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!

Dogs and farms. When I was young vet services were not exactly primitive, but not like those of today. Also, where I am, there were no fences back then, and neutering not standard (several decades ago) so dogs would fight and be injured badly, be hit by cars, wander off into the bush and likely be bitten by a snake etc. So, as kids, we ALL had family dogs that ‘wanted to go live on a farm’, and that’s why they were no longer there, they went to live their best life on a farm instead🤣.

My 11 year old self's year infatuation with Holly Johnson. I loved his vice, the way he looked, his music and the band vibe. They just all looked so joyous. There was no doubt in my mind at all they he would, one day, find and marry me.

Yeah..... I was very young and naive... 😂 🤣

Me and my friend used to play Rovers Return in my kitchen. We advertised a barmaid job with a card in my mum's front window for £100/hour. It wasn't until I actually applied for my first job, as a barmaid, that I realised how ridiculous this figure was for bar work 😒

My writing was "upright" and my parents wrote slanted to the right. I actually asked my teacher if my writing would slant when I became an adult 🤣

I now deliberately slant my writing to the right to feel more grown up 🤣

Being sent to church on Sunday with my siblings - parents stayed home. Of course, they wanted us out of the house so they could have some peace and quiet and share some intimate time! We all thought they were terribly hypocritical making us go, while they didn’t 🤣🤣🤣

My first driving lesson was with a family member when I was 18. I didn’t realise that you had to keep moving the steering wheel to keep the car going straight. I thought you only needed to turn it when going round corners!

I thought prosecuted meant the same as executed. So I worried about accidentally going into a field that said Trespassers will be prosecuted, and being shot, hung or beheaded

I used to think that the adults in charge were competent and knew what they were doing

Having read William Tell at the age of 6, with the "cruel governor" (Ladybird book), I thought all "government" was cruel. Sometimes now, I think I was right.

When I was walking through a field with my grandad, I saw a 'trespassers will be prosecuted' sign and asked what is a trespasser. He told me, and said that we were technically trespassing. I didn't ask what prosecuted meant because i thought i knew, but mixed it up with 'executed'. Even worse, my understanding of executed was beheaded, so I thought some crazy guards would come running out and chop my head off if I was seen! I became terrified of walking through the fields after that.

@blubberball I just posted the same thing and hadn't read yours. At least I wasn't the only one

The age you hit ‘middle age’.

As a child I thought it was somewhere around 24…..

When she was small my daughter thought there was a man sitting on the other side of the ATM, counting out money.
My younger daughter insisted she was older than her sister because her birthday was first in the year.

When I was quite young if I heard my mother saying to another woman that somebody had lost her baby I thought she'd just been careless.
The Easter hymn 'There is a green hill far away, without a city wall' puzzled me because I didn't see why a green hill would need a city wall in the first place.

Wait, it doesn't?

My son (6) thinks killing somone is hitting them

After seeing a nude painting of the Colossus of Rhodes I assumed men had 2 penises. Wasn't aware that the second dangly bit was the balls since I didn't even know they existed. For the longest I wondered how you decided which penis to choose when you had sex

I was playing in the woods with my friend when I was about 7, we were very industriously building an awesome den. We were collecting branches, etc, and we discovered a stack of magazines that had been dumped, absolutely loads of them. We looked through them and were horrified by seeing endless pictures of people hurting each other, or more specifically, men hurting women. We were very upset by them.

We had a serious discussion, and decided that the police needed to know about the horrors in these magazines, they might be able to arrest the men and stop more women being hurt. So we nervously went to my house and told my mum and dad, and took my dad to the woods to show him the evidence. It was decided that it was time my friend to go home for tea, and the Adults would report our findings to police 👮‍♀️

I don’t remember seeing any police. I think my dad filled a couple of bin bags with the porn mags and took them to the tip… 😳 I must ask him if he remembers that, I was so innocent 😄

For many years I thought it was Public hair. I couldn't understand why something so private would be called that.
I was in my 20's when I realised it was Pubic.....

My Dad always said this. Now I know he was off to meet your Mum.😄

I heard about a war that was going on or just began. Genuinely thought i was going to be an evacuee (sp dyslexic) the next day

New next door neighbours had a sausage dog, I'd hear them call it and thought they were calling hot bread, because you know, sausage dog. Turned out his name was Fred.

Had a furby who's batterys were running out and it was making that weird sound. Was adamant he was dying. I was distraught, in true moaning myrtle fashion.

Thought the lyrics to "away in a manger" were, "the little malteaser lay down his sweet head"

When Louise Brown, the first IVF baby was born, she was referred to as a “test tube” baby.

I couldn’t figure out how a baby could grow in a test tube.

Likewise! I thought it must have been a giant test tube...

My dad's favourite joke - look the 'i' has fallen out of that sign! Stopped being funny when I was about 7, he still tells it 30 years later...

There's a hairdresser's in Nottingham called Public Hair. It appears that they made the same 'mistake' too!!

Also thought people behind held by the police were in custard tanks (custody).
And couldn't understand why the IRA released statements saying they'd done X, Y, Z thing.
I was pretty sure that if I'd blown something up I wouldn't ring the police and tell them.