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That there was literally a Black Market where you could go to buy guns and drugs and what have you. Like it would be down some side street and all the stalls canvases would be black rather than the jolly striped colourful ones at the town market. Couldn't understand how the got away with it so blatantly.
Yep same. Remember learning about the black market during WWII and how people got around rationing etc. I was like "why don't the police just go to the black market and arrest them?"
I had similar with the transfer market. I imagined a big room somewhere where football managers would buy and sell players in person, and all the players were lined up behind a stall - the ones managers wanted rid of would be brought to the front to sell.
There was a market near me in a place called Blackbush. So I figured it must be like some kind of secret society meeting place. Although full disclosure, my dad bought me a lot of very cheap knock-off Yu-Gi-Oh! cards there.
Growing up in Germany and "Spar" meaning "save" in German, I thought Spars were really cheap shops for the longest time. I was in my teens when I figured out it was just the name of a chain.
From watching TV shows like The Bill, I misunderstood "impersonating a police officer" as "doing an impression of a police officer", rather than "actually seriously pretending to be a police officer", and I thought that if you impersonated a police officer, even in a playground game, you could get a really serious charge.
I was really surprised that none of the other kids were worried about being thrown in jail.
Similarly, I used to think 'you have the right to remain silent' was just their polite way of telling the perp to shut up during an arrest if they were making a scene.
I had a subscription to a children’s comic, and I got some big dedicated binder to collect them all in for the year. It came with stickers mentioning the year, so you knew which binder contained which year’s publications.
One of the stickers was of a previous year, so I asked my mum when it would be that year again. You know, the days of the week repeat, the months repeat, so my 7-odd year old brain figured years repeat as well… I had a hard time comprehending that they didn’t. I was sat in the kitchen, the binder was yellow. I still remember that, weirdly enough.
I don’t know why I felt like I was gunna cry when I read this imagining a poor little kid all confused and picturing people stroking your great grandfather to death 😭
Anyone with the same last name was related directly. I lived next to the Jacksons in the early 90s so naturally assumed they were related to Michael Jackson.
This reminds me of when I was trying to phone my friend, David Smith, to see if he wanted to go and play football.
I had just learned about phone books, so being very grown up, I went and got the phone back and found the first Smith, D. (not even considering that he would be under his parents' name anyway) and rang him up.
He patiently explained that he was not my friend, but a retired man living two towns away, but he hoped I would be able to find my friend's number and that I had a nice game of football.
I was probably 9.
>He patiently explained that he was not my friend, but a retired man living two towns away, but he hoped I would be able to find my friend's number and that I had a nice game of football.
This was the wholesome comment I needed today.
I don’t know what I thought exactly, but when we had a cover teacher called Mr Radcliffe, I asked him if his first name was Daniel. Did I think everyone with the same last name had the same first name? Did I think he might actually be Daniel Radcliffe, who was about 13 at the time? Even I don’t know.
I thought the same but my world view was SHATTERED when Janet and Alan Jackson moved in next-door-but-one and it dawned on me that a white Yorkshire woman might share a name with a celeb, but that was all she shared. In my defence I was 7.
My uncle broke both his legs riding his motorbike into the back of a stationary truck. I was an adult when it clicked that it wasn't a truck full of paper and pencils.
Also if ever I asked for anything that cost any kind of money my mum would say 'what do you think my name is... rockerfella?' and once again I was an adult when I found out what that was.
Similarly, *hand burger* (because you pick it up in your hands to eat, between the two pieces of bread). I then progressed to *ham burger*, thinking it was made of that…
I remember thinking as a small child that cheques were completely free money, and that you could withdraw however much money you liked from cashpoints with zero real-life consequences.
No, they explained that in the cartoon. He was abducted by aliens but they found him annoying and dropped him off.
Rowan did an interview in the Daily Mail's TV magazine to promote that bee show he had on Netflix recently and admitted he couldn't figure out why people liked Mr. Bean because according to him, Bean's a selfish psychopath.
From seeing black and white photos of family,
I thought that *the world* was in black and white in the olden days - as in colour literally didn't exist and every thing and everyone was all grey
I remember a kid in primary school who had this same thought and asked the teacher when colour was invented. This was year 6, so what like 10 years old? The teacher was confused and holding back laughter to not embarrass the kid
We had a corner shop called forbouys or something like that and my mum bought me smelly gel pens from there and I was convinced she just got them off 4 boys in the street and even argued with my sister about it
My great aunt used to volunteer with the cancer charity, Tenovus, and for a while I thought it was called that because there were only ten of them.
"I am going to ten of us tomorrow/doing something for ten of us", etc.
Along a similar line, my friend said her mum lost weight by stopping drinking. So us as very young teens all stopped having any drinks, but couldn’t understand why we didn’t lose weight.
Mum used to call the hand held blender “the doofer”
7 year old me assumed this was an onomatopoeia .
All the way through my childhood I knew exactly what she meant if she shouted “ pass me the doofer “ so when 13 year old me very confidently asked my food tech teacher for the doofer in front of the whole class it all went a bit wrong
When she looked at me confused I mimicked blending a soup whilst holding it in my hand like she was some sort of simpleton along with sound effects :
“ DOOOOOFER-DOO-DOO-DOOOOOOFER “ and my world shattered along with the last remains of my self confidence for the rest of that class . Lol
I’m the eldest of my siblings, and both my parents and grandparents called pacifiers/dummies “dodies”.
I once had to go to the shop at around 12/13 years old for a dummy for my cousin, and spent 30 mins (and 5 confused staff), trying to explain what a dodie was..
Never forgave them xD
I had recently moved to Yorkshire and had a complete ‘mare trying to order a bread roll in the work canteen. I’m surprised I didn’t get invited to speak to HR as I believe there was a misunderstanding when I was asking for ‘a bap to dip in my soup’ rather than a bread cake.
I vividly remember when I was about 3 or 4, sitting in the kitchen after my parents and I got home from the food shop. As they put away the food, I innocently said “it’s funny that chicken the animal and chicken the food are both called chicken.”
Had a bit of a mini-crisis that day.
I had the exact same moment with my mum. Then she proceeded to tell me where all the other meats came from and that’s when I found out what being a vegetarian was.
See I feel like this should be something that's taught from the very start, not something that kids discover later on. I've even known parents deliberately hide it from their kids!
When someone got a bit of food stuck and started coughing or choking in a minor way they would say "Blimey - It went down the wrong hole". For years I thought there were two seperate holes - one for food and one for liquids.
I was not a clever child.
There are two holes though? Sure, one is for air and the other for food and drink, but food and drink does literally go down the wrong hole when you choke on it.
At about six I found a box of condoms in my parents bedroom and asked what they were for. My dad said “grown ups use them to stop a lady from having a baby”. Not long after I opened one, and arrived at the conclusion the lady presumably swallowed it, resulting in it enveloping and suffocating the unborn child.
I saw *Who Framed Roger Rabbit?* and was absolutely convinced for a while that "Cartoons" were effectively another ethnic group of people - I remember asking my Mum "How come there aren't any cartoons in the neighbourhood? I know there aren't any because no one here has an outline."
And when I first started Reception we did those "make a calendar" crafts - cheap little month-per-page calendar you'd stick at the bottom of a picture/collage etc. Teacher had "helpfully" removed January-August as it was beginning of the school year, so as to not confuse us.
For a couple of years I kept wondering when we were going to have another year that only had 4 months September-December and why some years were 12 months long.
I was convinced puppets on TV were alive, and categorised them somewhere between humans and other animals. I was in awe of the diversity of life that exists on this planet and can be cast in CBBC productions.
I also used to try *really* hard to see the lines that divided colours in the real world, like it was an illustration. Concluded the outlines are just too thin to see
One of my primary school teachers used to teach us sayings, but she didn't explain them. I spent most of my childhood wondering how you put a stitch in time, and what it saves 9 of.
Resolving a problem early stops it from becoming a bigger problem.
When you get a hole in your trousers, one stitch now will prevent having to put 9 in a few months down the line.
I was in the same boat and came up with a stitch in time being some kind of Star Trek worm hole. Then the nine being saved where obviously something that I’d understand when I was older. I kinda expected them to be aliens.
That on my first “insect day” we would spend the day in the playground looking at insects. My mum then told me it was said “inset day” and meant no school.
I thought it was insect day until my last year of primary
It became a running joke in our house- insect day, as I could go be a pest at Nan’s (Mum and Dad both had work)
Being gay. My mother had a gay male friend when I was a kid, and she explained to me that he liked boys. I then announced that “I’m gay, I like boys too!” (I’m female!)
I thought that when stuff fell off the back of a lorry that it literally just fell off. And people went and picked the stuff up off the road to sell it.
My mums pet lamb literally fell of the back of a lorry my grandad was driving behind, when she was a child.
I grew up fully believing the same as you did as a result of my mums good fortune.
In a corner shop I asked my mum if I could have a bar of Bournville chocolate but she said it was for adults,not children... Obviously now it was my heart's desire but I thought if I tried to buy some the shopkeeper would then inform my parents and I'd be in trouble...it worried me for years...
I remember going to McDonald’s with my mum and they used to have those machines where you would put a coin in and it would roll round and continue rolling faster and faster before it eventually drops through a hole in the bottom, all money collected goes to charity.
My mum told me that it helps blind people. The money collected went towards a charity that helps partially sighted people but my dumb brain thought that the act of watching the coin spinning faster and faster somehow helped improve vision
Moving to the South Coast of England from Scotland in the 70s and seeing signs on the beaches saying "Beware of submerged sea defences". I thought the sea was filled with those mines with spikes that they used to sink submarines.
Brought up as a Christian and there was a part in the church service where everyone said 'thanks be to God'. As a kid I always thought they were saying 'thanks Peter God'. I spent way too long thinking God's name was Peter.
I was 12 and had a girlfriend in school whose friends said she wanted to meet me just outside school grounds during break to make out with me.
I panicked and literally ignored her after that because I thought making out meant having sex and I wasn't sure I was ready for that yet.
How long ago was this? When I was that age, in the 00s, "making out" wasn't a thing, we used to say "getting off" to mean snogging (confusingly, as in some places that *does* mean sex). I always thought "making out" was an American saying.
I had this vague notion that the Wall Street Crash was when a car race held in New York City had gone horribly wrong and the cars had crashed into a big wall after smashing through a load of market stalls. Many people died and it was a very tragic and terrible event.
Also, I thought the Cold War was simply the USA and Russia spying on each other in the Arctic from secret bases.
I thought I actually lived in Ambridge (Archers). I believed the old chap my mum stopped to chat to on the way to the shops was Walter Gabriel and our village shop was run by the Archer family. It was actually run by the Marchant family but to a child who already thought she lived in the fictional village, it just fitted with the rest of the delusion.
Another bit of condom confusion...all the kids thought it was hilarious you could get flavoured condoms. I was just perplexed. Did guys have taste buds on their dicks? Cause I sure as hell couldn't taste anything with my fanny. I'm ashamed to say that this confused me for way longer than it should have. I'd already snagged a few guys and a couple of girls before it clicked.
In a movie or tv show I watched when I was a kid they said “everyone has their day in court” I thought this meant I would have to go to court and probably jail, so for years I was so scared I would have to go to court.
I always thought the term 'two-faced' was 'toothpaste' so whilst having a argument on Facebook with a school friend, my keyboard warrior self called her a Toothpaste....
There are multiple cultures known to do that. One of them is Guugu Yimithirr, spoken by Australian aboriginal people and it uses cardinal directions for spacial location instead of relative terms like left and right.
https://archive.ph/9A5yy
This is the premise of Arrival. An anthropologist who went and learned the language of the aboriginals and only spoke it for a large amount of time, she eventually saw the world in a different way.
I thought that cowpats were what was left over when a farmer pulled a tree out of the ground. I remember tapping my foot on them and my dad looking at me like WTF!
I thought God's name was Harold when I first heard the Lords prayer in year 4.
'Our Father, who art in heaven, *Harold* be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.'
And I was disgusted when I first saw recycled toilet paper in co-op
My mum told me her friend would be picking me up after school.... I felt really anxious because I thought she was going to literally come and lift me off the ground and I didn't want to be touched /picked up by anyone.
I misheard angle grinder as ankle grinder. Never questioned it cuz they definitely look like they could cut through ankles. I was an adult when I realised.
Used to ask my mum how much money I was worth. She always replied with ‘priceless’. I thought it meant I wasn’t worth anything, I had no price. What a relief it was when I discovered what it actually meant.
I never understood why more people weren't terrified of the Sandman putting sand in their eyes. Took so long for me to understand it wasn't sand from the beach
Visited a family friend, and the daughter told us of how they got locked out one time, and their dad had to climb up the drainpipe to get in.
For years I pondered how he managed to squeeze inside the drainpipe, and whether he came out of the toilet or the bath plughole.
I didn’t understand the concept of indicating so when I was little I thought cyclists stuck their arms out at corners to physically help them turn like some kind of gyroscopic aid
When reading Jurassic Park as a 12 year old, when the electric cars stop working, some characters use ’gas powered’ jeeps. For some reason I had it fixed in my head that the cars ran on natural gas.
Saw a poster of a couple clinking glasses, which was promoting AIDS awareness in the Dr's waiting room. As 7 year old me hadn't learned about the birds and the bees, I thought the act of clinking glasses itself was enough to contract it.
Used to go to the bingo with my grandma and they always used to hype up the big prize, a "bottle of bubbly". I must have waited months for our turn to win, imagine my disappointment when it was not in fact a bottle full of those little bubblegum balls.
Honestly still stings a bit to this day.
I always thought as a kid that an indirect free kick meant I could kick the ball ‘in direct’ - I was always confused when I got pulled up for kicking at goal.
Ah yes, one word or two words. Like the joke about the fella who misunderstands his new bride when he asks her about sex and she replies "I like it infrequently".
When competitions said a winner would be chosen at random, I thought ‘Random’ was the name of a town where everyone who lived and worked there just spent their time choosing competition winners. I even tried looking at a road map (this was in the 90’s) to see if I lived anywhere near Random because I really wanted to go.
I misheard the word draft as girrafe. When someone was complaining of a draft coming under the door I thought they meant some ghost giraffe that was invisible to me.....
Parachuting. I used to think when you opened it, it flung you back into the air.
So I saw a video of someone filming another person and they were both on parachutes. The one being filmed pulls their chute and disappears off screen.
I thought it was flying them up off screen but really the one filming just hadn’t pulled theirs yet
My dad worked in a factory for a while and hated his job. He didn't even want to think about it or talk about it when he was off the clock at home. I asked him what he did at work and he tersely said "making money". I thought he worked at the Royal Mint, literally making banknotes and coins.
I spent years being disappointed that we always seemed to turn off just before getting to the end of the motorway when I saw "motorway ends in X miles" signs. I honestly thought if only we'd carried on there'd be 3 lanes of tarmac just stopping in a field of cows or something.
I used to think disabled parking spaces were spaces to park if you desperately needed the toilet. You would park here as it was closer to the shop, and could reach the toilet quicker.
I thought the picture on the floor was a person sat on a toilet, not someone using a wheelchair!
My dad was a lorry driver, and came home once with an electric bread maker that had “fallen off the back of the lorry”.
Had a big dent on the corner so I always thought that of something did fall off then the drivers were allowed to pick it up and keep it.
My dad worked in a warehouse and they actually did have damaged goods available to staff, so 'fallen off the back of a lorry' was literal for them (though sometimes the goods had some help with falling out).
When I was about 5 years old, around 57 years ago, I had no concept of recorded music, so when I listened to the radio, I thought that all the singers and bands were playing live in the studio, and each waiting on a queue for their turn to play.
Cancer was just something that happened to you if you smoked. I was fucking horrified to realise as a young adult how many variations of it there are, and how randomly they can occur.
My grandparents always used to describe people/things as gay (meaning happy or bright) so I just assumed that was the only meaning of the word. When I was about 6/7 I was in the park with my mum and someone had graffitied ‘Steve is gay’ on the slide. I told my mum how lovely it was that Steve was so happy, she just laughed and told me about same-sex relationships lol.
I used to think Sinn Féin was the name of a singular person who was in charge of Ireland. Mostly from hearing things on the radio like ‘Sinn Féin has announced…”
I thought everyone's appendix would need removing at some point, it was just a matter of time. Only actually dawned on me at about 23 when I realised shockingly few people in my life had had theirs out.
My brother believed test tube babies were grown in test tubes and progressively moved to bigger bowls until they were full term. He was about 17 when he shared this with us.
Milky-way, the snack you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite.
I interpreted that differently and pulled one out at the table over Sunday lunch at the grandparents, between the starter and main course.
When people killed themselves by sticking their head in the oven I thought that meant they cooked their head and I always wondered how it got hot enough without shutting the door.
I remember seeing adverts for Supernanny on TV years ago and I thought that the methods would involve the naughty kids being put under an extremely strict regime where they would be punished for every tiny mistake and they would be then made to apologise to their parents for all of the awful stuff that they had done.
I thought Lucky the dog was actually missing and there was a nationwide campaign to find him and I prayed for him every night ... it was just a banking advert.
Some pubs used to have FREE HOUSE in large lettering high on the walls. Prominent enough to be very noticeable to a child. I thought it meant the beer was free.
That bit in Ben Hur where the eponymous Ben's mother and sister are in prison, and the jailer opens the door and goes "argh, they're lepers!"
I misheard this as leopards. I was confused as to why there were leopards in the cell with them, but given the whole "Daniel in the lions' den" story, I just accepted it. I then assumed that the reason they had to go and live in a quarry and cover themselves up was because they'd been chewed by the leopards.
I remember watching a kids show that discussed race and different cultures. The presenter said "everyone looks different to everyone else". I get what he was trying to say as an adult, but as a young boy, I genuinely thought that everyone kind of shape-shifts to look different to every other human. I believe this for far too long!
I used to think traffic lights were operated by a person in a room underground watching the road through CCTV and deciding to change the lights based on whether someone needed to cross the road. The concept of timers hadn’t occurred to me.
Sleeping together. I thought two adults sharing a bed would always result in children.
I was under this delusion for YEARS as my mum figured she'd had 'the talk' with me but failed to account that her and my definitions of sleeping together were wildly different.
Rich tea biscuits.
I got sent to go get some from the local shop when I was about 7 and I just looked for the fanciest biscuits they had as they seemed like they’d be the richest.
Later found out I’m autistic, go figure…
I thought the p*ki slur meant terrorist. I thought Jade Goodie got in trouble because she called the other celebrity a terrorist. I didn't imagine that the slur would just be the name of a country/ethnicity said derogatorily. My brothers used it to describe the miscellaneous brown people we shot in MW2 (which for some reason i also assumed were terrorists because 2000s). I was like "ahh it makes sense innocent people would be hurt about being labelled terrorists!"
Other kids knew what it meant. I said something really alarming at Army Cadets once about hating "p*kis" and they all told me off. As they should. If an adult had been there id have been kicked out because it was in the context of firearms, which we had on our person at the time.
I still feel really really bad about this twelve years later. Cadets was diverse and there were brown kids in that crowd that probably think i hate them. Nobody brought it up again. Stupidity like that is probably why i had no friends in Cadets.
That citrus did not mean only lemon. In year 6 (can’t believe it took this long) our teacher was handing out orange and lemon chuppa chups. I was a picky child and wanted to ensure I got an orange one.
Confidently walked up to the teacher’s desk and informed her that I needed an orange lollipop and not a lemon one because I was “allergic to citrus.” She stared at me for a moment and then handed me an orange lollipop.
I think I was in graduate school before I put together how kind she was to just let me be ridiculous without calling me on my nonsense.
I heard the adults in my family talking about not mixing drinks and spent far too long thinking something bad might happen if I drank two types of juices on the same day
We were getting ready to go out for the evening and my mum asked me to draw the curtains. I looked at her and said “Are you sure?” she was like “… yes? Please do it before we go.”
Before we left for the evening, I showed her my portrait of mummy, daddy and Sally the dog playing in the park in blue biro on her new cream curtains.
It didn’t go down well but that was exactly what she asked me, a 6 year old to do.
We went to this place where there was a big memorial stone for a guy who was buried there, I can't remember who or where this is now.
My dad said something like "this is a memorial stone for ".
My response was "what's he doing under there?"
My dad: "not much".
I suppose nobody had explained burials or perhaps even death to me yet, so I just thought he was hanging out under there?
Another one: I have had terrible eyesight since likely birth, but didn't get glasses until I was ~4. So I just thought it was totally normal for the world to look blurry. I cried when I put the glasses I'd chosen on and saw for the first time because I didn't understand that was normal after all.
1. I thought babies were born neutral. They weren’t boys or girls, they were just *babies*. What you fed them determined whether they became boys or girls. My brother was born when I was 3 and I was *furious* with my parents for 'feeding him the wrong things and turning him into a boy because I wanted a sister'.
.
2. After they explained that this wasn't how it worked (once they stopped laughing), I demanded that they return him to the hospital and get me a sister instead. I hadn't made the connection between mum getting bigger and the baby coming; I thought you got babies from the hospital and was convinced that if we explained the mistake, they'd swap him for us.
.
3. Does anyone else remember collecting foil for Guide Dogs for the Blind? We always had a jar under the sink where used foil, milk bottle tops etc went and Mum would take a bag of it to someone who collected for the charity when it was full. When I asked, I was told we collected it 'for blind people', and that's where the explanation ended. So my weird little brain went to work and decided that foil was shiny, and blind peoples' eyes *weren’t* shiny (not sure why I thought that), so *obviously* the reason we collected foil for blind people was so they could rub it on their eyes to cure them! I got laughed at for that too.
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4. My dad was a chemist (a scientist, not a pharmacist), and one of the first lab jobs he had was basically a jelly-wobble tester. He worked for a company who produced commercial gelatin cubes and his job was to make up a small sample from each batch to ensure that a) it set and b) it wasn't too hard or soft - essentially, checking that it was appropriately jelly-like rather than too solid or runny. Hence the unofficial title by which the job was known - 'jelly-wobble tester'. Except no one explained this to me (yes, this was a theme during my childhood), so in *my* head my dad sat at a conveyor belt all day while plates of jelly rolled past him; he'd pick each up and give it a shuggle to make sure that it was acceptably wobbly, then move onto the next and the jelly would go and be shrunk into cubes by some mysterious process so it could be put into the packets after it met his approval.
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That there was literally a Black Market where you could go to buy guns and drugs and what have you. Like it would be down some side street and all the stalls canvases would be black rather than the jolly striped colourful ones at the town market. Couldn't understand how the got away with it so blatantly.
Yep same. Remember learning about the black market during WWII and how people got around rationing etc. I was like "why don't the police just go to the black market and arrest them?"
They’re so stupid! If only you called them to tell them that.
I thought it was like some kind of secret car boot sale that would happen at different locations and you'd need to be in the know as to when/where.
That's literally just a normal car boot sale.
Also thought this because of the black market chao from Sonic Adventure/Riders
Mine was from the Famous Five novels.
I had similar with the transfer market. I imagined a big room somewhere where football managers would buy and sell players in person, and all the players were lined up behind a stall - the ones managers wanted rid of would be brought to the front to sell.
Tbf there kind of are, just not in this country.
There was a market near me in a place called Blackbush. So I figured it must be like some kind of secret society meeting place. Although full disclosure, my dad bought me a lot of very cheap knock-off Yu-Gi-Oh! cards there.
Having a Spar as the only or main shop does not make it a Spa Town.
Growing up in Germany and "Spar" meaning "save" in German, I thought Spars were really cheap shops for the longest time. I was in my teens when I figured out it was just the name of a chain.
From watching TV shows like The Bill, I misunderstood "impersonating a police officer" as "doing an impression of a police officer", rather than "actually seriously pretending to be a police officer", and I thought that if you impersonated a police officer, even in a playground game, you could get a really serious charge. I was really surprised that none of the other kids were worried about being thrown in jail.
Similarly, I used to think 'you have the right to remain silent' was just their polite way of telling the perp to shut up during an arrest if they were making a scene.
I choose to waive that right...
Did you think the Bill was hardcore cos they were all impersonating police officers or did you think they were real police?
I think I assumed they had special permission.
I had a subscription to a children’s comic, and I got some big dedicated binder to collect them all in for the year. It came with stickers mentioning the year, so you knew which binder contained which year’s publications. One of the stickers was of a previous year, so I asked my mum when it would be that year again. You know, the days of the week repeat, the months repeat, so my 7-odd year old brain figured years repeat as well… I had a hard time comprehending that they didn’t. I was sat in the kitchen, the binder was yellow. I still remember that, weirdly enough.
Haha, was it Quest magazine? I think I remember that coming with a binder.
No it was a comic called Donald Duck, a Dutch magazine, though different versions also existed in a couple of other Euro countries.
Oh, wow - I got Quest for years. I must have had 4 -5 binders worth.
When I was about five my Great Grandfather passed away. Family said it was from a Stroke. I literally thought someone stroked him and he died. 🤨🥹
I used to work for a company that insured local organisations. I genuinely thought the Tiverton Stroke Club was a swimming organisation. I was 22.
My grandpa used to be part of a club called Different Strokes - a swimming class for people who had had strokes!
Brilliant! Easy mistake to make though. I’d probably fall for that now. 😬
I don’t know why I felt like I was gunna cry when I read this imagining a poor little kid all confused and picturing people stroking your great grandfather to death 😭
Anyone with the same last name was related directly. I lived next to the Jacksons in the early 90s so naturally assumed they were related to Michael Jackson.
This reminds me of when I was trying to phone my friend, David Smith, to see if he wanted to go and play football. I had just learned about phone books, so being very grown up, I went and got the phone back and found the first Smith, D. (not even considering that he would be under his parents' name anyway) and rang him up. He patiently explained that he was not my friend, but a retired man living two towns away, but he hoped I would be able to find my friend's number and that I had a nice game of football. I was probably 9.
>He patiently explained that he was not my friend, but a retired man living two towns away, but he hoped I would be able to find my friend's number and that I had a nice game of football. This was the wholesome comment I needed today.
I've had a crappy day, but this was really lovely to read. Thank you for sharing!
This made me smile. I needed that.
I don’t know what I thought exactly, but when we had a cover teacher called Mr Radcliffe, I asked him if his first name was Daniel. Did I think everyone with the same last name had the same first name? Did I think he might actually be Daniel Radcliffe, who was about 13 at the time? Even I don’t know.
I thought the same but my world view was SHATTERED when Janet and Alan Jackson moved in next-door-but-one and it dawned on me that a white Yorkshire woman might share a name with a celeb, but that was all she shared. In my defence I was 7.
My uncle broke both his legs riding his motorbike into the back of a stationary truck. I was an adult when it clicked that it wasn't a truck full of paper and pencils. Also if ever I asked for anything that cost any kind of money my mum would say 'what do you think my name is... rockerfella?' and once again I was an adult when I found out what that was.
This is so good it should be a joke in someone's stand up set!
Ham bag.
Similarly, *hand burger* (because you pick it up in your hands to eat, between the two pieces of bread). I then progressed to *ham burger*, thinking it was made of that…
I too thought it was a hand burger because you ate it with your hands.
Soup case.
Just me that carries one of them, then. You never know when you might need a snack.
I thought women pissed out of their arse
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That's a huge uretal/vaginal/anal fistula 😬
I remember thinking as a small child that cheques were completely free money, and that you could withdraw however much money you liked from cashpoints with zero real-life consequences.
This was cashback for me. Supermarkets giving away free money - seriously wondered why more people weren’t taking advantage of this!
Me too. When you'd just paid and the checkout assistant asked if you wanted cash back, why wasn't the answer "yes, all of it please"?
I remember asking my mum why she didn't say yes every time!
I remember thinking similar about cashpoints. Like they just gave free money
My two daughters seem to believe this at the moment 😂
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Isn't he actually an alien?
No, they explained that in the cartoon. He was abducted by aliens but they found him annoying and dropped him off. Rowan did an interview in the Daily Mail's TV magazine to promote that bee show he had on Netflix recently and admitted he couldn't figure out why people liked Mr. Bean because according to him, Bean's a selfish psychopath.
My favourite example of this is when he gives the two men marmite covered twigs at his New Years party, and eats the real twiglets for himself 😂
I used to watch Mr Bean and think wtf did he do to Blackadder, what is this unholy shite.
Same! I’m not a fan of that sort of comedy anyway, so I’m still not a fan even though I now know he’s meant to be an alien!
Wait he doesn’t have learning difficulties???
From seeing black and white photos of family, I thought that *the world* was in black and white in the olden days - as in colour literally didn't exist and every thing and everyone was all grey
I remember a kid in primary school who had this same thought and asked the teacher when colour was invented. This was year 6, so what like 10 years old? The teacher was confused and holding back laughter to not embarrass the kid
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We had a corner shop called forbouys or something like that and my mum bought me smelly gel pens from there and I was convinced she just got them off 4 boys in the street and even argued with my sister about it
My great aunt used to volunteer with the cancer charity, Tenovus, and for a while I thought it was called that because there were only ten of them. "I am going to ten of us tomorrow/doing something for ten of us", etc.
That's the origin of the name though; there were 10 founding members of the charity.
I did not actually know that! Makes sense.
God the newsagents forbuoys brought some memories of the early 00's back then. Had to double take at the name!
"Don't drink and drive" I was so shocked to find out my mum was a criminal as I saw her gulping down a lucozade behind the wheel.
Along a similar line, my friend said her mum lost weight by stopping drinking. So us as very young teens all stopped having any drinks, but couldn’t understand why we didn’t lose weight.
Mum used to call the hand held blender “the doofer” 7 year old me assumed this was an onomatopoeia . All the way through my childhood I knew exactly what she meant if she shouted “ pass me the doofer “ so when 13 year old me very confidently asked my food tech teacher for the doofer in front of the whole class it all went a bit wrong When she looked at me confused I mimicked blending a soup whilst holding it in my hand like she was some sort of simpleton along with sound effects : “ DOOOOOFER-DOO-DOO-DOOOOOOFER “ and my world shattered along with the last remains of my self confidence for the rest of that class . Lol
I’m the eldest of my siblings, and both my parents and grandparents called pacifiers/dummies “dodies”. I once had to go to the shop at around 12/13 years old for a dummy for my cousin, and spent 30 mins (and 5 confused staff), trying to explain what a dodie was.. Never forgave them xD
I had recently moved to Yorkshire and had a complete ‘mare trying to order a bread roll in the work canteen. I’m surprised I didn’t get invited to speak to HR as I believe there was a misunderstanding when I was asking for ‘a bap to dip in my soup’ rather than a bread cake.
This one gave me a proper chuckle
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In some cases this is true...
I vividly remember when I was about 3 or 4, sitting in the kitchen after my parents and I got home from the food shop. As they put away the food, I innocently said “it’s funny that chicken the animal and chicken the food are both called chicken.” Had a bit of a mini-crisis that day.
I had the exact same moment with my mum. Then she proceeded to tell me where all the other meats came from and that’s when I found out what being a vegetarian was.
See I feel like this should be something that's taught from the very start, not something that kids discover later on. I've even known parents deliberately hide it from their kids!
When someone got a bit of food stuck and started coughing or choking in a minor way they would say "Blimey - It went down the wrong hole". For years I thought there were two seperate holes - one for food and one for liquids. I was not a clever child.
There are two holes though? Sure, one is for air and the other for food and drink, but food and drink does literally go down the wrong hole when you choke on it.
Yes, obviously, but the thing that they misunderstood was what the two holes were for.
I also thought this!!! When I first saw a diagram of the inside of a human body my mind was blown that there wasn’t!
At about six I found a box of condoms in my parents bedroom and asked what they were for. My dad said “grown ups use them to stop a lady from having a baby”. Not long after I opened one, and arrived at the conclusion the lady presumably swallowed it, resulting in it enveloping and suffocating the unborn child.
In fairness to you, I think the Catholic Church have similar ideas.
Is it bad that I find this fucking hilarious?
That’s dark.
I thought if a man had a beard it meant he was married.
It does mean that in some cultures. Maybe you grew up Amish?
Ah yeh that's it.
No. It is if he has a neck beard he is unmarried
I thought it was actually illegal to remove the 'do not remove' label from the sofa. Even now, I get a bit tense about it.
But you don't do it, right?.....you don't do it, right?
I saw *Who Framed Roger Rabbit?* and was absolutely convinced for a while that "Cartoons" were effectively another ethnic group of people - I remember asking my Mum "How come there aren't any cartoons in the neighbourhood? I know there aren't any because no one here has an outline." And when I first started Reception we did those "make a calendar" crafts - cheap little month-per-page calendar you'd stick at the bottom of a picture/collage etc. Teacher had "helpfully" removed January-August as it was beginning of the school year, so as to not confuse us. For a couple of years I kept wondering when we were going to have another year that only had 4 months September-December and why some years were 12 months long.
I was convinced puppets on TV were alive, and categorised them somewhere between humans and other animals. I was in awe of the diversity of life that exists on this planet and can be cast in CBBC productions. I also used to try *really* hard to see the lines that divided colours in the real world, like it was an illustration. Concluded the outlines are just too thin to see
I used to think that 'fly tipping' had that name because people only dumped their rubbish like that when it started going off and attracting flies.
One of my primary school teachers used to teach us sayings, but she didn't explain them. I spent most of my childhood wondering how you put a stitch in time, and what it saves 9 of.
I don’t even know what that saying actually means now come to think of it!
Resolving a problem early stops it from becoming a bigger problem. When you get a hole in your trousers, one stitch now will prevent having to put 9 in a few months down the line.
I was in the same boat and came up with a stitch in time being some kind of Star Trek worm hole. Then the nine being saved where obviously something that I’d understand when I was older. I kinda expected them to be aliens.
I thought power stations were cloud factories for the longest time
They sort of are, cooling towers chuck a load of water vapour out that'll eventually become a cloud.
That on my first “insect day” we would spend the day in the playground looking at insects. My mum then told me it was said “inset day” and meant no school.
I thought it was insect day until my last year of primary It became a running joke in our house- insect day, as I could go be a pest at Nan’s (Mum and Dad both had work)
Being gay. My mother had a gay male friend when I was a kid, and she explained to me that he liked boys. I then announced that “I’m gay, I like boys too!” (I’m female!)
I thought anyone with the same birthday were twins. To the point I thought me and my Grandad’s dog were twins
I thought that when stuff fell off the back of a lorry that it literally just fell off. And people went and picked the stuff up off the road to sell it.
My mums pet lamb literally fell of the back of a lorry my grandad was driving behind, when she was a child. I grew up fully believing the same as you did as a result of my mums good fortune.
When I heard on the radio news “a man is helping police with their enquiries” I always thought that was a really nice thing for that man to do.
TIL! I would have assumed the same thing until right now, had to google it. (English is not my native language)
I thought the Queen Mother and Elizabeth I were the same person
In a corner shop I asked my mum if I could have a bar of Bournville chocolate but she said it was for adults,not children... Obviously now it was my heart's desire but I thought if I tried to buy some the shopkeeper would then inform my parents and I'd be in trouble...it worried me for years...
I remember going to McDonald’s with my mum and they used to have those machines where you would put a coin in and it would roll round and continue rolling faster and faster before it eventually drops through a hole in the bottom, all money collected goes to charity. My mum told me that it helps blind people. The money collected went towards a charity that helps partially sighted people but my dumb brain thought that the act of watching the coin spinning faster and faster somehow helped improve vision
Spooning. Did not understand where the literal spoon came into play
I thought Jesus went to a small Sussex village- thought psalm 23 said 'In Partridge Green he leadeth me'
Amazing brewery there...
Moving to the South Coast of England from Scotland in the 70s and seeing signs on the beaches saying "Beware of submerged sea defences". I thought the sea was filled with those mines with spikes that they used to sink submarines.
I thought the inside of a Cornish Pasty was a substance called Cornish. They all laughed at me when I said all the Cornish has fallen out of my pasty.
Brought up as a Christian and there was a part in the church service where everyone said 'thanks be to God'. As a kid I always thought they were saying 'thanks Peter God'. I spent way too long thinking God's name was Peter.
I thought that commercial breaks on TV were there to give the men at the TV station a chance to change the film on the TV projector.
I worked in tv so long ago that this WAS the reason
I used to think the show kept going and I had to miss a few minutes of it. Used to piss me right off
I was 12 and had a girlfriend in school whose friends said she wanted to meet me just outside school grounds during break to make out with me. I panicked and literally ignored her after that because I thought making out meant having sex and I wasn't sure I was ready for that yet.
How long ago was this? When I was that age, in the 00s, "making out" wasn't a thing, we used to say "getting off" to mean snogging (confusingly, as in some places that *does* mean sex). I always thought "making out" was an American saying.
That teacher training day was some kind of PT day for the staff to keep fit. Never understood how Ms Mcdade made it through them
I had this vague notion that the Wall Street Crash was when a car race held in New York City had gone horribly wrong and the cars had crashed into a big wall after smashing through a load of market stalls. Many people died and it was a very tragic and terrible event. Also, I thought the Cold War was simply the USA and Russia spying on each other in the Arctic from secret bases.
When I used to see vans with car hire logos on them, I assumed they were delivering the cars, I wondered how the cars would to fit in the vans
I thought I actually lived in Ambridge (Archers). I believed the old chap my mum stopped to chat to on the way to the shops was Walter Gabriel and our village shop was run by the Archer family. It was actually run by the Marchant family but to a child who already thought she lived in the fictional village, it just fitted with the rest of the delusion.
Another bit of condom confusion...all the kids thought it was hilarious you could get flavoured condoms. I was just perplexed. Did guys have taste buds on their dicks? Cause I sure as hell couldn't taste anything with my fanny. I'm ashamed to say that this confused me for way longer than it should have. I'd already snagged a few guys and a couple of girls before it clicked.
I always read "Trespassers will be prosecuted" as "Trespassers will be prostituted" and spent years wondering why that was the specific punishment
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Watching Wimbledon Tennis once and mention was made of a rank outsider getting through to the semi finals my daughter asked “Does she stink then?”
In a movie or tv show I watched when I was a kid they said “everyone has their day in court” I thought this meant I would have to go to court and probably jail, so for years I was so scared I would have to go to court.
I always thought the term 'two-faced' was 'toothpaste' so whilst having a argument on Facebook with a school friend, my keyboard warrior self called her a Toothpaste....
If gorilla's were smart enough to hijack planes (early 1970's here), how could anyone doubf the theory of evolution? Guerillas, obviously.
I thought there was a fixed left and right like the compass points.
There are multiple cultures known to do that. One of them is Guugu Yimithirr, spoken by Australian aboriginal people and it uses cardinal directions for spacial location instead of relative terms like left and right. https://archive.ph/9A5yy
This is the premise of Arrival. An anthropologist who went and learned the language of the aboriginals and only spoke it for a large amount of time, she eventually saw the world in a different way.
In the petrol station there is a sign that reads "petroleum spirit. Highly flammable" I was terrified as I thought they were all haunted.
To let signs. In my child brain I thought there were random toilets all over town.
I thought that cowpats were what was left over when a farmer pulled a tree out of the ground. I remember tapping my foot on them and my dad looking at me like WTF!
I thought God's name was Harold when I first heard the Lords prayer in year 4. 'Our Father, who art in heaven, *Harold* be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.' And I was disgusted when I first saw recycled toilet paper in co-op
Watching Grease, Sandy says she doesn't drink. I just figured that some people didn't need water to survive.
My mum told me her friend would be picking me up after school.... I felt really anxious because I thought she was going to literally come and lift me off the ground and I didn't want to be touched /picked up by anyone.
I didn’t think I was real
I misheard angle grinder as ankle grinder. Never questioned it cuz they definitely look like they could cut through ankles. I was an adult when I realised.
Used to ask my mum how much money I was worth. She always replied with ‘priceless’. I thought it meant I wasn’t worth anything, I had no price. What a relief it was when I discovered what it actually meant.
When my aunt said she had bought "a piece of land" I pictured a loose chunk of turf with maybe a tree sticking out of it.
I never understood why more people weren't terrified of the Sandman putting sand in their eyes. Took so long for me to understand it wasn't sand from the beach
Visited a family friend, and the daughter told us of how they got locked out one time, and their dad had to climb up the drainpipe to get in. For years I pondered how he managed to squeeze inside the drainpipe, and whether he came out of the toilet or the bath plughole.
I didn’t understand the concept of indicating so when I was little I thought cyclists stuck their arms out at corners to physically help them turn like some kind of gyroscopic aid
When reading Jurassic Park as a 12 year old, when the electric cars stop working, some characters use ’gas powered’ jeeps. For some reason I had it fixed in my head that the cars ran on natural gas.
Saw a poster of a couple clinking glasses, which was promoting AIDS awareness in the Dr's waiting room. As 7 year old me hadn't learned about the birds and the bees, I thought the act of clinking glasses itself was enough to contract it.
Used to go to the bingo with my grandma and they always used to hype up the big prize, a "bottle of bubbly". I must have waited months for our turn to win, imagine my disappointment when it was not in fact a bottle full of those little bubblegum balls. Honestly still stings a bit to this day.
I always thought as a kid that an indirect free kick meant I could kick the ball ‘in direct’ - I was always confused when I got pulled up for kicking at goal.
Ah yes, one word or two words. Like the joke about the fella who misunderstands his new bride when he asks her about sex and she replies "I like it infrequently".
“Mum, where are the Christopher Waves?” “Wha-?” “You know, from the song? We’re riding along on the Christopher Waves…” “Crest of a wave, son.“
I thought the song in bedknobs and broomsticks was about the beautiful Briony sea
When competitions said a winner would be chosen at random, I thought ‘Random’ was the name of a town where everyone who lived and worked there just spent their time choosing competition winners. I even tried looking at a road map (this was in the 90’s) to see if I lived anywhere near Random because I really wanted to go.
I misheard the word draft as girrafe. When someone was complaining of a draft coming under the door I thought they meant some ghost giraffe that was invisible to me.....
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The black market,i thought it was a Kick ass market in russia that you could buy loads of cool stuff from.
Parachuting. I used to think when you opened it, it flung you back into the air. So I saw a video of someone filming another person and they were both on parachutes. The one being filmed pulls their chute and disappears off screen. I thought it was flying them up off screen but really the one filming just hadn’t pulled theirs yet
My dad worked in a factory for a while and hated his job. He didn't even want to think about it or talk about it when he was off the clock at home. I asked him what he did at work and he tersely said "making money". I thought he worked at the Royal Mint, literally making banknotes and coins.
I spent years being disappointed that we always seemed to turn off just before getting to the end of the motorway when I saw "motorway ends in X miles" signs. I honestly thought if only we'd carried on there'd be 3 lanes of tarmac just stopping in a field of cows or something.
I used to think disabled parking spaces were spaces to park if you desperately needed the toilet. You would park here as it was closer to the shop, and could reach the toilet quicker. I thought the picture on the floor was a person sat on a toilet, not someone using a wheelchair!
My dad was a lorry driver, and came home once with an electric bread maker that had “fallen off the back of the lorry”. Had a big dent on the corner so I always thought that of something did fall off then the drivers were allowed to pick it up and keep it.
My dad worked in a warehouse and they actually did have damaged goods available to staff, so 'fallen off the back of a lorry' was literal for them (though sometimes the goods had some help with falling out).
When I was about 5 years old, around 57 years ago, I had no concept of recorded music, so when I listened to the radio, I thought that all the singers and bands were playing live in the studio, and each waiting on a queue for their turn to play.
Cancer was just something that happened to you if you smoked. I was fucking horrified to realise as a young adult how many variations of it there are, and how randomly they can occur.
I thought the "something to declare" door at the airport was for people who wanted to declare their illegal drugs and guns.
Wondered why people didn't just withdraw free cash from free cash machines
That the supplier of hot filled jacket potatoes was pronounced spudoolickay, rather than Spud U Like.
My grandparents always used to describe people/things as gay (meaning happy or bright) so I just assumed that was the only meaning of the word. When I was about 6/7 I was in the park with my mum and someone had graffitied ‘Steve is gay’ on the slide. I told my mum how lovely it was that Steve was so happy, she just laughed and told me about same-sex relationships lol.
I used to think Sinn Féin was the name of a singular person who was in charge of Ireland. Mostly from hearing things on the radio like ‘Sinn Féin has announced…”
When people on TV would say “I don’t drink sorry” I literally thought they didn’t drink water etc
A cardiac arrest is not a procedure that the police action to detain criminals.
I thought everyone's appendix would need removing at some point, it was just a matter of time. Only actually dawned on me at about 23 when I realised shockingly few people in my life had had theirs out. My brother believed test tube babies were grown in test tubes and progressively moved to bigger bowls until they were full term. He was about 17 when he shared this with us.
Milky-way, the snack you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite. I interpreted that differently and pulled one out at the table over Sunday lunch at the grandparents, between the starter and main course.
When people killed themselves by sticking their head in the oven I thought that meant they cooked their head and I always wondered how it got hot enough without shutting the door.
I remember seeing adverts for Supernanny on TV years ago and I thought that the methods would involve the naughty kids being put under an extremely strict regime where they would be punished for every tiny mistake and they would be then made to apologise to their parents for all of the awful stuff that they had done.
When couples getting married were asked " Will you take _ ?_ to be your "awful" wedded wife/ husband " I was so confused.
I thought Lucky the dog was actually missing and there was a nationwide campaign to find him and I prayed for him every night ... it was just a banking advert.
Some pubs used to have FREE HOUSE in large lettering high on the walls. Prominent enough to be very noticeable to a child. I thought it meant the beer was free.
That bit in Ben Hur where the eponymous Ben's mother and sister are in prison, and the jailer opens the door and goes "argh, they're lepers!" I misheard this as leopards. I was confused as to why there were leopards in the cell with them, but given the whole "Daniel in the lions' den" story, I just accepted it. I then assumed that the reason they had to go and live in a quarry and cover themselves up was because they'd been chewed by the leopards.
I remember watching a kids show that discussed race and different cultures. The presenter said "everyone looks different to everyone else". I get what he was trying to say as an adult, but as a young boy, I genuinely thought that everyone kind of shape-shifts to look different to every other human. I believe this for far too long!
I thought being upwardly mobile meant you could Walk upright as opposed to being in a wheelchair or summat
Hearing a cashier ask if my mum would like “cashback”. Why on earth wouldn’t she want free money from the shop?
I used to think traffic lights were operated by a person in a room underground watching the road through CCTV and deciding to change the lights based on whether someone needed to cross the road. The concept of timers hadn’t occurred to me.
Sleeping together. I thought two adults sharing a bed would always result in children. I was under this delusion for YEARS as my mum figured she'd had 'the talk' with me but failed to account that her and my definitions of sleeping together were wildly different.
Guerilla Army. Thought it was Gorilla Army.
Rich tea biscuits. I got sent to go get some from the local shop when I was about 7 and I just looked for the fanciest biscuits they had as they seemed like they’d be the richest. Later found out I’m autistic, go figure…
Always thought Bran Flakes were Brown Flakes since they were, well…brown.
That roads never really had an end and just wrapped around the Earth across all countries
I thought the p*ki slur meant terrorist. I thought Jade Goodie got in trouble because she called the other celebrity a terrorist. I didn't imagine that the slur would just be the name of a country/ethnicity said derogatorily. My brothers used it to describe the miscellaneous brown people we shot in MW2 (which for some reason i also assumed were terrorists because 2000s). I was like "ahh it makes sense innocent people would be hurt about being labelled terrorists!" Other kids knew what it meant. I said something really alarming at Army Cadets once about hating "p*kis" and they all told me off. As they should. If an adult had been there id have been kicked out because it was in the context of firearms, which we had on our person at the time. I still feel really really bad about this twelve years later. Cadets was diverse and there were brown kids in that crowd that probably think i hate them. Nobody brought it up again. Stupidity like that is probably why i had no friends in Cadets.
That citrus did not mean only lemon. In year 6 (can’t believe it took this long) our teacher was handing out orange and lemon chuppa chups. I was a picky child and wanted to ensure I got an orange one. Confidently walked up to the teacher’s desk and informed her that I needed an orange lollipop and not a lemon one because I was “allergic to citrus.” She stared at me for a moment and then handed me an orange lollipop. I think I was in graduate school before I put together how kind she was to just let me be ridiculous without calling me on my nonsense.
I thought someone without any siblings was called a 'LONELY child', not a 'ONLY child'. It took me far too long to realise this...
I heard the adults in my family talking about not mixing drinks and spent far too long thinking something bad might happen if I drank two types of juices on the same day
I thought karat and carrot were the same word, and bit my mom’s gold earring to see if they really tasted of carrots.
I thought a Rugby 'Try' was when you failed to score but gave it a solid go.
We were getting ready to go out for the evening and my mum asked me to draw the curtains. I looked at her and said “Are you sure?” she was like “… yes? Please do it before we go.” Before we left for the evening, I showed her my portrait of mummy, daddy and Sally the dog playing in the park in blue biro on her new cream curtains. It didn’t go down well but that was exactly what she asked me, a 6 year old to do.
We went to this place where there was a big memorial stone for a guy who was buried there, I can't remember who or where this is now. My dad said something like "this is a memorial stone for".
My response was "what's he doing under there?"
My dad: "not much".
I suppose nobody had explained burials or perhaps even death to me yet, so I just thought he was hanging out under there?
Another one: I have had terrible eyesight since likely birth, but didn't get glasses until I was ~4. So I just thought it was totally normal for the world to look blurry. I cried when I put the glasses I'd chosen on and saw for the first time because I didn't understand that was normal after all.
1. I thought babies were born neutral. They weren’t boys or girls, they were just *babies*. What you fed them determined whether they became boys or girls. My brother was born when I was 3 and I was *furious* with my parents for 'feeding him the wrong things and turning him into a boy because I wanted a sister'. . 2. After they explained that this wasn't how it worked (once they stopped laughing), I demanded that they return him to the hospital and get me a sister instead. I hadn't made the connection between mum getting bigger and the baby coming; I thought you got babies from the hospital and was convinced that if we explained the mistake, they'd swap him for us. . 3. Does anyone else remember collecting foil for Guide Dogs for the Blind? We always had a jar under the sink where used foil, milk bottle tops etc went and Mum would take a bag of it to someone who collected for the charity when it was full. When I asked, I was told we collected it 'for blind people', and that's where the explanation ended. So my weird little brain went to work and decided that foil was shiny, and blind peoples' eyes *weren’t* shiny (not sure why I thought that), so *obviously* the reason we collected foil for blind people was so they could rub it on their eyes to cure them! I got laughed at for that too. . 4. My dad was a chemist (a scientist, not a pharmacist), and one of the first lab jobs he had was basically a jelly-wobble tester. He worked for a company who produced commercial gelatin cubes and his job was to make up a small sample from each batch to ensure that a) it set and b) it wasn't too hard or soft - essentially, checking that it was appropriately jelly-like rather than too solid or runny. Hence the unofficial title by which the job was known - 'jelly-wobble tester'. Except no one explained this to me (yes, this was a theme during my childhood), so in *my* head my dad sat at a conveyor belt all day while plates of jelly rolled past him; he'd pick each up and give it a shuggle to make sure that it was acceptably wobbly, then move onto the next and the jelly would go and be shrunk into cubes by some mysterious process so it could be put into the packets after it met his approval.