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 was born in the 50's. Catholic upbringing, sex was never, ever discussed.
So I knew nothing other than what tiny bits of info I heard from other kids.
I totally believed that when babies were born, they erupted out of your tummy and your skin was torn and had to be sewn up.
It left me absolutely terrified of childbirth for many years.

As compared to the perfectly lovely reality of them emerging slowly and painfully from your fanny?!

I think I prefer the stomach eruption!

Until I actually read the book it was ‘Alison Wonderland’ in my head.

Thank you so at the grand old age of 59 , I have only realised this now you point i5 out! I am a bit behind the times

I had a boyfriend in my early twenties (he was the same age as me) who thought that all babies were born by the mother having her stomach and/or nether regions cut open. When I told him what actually happened, he didn't believe me. I distinctly remember him telling me that I must have got it wrong, because how would a baby fit through there?! He told me that he and his friend had discussed it and didn't know what happened, so had both kind of assumed that that's how all babies must come out. He hadn't heard of caesarean sections, so he wasn't even getting confused with those. It still surprises me to this day when I think of it!

A few of you have unlocked a memory. My Mum is mixed race and is fairly dark skinned. She has adopted sisters whose skin is a lot darker than my Mum. When I was little I was convinced that they just had a really good tan and under their swimming costume they would have the same colour skin as my Mum! My auntie had to show me that she is in fact the same colour all over! 🤦🏻‍♀️

@Feelinghurt2 how strange! I wonder how he thought other mammals give birth?

'then it must be burglary' Uncle Monty, Withnail and I. You weren't wrong!

Me too!

I have wondered that myself! Did he not wonder how pigs, cows, sheep, etc., attended to each other with knives?! Very good point you have made!

Never mind other mammals, how would humans have got to the 21st century if women had to give birth by being cut open?

I don't think I understood that permanent hair dye didn't mean it never washed off until I was about 21.

@Feelinghurt2 , we used to get the 'bread and pull it' comment.
It dawned on me as I became an adult it was 'bread and POULLET' as in chicken 🐔
We were also told 'shit & sugar'.

Good point! My mind boggled at the time and it continues to boggle to this very day!

Some friends of my parents were getting divorced and I wondered why they would have married someone they didn't like in the first place. I decided a wedding must be like a big party where lots of men and women went to get married and the popular ones paired off first, the less popular ones later and if you were the last one left then you had to marry someone you didn't like at all. (I may have been scarred by being the last to be picked for team games at school.) My parents' friends must have been the last ones left at the wedding and had to grumpily make do with each other.

Oh my goodness! I always thought that my Mum meant that we were so broke that we had to stretch the bread out, as in bread and 'pull it'!! I have never heard the shit and sugar one before though ha ha 😂

I was late teens when I realised pork came from a pig! But my reasons are daft - mainly because it was “white meat” (pork chops) which doesn’t even make sense! I thought only bacon came from a pig because it was pink. And I didn’t twig that a pig was called a porker.

That is what it means isn’t it??

In Grease Danny says something to Sandy about her dating that "jockstrap". I heard my grandfather call his Scottish friend Jock a number of times and asked it was his name, so for years I thought there was a character in Grease called Jock Strap

There was a poster on here whose first husband thought girls women could control loss of blood during a period.
He thought it was like going for a widdle but that blood would be excreted as well as urine.
I think he was in the army.
Perhaps she's reading and could expand?
Some of this male ignorance might explain some men's attitude that women are making a fuss over periods childbirth etc. No excuse.

It is pronounced mis-led

Sorry going off topic a bit but
I remember at work once
New office location.
Big meeting all staff.
Any problems with new premises?
One woman was brave enough to point out that there had been a machine for sanitary products in the old building's ladies loo but not in the new.
A senior manager asked is that necessary? How urgent is the need?

All the women just glanced at each other trying to keep their eyebrows in check. Speechless.

But they’re not necessary really, are they? I’ve never worked anywhere that had one. You just keep a few spares in your bag.
Do many workplaces have dispensers for sanitary products?

I thought all the To Let signs in our area spelled out Toilet and that some cheeky bugger had removed the 'I' from each sign. I felt relieved there were so many public bathrooms in case I needed one.

I thought when a football team won on aggregate it meant they were playing on a sand pitch. I didn't watch much football, but did wonder why I never saw matches on aggregate on tv! My Dad worked on highways so I often heard the word aggregate. I'd left home before I realised!