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!

Oh I also thought that once you started your periods you'd bleed continually until menopause!

Um, they're the Conservatives

Tory is an old insult meaning thief that has evolved into a somewhat neutral term.

My parents both share the exact same birthday so I thought that was a prerequisite for getting married 🤣

That’s amazing @CrowsInMyGarden I wonder if any of those escaped eels made it to a water course somewhere using a sort of ‘homing instinct’. Or as you say did they just survive and live and breed in the sewer system.

I was told sketchily about the birds and the bees just into high school. I heard women saying they didn’t know they were pregnant so. I thought every time a couple had sex resulted in a pregnancy and for the woman not to know sex must happen at night when the woman was sound asleep.??????

I was at secondary school before I realised penis was pronounced pee-nis and not pen-is. It was the in the first year but before we had 'the talk'

Another one, when I was young we found an injured bird. My mum put it in a cardboard box with a blanket to help to make it better. The next morning it had gone. She said it had got better and flown away. I now know that it had died. :(

I actually knew a client who was called Thomas Thomas. No change of name at any time, he was just given that name when he was born! I can’t understand why any parent would actually call their child something like this.

I'm another one who thought to let signs were pointing to toilets. And I thought the motorway road sign symbol was a monster or creature of some kind, with big legs. Took me ages to realise it's symbolising the two roads with a bridge going across. That's still a bit weird tbh, but I suppose trying to show two three lane roads without anything else for context would just be six parallel lines.

I also thought as a child that if I ate a bit of paper, like a bit of sweet wrapper stuck to a boiled sweet, it might kill me. Still did it, just worried about it a lot.

We lived abroad and when an old friend of my father came over to visit she promised she would make us a proper English roast with a leg of lamb. I was horrified as I thought the lamb would be hobbling about like the war amputees we saw begging on the streets.
I couldn’t eat it and she was so offended and cross., my father too, silent treatment for days.

My granny would say that too 😂 😂

The father of the footballing and netballing family the Nevilles was called Neville Neville!

I was about 3 or 4, and for some reason thought the Army cut your arms off. (I suspect next oldest brother had come home from school and talked about the army or something as the school was near the barracks - this was 60s so not that long after the end of the War, and there were a one or two ex Army with limbs missing you used to see around town too, so I can entirely see how confused I was about it all.
I remember driving somewhere there was an army lorry behind us and shrinking down in the car so they couldn't see me in case they wanted to cut my arms off. I also used to hide low in the car when we passed the Kings Arms pub, as I thought that was a place the Army lurked (waiting to cut your Arms off).

I had to explain to DH (who is late 50s) just last year that, no twat isn't the same as twit and is slang for vagina. His face was a picture 😂

@WhiteRoseWaratah @LiarAtAWitchTrial I have an uncle who did that. I don't know how it came about, but it was out in the open that he had killed a few kittens. I wasn't older than 10. I could never look at him the same way again and never understood how a human could do that. It still creeps me out. I know times were different, yadda yadda yadda but I'm not buying it. I think there is something not right with people who do that.

I also thought as a child that if I ate a bit of paper, like a bit of sweet wrapper stuck to a boiled sweet, it might kill me. Still did it, just worried about it a lot.

I thought accidentally swallowing gum would kill you. I used to watch people chewing gum in complete incredulity. Why risk your life like that?

I can remember the complete confusion I felt as a 7-8 year old having gone with parents to look at carpets.

They were in little squares and I genuinely couldn't get my head round how it would be stretched to fit our whole living room.

Not me but my mam, from Yorkshire, thought God had a big map on his wall - Our Father wi' chart in heaven.

I used to miss read 'cattle grid' as 'Castle grid' and couldn't work out why all these different castles, in different parts of the country had the same name.....

Oh another one - watching Wimbledon as a child I thought they kept saying "juice" (deuce). It made sense to me because the players would take a break for a drink, presumably of the juice that they kept going on about! Took years to realise.

When I was young, my parents always drummed into me not to use the last socket in an 4 plug extension lead because it was "dangerous". A uni housemate explained to me that it only applied if all other 3 plugs were in use. And with modern leads probably not an issue at all.

When I was quite young my brother and I were very excited to see 'Park and ride' signs which seemed to be on the route we were on. We were quite disappointed.

@Riapia I thought that Asparagus soup was "sparrows guts soup"

When you die and go to heaven you will sit on the right hand of God the Father for ever. Sounded really dull.

My mum told me that Rizla papers were dog toilet paper , probably because they were always packets or odd ones on the ground down a grim alley full of white dog poo (remember that ?) and now I kinda understand why she said it ….

Chewing gum, chewing gum made of wax, sent me to my grave at last.