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!

We were taught look right,then left,then right again. Or maybe you're not in the UK,and they drive on the right where you are?

I didn’t understand the concept of cashback when asked at the till until I was in my twenties 🙈

Both my grandads have the same name (which start with G) and I just assumed it was another name for grandad/grandpa. I also didnt realise that one of them was actually technically my step grandad until I was about 10, I made an assumption he was my blood granddad as he married my grandma before I was born and my dad never talked about his bio father who died young.

My parents never talked about my dad's father, and we were never that close to his side of the family (contact was Christmas / birthdays and an annual visit) so I might have twigged a lot sooner if circumstances were different.

Another one I just remembered.
Was walking my DC to school this morning, when my eldest announced that when she was younger she'd always thought there was lava under the pavements. "But that was when I was 5 mummy, I didn't realise you only get lava in volcanoes. I know now!"
She's 9, so I'm glad she didn't have to live in fear of walking down the street for long!

I heard my mum talking on the way home from picking me up at school, to some of her mum friends. She said something like 'my heart missed a beat' and from that moment on for YEARS I was afraid that hearts could do this. I worried that my mum's heart would miss more beats and she would die, or that my heart might miss a beat and something bad would happen. I'd lie in bed listening to my heartbeat and wondering if I'd notice if it missed one...

I didn't like food when I was little - now realise it was sensory issues.
I had a life threatening illness when I was 6. I then decided that my food was poisoned and that was why they were always trying to make me eat it, but I had superpower immunity to the poison. My parents were kind and loving, this was very fuzzy logic.

Sorry,the above post missed out the quote. I was referring to the poster who said they were taught to look left,then right,then left again when crossing the road.

Where's Dad?
In the dog house.

We didn't have a dog and I'd only seen a kennel on Snoopy. I always wondered where it was.

I knew it meant he'd been bad though!

I remember my dad giving the 1 finger salute when driving and me asking my mum what that meant. With a rather frosty look at my dad she said it meant up and over. I then got confused as to why I got into trouble doing it

This is actually really sweet!

Putting salt on food to cool it down.

I thought that the 'olden days' really were black and white and there really was no colour - just like the photographs. I thought that at least they had grey and different tones of black and white.

I also pronounced ceramic as ser-a-mic well into my teens. Even now, I have to think about the word before I say it out loud in case ser-a-mic comes out.

I read a lot of the Judy Blume books before I was fully informed about sex Ed. I wondered when I would start to have wet dreams (I'm female) and why we called hair between our legs public hair given that it's never seen.

That old photos are in black and white because the cameras couldn’t capture colour, rather than one day the world woke up in colour a la Wizard of Oz.

I am embarrassed to say how old I was when I figured this out

"Where are you going mum?"
"To see a man about a dog" (ie, stop being nosy, I'm doing grown up stuff).
I was devastated when she didn't return with a puppy.

Such a funny word on signs in M&S - linger-y. It was quite a while before I heard anyone actually say it.

OTOH I loved the fuck-seeya fairy in my Flower Fairies book. Such a lovely dress she had on! It was some time before I said it out loud, whereupon an aunt said hastily, ‘No, dear - it’s pronounced ‘fyoosha’. 😂

I remember going with my mum to apply for my sisters infant school. The lady in the office asked if she would be having free school dinners and my mum said yes every day. My sister started crying and when my mum asked what was wrong, she said I don’t want to go to school, I can’t eat three dinners every day!

I thought prostitute was another word for actress because Jamie Lee Curtis had a load of wigs in Trading Places and Julia Roberts got a job acting like Richard Gere's girlfriend in Pretty Woman.

I had no idea what they were doing to Penny in Dirty Dancing but I thought it was maybe a trick that went wrong because the guy said "he had a folding table and a rusty knife". Thought he was throwing the knife like a circus trick type thing and it went wrong.

oh my word am laughing but aswell horrified, lucky you had no accidents or worse

Same! I also thought having a credit card was just being able to buy an unlimited amount of stuff for free.

That the "don't drink and drive" message was relating to alcohol. I absolutely screamed at my dad in the car for drinking a carton of ribena 🥴

Also thought the Tories were called that because it was short for their party’s name “the conservatories”

I used to try and look down into photos to see what I was wearing 😂

Not me; my daughter excitedly informing us of “Bug day” in school and wondering what sort of bugs there would be. It took a little while to figure out that she was referring to an “Inset day” which she’d mistaken as “Insect day”. She was only 6 at the time.

My teacher told me to 'pull my socks up' sometime in the 80s when I was about 7 or 8. I bended and pulled up my school socks and she got annoyed. I literally thought that's what she meant!