Awkward misunderstandings that you had as a child

[CompleteBarstool]

I've just been reminded of the time where I'd overheard the word "bollocking" used and had no idea it wasn't a word a child used....until I saw the look on my Dad's face when 6/7 year old me told him that I'd had to give the cat a bollocking earlier for scratching the furniture.

Any similar stories?

@RosemaryShortcake

DM said oh the sweets have arrived one day when I was home from school as a lorry pulled up.

I was picturing a huge bag of sweets, no suites were a type of sofa .

I asked DM how much it took to get drunk and she said about three glasses.

I asked how much a glass was and she indicated a full glass. I didn't realise she meant with mixer, and the first time I got drunk I tried to drink three glasses of neat spirits.

I was drunk for at least two days.

I tried to give up my seat to a man on the tube when I was about 6. He must have been about 30. Everyone smiled/laughed and I went bright red realising he was not that old.

I did this!

Out with a friend and her family. We were both about 9 or 10. On the way to wherever we were going her mother said they needed to stop in to look at some suites.

I was skipping! If you're going to be looking at sweets you'll probably be buying them! I pictured the massive Woolworths pick and mix section my gran sometimes took me to. My god the excitement. I remember the absolute horror of turning into a fucking furniture shop and the dawning realisation that I'd just learnt a new word.

"When are we going to look at the sweets?"
"We're looking at them right now."

The feeling still stings.

When I was in primary school, about 10 yrs old an older boy, about 13, came up to me and said:

"Oi, Geppili, I bet you don't know what an orgasm is!"

I replied witheringly:

"Course I do".

On my return home from school I made sure to find out what an orgasm was by asking my mother, who was ironing, what exactly one was.

I remember her wearily putting down the iron and laconically saying:

"I really wouldn't know, darling, I suggest you ask Daddy."

So later on when Daddy gets back I ask him what exactly is an orgasm. He was appalled at first and looked at a loss until he ejaculated:
"It's a form of volcanic eruption between grown ups""."

Brother came home from his first day of secondary school and asked, what's cunt mean?

I remember reading the News of the World on a Sunday and asking at the dinner table what masturbating was? Grandparents were there too I was around 8

Not me - but my daughter. She was about 8 or 9 and we were in the supermarket. I don't know what magazine they had in the racks while we were waiting at the checkout, but she was looking at the covers and then said in a quite loud voice "mum, does an orgasm hurt?"

Needless to say, all heads turned towards my shocked face - waiting for my answer - which was "we'll talk about it later".

We did - in a tone suitable for 8-9 year old girls... and it turns out that she didn't know what an orgasm was, but the heading on the mag referenced it as a 'feeling' and she wanted to know what it was - and if it hurt!

I have always been into history and when I was about 6 we were learning about castles and knights in school, so I had lots of new words and phrases floating about my little 6 year old brain.

My parents very kindly took me to the Tower of London, keen to encourage this love of history. I was happily wandering about the armoury and stood in front of a huge suit of armour where I could read that it belonged to Henry VIII. It’s at this point you have to realise what is at the eye line of a suit of armour for a six year old as I promptly announced ‘see mammy! I told you henry viii had a big codpiece!’

Apparently the man nearest me fell about and my mother wanted the ground to swallow her up! I skipped on regardless and it’s been brought up consistently for the last 30 years to remind me

I have no idea how I knew the word (TV perhaps) but, when I was very young, I asked my mother if my dad was a pansy. She was absolutely furious, I was severely told off, and also told that I was never to ask such a question again. There was no explanation as to why she was so angry with me.

It was about a million years later, when I was an adult myself, before I ever found out what the word could mean. To this day, I have no idea why she was even so upset that I asked.

I can't remember how old I was - maybe year 5 or 6 at primary school but I remember hearing a joke of Birds of a Feather which tickled my parents immensely. Desperate to impress my best friends parents I repeated this joke at their house whilst eating tea there. They were somewhat strait-laced it has to be said and the looks of horror on their face still makes my tummy clench a bit

My hilarious joke? Sharon & Tracey were discussing an upcoming election and Tracey asked if Sharon would be voting Labour

"I don't know, I haven't even got into sex yet"

Oh how I laughed. I didn't know what sex was.

We stayed for a week at a friend's of my mother's place when I was 7 or 8. The friend whistled in a way that sounded just like a horn so I called her horny. She got quite upset with me and told me not to call her that ever. It made no sense to me as she sounded just like a horn and a musical instrument is not a bad word. I thought maybe she was upset because it was only one name so the next time I called her Mrs. Horny and she got really mad at me telling me that she had just told me not to use that word and to never call anyone that. I was baffled for years at why she was so upset by the name of a musical instrument.

Aged about 7 I bought a toy devil at a car boot sale. My brother was a Man United fan. Informed Mrs Brown my teacher that I'd bought my 5 year old brother a "horny little devil, like him!"

I'd be about 5/6 and called my brother a bastard during a fight. My much older sister told me off and explained that it meant you didn't have dad! I told my best friend in school that because her dad was dead that meant she was a bastard. Cue the next day, the nuns had to hold a crazy woman back who was flapping a large envelope at me in the playground "Screaming he died in the Korean war" I panicked because I thought we were at war and bombs were going to start dropping any minute.

Around 5 years old, I was in a public toilet with my mum, waiting in a queue for a free cubicle. Another woman in the queue suddenly went to a vending machine on the wall which I'd never noticed before. It had a pattern of coloured dots on it but no window to see what was inside. The woman put a coin in and took something out of the machine, quickly tucking it into her pocket. Of course, I was intrigued and started begging at the top of my voice to have a go. I wanted something from the machine too. My mum kept trying to shush me and she would not tell me what the machine was for. Then, for some wft-reason, she decided to tell me that it was sweets, but I wasn't allowed any because I'd been naughty.

Of course, all this did was make me obsessed with getting sweets out of those machines, which I soon realised were in every toilet. So I'd stand in front and beg my mum to let me have some whenever we went to the loo. It got worse, she obviously panicked one day and said that they were sweets that only grown ups could eat. Cue me changing my tune to "muuuum, am I old enough now? Please let me have some"

@WhatsErFace2020

I was about 7 and I asked my dad what a prostitute was whilst watching (if anyone remembers) the TV show ‘Band of Gold’. I remember the whole room went quiet and he just replied, “I’ll tell you when your older”

Reader: he never did tell me

Lol, my Mum apparently did the same but it was a radio news report on the Profumo affair that prompted her question which was asked in a loud voice over breakfast at a very respectable hotel.

Apparently her father became suddenly engrossed in his paper, while her teenage brothers looked mortified and the whole dining room went silent. Her mother apparently responded briskly that "it's a not very nice lady, but not the sort of thing we talk about at the table" before a swift change of subject.

I got the definitions of prosecuted and executed mixed up, was VERY concerned when I read a sign in a shop saying "shoplifters will be prosecuted".

My soft toy was called pussy. You can imagine the years of things I said about it.

Once I was told to thank my aunt on the phone for a birthday gift and I accidentally phrased it as 'you shouldn't have bothered'. My mum was mortified and I'm still embarrassed now 30yrs later when I think if it.

Oh, that reminds me. I somehow got it into my mind that being fired from a job meant that your boss shot you. I thought that if you did something wrong at work, depending on the severity of the misdemeanour, you would either be sacked (lose your job) or fired (shot). I don't know why my brain made this connection and the whole thing only came to light when Paul Robinson on Neighbours said he was going to fire Madge. I burst into tears and was inconsolable, terrified to keep watching because I didn't want to see it happen. My mum went from bemusement to fits of laughter as she explained it to me.

A PP mentioned playing a game called Hunt the Cunt. This was a very real game which was played in my primary school but I've never come across anyone else irl who has heard of it or played it. Unsurprisingly most people look utterly shocked if I mention it.

The premise was that there were two teams. One team thought of a secret word - obviously a swear word - and then the other team chased them around the playground and when they caught someone they had to torture them into giving up the word - torture was often tickling but often gravitated towards punching and kicking. I lived in a fairly rough neighbourhood and was terrified of playing this game. I used to cower in corners, desperately hoping I wouldn't be forced into a team.

I was about 6 when I was playing in the garden with our neighbours and my sister who are a little bit older, we were digging over the soil in a veg patch when I told my sister "I'm looking for some fucking centipedes"... I would definatley have heard that from my dad! My sister promptly rocketed inside to tell on me and I got a huge telling off from my mum.

On a sweeter more innocent note, we were stood in the fish and chip shop after swimming and while waiting to be served dd who was about 8 said "Mum, look at that brown fish that's shaped like a sausage". I pointed out if it's the colour of a sausage and the shape of a sausage, it might be a sausage. Dd was mortified and the man behind us in the queue was bent over laughing but had the good grace to turn his back so dd didn't see him.

I once saw an old English sheep dog and said to my Mum and Dad look a durex dog, instead of a dulux dog, they just laughed apparently.

My sibling called my dad a cunt once. She'd overheard it at the park and just thought it meant Wally.

I stick two fingers up at my dad when he was telling me off. I’d seen someone do it at school and just thought it meant ‘I don’t agree’ 😂

When I was about 6 we moved from the North to the South East. It took me several years and a lot of disappointment at birthday parties to work out that in my new town a 'bun' was a bread roll and not a delicious sticky cake like substance!

My mum and her friends were going out one day and I was staying in with my step dad, mum asked whether I’d be okay and I said yeah we’re going to have a legover!.

I’d heard it before and thought it just meant a good time

When I was about 4 I thought the older you got, the fatter you got. I proudly explained my theory and said my grandma (who was thin) must be about 50, and my poor aunt who was a a bit larger, must be about 100!!

Also when I about 10 me and friend watched the Stephen Spielberg movie ‘A.I’ where Jude law plays a character called gigolo Joe. Myself and my friend just thought gigolo was a funny name so we made up a song about it and performed it to my dad.....

@MrsTophamHat

I used to think "twat" was just a variation of "twit". So i told my mum that my little sister was messing with my Barbies and being a silly twat.

Only a few years ago I was given the task of explaining to MIL what twat meant. She'd overheard someone at work saying it and thought it was a softer alternative to/combination of twit and prat and was saying it all the time- including to the DC.

I still remember the scene which played out after my sister used the word “bollocking” too! And being told off for quoting a friend who said boys have balls.
I had my mouth washed out for using the word “knackered” when I was tired and agreeing I should get ready for bed. I was 9.

I once said to my dad you're so impotent instead of incompetent (he was asking me if I knew which setting my mum used for bed sheets, when I was about 8).

I also went through this thing when I was young where I didn't think I could make my eyes move like everyone else could, because I couldn't see myself do it in the mirror. Obviously because to make them move, you have to look away. I used to have tantrums about it, asking why even my baby brother could do it and I couldn't do it yet!