What do you remember from your childhood that you now realise you really misunderstood?

[Carryonrunning]

Was just chatting to a friend about this:

1. Hearing all the boys in class talking about how a girl’s tampon fell out in the classroom. Lived in fear of this for many years before I realised they meant it fell out of her bag, not her body!

2. Opening the door of a sauna with my cousin (which was right in the middle of the spa area, so not private) on holiday in a nice hotel and my uncle inside shouting at us to close the door. I cried for weeks thinking I’d inadvertently seen him naked (although I didn’t actually see anything). Couldn’t look at him for years without feeling sick before I was old enough to realise we were just letting the heat out and annoying the other people in there! No one was naked in mixed sauna in the very public pool area of a nice spa hotel full of people!

Yes my mum used to say this.

One day I was sitting colouring with the news on in the background and there was a feature about fertility treatment. I looked up at the TV and it was showing a chef preparing leeks... obviously it had moved on to the next item. But I spent the next several years thinking sperm looked like leeks... and telling my primary school friends the same.

True and so sad about your old friend.

I remember a news story about 3 armed guerilla’s and I thought it was about a gorilla with 3 arms!

I thought yellow cars were free! 😵‍💫

Despite being married to an avid F1 fan, in my head I still always read it as “Grand Pricks”

When I was about 10 or 11 I was off school sick, and This Morning was on the TV. They were doing a segment about condoms, and the lady on the show said that sometimes men are in a hurry and they don't take the time to put the condom on properly, so women need to make sure that they are fitting it correctly.

I had never seen a condom before so I was imagining this really complicated device, with buckles that needed to be tightened properly, like a horse saddle or something.

I was really surprised when I saw how simple they were a few years later.

thought when the shops had a sale it meant everything was free

thought superdrug sold illegal style drugs

Sorry to hear this. What was that lie that turned you off her?

I have an almost identical story, except it was my uncle who we were staying with, and it was a big litter of puppies. He said he was taking them to sell them, they were only a day old. He left two. I thought it was a bit strange because I knew they should be about 8 weeks old before they should be sold, but I knew my uncle didn't really follow the books when it came to animal care so I thought he was just breaking rules.

I was in my 20s before it clicked.

When some kids told me - I was 7 or 8 - that kissing involved tongues. I was distraught - how disgusting - and ran home to mum and dad who reassured me that that wasn't the case (they did tell me a while afterwards but they said I was to distraught initially).

Do not drink and drive.
As a child I thought it was because you might spill it.

That murder meant being roughed up a bit in the park

Similar here! Except my dad isn't a nasty person as such, just that my mum had so much burden on her shoulders, life admin, mental load, childcare etc. Dad could just work and then be fun dad at the weekends while actually contributing very little apart from money to the household.

I can't slag him off for it as it's how traditional families were then. But I do also now understand why my mum struggled and might have been grumpy.

It is, it's a play on words

I think this is correct, is it not?!?

A pub offered me cashback a few weeks ago. Handy, since 2 out of three banks in that shopping area have now gone.

Did children's books not have pictures of the pig with a basket on his arm, or have I made that up? (BTW why do we all assume that the pigs are male?)

I actually believed that when people left school that they would grow up and start behaving like the decent adults I knew. It was a very rude awakening.

That my father contributed more to the divorce than I realised - thought it was mostly my DMs fault

That we didn’t have much but DM did her v best

There are loads of things I think I didn’t get like social etiquette/norms or wasn’t taught im
not sure.

One thing I still recall from aged 5.
We were vegetarian and I so had packed lunches at school (no veggie choice in the 70s), but that afternoon the teacher said that there was some chocolate cake left over from school lunch and we could all have some instead of it going to waste. I said no thanks as I thought I wasn't allowed to eat it (why did I think a cake would have meat in it?). I am sad for that 5 year old now...

I went to school with a James James 🤷‍♀️

I was born in the London's East End where Jellied Eels were considered a local delicacy. When I was really small I can remember thinking they were "Jelly Deals", like some sort of bargain wobbly dessert and was quite shocked to find out that they were actually eels! In jelly! When I was a bit older I used to walk past the stalls in the market where said eels would have their heads chopped off just before they were sold. I was a little vegan rebel at age 11 (weirdo in 1973) and used to cross my fingers and silently cheer on the odd maverick eel that managed to wriggle off the counter, slip along the kerb and slide down the drain. Come to think of it, were there actually little communities of escapee eels living and breeding in the sewers? Perhaps I should write a book.

We were looking up words in a dictionary in primary school and my word was "manslaughter". Problem is I thought it was mans-laughter because I'd never heard it before so that's what I declared loudly to the class 😂

That you don’t have to wait until ‘After eight’ to eat the chocolates.

That the TV magazine was correct the day after the clocks changed. I used to get so confused wondering if the TV magazine knew this and changed the times.

I always wondered why we didn’t watch a boxing match on Boxing Day.