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!

I used to think that if you wanted a baby you just had sex and that was it you got pregnant. Didn't realise until I was in my 20s that some people found it much much harder.

@Wendyhause

On the "sex" subject, I know I was not the only girl in my family to think that (long before my own sex life started) the man puts it in but just leaves it there for whatever time he wanted. I had no clue there was any movement involved.

That's what I was trying to say I thought lol

@Hailtomyteeth

Someone in my family, who shall remain nameless, thought Dunkirk was in Scotland. Presumably somewhere near Falkirk.

Rescuing 300 000 soldiers from Scotland???

Precisely. From the beaches of the Forth estuary.

@ConcernedAuntie

When I was little I was watching a TV drama (to be continued next week) with my Dad. He told me that all the actors had to stay in that position until the next episode.... and I believed him. Used to worry what they did about eating and going to the toilet, for a whole week!! Believed that for ages.

At work once I had a YTS girl for a week and asked her to do some filing. Was looking for some paperwork and found she had filed correspondence from Argentina under Europe. She would not believe me it was in South America until I showed her a map. She had thought that The Falklands were off Europe and that was why we had the Falklands conflict.

@ConcernedAuntie that is brilliant, I love your dad. When did you realise he was pulling your leg?

@KarmaViolet I’m not sure I’ll ever forget where I was the day I first read ‘spunk gumbo’. 😂

I discovered in my 40s!! that tuna were big fish. I'd eaten sardines, pilchards etc etc, and didn't really like tuna so paid it no mind, other than believing they were fish small enough to go into tins. Then I was in a restaurant and someone in our party ordered a tuna steak - I absolutely boggled and felt like such an idiot!

I knew full well that salmon are big fish but still in a tin, because I'd seen salmon.

I felt like a complete numpty, and discovering how wrong I was flet like some sort of divine revelation.

And narwhals - ashamed to say that I had no clue they even existed until that chap used a tusk to defend people in that terrorist attack very recently.

irony is in other areas I'm an absolute mine of trivia and irrelevance, but obviously am not the font of all knowledge by a long chalk

Up until very recently I thought Billericay was in Ireland

In Tennis - that it was "juice" and not "deuce".

I think I was in my early 20's acting as umpire to friends playing tennis in the park when one finally turned around to me and said "Araminta, you know it's not juice... right?" and I was like "Duh OF COURSE" (whilst at the same time manically Googling)

Similar to the ‘moving house’ one, when I was quite small we drove past a shop selling swimming pools and I recall being baffled a) how did they fit all the swimming pools into the tiny shop for people to look at and b) how did they deliver the swimming pool on a lorry without all the water swishing out everywhere?

That my mum's "Swiss cheese plant" actually produced cheese, and that all the cheese we used in the house came from that plant.
I believed that for years.
No idea why, I was a relatively bright kid 🤣

Someone I know thought until very recently that LOL meant "lots of love"..... until a rather unfortunate Facebook comment upon the death of a friend's relative....."So sorry to hear your news, lol"! 😬😬

My favourite one was from an ex of mine, not even that long ago, and at the age of 35, who confused fracking with twerking...

Her 'I can't believe they're thinking of banning fracking!!!'

Me: 'Mmmmm, yeah well I guess they're worried about the environmental impact'

Her '??????????????'

O how I laughed when I realised what she was thinking

If Pontefract was Welsh, how would they know how to make the cakes?

That the generation of my grandparents had been the first humans to live on earth 🤣. I think I believed that when I was about 4.

I also believed in vampires for a long time and refused to sleep with an open bedroom window during the night as a young girl.
I’m still not sure if they really exist or not

@RestingPandaFace

I thought that roundabouts worked by taking you to different places based on how many times you went round

I think this is a reflection of DMs driving to be honest.

They sort of do, so long as you don't insist on counting in whole numbers.

When I was 20 I was explaining to my new boyfriend how to get to my home village, coming down the motorway: "...it's quite a big junction, it's got a roundabout"

Obviously I wasn't a driver at that point! And I had been driven along several relatively major A-roads which had both slip-roads and roundabout junctions.

Never did find out whether he noticed/realised what I'd said. I could ask him (he's only 5 yards away) but I like to retain some dignity...

That earwigs were so called because they crawled into your ears and ate through your eardrums until they could eat your brain. I was terrified of them for years.

Thanks, oldest cousin.

When I was little I thought that faeces/poo/shit whatever you like to call it, was called "properly", although I think pronounced it "proply".

This was because, when I first started to use the loo on my own, my mother would ask me afterwards "Did you just wee, or did you go properly" (presumably to check I wasn't constipated). So if we were out and I noticed some dog's mess on the pavement I'd say "Mind the dog's proply!"

That coercive control is dealt with as a crime now. It isn't.

Still, at least I called it a roundabout. When I was growing up my parents referred to them as "islands" so I did too, until I was in a road safety quiz team and learned my error.

Years later an older friend told me that earlier versions of the Highway Code referred to them as islands, so I felt vindicated (looking back, I'm pretty certain that my parents were older than the others' - certainly my dad was).

@FredAndChips

I thought rumble strips on the roads were for blind people to tell them to slow down... I thought this until i was 22

That’s amazing!

I also never realised people were saying 'bless you' in response to a sneeze, I thought they saying 'bleshu' like a word. I remember sneezing and saying 'bleshu' and a kid in my class was like 'did you sneeze? If you're the one who sneezed you're meant to say bless me' and I said 'bleshu me' from then on until I realised

Custardy's post reminds me of an incident with my son. Aged maybe 3? He liked to splash through puddles, but occasionally I would warn him off some suggesting they were "a bit deep". One day he announced that he was going to jump in the bitdeep, and I realised he thought it was a word for a big puddle

@FredAndChips

I thought rumble strips on the roads were for blind people to tell them to slow down... I thought this until i was 22

Hang on, until you were 22 you thought blind people drove vehicles? Surely not.

I thought an Indian summer referred to Native Americans - I could clearly picture them hanging around their teepees and wigwams in their feathers and buckskins, fanning themselves and moaning about how hot is was. It took the invention of the Internet to set me straight