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!

Was well into adulthood before I realised the euro tunnel wasn't a big glass aquarium you drove through.
Also thought heavy plant crossing meant a tree would cross the road.

Another rhyme with a grisly origin is:
Ring-a-ring o' roses,
a pocket full of posies:
Atishoo, Atishoo,
We all fall down.

It refers to people sneezing and falling down dead from a disease (I think The Plague), one of the symptoms being a ring of spots on the face.

So did I! 😁

thankfully not! scary though.

as you approach the middle, you look left again

givemushypeasachance · 24/01/2025

And I thought the motorway road sign symbol was a monster or creature of some kind, with big legs.

Oh God! Are you my eldest sister? She put Mr in terror of the giants, which would try to stamp on the cars, when I was about 4.

I used to think that the building society I went and paid money into with my parents had little safe’s with your name on and you got your actual money back. It blew my mind when I found out that wasn’t the case.

I think it's a real shame that a show like Jim'll Fix It will now never be made again - at least not in the living memory of those of us whose lives overlapped with Savile's.

It's a fantastic, simple-but-exciting idea that children will naturally love - and one that would still work brilliantly if hosted by somebody who wasn't an evil paedophile.

It would be a guaranteed hit if done by the equivalent in two or three generations' time of Ant & Dec, Mel & Sue, Colin Murray or Claudia Winkleman.

As a typical young child, I always wondered where babies came from and then one evening when my parents were driving home I was sitting in the back of the car and leaned forward to speak to my mum (this was before seatbelts were compulsory) and noticed her cleavage and wondered where it led to. I had a sudden revelation and was convinced that it led to a stash of babies and that they were born up through women's cleavages. I remember being beside myself at the excitement of discovering the mystery of childbirth and told all my friends at school.

I thought it was Dan too!!

Me too!

the thunder we were always told that it was God moving furniture around. made sense as mum always moved her furniture around!

Where did you grow up that doesn't have scary nursery rhymes and fairy stories?

They're all gruesome. Gold-egg-laying geese being sliced open. Babies falling out of trees. Old men snoring in bed and young men fetching water both getting concusssion. Shards of ice embedded in hearts and eyes. Orphan match sellers freezing to death. Red Riding hood and her grandmother eaten by a wolf, and then the wolf chopped open. Hansel and Gretel abandoned by their father and would have been cooked by the witch if they'd not cooked her first. Hedgehogs and bulls having their skins peeled off and thrown on the fire. Baba Yaga chasing people in her pestle and mortar. That one with the 3 brothers, 2 of whom get drowned in molten gold. Nine-tailed foxes eating people. Red hot iron shoes. Stolen voices.

Traditional stories for children are all nightmare fodder.

The ineffable needs to get out more, it's too good a word to hide away just for the use of bishops.

Oh my god, I LOVE this.

Which leads us to the question - what is the furniture of the angels?

Writing desk? Feather beds? Halo stand?

I was also confused with phone numbers advertised on TV, which noted beneath that before we call we should 'check with Bill Payer'.

Who was Bill and why did we need to check with him?

Don't. Too late.
You've given someone a business idea. . .
Just imagine the spin offs.
Could revive the high street
With specialist outfitters.
Of dark sombre clothes.
Could double up for funeral wear.
And then there's the videographers and caterers venues etc.

That was bad enough.
Imagine if your father had taken you.

This puzzled me until I re read it and realised you were not aged 41 at the time.

Gold lamé banquette, surely?!

That is actually quite a sensible assumption.
Not only because it is an abbreviation of the word but also because I wager the majority of people who do have conservatories do tend to vote tory.
Imagine the pollsters questions...

That's not quite right I think.
Tory comes from an old Irish word meaning something like vagabond. Conservative was a kind of re branding in the mid 19th century.

I mean the words are not related linguistically.
But of course politically they denote the same group.

Lots of hymns and carols have always reimagined Biblical events in a kind of imaginary space which isn’t quite Middle Eastern, may be European or sort-of-European, or some kind of fantasy or allegorical mingling of the two.

I quite like it; it’s as if the Europeanised version of Bible stories takes place in a rather fantastical place. Something similar happens in spirituals, where the Biblical stories and the American south become part of the same imaginary landscape.