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!

My Dad thought "held as gunpoint" was a place. So any hold ups, shoot em ups in the saloon bar, shady folk etc, all got taken to the same town where they were held captive. Ask these bad people in one place, and felt very sorry for normal people who happened to live in that poor town. 🤣

This is a sad one, but I remember my mum shouting at my dad she would leave him if things didn't improve. She went into her bedroom. I was in bed in the room next door and I listened for ages to make sure she wasn't making a sheet rope and climbing out the window.
They remained married for 54 years in the end..

Same here!

Whenever I heard on the news that a body had been found, I thought it meant it had been found without the arms, legs or head.

I did too! Thanks Peter God! And then when I heard the gospel reading where Jesus says, "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church", I was so confused. I thought how can God be Peter when there is also a separate Peter?!

Not me, my DGD.

”nanny when you were 16 did you have a gun?”

”nio darling why would you think that?”

”” I heard mummy say you only went out with Grandad to annoy someone else and you shot your self in the foot. “

Awww thank you! Glad it made you laugh. 😀 My Mum and I still laugh about it now. I was so scared. I also couldn't work out how the teacher was so calm and jolly about it all.😂 🤣

I may be wrong but I think she meant that she thought that Nitty Nora could only tell her to do her laces up after having looked at her head first. As if looking at her head was a prerequisite for giving the order to do laces up!

My Dad was Irish and at his Catholic school in Ireland they had to recite the sacraments...."Baptism, Confession, First Communion, etc." The last one on the list was "Matrimony". For years he thought they were all saying, "Bags of Money." I remember him telling me that he couldn't wait to grow up so that he could go to church and be presented with his bags of money. 😂

They also used to have the recite the prayer "Hail Mary". In the part that goes, "Blessed art thou amongst women", he thought they were all saying, "Blessed art thou a monk swimming". 😂 😂

Someone is going to have to explain this to me! (Shameful 50 year old embarrassed shuffle!)

I had friends who were twins. They used to have separate birthday parties at their house on successive Saturdays. I thought these were their actual birthdays and that their mum had been in labour for a week.

Mommy is kissing Daddy, dressed as Santa!

You're right, that is what it means - but it is not how I understood it as a child

My mother used to say "Don't worry - it's only the angels moving the furniture about."

Me too! I remember Princess Diana being on the news and she had short hair, wore normal clothes and....shock horror.....drove a car! It blew my mind when I saw a picture of her in a pair of trousers! I thought that all princesses lived in towers or castles. 😂 I remember visiting my Aunt in London when I was tiny. She was a childminder and had a little boy with her that she was looking after. He told us that Lady Diana was his pre-school teacher. I knew that she was soon to be married to Prince Charles and I couldn't work out what she was doing having a job and not being rescued from dragons!!!

If we asked our Mum what was for dinner, she used to either say, "Pig's head and marmalade', 'Three leaps at the larder door', or ''Bread and pull it'. She thought each one was hysterical 🤣

or "Seura MIKE" I read it like that.

SERRA-mix or ser-A-mix? (Link to 1m18s clip of Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep)

Ah that's so sweet. I remember thinking that I would marry potatoes when I grew up because I loved them. Shame we can't marry our dogs really! They'd never let us down!

I thought this too! Such a shock to find out that it was continuous! I think I kind of told myself that sanitary towels were just there as some kind of back up between toilet trips.

That the two elderly ladies in the bungalow opposite us weren't just friends who house-shared 😁. (Good on 'em!)

I only ever heard the words 'dual carriageway' said and not written down, so I thought it was a Jewel Carriegway.

The extent my imagination went to. I pictured a long gold road with jewels and diamonds all down it, glinting in the winter sun, emeralds and golds scattered amongst sparkling silver trees.

My grandparents said we'd have to go on the Jewel Carriageway to go to the shopping centre to get me new school shoes.

Imagine my disappointment, dear reader, when my grandad turned the engine off having driven us to the shopping centre. I asked when we were going on the Jewel Carriageway. Utter devastation when he told me we already had. My life was downhill from there tbh.

in a sense it is, the root of sit & situation are the same!

I had read Prudence by Jilly Cooper when I was around 12 and took from that parquet flooring was pronounced parkwet and Canapés rhymed with apes. I went to a fancy party in my 20’s when I lived in London and they had parkwet flooring and lovely canapes, they all laughed there tits off at my gaucheness. My friend still only calls canapé’s canapes to this day he sends me pictures of his dainty pasty bits with a picture of a monkey.

Me too! It used to worry me so much!