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 mum used to play the soundtrack for Joseph and the amazing Technicolor dreamcoat quite a bit. In the song Close every door, there’s a line that says “darken my daytimes and torture my nights”.

I was always quietly smug that I would have dealt with that just fine as I would have just slept in the day time when it was dark, and stayed awake at night when all the torches were shining on me. I didn’t get what Joseph’s problem was and thought he was a bit dim for not figuring out he could just change his sleeping pattern 😅

Even though I now know that torture has nothing to do with torches, I still get the mental image of Joseph trying to nod off with a load of torches being shone on him whenever I hear the song…

I hope you also learned that division is repeated subtraction!

I remember my dad telling me, when I was about five or six, that brown cows gave chocolate milk and black and white cows gave black and white milk. I wondered where all the white cows were because I'd only ever seen white milk.

Here's one that got me as an adult. The first time I came over to Maine, to spend time with DH before we got married, it was October and the leaf colours were magnificent. The fire hydrants in the town we were in were painted ochre and red, and I commented how apt it was that the colours went so well with the leaves. He looked me straight in the eye and said "Oh yes, they paint them that way every fall". And I believed him for a while! I am so gullible. I was 51 at the time.

Memories of Maureen Lipman rolling up a sheet of A4 into a very tight long cigarette shape and trying to push it down the phone wires when using a fax machine! It was a very new 'ology' then.
My late MIL would get worked up if a socket was switched on with nothing plugged in, all the electricity was escaping, You're paying for that!

@scalt I think he had told me, but it didn't stop me being scared. That's why he told me a bit of a white lie. Funny how I still believed it long after he'd forgotten telling me it 🙂.

My mom used to say quickly just have a cat lick or you'll be late (quick wipe with the flannel) I thought she said Catholic so used to say I'd have been late so I only had a Catholic.

Just remembered when my daughter came home from Kindergarten, she would be about 3 or 4, with a letter about a Bring And Buy Sale they were having at the weekend and I said we would go. She became very upset, she was adamant she didn't want to go and would get even tearful. Eventually I found out why, the staff had told them that they brought something of theirs and bought something else but she had heard it called Bring A Bicycle and didn't want to lose hers!

I strongly dislike that song but not as much as Santa Baby 🤢

I borrowed my DMs copy of Riders when I was around 12 (horse obsessed - thought it was just about horses). I skipped through most of the sex bits as really wasn’t bothered, but do remember being very confused about one of the men being described as ‘having an erection like a steeple’. I imagined he was having to stand up very straight.

Not really. That somehow didn't seem to be relevant!

@DuesToTheDirt male pigs were sold and females kept for breeding more piglets. Hence the merry little boars trotting off to market.

My mom told me there was "sparkle forrest" and I'd think it was some magical place with some princess playing a golden harp and music notes made sparkles- but it's just fireflies in May in the dark wood as we drove past.

I did this. I thought the olden days were sepia toned

Driving back from visiting my gran and my mum saying she could murder a chinese. I was horrified that my mum would say/think something so awful, what had the poor Chinese people done to her?!

I was terrified when I heard about gorillas taking people hostage in South America on the news! I remember thinking if they were clever enough to figure out how to do that they might also know how to get on a flight and come to the UK and take me hostage too.

I used to believe the world was black and white and one day someone turned on colour, because all the tv programmes used to be black and white. I thought, we must live in the ‘the colour age’. Similar to the Iron Age or Stone Age. However, I couldn’t understand how books showed pictures of the ‘olden times’ in colour. Why weren’t they black and white too. Lol

😂😂😂

Same with the chequebook and pen!

I was about 4 when my mum said she was going to Ann summers party.

I was really upset I wasn't allowed to go to this party and meet Ann summers....

Oh god! This has just unlocked an awful one. I thought rape just meant being made to go somewhere you don’t want to. I didn’t want to go in another boring shop with my mum so thought it’d be funny to shout ‘help my mums raping me!’ On a busy high street on a Saturday afternoon. I thought my mums angry response was a massive overreaction. I’m blushing and cringing as I remember it.

@TedLassosMoustache same - I always wondered why the big debate about Youth in Asia and why no-one seemed bothered about us in the UK…

yes my thought too.

Omg me too 🤣🤣 haven’t thought about that for years!!

I thought the words to Hail Mary were 'blessed is the fruit of diamond Jesus' and always imagined Jesus in some sort of spangly Elvis Presley suit 😆