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35 Lessons People Admit They Learned Embarrassingly Late In Life, As Shared In This Online Group
It’s no big secret that knowledge is essential to humanity. I mean, just consider all the things we wouldn’t be aware of if people didn’t believe in lifelong learning!
Folks would still think that the Earth was flat and sat on the back of a giant turtle that was flying through space, half of us would’ve perished from hunger and deadly diseases, language wouldn’t have been a thing, and yadda yadda yadda. The point is, we’d have an empty planet.
Most will probably agree that the enthusiasm one has for learning new things fades away straight after schooling, which is somewhat understandable. You know, we get busy with work and whatnot. However, as the saying goes, “It’s never too late to learn,” so even if you’ve just discovered that ponies are not, in fact, little horses – just be glad that you did.
“What’s something you learned ‘embarrassingly late’ in life?” – this internet user turned to one of Reddit’s most enlightening and thought-provoking communities, inviting its members to unveil a couple of things that they happened to learn way too late in life. The now-viral thread managed to garner nearly 36K upvotes as well as 31.8K comments containing some pretty surprising answers.
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This is something my little sister did through high school. We're about 8 years apart so we never overlapped in school.
She's always been a straight-A student, and I found out she worked extra hard because she "wanted to catch up to me" in school. So we could be in school at the same time.
I almost cried.
While watching Game of Thrones, I asked my husband when dragons went extinct. He had to pause the show for that one.
That Bonsai are not a species of tree, but a way to grow them. Any tree can be a bonsai.
I was like, 22? working at a restaurant making myself a salad, and I asked the chef for bumps and he stared at me for like, 60 solid seconds trying to figure out what I wanted. I explained to him I wanted bumps for my salad. I have all the rest of the toppings but now needed bumps.
Guys … my family told me croutons were called bumps my entire life. I called my dad that night and confirmed that bumps are indeed, actually called croutons.
I live near the Hospital for Joint Diseases….when I was a kid I thought it was a special hospital for people who had two different diseases at the same time.
I thought that horses had toes until I was 22. I thought the hoof was a “horseshoe” and the toes were tucked inside.
How did I learn how wrong I was, you ask?
I was walking past a cavalry museum and saw a horse statue and loudly remarked “it must hurt so bad when they fold a horse’s toes to put them into the shoe!” Dozens of horse enthusiasts turned and looked at me with wild bewilderment in their eyes.
I learned that pork and beans are not called "cowboy beans". I was 18 and asked a grocery store clerk to help me find the "cowboy beans". We were looking everywhere and I was getting frustrated because I know that every store carries these beans. After a while I pick up a pork and beans can with a picture and say "see, it looks just like this!" He says "you mean pork and beans?" Then I realize that my mom called them that so that I would eat them. The look of disappointment from that grocery store clerk haunts me to this day.
When I was ten years old, I considered orgasm to be a nice word for a fart. I told my mother that my stomach hurt from having so many orgasms.
Well, i once got a few slaps from my mom from something similar, kid at school had made up a song ( we where 10 or 11 tops ) and it went like " A, E, I, O, U, VAIS LEVAR NO CU " it was a dumb rime, but ( a part from the voals) it means " you're gonna get it in the a*s " an me with all my Innocence thought it meant " you're gonna get spanked in the a*s " in sum, i sung it Next to my Mother, and got a few slaps, and later, much much later, i understood it meant " you're gonna get sodomized "
When you're an adult...you shouldn't buy shoes that are "a little loose, incase you get taller".
That you don't have to stand *in* the shower while the water warms up.
I'm feeling personally attacked by this list. I just stood at the other end so I didn't get splashed
I though Mick Jagger’s name was McJagger, and people just never said his first name for some reason.
Jackalopes are mythical creatures. I was... 18 I think? To be fair, I've seen a platypus, rhino, and a giraffe. Those are some bs animals.
How can you say they are mythical, then provide clear photographic evidence of their existence?
Because BP posted that photo… OP didn’t post any picture on their Reddit comment.
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I was very disappointed when I learned jackalopes are just a taxidermy's Frankenstein creation. I was in my 20s. I'm still stubbornly hoping they're real and not discovered yet.
Don't worry...learned Narwhals are real at 35. Saw a documentary on sea life...when the got to Narwhals I exclaimed "They are real?"
They're why people thought unicorns were real for a LONG time.
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I remember my then GF seeing an okapi in the London zoo... She was in complete disbelief, having never heard/seen/noted any reference to them. I was in similar disbelief that this would be possible; then I found out my local zoo that I'd gone to weekly as a child actually is actually the coordinator of all okapi breeding and conservation efforts.
Lol I just learned that I have a jackalope stuffed animal from when I was little
This was a giant debate on a bus I was on about a month ago....just complete strangers trying to prove one way or another
They are actually just sick rabbits, don't look this up, it will break your heart
Not sure at whst age I heard of them. Could been before 28, but realize they were fake animals .
A cousin thought armadillos were made up until she visited me in the south and saw one. I'll never forget her reaction, "What was THAT!".
The platypus is so B.s. they thought it was a joke when the first specimens were sent to the British museum. Fun fact: The Dreaming story about the creation of the platypus involves a water rat kidnapping a duck and having his way with her. Duck escapes his lair and swims all the way down the east coast laying eggs. Guess what hatched lol
Someone needs to tell these jackalopes here near Amarillo tx they not real
Jackalopes were REAL!!!! Well, sorta. Let's say that they weren't a joke, and the people describing them weren't lying. Jackrabbits can get a fungal infection which causes a horn-like substance to grow from behind their ear, or other places which tend to stay warm and damp. It's called Shopes papilloma. Here's a rabbit with tusks: Rabbit_sho...irus_3.jpg 
You don't have to rip the plastic top off of your new deodorant with your teeth or pliers or anything. You can just turn the base until it comes up enough to just take it off.
I will become a statute for the next several seconds while I contemplate my stupidness
Houston is not the name of the guy astronauts talk to
Not to mention "Roger". Roger that. Roger and over. Who's this guy?
I suspected it was the same with lots of people but I found out it wasn't gorilla warfare but guerrilla warfare maybe in my twenties.
The disappoints of growing up... they just keep coming.
I was probably 21 or 22 when I learned that whole milk is only 3% fat. I always thought it was 100, and when I saw reduced as being 2% I thought "why wouldn't they do 50% or somewhere in the middle?"
Don't know if I'm being the Boring Panda here or not, but I wanted to know: "The reason it's called "whole milk" has less to do with its fat content, than the fact that it's comparatively unadulterated. As the Dairy Council of California puts it, whole milk is "the way it comes from the cow before processing." -- Washington Post
Learned this yesterday, actually… apparently you need to RSVP to events even if you will not be attending.
My sister was in her 50's when she found out the meaning of: "you have an addictive personality". She thought after all these years of therapy that it meant that people were addicted to her personality. We laugh hysterically when we talk about this (in a very sad way).
Just this week I found out about the little button on the back of the socket driver that pushes the socket off. I have owned the same socket set for about 30 years, and I have a dedicated screwdriver that I keep with my sockets and use to pry them off when I’m done using them.
I will be 55 years old soon.
I was 19 when I learned that women have to give birth (or at least be pregnant) to have breast milk. I'd always thought that it's available at all times.
I was a very sheltered kid. Don't judge me.
Until I was in school for environmental studies, I thought “mourning dove” was “morning dove.” I usually heard them calling in the mornings, so “morning” made sense to me.
Coca and cocoa are two different plants, not one magical organism lol
Yea mate, cocoa makes you feel warm ínside and happy, Coca makes you f*****g fly and search for ninjas in the backyard....
That Cheesecake Factory is a restaurant and not an assembly line of workers making cheesecake. I always envisioned you would go in there and watch them and eat a slice, sort of like a brewery.
Edit: I’d like to add that I’ve lived in close proximity to multiple locations my entire life, and my sister used to go all the time with her friends. I thought they all just really liked the cheesecake, and the factory vibe of it all. It’s not until my now fiancé asked me to meet her and her friend there for drinks that I figured it all out, at about age 22-23 lol
Birds have sex. I thought that the mother bird laid the egg and the father fertilised it later. I was 18 and asked my mother what the birds were doing…
I was taught it's fine to flush tampons down the toilet, and would even flush pads, and sponges when I'd clean the bathroom. I didn't learn that it was a *huge* no no until sometime in my mid to late 20's. I'm surprised the pipes at the house I grew up in weren't constantly exploding.
I think a piece of my soul just died. Don’t flush *anything* other than TP and the product. Even ‘flushable’ wipes wreak havoc on your plumbing… as we discovered upon returning from sabbatical. The house sitter had flushed baby wipes down the toilet… cost about $300 to fix.
the saying is: "Nip it in the bud" and not in fact *nip it in the butt*
Narwhals are real animals
I thought they were mythical like unicorns.
Unicorns are real! I should know! I almost died getting this picture! Dz7kyKvXgAAF31A.jpg 
That in Billy Joel‘s hit song „We didn’t start the fire“ the line of „homeless vets“ meant homeless veterans and not homeless veterinarians. I was about twenty five before i put those pieces together, and always thought there was a big homeless veterinarian problem I had never heard about
Not me but my mom: waiting for the shower to be warm BEFORE stepping in.
She grew up with a bathtub most of her life, and didn't get a shower until she moved out of my grandparents' place in her 20s.
She was apparently talking to a coworker about the winter weather one morning. While lamenting, she goes, "And don't you just HATE getting into a cold shower on these cold days?! It takes SO LONG for the water to get warm!"
Coworker: "Uh... Cheryl.... You know you can just WAIT until the water gets warm, THEN hop in...."
I thought that ‘prima donna' was 'pre-Madonna' and that it meant everything before the singer Madonna and just assumed she was some kind of universal queen.
I was maybe 17 or 18 before learning that it was Timbuktu, not Timbuk 2. I thought there was an original Timbuk out there somewhere
The "D" in the Disney logo was a stylized capital letter and not a backwards G.
That I was in fact NOT missing a testicle. Thought there was supposed to be 3 until I was like 14 years old.
When people say quote unquote I thought they were saying quote on quote
Wait… i actually thought thought it was quote on quote until this post
Note: this post originally had 45 images. It’s been shortened to the top 35 images based on user votes.
Don't know why you were downvoted. Not everyone has to believe in God or anything.
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For the computer people: I was once asked for a "Comedy-Limited Askey" file (instead of comma-delimited ASCII); and I told someone in a training session to download a file to C:\TEMP, and they complained it wasn't working. They had written "C:BACKSLASHTEMP". These were both professionals in an office.
Was terribly afraid of thunder as a kid. My mother said it was just clouds bumping into each other. When I was about 14 I said in a group outside my family, "I know thunder is just clouds bumping into each other, but that doesn't make me feel better. What the heck is in a cloud?!"
Haha I can imagine the looks "So I went to the movies" "oh kinky" *side eyes from the group* "anyhoo............
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We lived by a river that flowed into Lake Huron. When we'd travel at night the shipping channel was lighted with buoys. When I was little I asked my mom what they were and she said 'buoys'. Until my teens I though little boys sat out on a floating thing with a light to keep the ships from running aground.
My deceased wife was extremely intelligent in some ways and profoundly ignorant in others. We're driving to North Carolina. We get to I75. Signs says "North Atlanta/South Miami". She asks, "Which way?" It's at that point I realize I'm with the wrong person.
It took me 50yrs before I learned that simmering isn't just boiling on a lower heat.
I had the same idea growing up. (Although at a much younger age)
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I found out recently that SoMe is just short for social media. Up till then I assumed it was some kind of follow up to #metoo.
A few years ago I also realized what SoMe was. But I still read it with the voice of a bored to death teenager in my head: soooooo mee.... 🙄. I think that when I'm 100 years old I'll still hear that teenager in my head. Haha!
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My mom (73) was talking on the phone with me yesterday, and she thought pencil lead was actually lead. When I told her it wasn't lead, it was graphite, she thought that maybe that had lead in it. Nope. It's carbon. The reason it's called lead is a leftover from when graphite was first discovered in 1565 in England - not knowing as much about chemistry as we do now, they thought it was a form of lead. They would literally cut sticks of it to write with. But kids don't get lead poisoning from chewing on pencils, Mom.
My beautiful wife is always mixing up sayings. My favourite one she often says is "Hang ya horses" lol it's just another thing I love about her
For some reason have i always wetted my toothbrush. It was only when i as adult bought an electric toothbrush i found the foaming of the toothpaste unpractical and realised toothpaste is to be used ‘dry’.
Some of these are sweet and funny....the rest is a sad commentary on the public education system.
My husband argued with me that reindeer are imaginary. I had to go to Google for proof that they are not, in fact, pretend...this man was 32 at the time🙃
a better title for this would be "35 different ways to say 'dumb as a bag of hammers'"
I thought you could swim under an island. That islands were just pieces of land floating around in the ocean. I was 45 when my brother set me straight. I have a 52 yr old friend that didn't know that pee and babies don't come from the same opening until I told her how a catheter works with both the female & male anatomy. She was shocked. She also thought only boy cows had horns.
For the non english speakers: when I was around 11 and very bad at English, there was this song „shut up and sleep with me, come on shut up and sleep with me…“. I need to mention here, that I grew up in Germany and we had relatively many kids of Russian descend in our school. So, being the fool I was, I asked a Russian girl what „sharrap“ meant, because *obviously* that was a Russian word!
Haha! That song! I remember I thought it was such a cool song... but then I learned English and....yeah, it's fun but not that cool. Haha! Thank you for reminding me of this song. 😂
Load More Replies... My 70 year old stepmother asked me why she gets emails from someone called Nore Ply who never answers. She was so earnest I didn't dare laugh but I could tell she was embarrassed when I explained.
Aww.... sometimes elderly ppl just can't quite wrap their head around things that younger ppl take for granted. My grandma was in her early 90s when my cousin and I visited her and she was so confused: the night before she had seen a film on TV where London got flooded and she had no idea how they could show a flooded London on TV when it wasn't flooded in real life. My cousin and I tried to tell her that you can do such great drawings on computers that you can make such fake footage. Am not sure she understood it at all.
Load More Replies... Don't know why you were downvoted. Not everyone has to believe in God or anything.
Load More Replies... For the computer people: I was once asked for a "Comedy-Limited Askey" file (instead of comma-delimited ASCII); and I told someone in a training session to download a file to C:\TEMP, and they complained it wasn't working. They had written "C:BACKSLASHTEMP". These were both professionals in an office.
Was terribly afraid of thunder as a kid. My mother said it was just clouds bumping into each other. When I was about 14 I said in a group outside my family, "I know thunder is just clouds bumping into each other, but that doesn't make me feel better. What the heck is in a cloud?!"
Haha I can imagine the looks "So I went to the movies" "oh kinky" *side eyes from the group* "anyhoo............
Load More Replies... We lived by a river that flowed into Lake Huron. When we'd travel at night the shipping channel was lighted with buoys. When I was little I asked my mom what they were and she said 'buoys'. Until my teens I though little boys sat out on a floating thing with a light to keep the ships from running aground.
My deceased wife was extremely intelligent in some ways and profoundly ignorant in others. We're driving to North Carolina. We get to I75. Signs says "North Atlanta/South Miami". She asks, "Which way?" It's at that point I realize I'm with the wrong person.
It took me 50yrs before I learned that simmering isn't just boiling on a lower heat.
I had the same idea growing up. (Although at a much younger age)
Load More Replies... I found out recently that SoMe is just short for social media. Up till then I assumed it was some kind of follow up to #metoo.
A few years ago I also realized what SoMe was. But I still read it with the voice of a bored to death teenager in my head: soooooo mee.... 🙄. I think that when I'm 100 years old I'll still hear that teenager in my head. Haha!
Load More Replies... My mom (73) was talking on the phone with me yesterday, and she thought pencil lead was actually lead. When I told her it wasn't lead, it was graphite, she thought that maybe that had lead in it. Nope. It's carbon. The reason it's called lead is a leftover from when graphite was first discovered in 1565 in England - not knowing as much about chemistry as we do now, they thought it was a form of lead. They would literally cut sticks of it to write with. But kids don't get lead poisoning from chewing on pencils, Mom.
My beautiful wife is always mixing up sayings. My favourite one she often says is "Hang ya horses" lol it's just another thing I love about her
For some reason have i always wetted my toothbrush. It was only when i as adult bought an electric toothbrush i found the foaming of the toothpaste unpractical and realised toothpaste is to be used ‘dry’.
Some of these are sweet and funny....the rest is a sad commentary on the public education system.
My husband argued with me that reindeer are imaginary. I had to go to Google for proof that they are not, in fact, pretend...this man was 32 at the time🙃
a better title for this would be "35 different ways to say 'dumb as a bag of hammers'"
I thought you could swim under an island. That islands were just pieces of land floating around in the ocean. I was 45 when my brother set me straight. I have a 52 yr old friend that didn't know that pee and babies don't come from the same opening until I told her how a catheter works with both the female & male anatomy. She was shocked. She also thought only boy cows had horns.
For the non english speakers: when I was around 11 and very bad at English, there was this song „shut up and sleep with me, come on shut up and sleep with me…“. I need to mention here, that I grew up in Germany and we had relatively many kids of Russian descend in our school. So, being the fool I was, I asked a Russian girl what „sharrap“ meant, because *obviously* that was a Russian word!
Haha! That song! I remember I thought it was such a cool song... but then I learned English and....yeah, it's fun but not that cool. Haha! Thank you for reminding me of this song. 😂
Load More Replies... My 70 year old stepmother asked me why she gets emails from someone called Nore Ply who never answers. She was so earnest I didn't dare laugh but I could tell she was embarrassed when I explained.
Aww.... sometimes elderly ppl just can't quite wrap their head around things that younger ppl take for granted. My grandma was in her early 90s when my cousin and I visited her and she was so confused: the night before she had seen a film on TV where London got flooded and she had no idea how they could show a flooded London on TV when it wasn't flooded in real life. My cousin and I tried to tell her that you can do such great drawings on computers that you can make such fake footage. Am not sure she understood it at all.
Load More Replies...