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 have another childhood confusion ... My Nan had a male 'Lodger' who lived at her house. I never thought it at all strange that this 'Lodger' also came on holidays with us, came to our house for Sunday dinner, stayed with our family at Christmas etc.
It was years YEARS later that I put the obvious 2 and 2 together and realised the 'Lodger' was Nan's partner.
When he died mum used the term 'common-law wife' for Nan, which I thought made Nan sound like a common peasant :(
Apparently the Lodger had an estranged wife ... Nan was left nothing and couldn't even go to his funeral as the Lodger's wife and daughter took over.
No-one spoke about unmarried couples (especially older ones) living together in the 70s. We lived in ignorance.

Was watching TV when I was very little, and they announced that Michael Fish would be on later. I was really looking forward to seeing this cartoon about a fish.

I was very disappointed when it was just the weather forecast.

@alexdgr8 Yes! When we got frightened of thunder my Nan used to say 'Don't worry, it's just God moving his furniture around.'
I loved the idea that even God had to get on and do household things up there above the clouds.

Thinking my (older) brother was wonderful and craving his approval, when now I realise he was a nasty bully.

Lived in a council estate when I was little.
My Best friend who lived next door and ate a lot at ours had a dad who was a ‘long distance lorry driver’ who would be gone for months on end. His mum was a SAHM as there was 5 kids in total.
As an adult I realised that his dad was violent and in and out of prison, was unemployed and the reason my mum fed friend so much was because his mum was an alcoholic, struggling to survive and feed her kids.
We moved to our own house off the estate when I was 11 and we lost touch. I heared through other friends that friend was 17 the 1st time he was locked up for assault. At 50 he’s spent more time in prison than out of it.

I used to think my Dad was super popular as he waved to everyone when he was driving. It wasn't until I learnt to drive that I realised he was just thanking them!

I was also (showing my age here) confused about the "Blankety Blank Cheque Book and Pen". I didn't realise it was just a trophy, I thought you won a gold checkbook and pen which magically allowed you to spend as much money as you liked paid for by the BBC!

The difference loving parents can have, even when you don’t have much money, is astonishing. I ended up in a scholarship to Uni, now in a profession etc.
My life couldn’t be more different to that of my old friend.

I had something similar with "façade". When I said it alound as fuck-ade my uncle nearly wet himself.
Also I didn´t actually start writing in English until I was 12. That was when I realised that "queue" wasnt read kiwi. No wonder I thought the text was weird.

When my dad told us the pet tortoises had "run away" he meant they had died and not physically run away. Worst still i was in my 40's before I realised it.

God so many things. I was brilliant at misunderstanding.

For some reason I was petrified of the tide. Whenever we went to the beach, I would hang around at the high water mark fretting that the tide would turn and get us. I didn't realise it was predictable - thought it went in and out at will.

Freezing fog - I was terrified when this was forecast. I thought it meant that fog froze in the sky and fell to the ground in big boulder sized chunks.

Two examples.

Well, I only realised that "the little piggy went to market" didn´t mean he´d gone shopping while reading mumsnet a couple of years ago. I´m 50.

Driving from London to Ireland (13hrs) 4 kids under 6 in the back seat by my 28 year old uncle and him chugging back cans of larger throughout (after having propped the bar up on the ferry) ... and thinking he shouldnt be drinking and driving.

I grew up in the Troubles - a common belief for little ones 5/6/7 ( encouraged by older kids!) was that the reason soldiers walked backwards was because they had extra eyes in their back! They looked totally alien to us - big, full uniform, funny foreign accent, really loud, angry shouty sounding and pointing big rifles at us - we all totally believed it.
It was as if they’d been dropped down from Mars into our streets, because 10 of them would just appear from nowhere ( out of a land rover or helicopter out of sight actually) and fan out …

I thought the Michelin man was Father Christmas. Imagine how exciting I found it to pass a tyre place.

I could totally have written this. My dad was also a drunk and a show-off: not nasty exactly but totally self-centred and didn't give a shit about anyone else.

He was successful and briefly famous in a low-level way (getting recognised in supermarkets famous, not Hollywood famous) and it made him self-satisfied to the point of narcissism.

He spun this narrative about how creative and brave he was by ignoring convention and taking risks in his life. Which predisposed me to think that people who focus on doing normal jobs well to provide for their families were "boring". He was always slagging off my mum's siblings because they had normal, average jobs and couldn't afford expensive holidays etc.

In the fact the reality, which I didn't learn until decades later was that he had a drinking problem, he was hopeless with money, we nearly got foreclosed on during the 80s and the reason we moved house so much was that he had no savings (and in his late 70s he still had no idea what his pension provision was). My mum was completely in thrall to him and she didn't work so she lived at the mercy of it.

It's also why I would never ever rely on a man for money.

Not after that seriously cold winter of around 63, was it? I well remember going to see whether my two had woken up yet (hibernating in the shed) and finding them both dead. I was so distraught. 😰. DF buried them in the garden.

🤣😂🫶

My Gran had a tablespoon that she said was specially shaped for her saucepans.

It wasn't until I was about 40 & my own tablespoons were wearing away I realised !

The town I grew up in was a 'twin town' (ie there was a sign up as you entered saying something like "Cardiff: Twinned With Nantes" - for example - I didn't actually grow up in Cardiff).

I genuinely thought 'twin town' meant that the other town was an identical twin of ours. So that somewhere else in the world there would be a town that looked EXACTLY like ours. Identical buildings, shops, schools, road network, greenery, everything.

I don't think I worked out that this wasn't actually true until I got to university.

I thought testicle was something that came out of a spider’s head. I had a very sheltered childhood.

Ser-am-ic I did it with the standalone a.ser-a-mic . Hard to explain, but I do say it correctly now.

When I was about 5 (40 years ago!), my dad's car was stolen. It was actually recovered a couple of days later and was returned to us. The only damage was that orange juice had been poured all over the seats/interior.
It was only decades later that I realised it wasn't 'orange juice', but that the thieves had urinated all over the inside of the car.

When I was very young, there was an advertisement which said “Don’t be vague, ask for Haig” I read this as don’t be vag u and thought it was silly it didn’t rhyme! I mentioned this to Dh when we were talking about old adverts and he had done exactly the same!

When Louise Brown, the world's first IVF baby was born.

She was often referred to as the "test tube baby"

I just couldn't understand how they managed to grow a baby in a test tube 😂

What? I really thought that it was a real cheque book and pen. Wanders off muttering to self.