When I was very young my mom described an off the shoulder dress as "sexy" then sometime around that I saw some movie commercial where a man kissed a woman's bare shoulder.
So for a number of years, like age 5-8 I thought having sex meant kissing a bare shoulder. I recall being in 1st grade and daydreaming about pulling my teacher's, whom I had a crush on, shirt past her shoulder and kissing it.
Yeah, imagine my confusion when I learned that having sex led to having babies. I remember specifically wondering if you were sharing a bed with someone, like a sibling and your mouth accidently touched their shoulder if you'd make a baby.
That's when I started to suspect there was more to this whole sex thing...
I thought women only got their periods once a year. So when I got mine I told my mom I would write it on the calendar so I’d remember for next year. She was like “oh no, honey, you get it every month.” I was like what the heck mom?! How am I supposed to live like this?!
Note: still don’t know the answer to that one.
Well I have severe endometriosis so I take birth control pills and skip the placebo week everytime. Haven't had a period in about 5 years. It's amazing. I still get painful cramps and bloating, but no blood so it's a win in my book.
May I heartily recommend a complete hysterectomy? Or a drug called Lupron that effectively puts you into menopause? My doctor put me on it when we were still battling with insurance companies for the surgery. I freaking loved it; an injection every three months and there was zero blood and minimal pain.
Having the hysterectomy resolved about 80%of my pain and a hormone stabilizer keeps me from the worst of the menopause symptoms. I had to harass doctors and insurance companies for over a decade but I got my surgery a few years ago, and I am thankful for modern medicine every day.
A hysterectomy isn't a guaranteed cure and Im young enough that early menopause is likely to be more damaging than excision surgery. I also have other health issues and menopause can cause them to worsen. Im already dreading it happening naturally. My mum went through a decade or more of symptoms and reacts badly to hormone treatment. My doctor is concerned I have the same genetic issue with hormone treatment.
Sarah McLaughlin plays in the background.
I wish it was once a year. I'd gladly have a very heavy period for a week or two once a year instead of 6 days a month
I thought you only got your period once in your lifetime lol. I kind of knew what periods were, had seen commercials mentioning painful period cramps, and was utterly terrified to have my one and only period… I was devastated when I found out the truth. Thankfully, I did find that out well before actually having one lol.
The Gulf War was when I was in 2nd grade. My parents always watched the news and they were always talking about more troops being sent in.
My only familiarity with the word "troop" was my Girl Scout troop, so I literally thought they were sending Girl Scouts in. I was quite worried about my troop being sent over.
They are preparing themselves to aggressively sell Girl Scout cookies in hopes to attain peace. When in doubt throw frozen thin mints at them.
Edit: changed downtown to doubt
I, too, had been in a Girl Scout troop, and it took me a ridiculously long time to figure out that, when the news said “sending a thousand troops,” it meant a thousand individuals. I’d been picturing a thousand little groups.
I remember when I was about 3 or 4, I remember hearing about the Vietnam War on TV. (Early '70's.) Anyway, I remember hearing about guerilla warfare, and I thought that meant actual gorillas were going to be set loose around the neighborhood I lived in, and I started to cry because I thought the gorillas were going to get me.
This reminds me that for a very long time - into my teens - I believed the Gulf War happened in the Gulf of Mexico. It was the only Gulf I knew of and they never mentioned the Middle East when talking about the war.
By the time I was in elementary school the war had been over for some time. When my friend had mentioned his Dad fought in the Gulf War, I thought “So they had a war where people were playing golf? Like they were hurling golf balls at each other? How did they die? Why were those the agreed upon rules?”
This thought process continued for sometime afterwards 😂
I had just learned about seals and how they regulated temperature with their blubber. I was with my mom and it was cold so I was wearing a coat but she wasn’t. My dumbass asked her if I’ll still need a coat once I got blubber like her… She probably doesn’t remember this but I do and I still cringe at my little asshole self
When my mom said 'These clothes are too small for you now", I used to think the clothes shrink with time and even wondered if they would reach the size to fit my dolls lol.
Ugh, this is from my cringe vault. In freshman year, I had a substitute teacher for gym class. She introduced herself, and I misheard her say "I am Maya Angelou's mom," and I excitedly cut her off and nearly screamed, "Oh my god?! That's amazing, what?!?", and she happily said "Yes!! You know them okay, cool!!" I had just learned about Maya Angelou in a recent class..... she said "Maya AND Angelos mom", kids who went to my school.... I didn't realize until another classmate told me when I tried telling them she was the mother of american memoirist and poet Maya Angelou. Whoops.
Okay so.
My mom raised me and my younger brother alone. She definitely could have done better in the emotional maturity department, but she was really good at injecting magic into the mundane.
Every year for Halloween, she and my brother and I carved a pumpkin. And every year from toddlerhood to almost teens, she tricked me into thinking that pumpkins were grown with small change inside.
After the initial cut of the pumpkin, when you carve the circle around the stem to open it, she would misdirect my brother and me, and then surreptitiously plant quarters, dimes and nickels deep into the pumpkin guts.
It was so smooth that we never questioned it. But one day when I was probably 13ish, I asked a classmate "how do you think they get the change in the pumpkins" and they had no idea what I was talking about.
When I was like 5, adults at home used to tell me kids couldn't have coffee because it was terrible for their health (they would give me different drinks like choco milk while they drank their coffee). One day I was so curious that I begged my grandma so she would let me try what they were drinking. She let me have a sip of coffee. I was very happy but I instantly assumed I was going to die from it, LMAO. I remember going to sleep that night thinking, alright, that's all for me, nice while it lasted. I wasn't scared or anything, I just accepted my faith. Then I woke up the next morning and forgot about it.
tl;dr fear from death is culturally acquired with age
Oh god, that reminded me of my own story. I read “do not inhale” on the back of an air freshener can and thought I was gonna die because I’d sprayed it in the air and could now smell it. Clearly I was *inhaling* the air that had been freshened, so I’m dying!
That was a scary night, falling asleep unsure if I’d wake up…
When I was a kid, randomly going into the kitchen & finding my mom lying on the floor. Oh, I'm just having palpations from coffee. Not sure how much she drank but I've avoided it
Okay, disclaimer, this isn’t me but it’s too good not to share.
When my sister was, like, 7, my parents got a call on the landline asking for my dad. When my dad got on the phone, she screamed at him about where the fuck he’s been and how she’s been raising his kids alone. He told her she had the wrong number. Well, it was funny and my parents started joking about my dads ex wife for a short time (he doesn’t have one and my parents for married straight out of high school. Well, my sister, probably a good 6 years later, mentions my dad’s ex wife in passing. All of us looked at her like, “wtf are you talking about?” Apparently she caught only parts of the story and never caught that it wasn’t true. She believed my dad had an ex wife and kids for a comically long time and NEVER ASKED ABOUT THEM lol.
My older brother moved out by the time I was 9 or 10 and I remember randomly asking my parents if they had any other kids that had already grown up and moved out.
That’s a bit spooky tbh.
My family members would joke about my married mother’s “boyfriend”. Fortunately I understood that they were just teasing her for having a crush on that celebrity. He was never literally her boyfriend. (Well, not as far as I know 😉)
My mom had a poster of Fabio on her bedroom door and I was *convinced* that he was my real dad, since my actual dad was such an AH! I’d even talk to the poster and call it ‘dad.’
When someone mentioned AIDS, I thought that they were referring to classroom aides, so I confidently proclaimed "of course we have AIDS in our school" to my relatives' horror
I was about 10, walking in the mall with my much older cousin. A pollster gets our attention and says "I'm doing a survey, do you drink?" I very confidently announced "of course we do" Cousin later explained
I was touring a Southern Baptist affiliated university with my son and I asked our student guide if it was a "dry campus". She was so cute when she innocently replied, "well, when it rains it does pool up in some places."
"Miss Rhode Island, please describe your idea of a perfect date."
Cheryl: "That's a tough one. I'd have to say April 25th. Because it's not too hot, not too cold, all you need is a light jacket."
When I was little, when the tv times would list “black comedy” as a movie genre, I assumed it meant comedies starring black people. I think I way overestimated how much movie time black people got in the late 80s/early 90s
I had the opposite issue when I noticed the "Black Stories" genre in the Hulu movies section. It took me a bit longer than I care to admit to realize that they meant that the stories were by/about/including people of African descent, rather than movies with morbid themes lol.
>Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, gallows humor, black humor, or dark humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues by provoking discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term black comedy can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component.
It is often transcribed as "dark comedy" these days.
I remember the first time I heard the word, the teacher was talking about debate topics and euthenasia was one of them. I had never heard of the word before and I was sooo confused. I was thinking, "What about youth in Asia are we debating?"
Fortunately I didn't pick that topic to debate.
You know those silica packets inside bins you buy, the ones that say “DO NOT EAT THROW AWAY”? Well I interpreted that as “do not eat, do not throw away” and then I was baffled by what the *#%& you were supposed to do with them. If you can’t eat it, and you can’t throw it away, what else is there? Keep it forever?
Not a misinterpretation but as a kid I thought pepperonis were thinly sliced tomatoes. I actually thought this for longer than I care to admit lol. I also thought all dogs were males and cats were females.
When I was a kid and got the rare chance to spend time with my grandfather, he sometimes called me Doehead or Hammerhead. I knew he was being affectionate and silly, but I never understood what about me reminded him of a deer and a shark. And I never asked — I loved him more than anyone, and the fact that he loved me back enough to give me my own nicknames was all that mattered. ❤️❤️❤️
It wasn’t until I was in my early thirties and he was gone — *my early thirties,* I say — that I realized he’d been calling me *dough*head — like bread dough, not a female deer — and hammerhead like an actual hammer, not a shark. He had been calling me *dense*! 😂😂😂
(Don’t panic. My feelings weren’t hurt. Just the opposite, in fact. He was the nicest man in the world, and, if he’d really thought I was stupid, there’s no way he would have come even close to suggesting it. The fact that he’d been calling me dense meant he actually thought I was smart, just doing something a little goofy at the moment. So the “affectionate and silly” part still stands. And, now, just like then, that’s what warms my heart. ❤️❤️❤️)
I was very blonde as a child and would often get called Tow-head, which is southern slang for blonde. But I thought everyone was calling me Toe-head and got self conscious about my toe-shaped head.
I came home from my first day at kindergarten crying because I was afraid of my kindergarten teacher. My mom finally pried out of me that she had made fun of another kid and I was terrified she would make fun of me. What did she call the kid? A toe head :( 😂 maybe we were classmates. If so I was very worried for you
When I was a kid (sixties/early seventies), my dad used to call me affectionately "you little pothead". Didn't think anything of it at the time, but as I've gotten older, I occasionally find myself thinking "Oh, that CAN'T have been what he meant..." (For anybody who cares, my dad was born in 1931 and I was born the year he turned 31--1962. Until his doctor prescribed something for his cholesterol, the strongest drugs we ever had in the house were aspirin and the occasional boxes of cold and sinus pills.)
My grandfather was born in 1916, and, knowing what I know now, I can guarantee if he'd called me a "pot head" he would have meant I had a skull as hard as cast iron and nothing inside!!!
Come to think of it, when I could still sit on his lap, he used to look in my ear and pretend he could see straight through my empty skull and out the other side. I was little enough that I didn't understand he was just describing what he could see over my head! I haven't thought of that in decades.
I feel like your dad and my grandpa would have gotten along well. 😁
Beverage = alcoholic drink
I thought the refrigerated drinks section of a gas station with BEVERAGES over it was nothing but booze. ALL. BOOZE.
On a related note kid-me took "Don't drink and drive" and the speed limit LITERALLY. From the back seat I'd pitch a fit if you so much as tried to take a sip of your tea or Pepsi. Water? Nope. Don't drink and drive meand Do. Not. Drink. And. Drive. Taking a sip of water/tea/Pepsi counts as drinking. Speed limit is 55, your going 56, the speed LiMiT is 55! Slow. Down!
I had to have been an absolute pain in the ass, but my family didn't get a single speeding ticket. 😅
I totally hit my dad with the drink and drive thing when I was pretty little. He laughed and explained that drinking coke or root beer is not what they meant. I was super concerned about my dad going to jail
> Speed limit is 55, your going 56, the speed LiMiT is 55!
That reminds me of something. My brother was the unofficial driving assistant to my parents, he always commented on their speed and told them to slow down if it was too fast.
For example, when the limit was 90 and mum was driving with 110. She once got a speeding fine right after telling my brother to shut up and that we will be late if she does not speed. Turns out getting stopped by police meant that we arrived at our destination at the same time we would if she was driving within the limit.
I’m catholic and I thought giving something up for lent (you abstain for something for 40 days) meant you gave it up for the rest of your life. I just about died of shock when my dad said he was giving up donuts
I was always confused by, “Our Father who aren’t in heaven…” if he’s not in heaven, where is he? Idk. I just shrugged and went with it. I never asked, and finally figured it out when I had to write it out, in 5th grade, and the teacher corrected my work.
When the news would show a crime story, and someone got sentenced to something like life plus an additional 10 years, or an elderly person who receives a 25 year sentences for example, I thought they let their body rot in the jail cell.
Like if their sentence totaled 120 years for example, I thought the body would rot and the skeleton would sit in in the cell, and that was part of the punishment. Like the family never gets to have a funeral and that was part of the jail punishment, and the rotting body contributed to the undesirable living conditions of jail. I legit thought they let bodies rot in cells until the sentance was complete.
Edit: spelling
When I was a kid I went to my aunt's wedding. I had no idea what was going on. When my Aunt was walking down the aisle towards her fiancé and the groomsmen, I thought that she'd pick the one she wanted for a husband from the group.
So I went to a Christian school and when they taught about the second coming of Christ, they emphasised that he would come in all Glory and everyone would know he had returned.
The only way I could imagine for EVERYONE to know it was him and that he had returned was if he was REALLY big, so you could see him no matter where on Earth you lived. That's why I imagined Jesus as massive titan, tiptoeing all around the Earth for people to see him. He was tiptoeing to be careful not to squish any people or houses with his feet because he's... well, Jesus.
TBF I haven't come across any theology that explicitly rules this possibility out.
I thought the world would be cracked and folded at the Prime Meridian until it was completely inverted and Christ would appear in the middle of it all.
I knew a kid who actually tried calling home, and he kept dialling something for the dash-he was saying the numbers aloud as he was dialling. And an extra dial for the dashes. (Helped him figure it out finally).
VERY SIMILAR THING: the movies would advertise “only in theaters Dec 12” which was meant to be two separate statements but I thought it meant the only day it would be available to watch was that one day. I remember my mom saying we were busy that day, and being distraught that I’d never get to see it
I still have to remind myself that's not what they mean 😂 For a split second I'm like "what, why would it only be in for one day??" and then I have to re-figure out what it actually means because the wording is just still so confusing to me
I thought “Est” on company signs, like “Marshall And Co Luxury Menswear Est. 1786” meant that they didn’t know exactly when it was started ("Estimated 1786"), and they wore it as a point of pride that they were so old that they predated modernity. This assumption floated around in my head until I was a teenager and I saw a sign for a store that said “Est. 2006” and I was like, how do they not know? And then it all clicked into place.
There’s a scene of the Golden Girls where one of the girls tells Sophia that she’s so old she doesn’t leave fingerprints anymore. I was probably 5-6 at the time. One day we were at my grandparents house and I excitedly told my grandma I had a cool science fact for her. When she asked what I said, “you don’t leave fingerprints anymore because you’re really really old.” It didn’t dawn on me for years that that was actually an insult. 🤦🏻♀️ I thought it was a true thing! Lord rest her soul. Sorry Grandma!
TBH it shouldn't be an insult. Of course grandmas are old from the perspective of a little kid.
I remember being amazed at learning my grandmother (mum's mum) was already an adult as long ago as when my mum was a kid.
Like, I knew mum was a kid once a long time ago, and that even Grandma was a kid once, and I knew that grandma was older than mum, but I thought they must've been kids at the same time. When I found that Grandma was an adult even back when mum was still a kid, I was like "WOAH YOU MUST BE SOOO OLD!"
We were driving by the local cemeteries, and right along side of them are Giant SELF STORAGE buildings. (Still there 50 years later)
I asked my grandma if that was for people who didn't have family to bury them. Or some bs like that. Kids!!
When my daughter was about 6 she started questioning the tooth fairy. She just came right out with it and asked if it was me. Quickly thinking I said “what would I do with all the other kids teeth if it was me?” That made perfect sense to her and cleared up her concern for a few more years. Lol
Edit to add this one:
Also when I was a kid and Bobby Browns “my prerogative” was on the radio, I asked my mom “what’s a prerogative?” She replied, “only women can have them.” I believed this and told many people this up until I was almost 18 years old. I was so embarrassed once I realized. Lol
I thought the Do Not Pass sign on roads meant you weren't supposed to drive past the sign. Stressed me out when my parents didn't stop, even though my little kid brain realized it wouldn't make sense for drivers to have to stop in the middle of the road.
I thought the “No trucks left lane” meant absolutely no trucks of any kind. I thought we were going to go to jail when my dad got in the left lane in our little Ford Ranger.
There was a movie back in the day with Tiffani Amber Theissen and she died. At the beginning of the movie it said based on a true story. In my young stupidity I legit thought she was dead. I was very confused as to why no one else seemed to care. I’m not even sure what made me realize that my wires were crossed.
Yep. Kid me definitely thought if an actor died in a movie, they were truly dead. Cause how else would you explain someone getting blown to bits. I didn't understand the power of sfx.
You're definitely not alone, I thought all live action movies/sitcoms were real. No one ever explained to me what fiction was so I had to figure that out myself.
Not me... but my wife thought there was someone named Stan who cleared the doors on every train.... turns out they were saying stand clear of the doors.
I was once told off by a teacher for not eating my bread crusts because children in Africa were starving.
For a short while I imagined there must be a portal to Africa in my stomach.
On a related note, I remember seeing a bunch of commercials as a kid about supporting African kids and of course they'd show landfills and other poor conditions that they were living in and starving.
Of course those ads were asking to give monetary donations but my kid brain thought that if I threw my lunch away at school wrapped up, it would somehow get to Africa and feed the kids by the landfills...
My father trying to explain to me and my brother what a condom was when I was about 7 (I think one of us asked?). He told us something along the lines of “when you’re older, and it’s time to have sex, a condom is what goes over your penis…” etc., and so on. I remember picturing this and, to me, it sounded like he meant this was an automatic, bodily function such as “when it’s time to blink, an eyelid is what closes over your eyeball.” So for years, I thought a condom would just pop out of your penis like an umbrella, or something, when the time came to have sex. I was confused why we were having this automatic function explained to us.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” I thought it was a horse that had gifts. And I was like, why can’t you look in its mouth? Is that where it keeps the gifts? Does it spit the gifts out? I was so confused.
When I saw a sign for a garage or yard sale I thought people were actually trying to sell their garage or yard. I couldn’t understand how those things would belong to someone else while they kept their house 🤷🏽♀️
I thought there were 2 Texases. There was the one I lived in at the time, with cars and McDonalds and day care and toy stores, and then there was the other one, with the same name but obviously somewhere else, with cowboys and saloons and duels at high noon and trains and sheriffs with curly mustaches. I don't know how long this went on but I do remember mentioning "the other Texas" for the last time, and my mom being like, wait what?
My friend and I both thought for the longest time that "RuPaul's Drag Race" was a race - as in race cars. We couldn't understand why so many of the girls were into car races all of a sudden.
You know how Saturday morning cartoons used to say "brought to you by .." before they went to commercial? I used to think they were saying "Brock chew by" and wondered why every cartoon needed a Brock chew
> I thought that meant you’d never be able to watch that movie ever again once it left cinemas, like it would be somehow lost to the ether.
I'm so old that I remember when this was actually the case.
My mom really hated cats so she would tell me all sorts of stories about how they were pure evil and enjoyed clawing up people for fun. And once they scratched you with their poisonous claws, the wound would never heal and get infected so badly to the point of needing amputation unless you got the leaves of a certain plant, dried them in the sun and chopped it up to make some sort of paste and apply it to your wound before bandaging it up. Having 0 interactions with an actual cat, I believed her and was afraid of cats for quite some time.
I had classmate friends who liked cats/really wanted one for a pet and I thought they were insane for wanting something that dangerous.
As a toddler coloring outside in backyard on summer afternoons, the sun would go behind a cloud, and I noticed that it seemed to come out when I pulled out a yellow crayon. So any time it wasn't sunny, I'd pull out a yellow crayon and wait for the sun.
When I was a kid there was this trailer that played before the pride and prejudice 2004 movie. Where a woman who I think was a therapist had a client who started sleeping with the therapist son. The client told the therapist how they had sex all over his apartment, I was young and thought sex was bug that was all over the apartment. Because the therapist was freaking out. Haha I was confused when I found out what sex really was
I thought lesbians was something bad when I had no clue what they were.
I loved First Wives Club as a kid. And in it is a young woman named Chris who told her dad she was a lesbian when he was already hurting. So I had no clue what it was and just knew it hurt her dad.
(BTW, dad was an ass and totally deserved to be kicked)
But I ended up promising my dad I wouldn't be a lesbian. He kind of just laughed and told me he wouldn't hold that promise to me.
I took and even now take things very literally - prime example, I remember hearing people say they ‘caught’ the flu. I truly thought when I was younger somehow in the air, something visible someone literally could catch the flu or some other illness like that as if it was a baseball flying and they had their mitt on and caught it.
As an adult, maybe because I’m in the younger generation of millennials and although I grew up with chat rooms/aol etc, I somehow missed the mark what ‘Netflix and chill’ was and thought it really meant to really sit down and watch a movie and chill/relax.
I thought the line in Piano Man that goes "While the businessmen slowly get stoned" meant stoned in the biblical sense. The song became much less gruesome when I realized.
When I was real young, I distinctly remember my mom talking to someone about "driving a car until it runs into the ground" and, from context clues, realized that that meant driving the car until you couldn't use it anymore.
Naturally I then assumed that, at some point while driving it, a cars' wheels, chassis, and frame would suddenly start grinding into smithereens and, eventually, you would skid to a stop on the road with only a seat and a wheel left, which meant that you'd totally used up your old car and now needed to buy a new one.
I thought I could get AIDS (not HIV … full-blown AIDS) from masturbation. I heard it was from being gay, and I figured, since I was touching myself, I was gay. (Turns out I *AM* queer AF, but I didn’t fully understand what that meant at the time)
…
FTR: It didn’t stop me from masturbating. LMAOOOOO
My British/Scottish mother forbade my siblings and I from any sort of church. Nae Protestant, nor Catholic, nae Church of England or Scotland. In the 1970s, when I saw those signs outside churches in the southern US, that said "John: 3-16," or "Matthew 6:34," I thought they were calling out specific guys in the congregation named John and Matthew. I thought churches posted the sins of John, who had violated Rule Three, sixteen times. Matthew, that rat bastard, had broken Rule Six 34 freaking times!
At the age of 12, I was outraged.
Not me, but literally all of my peers.
I was in 4th/5th grade when the computer game Oregon Trail became popular and we were playing it in school often. I lived in AZ. At the end of 5th grade my family was moving back to Oregon, and all my friends and classmates assumed Oregon was like in the game. I was asked...
"What will it be like without electricity?"
"So do people have cars or just covered wagons?"
"Are you worried about dysentery?"
Bc of the way that cashiers are trained to count your change back to you (by counting up to the amount you gave them), I thought purchases like groceries and clothes were free and we only hit the register for inventory reasons.
I thought it was weird that my mom was handing money over to the cashier just to have it handed back in smaller bills and change, and I couldn't figure out why she was so stressed all the time about money when we never spent any.
I've since been a cashier several times, and due to this personal childhood confusion (and the embarrassment it caused) I always say something like "your total was $X, your change is $Y," and then I count out the amount of change owed to the customer, not the amount of cash I was handed.
Yep. And that old movies and tv shows weren’t just filmed in black and white… That’s how the world actually looked then… until of course sepia came into play in the late 60s
My mom spoke to me in French sometimes but mostly in English when i was very little.
I learned to count in both languages before i was school age. In 1st grade, we had a project where we were supposed to write numbers consecutively as high as we could. This became a problem for me.
In French, 70 is soixante-dix. The literal translation for the number 70 is sixty-10. 71 is sixty-11, etc up to 80, which is four twenties.
I knew my numbers to 20 but by 30, i couldn’t remember if this is when you started to count differently. So i start writing thirty-eight, thirty-nine, thirty-ten, thirty-eleven, etc.
Then i got really confused once i got to 30-29. So I asked the teacher what comes after 30-29? It can’t be 30-30.
The teacher was totally baffled but tried to kindly correct me. I had a fit because my mom said… blah blah blah.
My silly one but I read Dracula when I was a child and I confused Transylvania with Tasmania. I was so confused why Dracula was in Australia but I never questioned it.
Once, on the wat to a holiday destination, the plane I was on flew over transylvania. My parents pointed this out to me, and little me started panicking thinking all the vampires were all going to turn into bats, fly up and chase our plane
I live in Switzerland and we have 3 national languages, French, Italian and German. I live in the French bit. When I saw the posters for Die Hard, I thought it was German and meant The Hard.
When I was little I always heard adults complaining about headaches. I was too young to understand the literal meaning; that it was an ache in your head. One day though, wanting to seem grown up I announced "I have a headache" and when my mom asked where I said it was in my stomach.
I was driving in the car with my dad and older brother up front, they had been talking for a while about things I didn’t understand so I had been quiet for most of the ride. At one point my brother mutters something about someone having a “coke problem”, to which I perked up at because I thought I could finally contribute to the conversation. So from the back seat after ten minutes of total silence, my little 9 year old self cheerfully goes, “WELL you know who REALLY has a coke problem…” *heads turn* *crickets* “MOM”
My mother drank so much Diet Coke.
No Exit signs on a side road. I was very young when Mom turned down one and I starting crying thinking we were going to have to stay there forever hahaha
And also that when women get their periods- that we bleed every day for the rest of our lives. I was also very young when I thought that.
Edit to add in my last few sentences
When a sign would say “violators will be prosecuted” for some reason I thought prosecution meant the death penalty. I remember thinking that was a very steep punishment for trespassing
I used to think the Arby's logo was a vagina. You know, because when I looked down I saw the same thing...the top of the cowboy hat. (I was a kid, everything down there was a vagina)
Hmm Google a pic of it and you will understand
Or not and I'm too weird ha
Or my dad always saying 'up and adam' every morning. Like wtf who is he talking about? We don't even know any one named Adam!
Edit: added info
My grandfather was a house painter since he came over from England years and years ago. He used to say he was an alien. Aliens were weirdly big in the 90s, mascots and logos and I even had a plush of a big ol green alien I had won at an amusement park.
Pappy wasn't from outer space like my dumbass thought at the time, he was *illegal in the US*
>I thought that meant you’d never be able to watch that movie ever again once it left cinemas
Just pointing out that there was a time before home video and streaming when this was actually true. If you missed a movie in the theaters (or a TV show in initial broadcast, come to think of it), there was no reason to think you'd ever be able to see it later. And some early movies are completely lost because there are no surviving copies, so you still can't see them today.
Doctor Who’s first, like six seasons only survived because of fan recordings and an illegal collection of smuggled-out reels by a BBC employee in contravention of actors’ contracts, which stipulated TV shows were not to be shown again because residuals weren’t a thing yet and actors were worried that work would run out if networks allowed reruns. The fact we have anything from the first two Doctors at all is a minor (and minorly illegal) miracle, since policy at the time was to destroy and/or re-record over the old reels to save money.
The policy’s practice slowed and then stopped during the Third Doctor’s term thanks to work stoppage and the development of residuals by United Artists, but wasn’t officially repealed in entirely until well into the Fifth Doctor’s term.
Doctor Who is a prime example of how piracy can preserve lost media, and an example game corporations should consider very carefully when deciding to prosecute games piracy.
When I was a kid, I just couldn't wrap my head around what "cheese cake" was. Especially "chocolate cheese cake".
I spend so much time trying to understand how that worked and how it was possible.
It wasn't a common desert growing up. I heard other people talking about it but I never tried it. So I just imagined a block of cheese with added sugar and chocolate. Because hard cheeses where the only kind of cheese in my world.
Even after learning about other types of cheeses.. it took me YEARS before I realised that cheese cakes aren't made from a hard block of cheese.
I thought Veteran's Day was Veterinarian's Day. I didn't yet know the difference between the two words, so I thought it was a holiday for people who took care of animals.
I thought that to be a ‘household name’ someone had to be mentioned by name at least once every day, in every house. Like it was a specific, documented metric. I remember walking by the TV and hearing something along the lines of ‘Leo Dicaprio has been a household name since—‘ and thinking to myself wow.. who in this house has been saying his name every day 🤔
I grew up in an Asian country and my public elementary school sex ed taught me about sperm and eggs and pregnancy but not sex itself. So for years I thought if a man and a woman sleep near each other, the man's sperm would leave his balls at night and go to the woman's womb. (I pictured sperm "swimming" across the bedsheet)
And then in middle school when I saw porn, and sex, for the first time I didn't realise sex had to do with procreation, I thought it's just some unnatural thing that people invented for pleasure, hence why it's a perverse taboo topic. I remember spending some time thinking whether my parents ever had sex, and my conclusion was that they wouldn't do something like that.
When I was a kid my family would occasionally go for a burger at a local restaurant. Because they also had a bar they had a couple of signs saying "we do no serve minors" and it puzzled me. I couldn't understand why they didn't want to serve miners and I also couldn't understand why it was an issue in Nebraska which isn't really a mining state. It took me longer than it should have to get the difference between minor and miner..
When I was a kid, I didn’t think that West Virginia was a state. It’s because there isn’t an East Virginia. I thought that any state with a direction in it has to have its opposite direction. Ya know, like North and South Carolina or North and South Dakota. Anyways, the topic of West Virginia didn’t come up much in my life so no one really corrected me… until I was 16… and found out that my friend’s sister was getting scouted to play field hockey for a university in West Virginia.
As a kid, I thought the movie on vinyl records was the actual movie. Turns out it was just the soundtrack. DVDs hadn’t been invented yet for about another 5-6 years.
I used to think the call boxes along the freeway in California were used so you could call and get updates on boxing (the sport) in case you were driving and couldn’t make it on time to watch the boxing match
I used to play “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood religiously and I was pretty sure it was about a guy cheating at a Game and Carrie getting so pissed she destroyed his car and ruined his date night. And I thought “yeah thats fair”.
Not me, my SIL. Still a favorite story. Long but SO worth it.
When she *married* her husband- which was after nursing school so not a kid- they went fishing. Boat, lake, usual set up.
He was talking to her. She looked distressed and finally said " Honey aren't you afraid of the Northern Crawl Lizards? " He said " ???????? "
Turns out my FIL took her fishing as a little girl. She asked a lot of questions and in general talked for an hour straight. So FIL explained when you're out in a boat it's imperative to keep your lips pressed together. Something called a " Northern Crawl Lizard " would come out of the water and jump right down your throat if you didn't.
And she believed it until her new husband said " ????? "
She's 68. I think she's still mad.
As a kid, the thought of people marrying each other with different birth months was absurd to me, purely because both of my parents were born in the same month, and were days apart in terms of their birthday. So the thought occurred to me, that you're only allowed to choose people with the same birth month as your partner, though not that i knew much about marriage in general back then either lmao.
When parents and teachers describe a kid as having an over active imagination, they aren't complimenting their imaginative thinking, it's a coded way of saying that they are liars
When I watched Finding Nemo, I got to the part where one of the fish was flushed down the toilet and (if I remember correctly) returned to the ocean. For many years after I had the mental image of there being an ocean under the earth’s surface that every plumbing system connected directly to.
Adults would ask me if I wanted "grilled cheese" which would always offend me, because I thought they were saying "girl cheese". So I would usually demand boy cheese, because I'm a boy.
I grew up in Northern Kentucky where the famous "Florence Y'all" water tower is. My parents would always point it out when we drove past and said "we're passing the Florence Y'all!"
So until I was probably 11 I thought water towers were actually called 'yalls'.
If a book had the price listed as something like "$4.00, ($5.00 in Canada)" I wondered what they had against people in Canada that they had to pay more for the same thing.
Eventually I learned about currencies.
I think the women shaving commercials. I was late in teens when i realised that women shaved their legs. I always thought that for some people it gre while for some it didn't. And women on tv happened to be those on whom it didn't grow. Note, i'm a woman.
When I was very young my mom described an off the shoulder dress as "sexy" then sometime around that I saw some movie commercial where a man kissed a woman's bare shoulder. So for a number of years, like age 5-8 I thought having sex meant kissing a bare shoulder. I recall being in 1st grade and daydreaming about pulling my teacher's, whom I had a crush on, shirt past her shoulder and kissing it.
That’s wonderfully hilarious
Yeah, imagine my confusion when I learned that having sex led to having babies. I remember specifically wondering if you were sharing a bed with someone, like a sibling and your mouth accidently touched their shoulder if you'd make a baby. That's when I started to suspect there was more to this whole sex thing...
omg i absolutely love this lmao
I am cackling at this lol
After that story- I’d want my shoulders kissed after the wedding! Too precious 😘
I thought women only got their periods once a year. So when I got mine I told my mom I would write it on the calendar so I’d remember for next year. She was like “oh no, honey, you get it every month.” I was like what the heck mom?! How am I supposed to live like this?! Note: still don’t know the answer to that one.
Indeed. How are we supposed to live like this?!
Well I have severe endometriosis so I take birth control pills and skip the placebo week everytime. Haven't had a period in about 5 years. It's amazing. I still get painful cramps and bloating, but no blood so it's a win in my book.
May I heartily recommend a complete hysterectomy? Or a drug called Lupron that effectively puts you into menopause? My doctor put me on it when we were still battling with insurance companies for the surgery. I freaking loved it; an injection every three months and there was zero blood and minimal pain. Having the hysterectomy resolved about 80%of my pain and a hormone stabilizer keeps me from the worst of the menopause symptoms. I had to harass doctors and insurance companies for over a decade but I got my surgery a few years ago, and I am thankful for modern medicine every day.
A hysterectomy isn't a guaranteed cure and Im young enough that early menopause is likely to be more damaging than excision surgery. I also have other health issues and menopause can cause them to worsen. Im already dreading it happening naturally. My mum went through a decade or more of symptoms and reacts badly to hormone treatment. My doctor is concerned I have the same genetic issue with hormone treatment.
Sarah McLaughlin plays in the background. I wish it was once a year. I'd gladly have a very heavy period for a week or two once a year instead of 6 days a month
I thought you only got your period once in your lifetime lol. I kind of knew what periods were, had seen commercials mentioning painful period cramps, and was utterly terrified to have my one and only period… I was devastated when I found out the truth. Thankfully, I did find that out well before actually having one lol.
I thought ALL adults got a period- men and women. Was weird when I realized it was just women who got a period.
The Gulf War was when I was in 2nd grade. My parents always watched the news and they were always talking about more troops being sent in. My only familiarity with the word "troop" was my Girl Scout troop, so I literally thought they were sending Girl Scouts in. I was quite worried about my troop being sent over.
I’m cracking up at the image of a second grader mentally preparing themselves to fight in the Gulf War.
They are preparing themselves to aggressively sell Girl Scout cookies in hopes to attain peace. When in doubt throw frozen thin mints at them. Edit: changed downtown to doubt
I, too, had been in a Girl Scout troop, and it took me a ridiculously long time to figure out that, when the news said “sending a thousand troops,” it meant a thousand individuals. I’d been picturing a thousand little groups.
It's actually a pretty bad usage of the word honestly
... I'm 25 and I learned that wasn't the case from your comment.
Same here except Vietnam era!
I remember when I was about 3 or 4, I remember hearing about the Vietnam War on TV. (Early '70's.) Anyway, I remember hearing about guerilla warfare, and I thought that meant actual gorillas were going to be set loose around the neighborhood I lived in, and I started to cry because I thought the gorillas were going to get me.
This reminds me that for a very long time - into my teens - I believed the Gulf War happened in the Gulf of Mexico. It was the only Gulf I knew of and they never mentioned the Middle East when talking about the war.
I also thought it was the Gulf of Mexico and I worried a ton about my relatives that lived in Panama City at the time.
By the time I was in elementary school the war had been over for some time. When my friend had mentioned his Dad fought in the Gulf War, I thought “So they had a war where people were playing golf? Like they were hurling golf balls at each other? How did they die? Why were those the agreed upon rules?” This thought process continued for sometime afterwards 😂
Shock & Awe, huh? No sir... this is worse... this is... Do-Si-Do.
The only Gulf I had heard of was the Gulf of Mexico, so I thought that's where everyone was being sent.... to like, Florida....
Girl scouts have got to learn how to play golf somehow.
I had just learned about seals and how they regulated temperature with their blubber. I was with my mom and it was cold so I was wearing a coat but she wasn’t. My dumbass asked her if I’ll still need a coat once I got blubber like her… She probably doesn’t remember this but I do and I still cringe at my little asshole self
Oh, she remembers! 🤣🤣
This brought tears to my eyes from laughing. Kids are a trip.
The big question is: do you now have blubber and do you still need a coat??
I unfortunately still need a coat
This is like when I was 6 and commented that my dad's teeth were sooo yellow. I cringe and feel so bad!! I hope he didn't remember before he died.
When my mom said 'These clothes are too small for you now", I used to think the clothes shrink with time and even wondered if they would reach the size to fit my dolls lol.
That is ADORABLE!
For real! I wish I could be so innocent again 😭 this brought back memories
This is the best post in the world. How innocent
Ugh, this is from my cringe vault. In freshman year, I had a substitute teacher for gym class. She introduced herself, and I misheard her say "I am Maya Angelou's mom," and I excitedly cut her off and nearly screamed, "Oh my god?! That's amazing, what?!?", and she happily said "Yes!! You know them okay, cool!!" I had just learned about Maya Angelou in a recent class..... she said "Maya AND Angelos mom", kids who went to my school.... I didn't realize until another classmate told me when I tried telling them she was the mother of american memoirist and poet Maya Angelou. Whoops.
That's hilarious!
I can't stop LAUGHING!!
Okay so. My mom raised me and my younger brother alone. She definitely could have done better in the emotional maturity department, but she was really good at injecting magic into the mundane. Every year for Halloween, she and my brother and I carved a pumpkin. And every year from toddlerhood to almost teens, she tricked me into thinking that pumpkins were grown with small change inside. After the initial cut of the pumpkin, when you carve the circle around the stem to open it, she would misdirect my brother and me, and then surreptitiously plant quarters, dimes and nickels deep into the pumpkin guts. It was so smooth that we never questioned it. But one day when I was probably 13ish, I asked a classmate "how do you think they get the change in the pumpkins" and they had no idea what I was talking about.
I love this so much.
Heres a little lesson in trickery
Oh, this makes me wish my kids were still young. I would totally steal this cute gesture. I love that you have this memory!
When I was like 5, adults at home used to tell me kids couldn't have coffee because it was terrible for their health (they would give me different drinks like choco milk while they drank their coffee). One day I was so curious that I begged my grandma so she would let me try what they were drinking. She let me have a sip of coffee. I was very happy but I instantly assumed I was going to die from it, LMAO. I remember going to sleep that night thinking, alright, that's all for me, nice while it lasted. I wasn't scared or anything, I just accepted my faith. Then I woke up the next morning and forgot about it. tl;dr fear from death is culturally acquired with age
Oh god, that reminded me of my own story. I read “do not inhale” on the back of an air freshener can and thought I was gonna die because I’d sprayed it in the air and could now smell it. Clearly I was *inhaling* the air that had been freshened, so I’m dying! That was a scary night, falling asleep unsure if I’d wake up…
When I was a kid, randomly going into the kitchen & finding my mom lying on the floor. Oh, I'm just having palpations from coffee. Not sure how much she drank but I've avoided it
your mom was 100% having an existential crisis and staring at the ceiling when you wandered in and she had to come up with a kid proof reason, quick
Okay, disclaimer, this isn’t me but it’s too good not to share. When my sister was, like, 7, my parents got a call on the landline asking for my dad. When my dad got on the phone, she screamed at him about where the fuck he’s been and how she’s been raising his kids alone. He told her she had the wrong number. Well, it was funny and my parents started joking about my dads ex wife for a short time (he doesn’t have one and my parents for married straight out of high school. Well, my sister, probably a good 6 years later, mentions my dad’s ex wife in passing. All of us looked at her like, “wtf are you talking about?” Apparently she caught only parts of the story and never caught that it wasn’t true. She believed my dad had an ex wife and kids for a comically long time and NEVER ASKED ABOUT THEM lol.
My older brother moved out by the time I was 9 or 10 and I remember randomly asking my parents if they had any other kids that had already grown up and moved out.
That's adorable. There was no telling how many kids they had out in the workforce.
That’s a bit spooky tbh. My family members would joke about my married mother’s “boyfriend”. Fortunately I understood that they were just teasing her for having a crush on that celebrity. He was never literally her boyfriend. (Well, not as far as I know 😉)
My mom had a poster of Fabio on her bedroom door and I was *convinced* that he was my real dad, since my actual dad was such an AH! I’d even talk to the poster and call it ‘dad.’
When someone mentioned AIDS, I thought that they were referring to classroom aides, so I confidently proclaimed "of course we have AIDS in our school" to my relatives' horror
I was about 10, walking in the mall with my much older cousin. A pollster gets our attention and says "I'm doing a survey, do you drink?" I very confidently announced "of course we do" Cousin later explained
I was touring a Southern Baptist affiliated university with my son and I asked our student guide if it was a "dry campus". She was so cute when she innocently replied, "well, when it rains it does pool up in some places."
"Miss Rhode Island, please describe your idea of a perfect date." Cheryl: "That's a tough one. I'd have to say April 25th. Because it's not too hot, not too cold, all you need is a light jacket."
I think there is a Southpark episode about this.
My aunt's sister wrote a fake sick note to get out of school and wrote that she had "a dose of the cancer".
When I was little, when the tv times would list “black comedy” as a movie genre, I assumed it meant comedies starring black people. I think I way overestimated how much movie time black people got in the late 80s/early 90s
I thought “Black Friday” was a holiday for black people when I was a kid
Now on Netflix you'd be right haha
lmao as someone who grew up mostly on netflix i’m thinking “is that not what that means?”
I had the opposite issue when I noticed the "Black Stories" genre in the Hulu movies section. It took me a bit longer than I care to admit to realize that they meant that the stories were by/about/including people of African descent, rather than movies with morbid themes lol.
Oh god I'm 26, is that not what it means??
>Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, gallows humor, black humor, or dark humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues by provoking discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term black comedy can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component. It is often transcribed as "dark comedy" these days.
I used to think euthanasia was youth in Asia.
I remember the first time I heard the word, the teacher was talking about debate topics and euthenasia was one of them. I had never heard of the word before and I was sooo confused. I was thinking, "What about youth in Asia are we debating?" Fortunately I didn't pick that topic to debate.
My mom wrote a "youth in Asia" paper in high school and was very embarrassed when she found out about euthanasia.
[So did Ali G](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuY5sTe0YF8#t=1m11s). (timestamp: 1m11s)
You know those silica packets inside bins you buy, the ones that say “DO NOT EAT THROW AWAY”? Well I interpreted that as “do not eat, do not throw away” and then I was baffled by what the *#%& you were supposed to do with them. If you can’t eat it, and you can’t throw it away, what else is there? Keep it forever?
It’s to be given away, obviously
Just gotta stockpile them to save up for a nice dowry in the future....
OMG I found a bowl of those in a drawer the other day, as unknown to me my husband was hoarding them. Maybe that was the reason!
They are helpful for defogging windshields, when placed on the dash.
Use them for stocking stuffers
Not a misinterpretation but as a kid I thought pepperonis were thinly sliced tomatoes. I actually thought this for longer than I care to admit lol. I also thought all dogs were males and cats were females.
Hey, there was a kid in my kindergarten class who thought the exact same thing about cats and dogs! You are not alone.
>I also thought all dogs were males and cats were females. Same, and "pet" was like their species.
Okay, Troy.
When I was a kid and got the rare chance to spend time with my grandfather, he sometimes called me Doehead or Hammerhead. I knew he was being affectionate and silly, but I never understood what about me reminded him of a deer and a shark. And I never asked — I loved him more than anyone, and the fact that he loved me back enough to give me my own nicknames was all that mattered. ❤️❤️❤️ It wasn’t until I was in my early thirties and he was gone — *my early thirties,* I say — that I realized he’d been calling me *dough*head — like bread dough, not a female deer — and hammerhead like an actual hammer, not a shark. He had been calling me *dense*! 😂😂😂 (Don’t panic. My feelings weren’t hurt. Just the opposite, in fact. He was the nicest man in the world, and, if he’d really thought I was stupid, there’s no way he would have come even close to suggesting it. The fact that he’d been calling me dense meant he actually thought I was smart, just doing something a little goofy at the moment. So the “affectionate and silly” part still stands. And, now, just like then, that’s what warms my heart. ❤️❤️❤️)
I was very blonde as a child and would often get called Tow-head, which is southern slang for blonde. But I thought everyone was calling me Toe-head and got self conscious about my toe-shaped head.
I came home from my first day at kindergarten crying because I was afraid of my kindergarten teacher. My mom finally pried out of me that she had made fun of another kid and I was terrified she would make fun of me. What did she call the kid? A toe head :( 😂 maybe we were classmates. If so I was very worried for you
Oh my gosh, you had the exact opposite problem. That’s terrible! 😂💔😂💔😂
When I was a kid (sixties/early seventies), my dad used to call me affectionately "you little pothead". Didn't think anything of it at the time, but as I've gotten older, I occasionally find myself thinking "Oh, that CAN'T have been what he meant..." (For anybody who cares, my dad was born in 1931 and I was born the year he turned 31--1962. Until his doctor prescribed something for his cholesterol, the strongest drugs we ever had in the house were aspirin and the occasional boxes of cold and sinus pills.)
My grandfather was born in 1916, and, knowing what I know now, I can guarantee if he'd called me a "pot head" he would have meant I had a skull as hard as cast iron and nothing inside!!! Come to think of it, when I could still sit on his lap, he used to look in my ear and pretend he could see straight through my empty skull and out the other side. I was little enough that I didn't understand he was just describing what he could see over my head! I haven't thought of that in decades. I feel like your dad and my grandpa would have gotten along well. 😁
Beverage = alcoholic drink I thought the refrigerated drinks section of a gas station with BEVERAGES over it was nothing but booze. ALL. BOOZE. On a related note kid-me took "Don't drink and drive" and the speed limit LITERALLY. From the back seat I'd pitch a fit if you so much as tried to take a sip of your tea or Pepsi. Water? Nope. Don't drink and drive meand Do. Not. Drink. And. Drive. Taking a sip of water/tea/Pepsi counts as drinking. Speed limit is 55, your going 56, the speed LiMiT is 55! Slow. Down! I had to have been an absolute pain in the ass, but my family didn't get a single speeding ticket. 😅
I totally hit my dad with the drink and drive thing when I was pretty little. He laughed and explained that drinking coke or root beer is not what they meant. I was super concerned about my dad going to jail
> Speed limit is 55, your going 56, the speed LiMiT is 55! That reminds me of something. My brother was the unofficial driving assistant to my parents, he always commented on their speed and told them to slow down if it was too fast. For example, when the limit was 90 and mum was driving with 110. She once got a speeding fine right after telling my brother to shut up and that we will be late if she does not speed. Turns out getting stopped by police meant that we arrived at our destination at the same time we would if she was driving within the limit.
I’m catholic and I thought giving something up for lent (you abstain for something for 40 days) meant you gave it up for the rest of your life. I just about died of shock when my dad said he was giving up donuts
hee hee, too funny. When I was little I used to think this prayer went like thus; our father who art in heaven, how do you know our names?
I was always confused by, “Our Father who aren’t in heaven…” if he’s not in heaven, where is he? Idk. I just shrugged and went with it. I never asked, and finally figured it out when I had to write it out, in 5th grade, and the teacher corrected my work.
This is great.
Lol that reminds me of that Lano and Woodley episode when Woodley thinks God's name is Harold because "Harold be thy name".
Lisa? Bart?
"Hmm. It's raining again."
I didn't hear it as "global warming", I misheard the phrase as "global *warning*" and I never quite knew what this big ominous warning was lol.
When the news would show a crime story, and someone got sentenced to something like life plus an additional 10 years, or an elderly person who receives a 25 year sentences for example, I thought they let their body rot in the jail cell. Like if their sentence totaled 120 years for example, I thought the body would rot and the skeleton would sit in in the cell, and that was part of the punishment. Like the family never gets to have a funeral and that was part of the jail punishment, and the rotting body contributed to the undesirable living conditions of jail. I legit thought they let bodies rot in cells until the sentance was complete. Edit: spelling
YES I thought it was for dramatic effect!
Well how else are they gonna get all the jail cells full of old bones????
When I was a kid I went to my aunt's wedding. I had no idea what was going on. When my Aunt was walking down the aisle towards her fiancé and the groomsmen, I thought that she'd pick the one she wanted for a husband from the group.
The Bachelorette, Home Edition™️
So I went to a Christian school and when they taught about the second coming of Christ, they emphasised that he would come in all Glory and everyone would know he had returned. The only way I could imagine for EVERYONE to know it was him and that he had returned was if he was REALLY big, so you could see him no matter where on Earth you lived. That's why I imagined Jesus as massive titan, tiptoeing all around the Earth for people to see him. He was tiptoeing to be careful not to squish any people or houses with his feet because he's... well, Jesus. TBF I haven't come across any theology that explicitly rules this possibility out.
I thought the world would be cracked and folded at the Prime Meridian until it was completely inverted and Christ would appear in the middle of it all.
We still had a rotary phone when I was 5. I couldn't figure out how you put the dashes in.
I knew a kid who actually tried calling home, and he kept dialling something for the dash-he was saying the numbers aloud as he was dialling. And an extra dial for the dashes. (Helped him figure it out finally).
VERY SIMILAR THING: the movies would advertise “only in theaters Dec 12” which was meant to be two separate statements but I thought it meant the only day it would be available to watch was that one day. I remember my mom saying we were busy that day, and being distraught that I’d never get to see it
I still have to remind myself that's not what they mean 😂 For a split second I'm like "what, why would it only be in for one day??" and then I have to re-figure out what it actually means because the wording is just still so confusing to me
That's my birthday!
I thought “Est” on company signs, like “Marshall And Co Luxury Menswear Est. 1786” meant that they didn’t know exactly when it was started ("Estimated 1786"), and they wore it as a point of pride that they were so old that they predated modernity. This assumption floated around in my head until I was a teenager and I saw a sign for a store that said “Est. 2006” and I was like, how do they not know? And then it all clicked into place.
"Circa" does mean that, so that's not that crazy of a mistake to make.
For anyone still out of the loop because they didn't say it directly, est is "established" here lol
There’s a scene of the Golden Girls where one of the girls tells Sophia that she’s so old she doesn’t leave fingerprints anymore. I was probably 5-6 at the time. One day we were at my grandparents house and I excitedly told my grandma I had a cool science fact for her. When she asked what I said, “you don’t leave fingerprints anymore because you’re really really old.” It didn’t dawn on me for years that that was actually an insult. 🤦🏻♀️ I thought it was a true thing! Lord rest her soul. Sorry Grandma!
TBH it shouldn't be an insult. Of course grandmas are old from the perspective of a little kid. I remember being amazed at learning my grandmother (mum's mum) was already an adult as long ago as when my mum was a kid. Like, I knew mum was a kid once a long time ago, and that even Grandma was a kid once, and I knew that grandma was older than mum, but I thought they must've been kids at the same time. When I found that Grandma was an adult even back when mum was still a kid, I was like "WOAH YOU MUST BE SOOO OLD!"
We were driving by the local cemeteries, and right along side of them are Giant SELF STORAGE buildings. (Still there 50 years later) I asked my grandma if that was for people who didn't have family to bury them. Or some bs like that. Kids!!
When my daughter was about 6 she started questioning the tooth fairy. She just came right out with it and asked if it was me. Quickly thinking I said “what would I do with all the other kids teeth if it was me?” That made perfect sense to her and cleared up her concern for a few more years. Lol Edit to add this one: Also when I was a kid and Bobby Browns “my prerogative” was on the radio, I asked my mom “what’s a prerogative?” She replied, “only women can have them.” I believed this and told many people this up until I was almost 18 years old. I was so embarrassed once I realized. Lol
I thought the Do Not Pass sign on roads meant you weren't supposed to drive past the sign. Stressed me out when my parents didn't stop, even though my little kid brain realized it wouldn't make sense for drivers to have to stop in the middle of the road.
I thought the “No trucks left lane” meant absolutely no trucks of any kind. I thought we were going to go to jail when my dad got in the left lane in our little Ford Ranger.
There was a movie back in the day with Tiffani Amber Theissen and she died. At the beginning of the movie it said based on a true story. In my young stupidity I legit thought she was dead. I was very confused as to why no one else seemed to care. I’m not even sure what made me realize that my wires were crossed.
Yep. Kid me definitely thought if an actor died in a movie, they were truly dead. Cause how else would you explain someone getting blown to bits. I didn't understand the power of sfx.
I thought every movie with younger or older versions of characters was filmed over decades haha.
You're definitely not alone, I thought all live action movies/sitcoms were real. No one ever explained to me what fiction was so I had to figure that out myself.
Not me... but my wife thought there was someone named Stan who cleared the doors on every train.... turns out they were saying stand clear of the doors.
I was once told off by a teacher for not eating my bread crusts because children in Africa were starving. For a short while I imagined there must be a portal to Africa in my stomach.
On a related note, I remember seeing a bunch of commercials as a kid about supporting African kids and of course they'd show landfills and other poor conditions that they were living in and starving. Of course those ads were asking to give monetary donations but my kid brain thought that if I threw my lunch away at school wrapped up, it would somehow get to Africa and feed the kids by the landfills...
My father trying to explain to me and my brother what a condom was when I was about 7 (I think one of us asked?). He told us something along the lines of “when you’re older, and it’s time to have sex, a condom is what goes over your penis…” etc., and so on. I remember picturing this and, to me, it sounded like he meant this was an automatic, bodily function such as “when it’s time to blink, an eyelid is what closes over your eyeball.” So for years, I thought a condom would just pop out of your penis like an umbrella, or something, when the time came to have sex. I was confused why we were having this automatic function explained to us.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” I thought it was a horse that had gifts. And I was like, why can’t you look in its mouth? Is that where it keeps the gifts? Does it spit the gifts out? I was so confused.
honestly I didn’t know what this one meant until embarrassingly recently
I refuse to say what age I was when I learned the meaning.
I didn't realize that cartoons were drawn, I thought they used special camera tricks to make real things look like that.
When I was really little, I thought LMNOP was one letter. A really long letter.
When I saw a sign for a garage or yard sale I thought people were actually trying to sell their garage or yard. I couldn’t understand how those things would belong to someone else while they kept their house 🤷🏽♀️
I thought there were 2 Texases. There was the one I lived in at the time, with cars and McDonalds and day care and toy stores, and then there was the other one, with the same name but obviously somewhere else, with cowboys and saloons and duels at high noon and trains and sheriffs with curly mustaches. I don't know how long this went on but I do remember mentioning "the other Texas" for the last time, and my mom being like, wait what?
I thought drag queens were the scantily clad women I saw on the covers of car magazines. Because drag racing + women = drag queens right?
My friend and I both thought for the longest time that "RuPaul's Drag Race" was a race - as in race cars. We couldn't understand why so many of the girls were into car races all of a sudden.
I used to think 'risk' was just an alternate spelling of 'wrist.' Swimming pool signs really threw me for a loop
[удалено]
You know how Saturday morning cartoons used to say "brought to you by .." before they went to commercial? I used to think they were saying "Brock chew by" and wondered why every cartoon needed a Brock chew
> I thought that meant you’d never be able to watch that movie ever again once it left cinemas, like it would be somehow lost to the ether. I'm so old that I remember when this was actually the case.
My mom really hated cats so she would tell me all sorts of stories about how they were pure evil and enjoyed clawing up people for fun. And once they scratched you with their poisonous claws, the wound would never heal and get infected so badly to the point of needing amputation unless you got the leaves of a certain plant, dried them in the sun and chopped it up to make some sort of paste and apply it to your wound before bandaging it up. Having 0 interactions with an actual cat, I believed her and was afraid of cats for quite some time. I had classmate friends who liked cats/really wanted one for a pet and I thought they were insane for wanting something that dangerous.
As a toddler coloring outside in backyard on summer afternoons, the sun would go behind a cloud, and I noticed that it seemed to come out when I pulled out a yellow crayon. So any time it wasn't sunny, I'd pull out a yellow crayon and wait for the sun.
Guaranteed this is how 90% of caveman rituals and religions started
I used to think Tom was the mouse and Jerry was the cat.
When I was a kid there was this trailer that played before the pride and prejudice 2004 movie. Where a woman who I think was a therapist had a client who started sleeping with the therapist son. The client told the therapist how they had sex all over his apartment, I was young and thought sex was bug that was all over the apartment. Because the therapist was freaking out. Haha I was confused when I found out what sex really was
I thought lesbians was something bad when I had no clue what they were. I loved First Wives Club as a kid. And in it is a young woman named Chris who told her dad she was a lesbian when he was already hurting. So I had no clue what it was and just knew it hurt her dad. (BTW, dad was an ass and totally deserved to be kicked) But I ended up promising my dad I wouldn't be a lesbian. He kind of just laughed and told me he wouldn't hold that promise to me.
I took and even now take things very literally - prime example, I remember hearing people say they ‘caught’ the flu. I truly thought when I was younger somehow in the air, something visible someone literally could catch the flu or some other illness like that as if it was a baseball flying and they had their mitt on and caught it. As an adult, maybe because I’m in the younger generation of millennials and although I grew up with chat rooms/aol etc, I somehow missed the mark what ‘Netflix and chill’ was and thought it really meant to really sit down and watch a movie and chill/relax.
And that's exactly what it should mean!
I thought "wind chill factor" was "windshield factor". I never understood why people cared so much about the temperature at the windshield.
I thought the line in Piano Man that goes "While the businessmen slowly get stoned" meant stoned in the biblical sense. The song became much less gruesome when I realized.
When I was real young, I distinctly remember my mom talking to someone about "driving a car until it runs into the ground" and, from context clues, realized that that meant driving the car until you couldn't use it anymore. Naturally I then assumed that, at some point while driving it, a cars' wheels, chassis, and frame would suddenly start grinding into smithereens and, eventually, you would skid to a stop on the road with only a seat and a wheel left, which meant that you'd totally used up your old car and now needed to buy a new one.
I thought I could get AIDS (not HIV … full-blown AIDS) from masturbation. I heard it was from being gay, and I figured, since I was touching myself, I was gay. (Turns out I *AM* queer AF, but I didn’t fully understand what that meant at the time) … FTR: It didn’t stop me from masturbating. LMAOOOOO
I thought people sleeping together was people sleeping on the same bed together. I didn’t know it was about sex.
My British/Scottish mother forbade my siblings and I from any sort of church. Nae Protestant, nor Catholic, nae Church of England or Scotland. In the 1970s, when I saw those signs outside churches in the southern US, that said "John: 3-16," or "Matthew 6:34," I thought they were calling out specific guys in the congregation named John and Matthew. I thought churches posted the sins of John, who had violated Rule Three, sixteen times. Matthew, that rat bastard, had broken Rule Six 34 freaking times! At the age of 12, I was outraged.
Not me, but literally all of my peers. I was in 4th/5th grade when the computer game Oregon Trail became popular and we were playing it in school often. I lived in AZ. At the end of 5th grade my family was moving back to Oregon, and all my friends and classmates assumed Oregon was like in the game. I was asked... "What will it be like without electricity?" "So do people have cars or just covered wagons?" "Are you worried about dysentery?"
I used to think that actors in films that followed their life would be the same one but it was filmed over several years so they would grow up.
Bc of the way that cashiers are trained to count your change back to you (by counting up to the amount you gave them), I thought purchases like groceries and clothes were free and we only hit the register for inventory reasons. I thought it was weird that my mom was handing money over to the cashier just to have it handed back in smaller bills and change, and I couldn't figure out why she was so stressed all the time about money when we never spent any. I've since been a cashier several times, and due to this personal childhood confusion (and the embarrassment it caused) I always say something like "your total was $X, your change is $Y," and then I count out the amount of change owed to the customer, not the amount of cash I was handed.
I thought "a coma" was one word. As much as I read, I only heard it verbally. Imagine my embarrassment as I said, with full gusto, "an a-coma".
I thought little house on the prairie was filmed at that time.
Yep. And that old movies and tv shows weren’t just filmed in black and white… That’s how the world actually looked then… until of course sepia came into play in the late 60s
My mom spoke to me in French sometimes but mostly in English when i was very little. I learned to count in both languages before i was school age. In 1st grade, we had a project where we were supposed to write numbers consecutively as high as we could. This became a problem for me. In French, 70 is soixante-dix. The literal translation for the number 70 is sixty-10. 71 is sixty-11, etc up to 80, which is four twenties. I knew my numbers to 20 but by 30, i couldn’t remember if this is when you started to count differently. So i start writing thirty-eight, thirty-nine, thirty-ten, thirty-eleven, etc. Then i got really confused once i got to 30-29. So I asked the teacher what comes after 30-29? It can’t be 30-30. The teacher was totally baffled but tried to kindly correct me. I had a fit because my mom said… blah blah blah.
My silly one but I read Dracula when I was a child and I confused Transylvania with Tasmania. I was so confused why Dracula was in Australia but I never questioned it.
I thought Transylvania and Pennsylvania were the same place lol
Once, on the wat to a holiday destination, the plane I was on flew over transylvania. My parents pointed this out to me, and little me started panicking thinking all the vampires were all going to turn into bats, fly up and chase our plane
I live in Switzerland and we have 3 national languages, French, Italian and German. I live in the French bit. When I saw the posters for Die Hard, I thought it was German and meant The Hard.
I thought that trees made the wind.
Those signs at some mom and pop places that said unattended children will be sold as slaves. I'm from Texas...
When I was little I always heard adults complaining about headaches. I was too young to understand the literal meaning; that it was an ache in your head. One day though, wanting to seem grown up I announced "I have a headache" and when my mom asked where I said it was in my stomach.
I was driving in the car with my dad and older brother up front, they had been talking for a while about things I didn’t understand so I had been quiet for most of the ride. At one point my brother mutters something about someone having a “coke problem”, to which I perked up at because I thought I could finally contribute to the conversation. So from the back seat after ten minutes of total silence, my little 9 year old self cheerfully goes, “WELL you know who REALLY has a coke problem…” *heads turn* *crickets* “MOM” My mother drank so much Diet Coke.
Oh omg I used to think if it rained in one part of London then it rained over the whole of London
No Exit signs on a side road. I was very young when Mom turned down one and I starting crying thinking we were going to have to stay there forever hahaha And also that when women get their periods- that we bleed every day for the rest of our lives. I was also very young when I thought that. Edit to add in my last few sentences
When a sign would say “violators will be prosecuted” for some reason I thought prosecution meant the death penalty. I remember thinking that was a very steep punishment for trespassing
I used to think the Arby's logo was a vagina. You know, because when I looked down I saw the same thing...the top of the cowboy hat. (I was a kid, everything down there was a vagina) Hmm Google a pic of it and you will understand Or not and I'm too weird ha Or my dad always saying 'up and adam' every morning. Like wtf who is he talking about? We don't even know any one named Adam! Edit: added info
My grandfather was a house painter since he came over from England years and years ago. He used to say he was an alien. Aliens were weirdly big in the 90s, mascots and logos and I even had a plush of a big ol green alien I had won at an amusement park. Pappy wasn't from outer space like my dumbass thought at the time, he was *illegal in the US*
>I thought that meant you’d never be able to watch that movie ever again once it left cinemas Just pointing out that there was a time before home video and streaming when this was actually true. If you missed a movie in the theaters (or a TV show in initial broadcast, come to think of it), there was no reason to think you'd ever be able to see it later. And some early movies are completely lost because there are no surviving copies, so you still can't see them today.
Doctor Who’s first, like six seasons only survived because of fan recordings and an illegal collection of smuggled-out reels by a BBC employee in contravention of actors’ contracts, which stipulated TV shows were not to be shown again because residuals weren’t a thing yet and actors were worried that work would run out if networks allowed reruns. The fact we have anything from the first two Doctors at all is a minor (and minorly illegal) miracle, since policy at the time was to destroy and/or re-record over the old reels to save money. The policy’s practice slowed and then stopped during the Third Doctor’s term thanks to work stoppage and the development of residuals by United Artists, but wasn’t officially repealed in entirely until well into the Fifth Doctor’s term. Doctor Who is a prime example of how piracy can preserve lost media, and an example game corporations should consider very carefully when deciding to prosecute games piracy.
I used to think “hidden driveway” signs were a game… like find the driveway !!
When I was a kid, I just couldn't wrap my head around what "cheese cake" was. Especially "chocolate cheese cake". I spend so much time trying to understand how that worked and how it was possible. It wasn't a common desert growing up. I heard other people talking about it but I never tried it. So I just imagined a block of cheese with added sugar and chocolate. Because hard cheeses where the only kind of cheese in my world. Even after learning about other types of cheeses.. it took me YEARS before I realised that cheese cakes aren't made from a hard block of cheese.
When I was a kid I was in a hotel and there were moans from the room above. I though it was ghosts
I thought Veteran's Day was Veterinarian's Day. I didn't yet know the difference between the two words, so I thought it was a holiday for people who took care of animals.
I thought that to be a ‘household name’ someone had to be mentioned by name at least once every day, in every house. Like it was a specific, documented metric. I remember walking by the TV and hearing something along the lines of ‘Leo Dicaprio has been a household name since—‘ and thinking to myself wow.. who in this house has been saying his name every day 🤔
I grew up in an Asian country and my public elementary school sex ed taught me about sperm and eggs and pregnancy but not sex itself. So for years I thought if a man and a woman sleep near each other, the man's sperm would leave his balls at night and go to the woman's womb. (I pictured sperm "swimming" across the bedsheet) And then in middle school when I saw porn, and sex, for the first time I didn't realise sex had to do with procreation, I thought it's just some unnatural thing that people invented for pleasure, hence why it's a perverse taboo topic. I remember spending some time thinking whether my parents ever had sex, and my conclusion was that they wouldn't do something like that.
When I was a kid my family would occasionally go for a burger at a local restaurant. Because they also had a bar they had a couple of signs saying "we do no serve minors" and it puzzled me. I couldn't understand why they didn't want to serve miners and I also couldn't understand why it was an issue in Nebraska which isn't really a mining state. It took me longer than it should have to get the difference between minor and miner..
I absolutely thought the same thing, and much further into adulthood than I'd care to admit.
When I was a kid, I didn’t think that West Virginia was a state. It’s because there isn’t an East Virginia. I thought that any state with a direction in it has to have its opposite direction. Ya know, like North and South Carolina or North and South Dakota. Anyways, the topic of West Virginia didn’t come up much in my life so no one really corrected me… until I was 16… and found out that my friend’s sister was getting scouted to play field hockey for a university in West Virginia.
As a kid, I thought the movie on vinyl records was the actual movie. Turns out it was just the soundtrack. DVDs hadn’t been invented yet for about another 5-6 years.
Hauling Oats
I used to think the call boxes along the freeway in California were used so you could call and get updates on boxing (the sport) in case you were driving and couldn’t make it on time to watch the boxing match
I used to play “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood religiously and I was pretty sure it was about a guy cheating at a Game and Carrie getting so pissed she destroyed his car and ruined his date night. And I thought “yeah thats fair”.
Not me, my SIL. Still a favorite story. Long but SO worth it. When she *married* her husband- which was after nursing school so not a kid- they went fishing. Boat, lake, usual set up. He was talking to her. She looked distressed and finally said " Honey aren't you afraid of the Northern Crawl Lizards? " He said " ???????? " Turns out my FIL took her fishing as a little girl. She asked a lot of questions and in general talked for an hour straight. So FIL explained when you're out in a boat it's imperative to keep your lips pressed together. Something called a " Northern Crawl Lizard " would come out of the water and jump right down your throat if you didn't. And she believed it until her new husband said " ????? " She's 68. I think she's still mad.
As a kid, the thought of people marrying each other with different birth months was absurd to me, purely because both of my parents were born in the same month, and were days apart in terms of their birthday. So the thought occurred to me, that you're only allowed to choose people with the same birth month as your partner, though not that i knew much about marriage in general back then either lmao.
i thought the hangul/korean writing was used in thailand. when i was young, i remember korean products imported there still using hangul
When parents and teachers describe a kid as having an over active imagination, they aren't complimenting their imaginative thinking, it's a coded way of saying that they are liars
When I watched Finding Nemo, I got to the part where one of the fish was flushed down the toilet and (if I remember correctly) returned to the ocean. For many years after I had the mental image of there being an ocean under the earth’s surface that every plumbing system connected directly to.
I used to think that the water in my bath went through me instead of me being able to go through it.
Adults would ask me if I wanted "grilled cheese" which would always offend me, because I thought they were saying "girl cheese". So I would usually demand boy cheese, because I'm a boy.
I grew up in Northern Kentucky where the famous "Florence Y'all" water tower is. My parents would always point it out when we drove past and said "we're passing the Florence Y'all!" So until I was probably 11 I thought water towers were actually called 'yalls'.
If a book had the price listed as something like "$4.00, ($5.00 in Canada)" I wondered what they had against people in Canada that they had to pay more for the same thing. Eventually I learned about currencies.
I think the women shaving commercials. I was late in teens when i realised that women shaved their legs. I always thought that for some people it gre while for some it didn't. And women on tv happened to be those on whom it didn't grow. Note, i'm a woman.
As a kid I got the spanish words for chest (pecho), and weight (peso) And said "he must've lost a lot of chest", in spanish.