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.

I thought big cities were called that because the buildings were taller. I was so confused when I went to a big city for the first time to find that the buildings looked roughly the same height as the buildings in any other city.

I thought a woman's cleavage was a hole and the doctor put his hand in to take the baby out. My friend pointed to where the baby actually comes out and said It comes out of here. I thought that was weird as I didn't realise there was another hole, only the one that wee comes out of and surely that would be far too small!
I also thought it weird when the same friend told me babies are born naked. I always assumed they were born wearing pink or blue. Otherwise, how would you know if they were a boy or a girl?

But that's the whole point of the confusion: we say "I am not"; we never say "I are not".

My first foreign holiday I remember being so confused why Dad had to get a special credit card (visa) for us to go. I'd seen visa credit card ads on TV that said accepted everywhere (or something like that) so it didn't make sense why he couldn't use his normal credit card. Probably didn't help that he thought it was funny so told me his credit card was American Express but I knew he had a visa card. Tbh I still don't get why you need a visa when any info they need can be tracked through your passport.

I remember watching Crimewatch, when they asked for any information that viewers may know/have heard that could help them with investigating the case.

I desperately urged my parents to call the hotline with the useful clue that I had deduced for them: the number plate of the car that was used in the crime, which I had just 'discovered' from watching their reconstruction video that they'd just shown!

I couldn't understand why they kept insisting that the police/BBC already knew the reg of the car that they'd used in the reconstruction, and that telling them what it was probably wouldn't help

That you got baby girls from kissing but you had to kiss AND 'do it' to have a boy. (I don't think I really knew what 'it' was but I knew it was mucky.)

I remember telling my best friend this with some authority and sympathy.

Sympathy because she had a brother and I didn't so her parents were obviously a bit filthy.

I must’ve watched a programme about recycling as I had vivid memories of seeing a conveyor belt full of waste being sorted by people wearing gloves. I was a teenager when I realised this didn’t apply to the entire bin bag though and that the black bag contents just got buried in the ground as landfill - I was absolutely flabbergasted and horrified to think this was how a civilised society decided to live. The whole emphasis on picking up litter and Keep Britain Tidy seemed fraudulent if it was ok to just dig a hole in a field and shove all the crisp packets, old food and dirty plastic bits in there and I was shocked by the whole concept. Still am - it’s obviously a disaster in the making for future generations and just so harmful to the environment.
I think the same globally now about plastic being permitted to be produced when we know it’s already in every bit of the sea, in rain etc - it’s like we’re wrapping the whole planet in cling film ignoring the fact we need to breathe, grow food etc 😩

I remember crossing the road with my gran and her saying..."wait for the green man. Do you see the green man. Look theres the green man lets go". I was scanning the busy city crowd for literally an actual green man. Wondering why we should wait for him. Feeling it was all a bit odd and wondering why i could see him. A wee while later i realised what she ment but that 2 min conversation is printed in my memory. I must have been about 3. My memory is shocking to. I have no idea why that stuck.

That program’s were pre-recorded and not live. I remember my mum trying to explain it to me once about the Dick Emery show which was on tv at the time. The concept was just too much for my brain to understand lol

My mum's father died before I was born. For some reason my mum used to call my paternal grandad 'Dad', so I was confused as to whether my parents were siblings.

That I wasn't allowed to walk home with the big group from school who lived near by me but had to go the long way round just in case my dad was passing and he could give me a lift.

The long way included going through a throng of teenage boys as I had to walk past the boy's school at letting out time.

I couldn't understand why people were sad at funerals because the dead person would be in heaven now.

I spent a lot of my childhood being puzzled about things.

Oh yes, I used to be baffled and fascinated about sizes of things further away all the time. My primary school had a long straight corridor, and while standing in it, you could watch somebody walking along it, ending up at a tiny size at the other end. I was fascinated by "perspective" from a young age. I never did the activity of taking photo of somebody in a field, and making it look as if they are standing in the palm of someone's hand: I'd have loved that.

Related to that, and my first time playing "pin the tail", I wondered why the children in front of me got their tails in the wrong place. I thought the scarf would appear as a strip in their vision, and they could look above or below it, and I didn't understand why they kept saying "no" when asked "can you see?", and I thought I would win easily. It was a shock when it was my turn, the scarf was tied over my eyes, and I couldn't see a thing! It is amazing what engimas you remember.

@myglowupera With the man always being older than his wife: there's a grain of truth to that, in that it used to be less socially "acceptable" for a man to have an older wife. Also, because girls generally mature earlier than boys, a girl will often have an older partner. I remember a story in which a wife who was two years older than her husband managed to keep her age secret from her own husband for decades, and he only found out when she received her centenary telegram from the Queen, and he thought she was only 98. She called him "my toy boy" after that.

Being scandalised because Superdrug was opening on the high street. Why was nobody else upset that drugs were being openly sold in a shop?! Boots was next door, but they sold medicines 🤷‍♀️

Also I thought that when I heard music on the radio it was the actual band playing in the studio. A bit like Top of the Pops all the time!

I thought everyone in centre parcs was in a giant dome (the whole forest) and was confused how they breathed and how the trees got watered as the rain wouldn’t reach them. My parents obviously never took me and I’d only seen adverts on the tv.

i was also confused by the information that “women live longer than men”. I thought it meant if a ship sank and people were drowning that the men would drown first and women were better swimmers.

Oh and I thought the broadcasters and studio for MTv was in a space ship, because it was Sky Tv and needed satellite dishes. So was sure it was beamed from space.

I couldn't understand when my parents said they had no money for something or other. I thought you could just go to a bank and withdraw more, or write a cheque. I didn't understand the concept of having to earn the money to put in there first.

I wondered why the same people used to go into the Turf Accountant shop so regularly. I thought they sold grass and surely they didn't need to keep buying grass?

There were lots of things I couldn't wrap my brain around, such as putting a needle on a revolving plastic disc and music coming out; how you could take a small roll of film into a shop they could magically make them into photographs; how a very heavy thing like an aeroplane could raise off the ground and fly (that one still gets me slightly if I'm honest and I know it has engines and stuff but it just seems crazy, even at 62!)

Being on holiday with family in the carribean when I was about 5 on a beach. Someone offered my Aunt a drink and she said "no thanks i'm not drinking" I remember thinking why would someone just decide not to drink anything?! How would she actually survive?? It completely passed me by it was only alcohol she wasn't drinking not all liquids 🤦
Also paying for shopping with my mum at the supermarket and the cashier offering her cashback. Not understanding the concept i thought she was literally offering money back for free- like a loyalty scheme or something. Could never understand why my mum only ever chose a tenner 😂

To Let signs. Up until the age of 6 or 7 I remember thinking they were just showing where the toilet was but missing an i.

Being able to see the moon in daylight hours occasionally used to blow my little mind....I was like how it's daytime!

In Ireland, some people do say amn't. Here's a good video explainer https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1AE3yG7uLs/

For those who dont click the video, it's due to English language not using the mn consonant pair so that contraction is difficult to pronounce.
In the Irish language the mn pairing is relatively common, but we insert a short 'ih' vowel sound (same reason we say fil-um for firm).

So did I!
I later realised that it was because whenever I read anything about periods, it always showed a diagram of the cycle starting from the first of the month.
For a convenient illustration, I suppose.

Mindblowing when I discovered that a period could start on any day of the month 🤣
And I was an extremely intelligent child! 🤦‍♀️

@MakeOrBake oh that makes sense! I am Scottish so also say "amn't" rather than "aren't".

So it's an accent thing?

When my grandad used to give me and my 3 siblings a £20 note and tell us we have £5 pocket money each. I couldn’t for the life of me work out how we all got £5 when it was a £20 note. I was around 5, it used to frazzle my little brain!

I guess more of a dialect thing than accent.

Hiberno English has its own sounds and sentence structures due to the influences of the Irish language... phrases directly translated from Irish to English, pronunciation, grammar and the lack of directness (because there is no word for yes or no).

The Scottish English dialect probably has similar (but different!) characteristics.

In my house radiators ARE for drying clothes. In the winter anyway