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!

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER no, would have been late 70's. Things from my childhood often pop into my head now days and i have a d'oh moment

I thought my mum was the best in the world until.
Around 8 i took a dislike to her for telling a lie and it never changed at 9 i just could not stand her at all and left at 14 went no contact at 16.
She was and still is the biggest lier on two feet.
Its been over 20 some odd years and i still dont like her shes my mum but i dont have any feelings towards her shes more of a stranger.

As a young child I was convinced that the 'Ark' in Noah's Ark was actually a reference to the arc of the rainbow that always seemed to be pictured appearing once the rain stopped. It was mid 70s and there seemed to be lots of children's books, pictures and toys featuring the story. To me it made perfect sense that someone who was forced to build and live on a boat with loads of animals would be really happy when he saw an the arc of a rainbow in the sky and knew that he would be able to get off soon.

I was aware that people often referred to the boat as Noah's Arc but was convinced that my version was right and this was just a common misconception (probably from people who were not as clever as me and did not know that an arc was part of a circle). I quite liked feeling smug about knowing this. At infant school we sang a song about the story and I was certain that the words were 'Who built the Arc? No-one, no-one' and that this was a reference to the fact that people often thought that the boat (ie the thing that was built) was the arc but actually it was the rainbow so no-one built the arc. I thought I was in on the joke with the song writer. I think I may have been a bit of a twat as a child!

I thought "moving house" meant you picked up your flat/house and moved it somewhere else. Couldn't understand how they were going to move my gran's flat (top floor of an old flat building in the grassmarket).

My parents took me to church and I thought God's name was Peter because there's a part in the service where they say "Thanks be to God" and i heard "Thanks Peter God".

I thought something along these lines too, they were always talking about guerrilla warfare on tv in the 70s!

And "Marshal Law" in Poland. I always wondered who this scary individual was. He certainly seemed to own a lot of tanks.

That men in the public swimming pool didn't 'accidentally' have their swimming trunks fall down in the pool 🙄

I thought they meant that there were a lot of them, which was odd because side we only saw about five.

It comes from the days when workmen brought their tools to work . If they got fired they were given a sack to put their tools in .

When I was about 10 and had my friend over, we were playing with Playmobil in my bedroom. She started acting out a little story where a Playmobil man kept his wife locked away in her bedroom and raped (although she didn't use that word) her a lot. I remember thinking it was a little strange but nothing more. When I look back it makes me realise she was probably sexually abused herself or had witnessed her mum being abused

Same 😂

Football scores "on aggregate". I thought if 2 teams were so well matched they always tied,, then they had to play on gravel. Ot probably didn't help that my dad worked for a quarrying company!

Not so much a misunderstanding as youthful gullibility: very bizarrely, when I was in primary school aged about 10, my class was once told that the next person to forget their PE kit would have to 'strip off and then go and see the headmaster'. Absolute fabrication to scare us, obviously (and I very much doubt the headmaster - who I have no reason to think was a perv - ever knew our class teacher had said this) but I believed it and became unhealthily fixated on not forgetting my kit for a while.

Imagine kids being told that now, though! This was late 70s.

This is a bit grim, but I remember believing that dead people were actually encased in the gravestones, I didn't realise they were in the ground underneath. Also thought the hymn was 'I am the Lord of the Dance Settee.'

I once had 2 black eyes within about a month of each other - I was called into the Head Mistresses office to talk about them. It wasn't until years later I realised they thought I was being abused at home. Luckily I was quite proud of getting black eyes playing the woods and I think my general demeanour about it showed they were genuine accidents

I also thought "the black market" was an actual physical market where they sold things like drugs and guns – I remember thinking they did very well to let all the customers know where it was without the police ever finding out!

On the miss pronunciation ones - I remember having a Grand Prix game on my old master system – you can probably imagine how I pronounced that! 😂

I remember thinking until I was about age 8 or so that once you were grown up, say 16 or so, you might just accidentally find yourself having a baby - I asked (quite terrified) how you stop it and why people seemed so cross at young and unmarried mothers, but not receiving much of a reply! Now I realise I had almost hit the nail on the head with these fears and observations, perhaps a sideways glancing blow.

I was also very worried, aged 5 and doing a Nativity play, about how Mary had the baby in the stable, knowing that I was born by caesarean section. My teacher did not enlighten me.

Then from the age of about 8-11 I thought that boys had to wee into you to get you pregnant. Obviously that was disgusting and I would never be doing that. Also an older friend told me about periods and I didn't believe her and also worried that you just constantly bled from your vagina (spelt virginia in my head).

Good job my mum bought me the Usborne Facts of Life book aged 11. Most illuminating. I was always honest with DDs when they asked such things and certainly did not make up stories or bat away their questions.

I remember being at my Granny's house (I must have been about 7/8) and asking her, 'what's for tea?' she replied, 'sugar and shite'. When I got home I told my mum and dad are they both started laughing (probably at my innocence and disgust), I didn't understand what was funny about it 😂

I thought it was ‘Lord of the Ducks’. I also thought the DLR was the Duckland Light Railway and drew a picture of a duck driving a train.

My grandpa used to feed his toast crumbs to the birds. He said they used to wait in the garden as they’d learned what time he had breakfast. I was… quite old when I realised they were just there anyway

Me too, to make it make sense I thought she must have been moved into a bigger glass container the bigger she got 😆

My mum told us all the exciting things DB would be able to do when he was 2, just before his birthday and said he'd talk more. I was devastated when his birthday came and he couldn't carry a conversation! I thought she'd lied to me 😂

Ha, that reminds me, probably about aged nine, using the word "twat" correctly in a sentence, thinking it was about the same level an insult as "twit". My DM went quiet and then helpless with laughter, and then when she stopped laughing, explained that it was quite a rude word.

Though I don't know that I knew it actually was slang for something until my late teens, I thought it was just a rude insult.

Hahaha, that's excellent. I love it.

Great idea for a thread OP loving the replies many remind me of much more innocent times@crackofdoom my father was always going to see a man about a dog. I used to want to go with him to see the dog. He was really going to the pub. When I was older I did go with him. I would sit on the step outside the pub with a bottle of pop and some crisps. I thought it was a treat! As a child my nan and I went into some public toilets. I asked what VD in large capital letters on a poster stood for? She told me it stood for Very Dirty. I believed that until secondary school😂.

That my dad's job was making electricity because if I left the lights on I'd be told "your dad will be working day and night with all the electric used in this house". That calling someone or something "a mare" meant a horse, so was as bad as "bitch", and never being able to understand why some nice adults said it. Similarly, that the phrase "like a tit in a trance" was really really rude and shocking that a lady at church said it all the time!