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!

I thought for ages it was my-zld!

Ah that reminds me that I thought when the A Team escaped to the Los Angeles underground they were going on the tube!

That whenever my dad or grandad said they were going to see a man about a dog,I'd still be excited every single time that one day,they might bring a dog home 😞

As a child I used to think that when you saw a sign saying 'Free house' on pubs it meant you could stay there overnight for free, basically a pub that was also a free hotel 😂

Also, I thought that 'sitcom' was actually 'sit-down comedy', you know, as opposed to 'stand-up comedy'.

Me too.

I had a friend called Louise Brown who would have been about the same age as that LB, so obviously I thought they were the same person. I didn’t understand why her mum was pretending to be her mum when in fact she’d been grown and born in a test tube.

When the weather said "snow on the hills" and being disappointed there wasn't any on the very small hill in our village 😔

I’m glad I’m not the only one who didn’t understand money. I thought that when you paid for something in a shop, you always got change. My dad gave me 50p to buy something that cost 50p, then found me patiently waiting beside the till for my change.

Say what?

I think sitcom is situational comedy.

Oh, I think I see what you mean.

Oh and I was a lot older than I'd like to admit when I realised money laundering wasn't actually washing bank notes 😳

To be fair, I went to a Catholic primary and there was a lot of talk about the Virgin Mary, who kind of did conceive like that, according to the teachers. Well, OK God may have helped, a bit. Ineffably.
I once taught in a Catholic High school, nuns and all, although I am a Protestant. The Sixth Form girls told me about their sex education lesson from a nun, talk about shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted! They were told that once you were married sex was allowed, AS LONG AS YOU DON'T ENJOY IT! One girl asked if that meant sex with anybody and the nun couldn't understand the question. At no point were they told what 'sex' entailed.

Yes it is. But I thought it was 'sit-down comedy' because in sitcom shows, people were mostly sitting around 🤣

My kids thought everyone lived to 100 then died. Decimalisation gone mad!

When we lived in Germany a new-comer said he was going to the local swimming pool because it was free! He was upset when we told him that Freibad wasn't free-pool, it means open-air pool and definitely not free!

Don’t give Kim Leadbeater ideas…. (Though I suspect she has already thought of this)

As a child I believed that my alcoholic dad just didn't love us enough. I grew up and and became an alcoholic and a parent and realised my dad did love us and sobriety is a separate issue and something the person needs to do for themselves and love themselves and want to live badly enough to come through rather than shaming and guilttripping with love for children.
I learnt that addicts are just people, they are complex and simple, can be good, funny, loving oe awful. In fact addicts need more sympathy and love than others.

Oh my DOG. I’m 52 and reading your comment is the first time I’ve realised that 😆

It is isn't it?

Oh. Is that not it? I assumed it meant "common" as in Wombles aren't rare.

There was a road that my friends and I would regularly walk down to go to the shops and get sweets probably between the ages of 8 and 15. Grown men in vans would regularly beep the horns and wave at us out the van and whistle at us.

We always thought it was funny and silly…. How fucking disgusting.

The Magic Roundabout!! 🤣

Me too. I cannot believe this!!!! 😅

@NewtName my DS thinks the same. We have a relative that's approaching 100 and he is absolutely convinced they will die on their birthday.

Oh my God. Hilarious! Alistair Campbell had three humps! Alistair Campbell had three humps! This has made me laugh so much. Thank you!

I overheard my mum and dad talking about my dad's friend and how he was going to give his friend 'a hand'. I literally cried for days thinking he was gonna chop his hand off and give it to him but I couldn't say anything because I was ear wigging!