To ask what you thought was weird as a child (lighthearted)

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What things do you remember from childhood that you thought were weird, even though they're perfectly normal to adults?

Bicycles staying upright, even though they only have two wheels.
How you stop noticing certain sensations (such as the clothes on your body) after a while: I remember pondering this aged four.
Puddles not being there the next day.

Happy New Year, everyone.

When offered paracetamol after breaking my arm (I had only ever had them for headaches before), I asked "How does it know where to go?"

Orange squash bottles saying ‘Dilute to taste’.

Bonkers! You didn’t have to dilute it in order to taste it!
😂

Plant crossing- I imagined Triffid style plants running across the road. I was probably 9ish before I understood.

Longest/shortest days of the year. I thought there was actually an extra hour of time added onto the day or taken off it.

to this day my dad still messages me on those days to say ‘now don’t freak out but its the longest day of the year today’ etc

After being on holiday in Spain thinking that flamenco dancing was actually called flamingo dancing and had something to do with the bird.

I honestly, genuinely thought black people were made of chocolate and would melt.

I also thought "work" was a place adults went to and it was all the same place.

I thought dogs' tongues were made of ham.

I was a weird child, clearly.

Seeing people sitting on a beach in swimwear on a boiling hot day smoking a fag. Didn't that make them feel hotter? As a non smoker and late 50s I still can't get my head around this.

This one is quite abstract but I think I was aware from a young age that all human rules and mortality etc. is just made up by humans and not an actual fact. Like I could not understand how money was "worth" something when they were just pieces of paper and metal. And why certain things were wrong if no body ever found out about them. I was quite a weird kid.

Oh I also used to think that people who could drive automatically knew the way to anywhere and also that radiators were for drying clothes.

To this day in my house if DDog licks your face you have to shout "BLERGH! Warm ham!!"

Pretty much everything because when you're a kid, you have time to think about everything really hard, and when you do that, it's all weird. Existing at all is weird, bodily functions are weird, social conventions are weird, everything is odd!

Aged 5ish,genuinely had never seen a breastfeeding woman and was horrified. I was the youngest in the family and somehow had never heard of it. My parents were mortified at my lack of knowledge.

Not understanding why kids needed earlier bedtimes if an hour was 60 minutes for everyone.

Daylight Saving Time - didn't (still kind of don't 🫣) see the point.

How my grandma was older than me when her birthday came later in the year!

Early 20s/late 20s etc.

I assumed that people were twenty, thirty etc twice (if only).

I remember understanding it as “delight to taste”.

That war was made up stories. I couldn't comprehend that people could kill others..

Me too!

These are brilliant! I spend a lot of my adulthood trying to regain that common sense fresh way of experiencing things ( I think there’s a description in Sophie’s World book) I couldn’t understand why adults would drink hot tea on a hot day. People being taken in by advertising. I thought doctors and nurses never died. I thought it was outrageous when I realised that food wasn’t free.

I wondered how people managed to save up hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy houses . No idea about mortgages .
I thought people as in They Say that where all in a sort of laboratory talking about stuff.

I always presumed this meant dilute with as much or as little water as to your own individual preference? To your own taste?

@WongKarWaiMe Oh yes. As a child you do indeed have lots of time to think about these things, in a way that adults don't: I was a deep thinker.
@Mrsclausemunchingonamincepie Related to war, I remember being astonished to learn as a child that people did archery or even shooting guns as a sport. For me, archery was something Robin Hood and William Tell did to kill their enemies. And then in modern times, I saw people using these dangerous weapons in a field! I couldn't understand how it was allowed.

Although I liked party games, everything about the game of Pin the Tail was plain weird. What was the point of trying to get the tail in place when I couldn't see to do it? Why did the party mum spin me round? Why was it called "pin the tail" if we used Blu-Tack? And most bafflingly of all, why couldn't I see the pattern on the scarf? I remember pondering the same thing when I was blindfolded at school, and I zoned out and forgot what I was supposed to be doing (guessing who was speaking in a funny voice).

I used to get very stressed when my mum sent me to the shop to buy 5lb of spuds but didn’t give me £5.

I used to think that if my brain saw my brain it would make my head explode.

Evidently you were more intelligent than I was! I didn’t realise ‘taste’ could mean personal preference.

Same with 'add salt to taste'. I was much older than a kid when I thought this must indicate it is a bland and tasteless dish if it needs salt to taste it! I still think it should say 'add salt to your preference'.