year old me didn't even have a boyfriend! Further questioning revealed that he thought you had to get married at 16.

Ha! That reminds me, I thought/imagined as a child that a shotgun wedding meant just that! The two fathers of the couple would stand behind and point rifles (not shotguns) and make sure the pair went through with it. I had overheard several conversations about neighbours or family members who "had to get married" or it was a "shotgun affair"

When I was about 3 or 4 my dad showed me Australia on a globe to show me where we were flying. He put his finger on the UK, lifted it up, spun the globe and put his finger on Australia leaving me to believe for some time that the aeroplane just went up into the air and hovered until the earth spun round then went down again.

I thought that when there was a film or tv programme with children in it, and then later you saw the children as grown ups, the film people had to wait until the original children had grown up to finish filming! Thought it must have taken ages, and wondered what happened if the children died or decided they didn't want to act anymore.
Same as if someone was pregnant in a tv series or film; they had to keep coming back and filming a bit more as the pregnancy progressed.
Billericay is in Ireland, yep thought that too. To be fair I didn't grow up in England so my geography is very hazy.
Up until I was about 18 I didn't realize petrol bombs had to be lit before throwing them. Anytime I'd read about them it was put petrol in a bottle, put cloth in the neck then throw it. I assumed the glass shattering caused some sort of friction/ spark which set the petrol off. It was only watching the news regarding The Troubles in northern Ireland on the news and they were throwing petrol bombs that the subject came up. My sister thought the same too!