When the penny drops about dumb things that you should have known!

[malificent7]

For ages I thought there was a poster called Tia. I always used to think it was a bit weird that they would sign their name....not very anonymous. Now I realise it means thanks in advance.
I am 45.

As a child I asked my dad how he knew that our new kitten was a boy. Quick as a flash he said "by the colour of his eyes" Such was my trust in this man that I was a qualified nurse before the penny dropped

Why? I don't know the answer to this 😬

That "The Cloud" isn't actually a cloud - ie all the data floating around in the atmosphere.
It's a bunch of servers (lots of bunches actually) where all the data is stored.
Sounds daft when I write it, but I really thought it floated about like the WiFi. 🤭

Because if you've only got 1 then it can't reproduce...

I thought laser car washes washed the car with lasers.

Actually Antarctic means "opposite the Arctic."

As a child I remember thinking why on earth were adults so silly going to war over a game of golf - the Gulf war 🙈

I never realised what envelope-necked vests were designed to do all of the time my DCs were young enough for them. I know now!

I'm learning an embarrassing amount from this thread 😳

My friend who is petite herself always thought petite was a brand😃

Putting something on insideout. The inside is outside. Upsidedown. The upside is downwards. I knew what it looks like or is but suddenly realised as a grown adult, it is a literal description. I think about this realisation fairly regularly.

The radiographer in me reading this thought you meant ROI Region of interest

I was about 32 before I realised why so very many artists chose to call their piece "Untitled".

Another one from my teens: I used to frequent chat rooms and one of the moderator bots was called wysiwyg - I thought it was such a cute name and that the owner was really creative. Only found out many years later, courtesy of Britney, that it means ‘what you see is what you get’ (I then googled it and found out it was coding related 🤦🏽‍♀️)

And it’s called the Arctic because the presiding constellation is the Great Bear ( arctos in Greek)…..
I know this isn’t pedants’ corner , BTW.

I’d flick through channels when I was a child and mistook ‘omnibus’ as ‘on-the-bus’ for years. I just accepted this as episodes of whatever that solely took place on buses. I must of been 19/20 when I finally clicked on one and wondered what was going on.

That they are sea defences not seedy fences.

Bit random but....

Old street lamps were unused cannons from the wars, rolled out and lengthened to become steet lighting.

Why had you thought he took them before that?

That you can’t just get pregnant at any time.
You have to be ovulating and have sex around that time. Otherwise pregnancy is pretty unlikely. As I child/teen I was told sex=pregnancy and worried about it more than needed. I was nearly 40 when I learned that on this site!!!

We've had the piggy, we've had the envelope vests, but weirdly not had the "side of the petrol cap on the petrol pump symbol" yet... can we get a bingo?

Oh and something about the dials on toasters, incorrect backronyms and TO LET signs...

Took me about four years to figure out what my daughter did on a regular basis at school in the ‘Icy Tearoom’. Envisaged some sort of playhouse or imagination corner. It was only as the years went on and she was evidently a bit old to be playing in such areas that I finally asked her.

’Computers mother. Typing and that’

😳

Seedy fences

I wanted a fountain pen, and could only find it in a country called Penisland.

A wooden Noah's Ark toy bought for DC had 2 male lions instead of a male and a female, so they weren't going to last long. The penny obviously hadn't dropped for the designer either.