Childhood misunderstandings

[GnarAlarm]

Things you misunderstood when you were a kid.

When I was a kid and a rain storm was rolling into town, I'd sometimes hear adults say "damnit, I just washed my car".
I thought they were mad because they could have skipped the car wash and let the rain wash their car for free.

I'd hear people refer to condoms as "rubbers", so I concluded that condoms were rubber bands that you put in your mouth.
I think I thought kissing was sex, and somehow the rubber band in your mouth would protect you when kissing someone.

I thought you'd die if you swallowed bubblegum. Not just the "stays in your stomach for X years" myth, I thought it would literally kill me, so I never chewed gum and to this day I'm not a big gum person.

Both of my grandmas divorced and remarried when I was just a baby, so I grew up with 4 grandpas and 2 grandmas.
I thought this was normal and that everyone had 4 grandpas.

[DNTRODDEN]

When I was a kid, there was a guy in the apartment complex we lived in, he had a huge snake, so I liked to hang out and watch it, one day he said for me to come over and "shoot the bull" I promptly went home and grabbed my cap guns.


Some days when I think about this, I wonder why the hell my parents let me hang out alone at a grown man's apartment....

[scab]

As a young kid I believed deaths in movies were real. I distinctly remember watching a western and thinking that all the extras being shot down had actually agreed to getting killed on screen. I assumed they did it because their families would probably get lots of money out of it. Fascinating how a child's mind works.

[GaryDahLegend]

i completely missed the point of fight club. But to be fair, I think Fincher was playing a joke on young men more than warning them.

[Bupstop]

I thought girls peed and had their period from the same hole. Took me until college to figure that out.

[GnarAlarm]

I thought girls peed and had their period from the same hole. Took me until college to figure that out.

I 100% thought girls peed out of their butt.

[Benicio El Toro]

I did not think it was going to be soooo far down there

[TheLurper]

I thought when my generation grew up that we'd be smarter than the adults the adults of the 90s and 00s.

Many are just as a dumb.

[Sincerity]

I assumed parents love their children.

[fakie nollie]

When I was 9, my friend and I tried to watch porn in the early days of the internet. We didn’t know why we wanted to but we figured why not try.

Went on my parents computer but didn’t know how to spell anything, or the slang for it. We looked up “Bajina” (thinking we searched “vagina”). Something started to slowly load eventually but my mom pulled into the driveway, so we panicked, unplugged the monitor and ran outside.

We decided to go skate as an excuse to leave. I lived on on a dirt road so we had to walk down in, past my house. Maybe 30’ away from my house, I just hear my mom scream, “TITS FUCKING?!”. She kept basically screaming every single word that we assumed showed up on the computer monitor once she plugged it back in.

Eventually, she drove my friend home and told his mom we looked up porn. Naturally, we both blamed each other and it breezed over in about a week.

In summary, my misunderstanding as a kid was the spelling of “vagina”.

[ungzilla]

when i was wee i thought all state capitals were the state plus city

capital of california? ez, california city, and so forth

[somethingmustbreaknow]

https://www.slapmagazine.com/index.php?topic=67141.0

[brycickle]

Expand Quote

I thought girls peed and had their period from the same hole. Took me until college to figure that out.

[close]

I 100% thought girls peed out of their butt.

Maybe it's because I'm only studying to be a physician assistant, and women's health was the exam I failed the worst, but I think you're right?

[JANUS]

I thought crucifixion involved lasers.

[layzieyez]

That I ever thought anything about people on the spectrum having anything wrong with them instead of childhood acceptance.

I had some misguided adult relatives with some thinking telling me stuff like “gay is not good.”

Joke is one of them ended up with a gay son. I love them both.

[Jehoshaphat Augustus]

when I was a kid I thought sex didn't involve multiple thrusts and both lovers climaxed immediately upon meeting genitals

now that I'm older, I got me a TARP and a POWERSTANCE
having fully understood the ugly truth

[GnarAlarm]

I did not think it was going to be soooo far down there

Man I had this exact thought the first time I ever...made love.
I'd seen porno and stuff but I was still like "wait...lower? Lower? Even Lower? It's all the way down here?"

[rothdigga]

when i was wee i thought all state capitals were the state plus city

capital of california? ez, california city, and so forth

If you've ever been to California City, you would really understand how awesome it would be if that was our capital. 

[Benicio El Toro]

Expand Quote

I did not think it was going to be soooo far down there

[close]

Man I had this exact thought the first time I ever...made love.
I'd seen porno and stuff but I was still like "wait...lower? Lower? Even Lower? It's all the way down here?"

Hahahaha my hand cramped up the first couple times

[Nom De Plume]

Expand Quote

Expand Quote

I did not think it was going to be soooo far down there

[close]

Man I had this exact thought the first time I ever...made love.
I'd seen porno and stuff but I was still like "wait...lower? Lower? Even Lower? It's all the way down here?"

[close]

Hahahaha my hand cramped up the first couple times

This hits home hard. It's like you had to be Reed Richards to get there. The body suits that snapped at the crotch were in fashion at the time too. You'd finally get all the way down there and only to meet yet another obstacle to overcome in the name of teenage romance.

Love that you called it porno. Not sure when we dropped the O, sounds better with the O.

[johnes]

Because 90s softcore porn only showed upper bush, as a kid I assumed the hole was under the bush and I thought, how do you stick it in passed all that thick hair?

[LUGR]

I used to think it was Lannucci instead of Iannucci.

[Emo jimmy]

Geee offf rowley

[Bertie]

In the UK there’s a yearly National festival called ‘bonfire night’ or ‘Guy Fawkes Night’. Guy Fawkes was responsible for a foiled attempt to kill British parliament members along with the King in the 1600s. Throughout my childhood, I always thought we were all gathering with big bonfires and firework displays to celebrate an attempt to end the monarchy and kill some of our incompetent overlords. When I finally twigged in my late teens that we were actually celebrating the whole thing being unsuccessful, I was gutted.

[Ankle_Lift]

When I was maybe 5, I used to think cars were sentient beings.
How else would they know to turn the windshield wipers on when it started raining?

For my whole child hood, I thought that the movie "the flight of the navigator" was a dream I had.
Turns out i had just watched it once when I was maybe 3 or 4 in 1989, and had never seen or heard of it it again until the Internet came around and you could access any movie and I found it again.

I believed my parents' adult friends when they told me their dogs had just ran away, when in reality they had put them down.

[DirtyCheddarKids]

When I was 5 or 6 I believed I could levitate if I was just cycling my legs fast enough. I also believed I could feel static from tv sets, even through walls and that I could spin up magic shields around me that would protect me at night. Pretty nutty shit, but there‘s a small part of me that still believes that as a kid I could do things I unlearned how to do.

[Slave IV]

When I was 5 or 6 I believed I could levitate if I was just cycling my legs fast enough. I also believed I could feel static from tv sets, even through walls and that I could spin up magic shields around me that would protect me at night. Pretty nutty shit, but there‘s a small part of me that still believes that as a kid I could do things I unlearned how to do.

Kids are definitely more in tuned to our natural abilities before they get discouraged and tainted by current society.

[midnitecruiser]

Things you misunderstood when you were a kid.

When I was a kid and a rain storm was rolling into town, I'd sometimes hear adults say "damnit, I just washed my car".
I thought they were mad because they could have skipped the car wash and let the rain wash their car for free.

What does this one actually mean? 40 years old here and still thought that, granted I lived car free in nyc for 30 years

[dunc]

I couldn't see the bat in the batman symbol. I could only see teeth.

[mattchew]

It took me a long time to understand that when someone borrowed money, they didn’t have return the exact bills back, but rather the same amount. I remember my brother borrowing a few dollars and buying candy at the grocery store and being mystified that he’d have to come back later and get those exact bills backs, seemed like so much work for everyone involved lol.