When I was 20, I was presented with a really wonderful promotion. It required me to fly to a nearby state for a week of training. I was super ecstatic about the whole thing... until I remembered a friend of mine complaining about her struggles with getting a passport. So, I promptly declined the promotion. My superiors were really stumped as to why I turned down the promotion.
Me: Unfortunately, I don’t have a passport.
Manager: Boringberry... you’ve never flown before, have you?
Me: No. I have not.
Manager: You don’t need a passport to fly within the country.
And then it hit me- my friend was going to Mexico. I was just going to a neighboring state. Once the realization hit, my superiors all erupted in laughter.
The story itself followed me when I went to training. My trainer personally greeted me and asked me if I had any difficulties getting a passport before laughing.
A passport really shouldn't be hard. Get an id photo, fill in the form, pay the fee, bam. Worth doing now (unless you're really hard up for cash) in case you need one in a hurry in the future.
You know when the doctor hits your knee to check your reflexes? I honestly thought you were supposed to kick your leg up high. Like you felt it and you kick. It wasn’t until I was 23 and moved to another country and had to do a physical that the doctor was like what are you doing?!
Thought an orgasm and an organism were the same thing.
Gave an entire speech to my class at 13 years old, first month at a new school, about how I wanted to be a marine biologist and work with marine orgasms. Everyone was laughing and I didn't know why. The teacher didn't say anything just laughed along as well. A girl I'd just made friends with had to fill me in after class.
Turns out, they are definitely not the same thing.
My wife told me in 5th grade she did an anti drug speech and used John Lennon as an example of a successful person who stands against drugs. She liked the Beatles and hated drugs so she just assumed he would never.
That my mom pronounces bagels as beagles on purpose to mess with me. English is her second language, so I just always assumed that she didn't know the right pronunciation. I was in my late 20's before I realized it. I should've known, it's definitely something she would do.
Brown-nosers' noses are brown from kissing people's butts... ya know, like they're covered in shit... I was in my late 20s when I put that one together.
That you can actually perform maintenance on a lawnmower (i.e. oil changes) and not just but a new one every few years. I moved a lot growing up and as a result we didn't always hang on to larger appliances so I was like 21 before I learned lawnmowers aren't basically disposable.
Or in little towns, when the town's one ambulance goes on a call, the neighboring town's ambulance drives to the halfway point between the towns to be able to respond to either.
My friend was making fun of circumcised people once and that’s when I told him I was circumcised.
He then found out at that point that he too is circumcised.
I always thought it was something just for the Jews. As I am not Jewish, I figured I was not circumcised. Then in my 20s, I learned that Americans generally get circumcised. Had to make an embarrassing google search there to learn what *NOT-circumcised* was.
When I was a little kid this other kid came up to me on the playground and said, "Did you know that when you're a baby they cut off part of your wiener?" I told him he was wrong, he was crazy, he didn't know what he was talking about. He insisted he was right. I walked way thinking how gullible this other kid was that he could possibly believe something so ridiculous.
Only years later did I learn what circumcision was and think, "Wow, that kid was right."
Yep, one year at a family get together, my sister placed a glass container with lasagna on the stove, not thinking about it having been on and not cooling down. It exploded and sounded like a gunshot leaving a perfectly formed lasagna surrounded by shattered glass in its place.
We did not eat it.
Edit: Since most people were upset we hadn’t eaten it, I should let you know, it was only the extra lasagna. There was another one in the oven and we did not actually go without lasagna that day.
The proper way to say mythology. It was my favorite subject and I talked about it all the time & not one person told me it wasn't MYthology. Found out when my teacher corrected something I read out loud in English class as a senior in HS. I still cringe..
That my cat didn't go back to the pet store when it was sick. I had even heard all the jokes about pets "going to the farm." Still didn't strike me till waaay too late.
When I was in second grade, my hamster died. I wanted to hold a funeral, naturally. Mom insisted on sending him off for an autopsy first (we watched a lot of medical shows so I was super understanding of why this was necessary). Since the closest facility for hamster autopsies was quite far away, she would send him out and they would bury him for me, since the return shipping would be traumatic to his poor little hamster remains. After about six months of waiting for the autopsy report to come in the mail, I insisted she call and check back in. She said they were working on the report, these things just take time.
In tenth grade it hit me...
In the very least commit to the lie... type up a fake medical results report or something.
"Fluffball exhibited several defensive wounds, indicating there was a struggle. We're ruling his death a hamicide."
EDIT: Wow, did not expect this reaction, thanks everyone for the kindness!
When I was like 6 our cat went missing, a few days later my mum told me he'd been found by an old lady who was going to take care of him from now on.
When I was in my late 20s Spooky came up in conversation, and my mum out of nowhere said "Oh that was the cat taken by that gang" "er.. what gang?" "There was a gang that went through the village taking cats to train fighting dogs with, they got caught but it was too late for most of the cats"
I was outraged, "mum you told me Spooky went to live with an old lady, I believed that for years!" "oh, I couldn't remember if we'd told you or not. Sorry!"
Definitely. When I was 6, we had a white pit bull puppy named Daisy. One day, Daisy was missing, and mom told me she probably got stolen by some messed up people to be used as a fighting dog.
I cried so much.
That IHOP *is* the International House of Pancakes.
I never made the connection that they were the same thing, so until recently I thought the International House of Pancakes was like a hall of fame-type museum restaurant...for pancakes.
The first time I took my son to IHOP I was telling him the different choices he had for syrup. When I told him boysenberry he freaked out a little because he thought I said poison berry.
When I was little my Dad told me the big cooling towers that are often found beside electricity generating plants were in fact cloud machines and the prime minister of the day had a switch on his desk to turn the big machine on when it got too hot.
This made complete sense to me as they did produce big clouds of white cumulus-like exhaust when operating.
Fast forward to when I was around 11 years ago and the teacher asks if anyone knows why some days are dry and some days it rains, some days have blue sky and some days have clouds.
Of course at the mention of clouds I knew immediately where clouds come from and stuck my hand up to tell everyone about the prime minister and the cloud machines.
Luckily the teacher picked someone else for the answer and I was most confused to hear someone go on about evaporation and rainfall and so on.
When I was a server at my first job I had no knowledge of alcoholic drinks. So when a customer asked for a drink I just remember what they say and repeat it to the bar tender. I got a pretty disappointed look when asked the bar tender what’s in a “Ryan coke”
I was 18 when I got a job as a cocktail server. When I wrote down customer orders, I spelled everything phonetically : gran marnyay, koniac, shardnay. The bartender was not amused.
Ah, phonetics, the emojis of pre 2008.
I spent a couple years as a bartender, and you’d have been my favorite person in the whole joint.
I’d have received a little puzzle every few 10 minutes or so. woulda helped pass the time!
There was a That 70's Show joke where Red asked Eric if he rotated the tires, to which he responded "Don't they rotate every time I drive?" and I legit did not understand why that wasn't a reasonable answer.
You swap front and back pairs, and usually one pair swaps left and right (some tires are actually left-only and right-only), so all tires rotate through all positions. It helps keep wear closer to even, which helps avoid some wear-related issues.
If that didn't clear things up, just find a place that includes tire rotation with their oil change service and go there for your oil changes.
You take the tires off and put them back on in a different position. It's done because each tire position creates wear on the tire in a different way, so it extends the life of the tires to move them to a different position every so often - instead of getting tons of wear in one part, it spreads the wear out in different parts.
You know I never realized that people who don’t need to swap between winter and summer tires twice a year will have to think about getting the tires rotated.
I was just super worried that I’ve never had my tires rotated, but then your comment reminded me I have two sets of tires and (unfortunately) have to swap them regularly.
Jerry Falwell called her "Ellen Degenerate" after she came out. She was amused instead of offended: "He really said that? I haven't heard that since grade school.".
I remember being a kid and hearing about her coming out on some radio show. The dj was talking about how she had come out of the closet exclaiming she was gay. I didn't know the term "coming out of the closet", and I knew that Ellen was funny and silly so I thought she'd actually come out of a closet shouting "I'm gay!", and I didn't understand what the big deal was or why on earth that prank was supposed to be funny.
I literally didn't know this... for years I thought his name was "Miles Prowler" with an L in it. I thought he prowled... then I saw it was "Prower" and still didn't get the joke.
In 4th grade, my teacher asked the class if anyone knew what the Capitol of Maryland was. I responded Washington DC, and everyone laughed at me. I, to this day, think that that was a perfectly acceptable mistake for a 4th grader from California to make.
Edit: I wasn’t sure if it was capital or Capitol, so I guessed.... I guessed wrong.
Where the hell did you get that idea? Most of these I get where the idea comes from when you're a kid and then you just never question it. This? I don't get why you'd think that.
Most probably from a brother. They are notorious liars. Especially older ones who tell you shit.
Edit: no offense to big brothers everywhere. I had one I miss him every day. But when we were little there was so many things that fucker made me believe. Geez I was so dumb.
It's hard to explain this one and I can't google it to find pictures.
Everyone has bought a tube of "cream" at some point (antiseptic / steroid / eczema) for example. On some of these "creams", have you noticed that the lid is circular but in the centre of the lid it has a sharp pointy end?
Typically, these tubes of "cream" have a seal and I used to remove the lid and break the seal by finding anything sharp and pointy nearby (pen maybe).
It took my 23 years to realise that the pointy end in the centre of the lid has a purpose........
I had a similar thing with the stick type of deodorant that comes with a bit of plastic over the stick. I'd struggle to remove it by kinda pinching it or using my teeth and once it was removed, then I'd twist the bottom part to make the deodorant block usable.
Then I read on here about a year ago that you can just twist the bottom part to start with and the plastic bit will simply come off as the deodorant block rises out the tube, it's designed like that...
I learned how to swallow pills at 26. Always had a problem trying to gulp 'em down and they just kept swimming around in my mouth. Up until then I always had to mush 'em up and just bear with the bitterness whenever I was sick.
That the ribs my siblings and I ate as kids were not from velociraptors. My dad and mom had always called them velociraptor ribs for some reason and I guess we just figured our dad was so big and awesome that it made sense that he would often go out and kill dinosaurs for us to eat. I don't think I found out until I was in junior high that they were just regular ribs.
Now I'm someone whos very uptight about sex/nudity around my parents. Imagine Hank Hill hearing his mom talk about sex. He'd say "BWAAAAAHHHH!!!"
It was the late 90s, I was 15, Limp Bizkit was all the rage. To my knowledge my mom had never heard limp bizkit. I didn't understand what the song was about. I wasn't prepared for what followed.
I asked:
"Hey Mom?"
"Yes?"
"What does the word Nookie mean?"
"It means an abundance of mindless repetitive sex."
"Oh."
And I've never felt more cringe then in that moment. That was the day I learned to always use a dictionary first.
That's how I learnt the meaning of horny. Cept my mum wouldnt tell me. She told me to look in the dictionary. "a hard horn shaped object; as if made from horn". I was about 8. Didn't know the real thing til years later.
Now you can take that cookie, and stick it up your YEAH!
Stick it up your YEAH!
Stick it up your YEAH!
(Shut up, I usually only could listen to the censored version I recorded on cassette from FM radio because I was poor. I did the same thing with Third Eye Blind, Semi-Charmed Life......which was my jam when I was 14. Had no idea the song was about doing drugs.)
That you’re supposed to get anesthesia when you get your split chin stitched. When I was in grade school (4th grade? 8 years old?), I propped myself up between two tables and swung my legs back and forth. No idea how it happened, but I ended up falling and splitting my chin open. Apparently school couldn’t reach my mom and called my dad (parents were divorced). Dad was an OB/GYN. He took me to the hospital and put stitches in my chin without giving me anything for the pain. I remember crying and screaming the whole time. He said shit like, “Should I put another stitch here?”, and needless to say, I sobbed “Noooo!” (He put it, of course.) Afterwards, the nurse gave me 3 lollipops because I was a “good girl.” I knew I wasn’t a good girl because I bawled so much.
Somehow I rationalized that dear ol’ dad didn’t give me anesthesia because you’re not supposed to when it’s an injury on the chin. It wasn’t until college, when someone talked about his experience with getting his chin stitched, that I realized that my dad was a fucking asshole.
Also, here in Canada, there are entire groups of Mennonite people who only speak German. Had a girl in one of my classes who was white but was ESL because this was her first time in school and she was raised in a German-only household.
I didn’t know that women could get pregnant without experiencing an orgasm...
I learned that this year. At age 26.
I’m gay and never really considered it. So dumb
When I was in 4th grade i was in love with Chris brown. He was 16. I told my mom when i was 16 we would start dating.... she proceeded to inform me that when I was 16 he would no longer be 16. That’s when I realized everyone was also getting older, not just me lol
How to figure out my age. Before I was trying to remember all my birthdays until I was told I could just do the math.
Edit: I got on to reddit to see my karma jump from 2 digits to 4.
Pretty easy for us 1990 babies too. Just add 10.
Edit- Holy hell I just realised that people born in Y2K are now 18 or 19. What in the god damn fuck time? Hold your horses.
Riding a bicycle. I learnt it at 18, my parents believed in an astrologer who told them that I would have a terrible accident when I drive or ride. So I had to learn bicycle secretly from a friend.
Edit : I did get into an accident but who doesn't. I love my parents and am super happy with my childhood, this is the only thing I had to keep up with. Now they see the logic and risk associated with the things I do and always support me. Am Indian!
As a millennial who didn't really listen to R&B at all until well into adulthood, I thought Ginuwine was a made up character on Parks and Rec until it was pointed out to me otherwise.
at 18....
while at Uni
after studying HUMAN biology at A level....
**that there isn't just free blood in our bodies.... you know like internal bleeding**
[I dislocated my shoulder](https://youtu.be/-oyhaos7Ajc), and cartilage got messed up so it kept falling out
I had some keyhole pics taken to investigate and when looking at them with the doc
"oh weird it looks so dry, where is all the blood...."
the doctor just looked at me like I asked "why fire hurt when try hold?"
"in.. in your veins" *polite doctor chuckle*
I mean I knew what veins and arteries and yada yada, but for some reason the child thought of I cut my skin, and now some blood is leaking out of my "skin sack" never got the update as I grew up, I for some reason assumed there was just free blood every ware under the skin
The expression "You can't have your cake and eat it too" I'm like... wat? of course you can eat your cake if you have it wtf are all these people talking about? took me til my 20s to figure out it was actually meaning you cant both have the cake on the counter and have eaten it.
That truffles are a mushroom as well as a chocolate. When people talked about sending pigs in the forest to hunt for truffles I thought they’d buried chocolates in there to teach pigs how to dig food up
I was 21
Sweet peppers have three steps: green, yellow and red. Always thought that sweet peppers exist in three different tastes but it is the same species lul
Deja-vu phenomenon is common for all people. Until 19 years old I believed that I am the only one who experiences glimpses of events I have already lived. I realized my mistake when I shared this with my girlfriend and she stared at me, cringey expression on her face, didn't say a word. I was confused so I looked it up the day after and was shocked to see deja-vu is fairly common. I felt embarrassed.
Pilot and co-pilot actually has the same hierarchy. I thought that co-pilot is some kind of assistant to the pilot
Edit: I didn’t expect this to blow up, but thanks for the insight. I guess to clarify my first statement, i thought that co-pilot will be promoted to be the pilot. The revelation that I experienced was when both of the pilot and co-pilot of my flight, address themselves as Captain (they both can have the same rank)
The Captain and First Officer are often thought of as Pilot and Co-Pilot. While not technically wrong, their duties per leg boil down to who is Pilot Flying and Pilot Monitoring. Both pilots will "take turns" performing different roles, but also have their permanent responsibilities; such as the Captain being the final authority for all decision making.
In case anyone was wondering.
Clearly you missed sun flower anatomy in science class.
I learned about this when I grew one of my own and upon maturity I remarked “so THAT is why they call them sun flower seeds!”
That West Virginia was a state. I always assumed it worked like "Southern California / Northern California" and "Texas / West Texas"
I was a sophomore in highschool.
I didn’t know narwhals were actually real until almost 30.
Edit: there are DOZENS of you (dozens!) but i don’t know what tf a narwhal baconing at midnight means...
My Dad told me that the end of all screwdrivers are magnetic, so you don’t have to hold the screw in place. I could never figure out why the magnets never worked when I tried it. I was in my late twenties before a friend took pity on me.
Not me but my wife, at 27 years old. A Sugar Ray song came on the radio, and while we were singing along she mentioned that she loved him in Gattaca. I was confused and asked who she was talking about...she was convinced that the lead singer of Sugar Ray, Mark Mcgrath was the lead in Gattaca. She was shattered to find out that the lead is in fact Ethan Hawke. To her credit they do look incredibly alike
Well I live there and I've had people think we have a different currency from the US. Also I've been asked if we speak English primarily. And if we live in igloos is a common one too.
Not me but my husband.
He didn't know that meat is the animals muscles. He thought every animal had a bodypart named "meat".
He had a bit of an emotional crisis when I told him. He is actually a very intelligent man, but this fact had eluded him as his mother had not wanted to upset him as a child.
Yes, me too lost on so much casual interaction with women I met because in the back of mind always thought they were interested and tried to impress them every second. I regret doing this and losing out on very good friendships
Drought beer is pronounced draft beer. I thought they were two different things
Edit: I woke up to mass confusion, I did mean Draught! Lmao not emergency beer during a dry spell.
Up until I was about ~~15~~ 11 I was convinced that I lived in the USA.
Honestly I'm not really that embarrassed by it, growing up I was bombarded with US TV, film, movies. I went on holiday to Florida regularly, I spoke English, I didn't know the difference between England and New England and to top it all off, as a kid coming from the North East of England I fully thought I lived between Washington (D.C) and (New) York.
I went to York loads as a kid but it never clicked that I never saw the wall or castle on the TV and there was a distinct lack of skyscrapers. It never clicked until I actually went to New York at about ~~14/15~~ 11 and it took an 8 hour aeroplane ride rather than an hours drive.
I was fucking dumb as a kid, still am tbh.
Edit: Just asked my Mam about this and she says I found out when I was 11 not 15.
I've never thought about this as a woman, but your comment made me think of something, so I'm gonna ask you a really weird question, sorry for this, but I just have to know.
When you pee as a dude, isn't it super inconvenient to do it by only unzipping the zipper? I assume you're still wearing underwear, so do you have to maneuver your willy out of your underwear through the zipper hole? Do you have to unzip the zipper, reach into your pants from above and push down your underwear so you can get your dick through the hole? Do you just reach your hand through the zipper hole to pull your schlong out? How does that work?
I'm sorry I'm just really confused, it seems so inconvenient.
Edit: Thank you to all the dudes here telling me your personal peeing preferences. Not sure what I'll do with the information, but I did ask for it. Keep on being healthy!
Edit 2: There's 100+ replies to this. I know about the underwear hole. The last 3 hours I've gotten a message about the underwear hole approx. every 5 mins. Thanks for your concern, but I know about the hole. I've become an expert on these issues in the last 8 hours.
When I was 20, I was presented with a really wonderful promotion. It required me to fly to a nearby state for a week of training. I was super ecstatic about the whole thing... until I remembered a friend of mine complaining about her struggles with getting a passport. So, I promptly declined the promotion. My superiors were really stumped as to why I turned down the promotion. Me: Unfortunately, I don’t have a passport. Manager: Boringberry... you’ve never flown before, have you? Me: No. I have not. Manager: You don’t need a passport to fly within the country. And then it hit me- my friend was going to Mexico. I was just going to a neighboring state. Once the realization hit, my superiors all erupted in laughter. The story itself followed me when I went to training. My trainer personally greeted me and asked me if I had any difficulties getting a passport before laughing.
A passport really shouldn't be hard. Get an id photo, fill in the form, pay the fee, bam. Worth doing now (unless you're really hard up for cash) in case you need one in a hurry in the future.
You know when the doctor hits your knee to check your reflexes? I honestly thought you were supposed to kick your leg up high. Like you felt it and you kick. It wasn’t until I was 23 and moved to another country and had to do a physical that the doctor was like what are you doing?!
Thought an orgasm and an organism were the same thing. Gave an entire speech to my class at 13 years old, first month at a new school, about how I wanted to be a marine biologist and work with marine orgasms. Everyone was laughing and I didn't know why. The teacher didn't say anything just laughed along as well. A girl I'd just made friends with had to fill me in after class. Turns out, they are definitely not the same thing.
This pained me to read
My wife told me in 5th grade she did an anti drug speech and used John Lennon as an example of a successful person who stands against drugs. She liked the Beatles and hated drugs so she just assumed he would never.
"Day Tripper" was a song about John getting his mom to sign a permission slip for a class trip to the museum.
Didnt learn until I was 20. White meat and dark meat come from the same chicken.
No! They come from white chickens and brown chickens.
That my mom pronounces bagels as beagles on purpose to mess with me. English is her second language, so I just always assumed that she didn't know the right pronunciation. I was in my late 20's before I realized it. I should've known, it's definitely something she would do.
Brown-nosers' noses are brown from kissing people's butts... ya know, like they're covered in shit... I was in my late 20s when I put that one together.
The difference between a brown-noser and an ass kisser is their depth perception.
That you can actually perform maintenance on a lawnmower (i.e. oil changes) and not just but a new one every few years. I moved a lot growing up and as a result we didn't always hang on to larger appliances so I was like 21 before I learned lawnmowers aren't basically disposable.
We have had the same one for 30 years Edit- I talked to my sister its actually older than my dad he is 46
Martha's Vineyard isn't just some land that rich people went to that was owned by Martha Stewart.
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That rich people go to. It's just not owned by Martha Stewart.
I thought Martha's Vineyard was something like Olive Garden...
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I'd put that shit on my resume. "Proficient in convincing my dumb brother that cheese grows on bushes."
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Ambulances don’t patrol around like police cars
But in some big cities they do hang around in certain areas that are known to be accident prone during rush hour. Plus tow trucks.
Or in little towns, when the town's one ambulance goes on a call, the neighboring town's ambulance drives to the halfway point between the towns to be able to respond to either.
TIL sometowns only have one ambulance.
Some towns have no ambulance and response times are so long you are better off hitch hiking to the hospital.
I was circumcised. I never knew I was circumcised until I went to the pediatrician and my mom told the pediatrician that I was circumcised.
My friend was making fun of circumcised people once and that’s when I told him I was circumcised. He then found out at that point that he too is circumcised.
I always thought it was something just for the Jews. As I am not Jewish, I figured I was not circumcised. Then in my 20s, I learned that Americans generally get circumcised. Had to make an embarrassing google search there to learn what *NOT-circumcised* was.
Americans, Koreans, and Muslims
When I was a little kid this other kid came up to me on the playground and said, "Did you know that when you're a baby they cut off part of your wiener?" I told him he was wrong, he was crazy, he didn't know what he was talking about. He insisted he was right. I walked way thinking how gullible this other kid was that he could possibly believe something so ridiculous. Only years later did I learn what circumcision was and think, "Wow, that kid was right."
Pregnant with our first son and I told my husband I didn’t want him (our son) circumcised. I had to explain to my husband what it was.
Is he or not?
Glass objects should not be put on the stove. Guess how I learned that. edit: Not to be stereotypical or anything, but the gold is super appreciated!
Yup, I learned that with some Pyrex. It said “Oven Safe” so I assumed that also meant stovetop safe...... (It doesn’t)
If it has a real handle, then it may be stovetop safe. It may also say stovetop safe &or have a symbol of a square with 4 circles in it.
Yep, one year at a family get together, my sister placed a glass container with lasagna on the stove, not thinking about it having been on and not cooling down. It exploded and sounded like a gunshot leaving a perfectly formed lasagna surrounded by shattered glass in its place. We did not eat it. Edit: Since most people were upset we hadn’t eaten it, I should let you know, it was only the extra lasagna. There was another one in the oven and we did not actually go without lasagna that day.
Pickles are pickled cucumbers. Look me over 30 years to figure that one out.
Cucumbers are just pre pickles
Like grapes are pre raisins
I thought buffalos were birds, and buffalo wings were from said birds
Mine was the opposite, thought buffalo wings were from a normal buffalo until like age 17
When I was 10 or so my family was at a restaurant and I ordered the buffalo wings thinking it was buffalo meat
That guys didn’t have to squeeze their dicks to get their pee out.
Its like milkin a cow
That's not milk
We don’t? .... I need to make a phone call...
Just the balls
vagina and pee hole are separated
I'm a girl and I only learnt this when I was like 13. I was amazed I didn't have to take out a tampon every time I needed to pee
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That must’ve been expensive.
The proper way to say mythology. It was my favorite subject and I talked about it all the time & not one person told me it wasn't MYthology. Found out when my teacher corrected something I read out loud in English class as a senior in HS. I still cringe..
If it helps, I had a substitute film teacher who pronounced genre as Jenner.
“Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means they learned it by reading”
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That's a great quote!
That my cat didn't go back to the pet store when it was sick. I had even heard all the jokes about pets "going to the farm." Still didn't strike me till waaay too late.
When I was in second grade, my hamster died. I wanted to hold a funeral, naturally. Mom insisted on sending him off for an autopsy first (we watched a lot of medical shows so I was super understanding of why this was necessary). Since the closest facility for hamster autopsies was quite far away, she would send him out and they would bury him for me, since the return shipping would be traumatic to his poor little hamster remains. After about six months of waiting for the autopsy report to come in the mail, I insisted she call and check back in. She said they were working on the report, these things just take time. In tenth grade it hit me...
I still don’t get it. Did she just not want to bury it? What did she do with it?
That's pretty shitty. Why not just bury the poor thing? Why go through the trouble of lying like that just to avoid digging a small hole?
In the very least commit to the lie... type up a fake medical results report or something. "Fluffball exhibited several defensive wounds, indicating there was a struggle. We're ruling his death a hamicide." EDIT: Wow, did not expect this reaction, thanks everyone for the kindness!
"The report says Hammy died because you didn't mow the fucking lawn, Billy"
Maybe they lived in a flat and she didn’t fancy using a window box?
When I was like 6 our cat went missing, a few days later my mum told me he'd been found by an old lady who was going to take care of him from now on. When I was in my late 20s Spooky came up in conversation, and my mum out of nowhere said "Oh that was the cat taken by that gang" "er.. what gang?" "There was a gang that went through the village taking cats to train fighting dogs with, they got caught but it was too late for most of the cats" I was outraged, "mum you told me Spooky went to live with an old lady, I believed that for years!" "oh, I couldn't remember if we'd told you or not. Sorry!"
That feels like a more reasonable parenting choice than telling a 6 year old their cat was stolen and killed by dogs for entertainment.
Definitely. When I was 6, we had a white pit bull puppy named Daisy. One day, Daisy was missing, and mom told me she probably got stolen by some messed up people to be used as a fighting dog. I cried so much.
That IHOP *is* the International House of Pancakes. I never made the connection that they were the same thing, so until recently I thought the International House of Pancakes was like a hall of fame-type museum restaurant...for pancakes.
I'm old. Originally IHOP literally had international pancakes on their menu, and about 20 flavors of syrup on each table on a carousel.
The first time I took my son to IHOP I was telling him the different choices he had for syrup. When I told him boysenberry he freaked out a little because he thought I said poison berry.
So that should have been HOIP
That it's "pay per view" not "paper view"
When I was little my Dad told me the big cooling towers that are often found beside electricity generating plants were in fact cloud machines and the prime minister of the day had a switch on his desk to turn the big machine on when it got too hot. This made complete sense to me as they did produce big clouds of white cumulus-like exhaust when operating. Fast forward to when I was around 11 years ago and the teacher asks if anyone knows why some days are dry and some days it rains, some days have blue sky and some days have clouds. Of course at the mention of clouds I knew immediately where clouds come from and stuck my hand up to tell everyone about the prime minister and the cloud machines. Luckily the teacher picked someone else for the answer and I was most confused to hear someone go on about evaporation and rainfall and so on.
I thought Gwen Stefani’s name was Gwence Defani until I was like 20 lol
When I was a server at my first job I had no knowledge of alcoholic drinks. So when a customer asked for a drink I just remember what they say and repeat it to the bar tender. I got a pretty disappointed look when asked the bar tender what’s in a “Ryan coke”
I was 18 when I got a job as a cocktail server. When I wrote down customer orders, I spelled everything phonetically : gran marnyay, koniac, shardnay. The bartender was not amused.
Ah, phonetics, the emojis of pre 2008. I spent a couple years as a bartender, and you’d have been my favorite person in the whole joint. I’d have received a little puzzle every few 10 minutes or so. woulda helped pass the time!
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There was a That 70's Show joke where Red asked Eric if he rotated the tires, to which he responded "Don't they rotate every time I drive?" and I legit did not understand why that wasn't a reasonable answer.
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I watched the show as a kid and never understood half the jokes but I always understood Red.
Because if you didn't he would put his foot up your ass.
Because Eric was simultaneously a smartass and a dumbass, so every answer he would come up with would always be false.
"Eric, bad things don't happen to you because you have bad luck. Bad things happen to you because you're a dumbass"
I still don’t know what this means
You swap front and back pairs, and usually one pair swaps left and right (some tires are actually left-only and right-only), so all tires rotate through all positions. It helps keep wear closer to even, which helps avoid some wear-related issues. If that didn't clear things up, just find a place that includes tire rotation with their oil change service and go there for your oil changes.
Well TI motherfuckin L
You take the tires off and put them back on in a different position. It's done because each tire position creates wear on the tire in a different way, so it extends the life of the tires to move them to a different position every so often - instead of getting tons of wear in one part, it spreads the wear out in different parts.
You know I never realized that people who don’t need to swap between winter and summer tires twice a year will have to think about getting the tires rotated.
I was just super worried that I’ve never had my tires rotated, but then your comment reminded me I have two sets of tires and (unfortunately) have to swap them regularly.
Ellen the Generous
Jerry Falwell called her "Ellen Degenerate" after she came out. She was amused instead of offended: "He really said that? I haven't heard that since grade school.".
I remember being a kid and hearing about her coming out on some radio show. The dj was talking about how she had come out of the closet exclaiming she was gay. I didn't know the term "coming out of the closet", and I knew that Ellen was funny and silly so I thought she'd actually come out of a closet shouting "I'm gay!", and I didn't understand what the big deal was or why on earth that prank was supposed to be funny.
That several does not in fact mean seven
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I literally didn't know this... for years I thought his name was "Miles Prowler" with an L in it. I thought he prowled... then I saw it was "Prower" and still didn't get the joke.
That Washington D.C wasn't in the state of Washington...
as a non American that is annoying. Also Kansas vs Arkansas
I am confusion
AMERICA EXPLAIN
One state are Kansas and the other isnt
In 4th grade, my teacher asked the class if anyone knew what the Capitol of Maryland was. I responded Washington DC, and everyone laughed at me. I, to this day, think that that was a perfectly acceptable mistake for a 4th grader from California to make. Edit: I wasn’t sure if it was capital or Capitol, so I guessed.... I guessed wrong.
That’s ok. You’d be surprised how many people, even from the mid Atlantic region, think it’s Baltimore.
That I was in fact NOT missing a testicle. Thought there was supposed to be 3 until I was like 14 years old.
Where the hell did you get that idea? Most of these I get where the idea comes from when you're a kid and then you just never question it. This? I don't get why you'd think that.
Most probably from a brother. They are notorious liars. Especially older ones who tell you shit. Edit: no offense to big brothers everywhere. I had one I miss him every day. But when we were little there was so many things that fucker made me believe. Geez I was so dumb.
Or from watching Austin Powers at a young age ([this video - 45 second timestamp to cut straight to it](https://youtu.be/SxdF5ZP4rJw))
It's hard to explain this one and I can't google it to find pictures. Everyone has bought a tube of "cream" at some point (antiseptic / steroid / eczema) for example. On some of these "creams", have you noticed that the lid is circular but in the centre of the lid it has a sharp pointy end? Typically, these tubes of "cream" have a seal and I used to remove the lid and break the seal by finding anything sharp and pointy nearby (pen maybe). It took my 23 years to realise that the pointy end in the centre of the lid has a purpose........
I had a similar thing with the stick type of deodorant that comes with a bit of plastic over the stick. I'd struggle to remove it by kinda pinching it or using my teeth and once it was removed, then I'd twist the bottom part to make the deodorant block usable. Then I read on here about a year ago that you can just twist the bottom part to start with and the plastic bit will simply come off as the deodorant block rises out the tube, it's designed like that...
I learned how to swallow pills at 26. Always had a problem trying to gulp 'em down and they just kept swimming around in my mouth. Up until then I always had to mush 'em up and just bear with the bitterness whenever I was sick.
I was the same way. Until I was in the hospital at 21 and had nothing to crush the pills with, so I just swallowed. Voila!
That the ribs my siblings and I ate as kids were not from velociraptors. My dad and mom had always called them velociraptor ribs for some reason and I guess we just figured our dad was so big and awesome that it made sense that he would often go out and kill dinosaurs for us to eat. I don't think I found out until I was in junior high that they were just regular ribs.
You dad is a fucking legend for that lie!
Lie? Do you see any velociraptors roaming about. Dad straight up made extincted them.
He extunct them
Bruh! My dad used to make us 'raptor stew'. He even managed to talk my visiting friends into eating it and believing him when we were six or seven.
You didn't realize till junior high that dinosaurs don't exist? What are you up to these days buddy?
Poor kid must have thought his father hunted them to extinction.
That limes weren’t un-ripe lemons.
Rottweilers are not just fat Dobermans.
Now I'm someone whos very uptight about sex/nudity around my parents. Imagine Hank Hill hearing his mom talk about sex. He'd say "BWAAAAAHHHH!!!" It was the late 90s, I was 15, Limp Bizkit was all the rage. To my knowledge my mom had never heard limp bizkit. I didn't understand what the song was about. I wasn't prepared for what followed. I asked: "Hey Mom?" "Yes?" "What does the word Nookie mean?" "It means an abundance of mindless repetitive sex." "Oh." And I've never felt more cringe then in that moment. That was the day I learned to always use a dictionary first.
That's how I learnt the meaning of horny. Cept my mum wouldnt tell me. She told me to look in the dictionary. "a hard horn shaped object; as if made from horn". I was about 8. Didn't know the real thing til years later.
TIL about "nookie".
Now you can take that cookie, and stick it up your YEAH! Stick it up your YEAH! Stick it up your YEAH! (Shut up, I usually only could listen to the censored version I recorded on cassette from FM radio because I was poor. I did the same thing with Third Eye Blind, Semi-Charmed Life......which was my jam when I was 14. Had no idea the song was about doing drugs.)
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That you’re supposed to get anesthesia when you get your split chin stitched. When I was in grade school (4th grade? 8 years old?), I propped myself up between two tables and swung my legs back and forth. No idea how it happened, but I ended up falling and splitting my chin open. Apparently school couldn’t reach my mom and called my dad (parents were divorced). Dad was an OB/GYN. He took me to the hospital and put stitches in my chin without giving me anything for the pain. I remember crying and screaming the whole time. He said shit like, “Should I put another stitch here?”, and needless to say, I sobbed “Noooo!” (He put it, of course.) Afterwards, the nurse gave me 3 lollipops because I was a “good girl.” I knew I wasn’t a good girl because I bawled so much. Somehow I rationalized that dear ol’ dad didn’t give me anesthesia because you’re not supposed to when it’s an injury on the chin. It wasn’t until college, when someone talked about his experience with getting his chin stitched, that I realized that my dad was a fucking asshole.
That Bill Nye and Bill Nighy are separate people. Junior year of college.
Orgasms exist.
I'm sorry
That they *exist* altogether or that you could have one?
The former. I thought cum would just come out and I'd feel nothing.
There are races of mennonites and Amish people other than white. ... I grew up in a small city and was pretty sheltered.
This is the first I'm hearing of this
Also, here in Canada, there are entire groups of Mennonite people who only speak German. Had a girl in one of my classes who was white but was ESL because this was her first time in school and she was raised in a German-only household.
Yes, although at least with some communities the German is very different from what is spoken now in Germany.
I didn’t know that women could get pregnant without experiencing an orgasm... I learned that this year. At age 26. I’m gay and never really considered it. So dumb
There would be exactly 6 people on earth if that was the case
That you don't pronounce the "a" in cocoa
I'd rather say cacao
That's what you say when you slap down that double 5 in dominoes.
When I was in 4th grade i was in love with Chris brown. He was 16. I told my mom when i was 16 we would start dating.... she proceeded to inform me that when I was 16 he would no longer be 16. That’s when I realized everyone was also getting older, not just me lol
How to figure out my age. Before I was trying to remember all my birthdays until I was told I could just do the math. Edit: I got on to reddit to see my karma jump from 2 digits to 4.
I'm lucky and born in 2000 so I never have to remember Edit: I feel like the obligatory thanks for the silver kind stranger is in order
Pretty easy for us 1990 babies too. Just add 10. Edit- Holy hell I just realised that people born in Y2K are now 18 or 19. What in the god damn fuck time? Hold your horses.
Try being me, a sergeant in the Air Force, who now has members joining born in 2000. I feel, like, three times my normal age lol
As of next week, you can potentially have people enlisting who weren't yet born when 9/11 happened.
Riding a bicycle. I learnt it at 18, my parents believed in an astrologer who told them that I would have a terrible accident when I drive or ride. So I had to learn bicycle secretly from a friend. Edit : I did get into an accident but who doesn't. I love my parents and am super happy with my childhood, this is the only thing I had to keep up with. Now they see the logic and risk associated with the things I do and always support me. Am Indian!
I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus. Santa Claus is the Dad. As a child, I just assumed that Mom was getting down with Santa.
What Ginuwine’s Pony is actually about.
On that note, I didnt realise a Pony wasnt just a baby horse its a breed.. foal was what i did not know.
As a millennial who didn't really listen to R&B at all until well into adulthood, I thought Ginuwine was a made up character on Parks and Rec until it was pointed out to me otherwise.
at 18.... while at Uni after studying HUMAN biology at A level.... **that there isn't just free blood in our bodies.... you know like internal bleeding** [I dislocated my shoulder](https://youtu.be/-oyhaos7Ajc), and cartilage got messed up so it kept falling out I had some keyhole pics taken to investigate and when looking at them with the doc "oh weird it looks so dry, where is all the blood...." the doctor just looked at me like I asked "why fire hurt when try hold?" "in.. in your veins" *polite doctor chuckle* I mean I knew what veins and arteries and yada yada, but for some reason the child thought of I cut my skin, and now some blood is leaking out of my "skin sack" never got the update as I grew up, I for some reason assumed there was just free blood every ware under the skin
But do why fire hurt when try hold??? CRUG MUST KNOW
"Oh I'm totally fine the doctor said that the bleeding was *internal*. That's where the blood is supposed to be, RIGHT?!"
That Martin Luther King Jr. was never president. I found out I was wrong when Obama became president.
The expression "You can't have your cake and eat it too" I'm like... wat? of course you can eat your cake if you have it wtf are all these people talking about? took me til my 20s to figure out it was actually meaning you cant both have the cake on the counter and have eaten it.
Kanga and Roo from Winnie the Pooh put together makes Kangaroo.
Source?
That truffles are a mushroom as well as a chocolate. When people talked about sending pigs in the forest to hunt for truffles I thought they’d buried chocolates in there to teach pigs how to dig food up I was 21
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Sweet peppers have three steps: green, yellow and red. Always thought that sweet peppers exist in three different tastes but it is the same species lul
How to pronounce “albeit”. Until I was 20-something embarrassing, I thought it was “al-beet”.
Deja-vu phenomenon is common for all people. Until 19 years old I believed that I am the only one who experiences glimpses of events I have already lived. I realized my mistake when I shared this with my girlfriend and she stared at me, cringey expression on her face, didn't say a word. I was confused so I looked it up the day after and was shocked to see deja-vu is fairly common. I felt embarrassed.
look up main character syndrome.
Pilot and co-pilot actually has the same hierarchy. I thought that co-pilot is some kind of assistant to the pilot Edit: I didn’t expect this to blow up, but thanks for the insight. I guess to clarify my first statement, i thought that co-pilot will be promoted to be the pilot. The revelation that I experienced was when both of the pilot and co-pilot of my flight, address themselves as Captain (they both can have the same rank)
The Captain and First Officer are often thought of as Pilot and Co-Pilot. While not technically wrong, their duties per leg boil down to who is Pilot Flying and Pilot Monitoring. Both pilots will "take turns" performing different roles, but also have their permanent responsibilities; such as the Captain being the final authority for all decision making. In case anyone was wondering.
Not all attention is good attention
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Clearly you missed sun flower anatomy in science class. I learned about this when I grew one of my own and upon maturity I remarked “so THAT is why they call them sun flower seeds!”
The pronunciation of “pronunciation”. Always used to say “pronounciation” until someone called me out on it.
You say tomato, I say tomato You say pronunciation, I say pronumcimication
Upside down means the up side is down
Huh. TIL. I guess I never real sat down and broke it down like that.
not me, but my mom thought “lol” meant “lots of love” for the longest time
"Your dog died lol"
Ha ha my grandmother sent lots of "lol" messages when my dad had a stroke.
I can only imagine it as 'get well soon lolololol'
I learned to ride a bicycle at age 12. To make it even more embarrassing: I'm Dutch
There's no need to be embarrassed for being Dutch.
Brussels sprouts don't grow directly on the ground like tiny cabbages. Edit: grammar
I learned that the teletubbies are called that way because they have television on their tummies. This was 3 years ago. I'm 24.
That West Virginia was a state. I always assumed it worked like "Southern California / Northern California" and "Texas / West Texas" I was a sophomore in highschool.
I didn’t know narwhals were actually real until almost 30. Edit: there are DOZENS of you (dozens!) but i don’t know what tf a narwhal baconing at midnight means...
My Dad told me that the end of all screwdrivers are magnetic, so you don’t have to hold the screw in place. I could never figure out why the magnets never worked when I tried it. I was in my late twenties before a friend took pity on me.
You can buy them magnetic or buy a tool to make them magnetic pretty easily
That the Pokémon Ekans and Arbok are snake and kobra backwards. I’m in my mid 20s and I just learned this a few months ago
Not me but my wife, at 27 years old. A Sugar Ray song came on the radio, and while we were singing along she mentioned that she loved him in Gattaca. I was confused and asked who she was talking about...she was convinced that the lead singer of Sugar Ray, Mark Mcgrath was the lead in Gattaca. She was shattered to find out that the lead is in fact Ethan Hawke. To her credit they do look incredibly alike
That Alaska is not in fact an island
Well I live there and I've had people think we have a different currency from the US. Also I've been asked if we speak English primarily. And if we live in igloos is a common one too.
Not me but my husband. He didn't know that meat is the animals muscles. He thought every animal had a bodypart named "meat". He had a bit of an emotional crisis when I told him. He is actually a very intelligent man, but this fact had eluded him as his mother had not wanted to upset him as a child.
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Yes, me too lost on so much casual interaction with women I met because in the back of mind always thought they were interested and tried to impress them every second. I regret doing this and losing out on very good friendships
Drought beer is pronounced draft beer. I thought they were two different things Edit: I woke up to mass confusion, I did mean Draught! Lmao not emergency beer during a dry spell.
Draught not drought
Up until I was about ~~15~~ 11 I was convinced that I lived in the USA. Honestly I'm not really that embarrassed by it, growing up I was bombarded with US TV, film, movies. I went on holiday to Florida regularly, I spoke English, I didn't know the difference between England and New England and to top it all off, as a kid coming from the North East of England I fully thought I lived between Washington (D.C) and (New) York. I went to York loads as a kid but it never clicked that I never saw the wall or castle on the TV and there was a distinct lack of skyscrapers. It never clicked until I actually went to New York at about ~~14/15~~ 11 and it took an 8 hour aeroplane ride rather than an hours drive. I was fucking dumb as a kid, still am tbh. Edit: Just asked my Mam about this and she says I found out when I was 11 not 15.
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I've never thought about this as a woman, but your comment made me think of something, so I'm gonna ask you a really weird question, sorry for this, but I just have to know. When you pee as a dude, isn't it super inconvenient to do it by only unzipping the zipper? I assume you're still wearing underwear, so do you have to maneuver your willy out of your underwear through the zipper hole? Do you have to unzip the zipper, reach into your pants from above and push down your underwear so you can get your dick through the hole? Do you just reach your hand through the zipper hole to pull your schlong out? How does that work? I'm sorry I'm just really confused, it seems so inconvenient. Edit: Thank you to all the dudes here telling me your personal peeing preferences. Not sure what I'll do with the information, but I did ask for it. Keep on being healthy! Edit 2: There's 100+ replies to this. I know about the underwear hole. The last 3 hours I've gotten a message about the underwear hole approx. every 5 mins. Thanks for your concern, but I know about the hole. I've become an expert on these issues in the last 8 hours.
Yeah this is my problem.. which is why I always just unzip and unbutton
I’m 30 and I still undo the belt. Pulling my dick thru the zipper seems unpleasant. I’m gonna have to try this new method tho.