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 this too!

I have a lot of siblings, I thought people were commenting on us being poor when they asked if my parents had a television, and that it was just a question about religion when I was asked many times if my parents were catholics.

This is so cute 🥰

@theressomanytinafeysicouldbe Well, clouds banging together is not that far off the reason for thunder: expanding hot air from the lightning pushing the colder air away.

I remember when I didn't make the connection between somebody holding a camera, and photos in an album; of course, this was long before digital cameras, and it could be weeks between a photo being taken, and actually seeing it. I thought they just "happened". It became clearer when I saw someone use a Polaroid camera, and then my mum explained photos to me, and taking film to be developed.

Marriage: I thought it just "happened", like being born. I didn't understand the whole process of people coming together until I was about twelve: dating, engagement, wedding; and even then, I wondered why literature made such a massive deal of people falling in love, and I was totally baffled by the whole boyfriend and girlfriend thing. I never saw any adults in my life get married: all of my parents' friends were already married, so I never really saw the process for myself.

Not one that followed me into adulthood, but confused me for a day (I must have been 5). I was told at the start of a party that we would play "pin the tail". I asked what the game was, and was told "the winner is the person who pins the tail closest to the right spot". I remember thinking how easy this must be. I was asked if I would like to go first, and it was a shock when I was blindfolded: nothing had been said about that! It wasn't fair that I couldn't see to pin my tail.
😭

@DigitalGoat I know what you mean about the game Sleeping Tigers being played to give the adults a break. I'm sure that "Keeper of the Keys" was played at my youth group for a similar reason: one person would sneak up and try to steal keys from the blindfolded keeper, who pointed at any sound they heard. Adults loved this game because it was very quiet.

When I went on an overnight trip with a youth group, aged six, my dad came too, as a helper. But we left after only one night. I thought this was because I wasn't enjoying the trip much, which was true. But many years later, my dad explained that some of the teenage helpers were having sex in the dormitories during the day, and some of the children knew this.

Certainly we talked about it, my mum and stepdad weren’t married when we were children. I think mum was a bit embarrassed about it though, she used to joke that he was her ‘bidie-in’ (live-in lover)

They're "the Wombles of Wimbledon Common" as in they live on the Common aren't they?

Goodness. You've just reminded me of something. Growing up, a few doors down the street, there was a residential home called 'Home For the Deaf'. My Dad had a shop, where we lived. People from the home used to come in to the shop regularly to buy things and used to communicate what they wanted by doing sign language or pointing. There was one particular lady who used to give me the world's tightest hug when she saw me. I was about four. I couldn't understand what she tried to say to me but I liked her a lot and used to love it when she came in. I thought that all deaf people in the world must live in special homes together. It was only many years later when I spoke to my Dad about this particular lady that I realised that they had learning difficulties as well as being profoundly deaf. My Dad was so kind to them. God rest his soul.

@FrustratedC0ffeeDrinker I thought EXACTLY the same about "your name's not daaan, you're not coming in" 😂

As I kid I thought that “declaring bankruptcy” was exactly how Michael Scott did it in The Office.

When I was about 9, my class teacher asked us to draw the M1. We didn't have a car and I'd never been on the motorway, so I drew what I thought a motorway would look like, complete with a zebra crossing. My friend who had been on the M1 explained my error before we had to show our work.

Two primary school ones:

I and a few others attended a weekly afternoon group where we did exercises like skipping, forward rolls, catching bean bags, hopping, balancing, and so on, which I thought was rather fun. It was only when I saw my school reports many years later that I found out this was a remedial group for gross coordination!

At the same school, a teacher took me aside during playtime and asked me how my younger brother had burnt his hand, showing me the damage. I explained perfectly truthfully that he had accidentally touched something hot. I didn't understand why she asked me this until much later; but it's nice to know they looked out for us.

That Brian’s mum in “The Life of Brian” was a prostitute and she wasn’t kneeling down to tie the centurion’s shoe-lace…

When I was a kid I thought songs about 'Doing it all night long' were about dancing. 😂

I was older than I'd like to admit before I realised there was movement in sex, since all the educational diagrams were stationary...

Same! I was just about to post this. I remember being so confused as to why there were so many signs for toilets all over the place.

I complained that it hurt when my dm put some antiseptic cream on a grazed knee and she told me it was there to fight any germs.
In my mind (confused with school where we were learning about Vikings) I envisioned germs and the cream having a teeny tiny battle, swords and shields included.
I was probably early 20s when I found myself giving the "fighting germs" explanation to my very young cousin and actually thought about it

And one from dsis that she only told me a few years ago (in her 30s). She asked my dad how he turned the engine and indicators on his car when she was maybe 7 -and he explained about switches/the key etc.
She took this to mean that every little thing the car did was done by the driver, so you had to keep pressing a button to keep the headlights on, physically turn the key regularly to keep the engine on, another button for indicators, a separate one for wipers, brake lights, keeping the radio on etc. It made her terrified of having to drive and of getting in the car for a while.

@Bloodybrambles As for photocopying money, the book Mr Bean's diary has a hand-drawn £10 note in it, with "ten pouns" on it, and underneath is written:

1. Photocopy this x 10 million, then:
2. SPEND it.

@OTannenbaumOTannenbaum I too thought "moving house" meant the house was moving, and I wrote a story about that when we were told to write about moving house. I must have been inspired by Mr Nonsense in one of the old Mr Men Annuals: a worm asks him what he is doing, when he attaches wheels to a tree. Mr Nonsense replies "Moving house!", as his house is perched up in a tree.

Have you ever heard of Gary and Phil Neville's (the ex footie players) Dad?
His name was Neville Neville. True 😁

Just been reminded of something from my 1950s childhood. We would go to watch our team play a match on Saturday afternoon and then sometimes it was on TV after we got home, Grandstand I think, and I was impressed that the players knew exactly how to replay every move of the match 2 hours later!

NN was a friend of my brother when they were young men, before his sons were famous, I thought my brother was joking about his name!

I thought it mean there was loads of them

@BaublesAndGlitter Your comment reminded me of "The Body Book" by Claire Rayner: it had a cartoon of white blood cells (with faces) actually fighting germs, also with faces. Having said that, although this book was for children, it didn't mess about. It explained the sexual act in some detail, with pictures, without actually using the word sex, instead "a very special cuddle that grown-ups have, to show they love each other very much"; and in the chapter explaining digestion, had a close up drawing of a bumhole, and a boy peeing against a tree. The last chapter was "growing old and dying", and tackled it head-on, in case any children didn't know that this happened, mostly to old people. When explaining touch and pain, this book also said "most people don't like pains". I couldn't imagine why that would only be most people. Why not all people? The blissful ignorance of childhood...

Another one:

Early 90s (I think) there was lots of news about banning CFCS (in aerosols etc) and I used to see lots of graffiti around for CCFC which I assumed was some campaign slogan. When older, I realised it meant Cardiff City Football Club!

Oh my goodness, had forgotten people used to say this so regularly in the 80s! Had the same confusion over it.

My parents used to argue and worry massively about money - they weren't great at managing it and the arguments were common at the end of each month. I remember when I was maybe 8 or 9 and overheard one such discussion where they were loudly talking about my dad's annual salary and how they had no money left. They meant for the last couple of days of the month. I thought that grown ups got paid once a year, and that they had run out of money for the year. I made a plan about what I could do without so they didn't have to worry about spending money on me.

I also had a startling realisation during a school assembly when I was about 7 when the head teacher was talking about when he was a wee boy. It was the first time I realised that grown ups hadn't always been grown ups. They had been children. Who grew up. And I was a child so that meant I would also be a grown up at some point. Before that, I had just assumed the world was split into big tall adults and normal sized children.