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Someone Online Asked “What Took You An Embarrassing Amount Of Time To Figure Out?”, And 30 People Delivered
Have you ever found yourself realizing that there are some things that you were interpreting wrong? If yes, then it’s okay because there are more people who misunderstood some common things and they all confessed this after someone on Reddit asked “What took you an embarrassing amount of time to figure out?” The question that received more than 39k upvotes was soon answered by many people who decided to share their personal and funny stories.
People confessed how long it took them to realize how some items and things work or how someone else had to explain this to them. One user shared that it took 9 months for them to finally realize how to use a French press correctly. Another Redditor revealed that it took them a while to understand how the fashion world and its runway shows work and that “those ridiculous over-the-top dresses exhibited at fashion shows are not intended to ever be worn in real life.”
What are some of the things you had to take some time to understand? Don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the comments down below!
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I was 50ish when I realized that the little piggy that goes to market wasn't going f**kin' shopping.
R u kiddin me?!! I had no other idea that he was going to market for anything else but to shop!! I am 60 yo and it sure blew my innocent old mind!
When I was younger I thought 'feat' was a very popular rapper. ie Eminem feat 50 cent etc.. I was like damn this feat guy appears in a lot of songs..
When I was like 5 my dad would constantly make the following joke:
He'd put his hand on my head and squeeze lightly a couple times while saying "I'm a brainsucker. What am I doing?" After a quick pause he'd follow up with the punch line "Starving!", but he always stretched out the pronunciation for the word so it sounded to me like "Star...ving"
For years I thought it was a lame joke where the punchline somehow referred to the fact that brainsuckers were aliens and came from the stars or something like that.
I was sitting in class one day and I must have been 10-12 years old before I realized "He's calling me dumb! The joke is that I dont have a brain so the brainsucker is starving!"
I was at least smart enough to never tell him this, because I'd never live it down if he knew it took me five years to figure out the joke.
If you're joking with a kid, make sure they get it and are in on the joke. Otherwise it risks coming across as mean. Dad calling his kid dumb isn't a good joke to begin with.
How ring binders work. I thought you had to take out all the pages to add a new page to the back of the binder, which annoyed me in school because it could take a while having to realign all the pages to fit the holes in the binder. I was about 22 when I worked in a bookstore and my coworker saw me take all the pages out, after which she showed me how it actually works. I will never forget the look of disbelief on her face.
That those ridiculous over-the-top dresses exhibited at fashion shows are not intended to ever be worn in real life; they are like concept cars of the fashion world, intended to showcase the designer's creativity and vision.
Before my cataract surgery I thought Hellboy wore aviator goggles. Post surgery I saw they were remnants of his horns.
That the state Montana is literally the word ‘mountains’ in Spanish. Didn’t realize until I was physically in Montana, staring up at some mountains, and thought ‘wow! Mountains are so pretty! Montañas… Montanas… montana, oh.’
I didn't realize until my late teens/early 20s that "chemical castration" means taking pills which render you infertile, not necessarily dipping someone's balls in a vat of acid. Yea this one is pretty embarrassing.
When I was growing up the family would often do road trips to Vancouver, at least once a year. Just outside Williams Lake I would always observe a construction site where some sort of log house is being built. It was always half finished.
After like a decade I was maybe 18 and finally made the comment about them "still building that place". Apparently they build custom log homes on site and disassemble and ship them out.
In 'Lady and the Tramp' the humans are called Jim dear and darling. I was in my 30s before I realized that wasn't their actual names, it was what lady heard them calling each other.
That my childhood hamster did not, in fact, run away.
My French press. I owned one 9 months before I realized the coffee grounds go UNDER the plunger and not ON TOP of it. I was always so annoyed having to clean the top of the plunger after lowering the coffee into the water.
My girlfriend stared at me like I was the stupidest person she’d ever met trying to formulate how to politely fix this.
That breakfast actually means breaking the fast.
That chickens always lay eggs without needing to mate with a rooster.
How to use a staple remover.
Until I was was in my 40s, I’d just use the staple remover to “bite” the long side of a staple and kind of tear it back through the paper.
Then someone showed me how to properly use a staple remover by “biting” the crimped side of the staple to bend the crimp and kind of straighten out the staple again. Once kind of straightened, “bite” the long side of the staple and the staple will back out the same holes it went in without further tearing the paper.
That the ‘Teletubbies’ literally had tele-tubby’s, as in their stomachs were TVs. Figured this out at university.
When I was younger I had no idea that New York and Newark were two different places. I kept thinking people saying Newark were trying to say New York, but had a speech impediment or accent, or just didn't know how to pronounce it.
Even worse, there's also a Newark in Delaware. Imagine being from there and having to constantly explain that, no, you're not from New Jersey.
I realised a few years ago that cows don’t just naturally produce milk, they have to be pregnant/have a calf to produce it. Which is embarrassingly late to figure out.
Yeah, thanks for that. I'm over 40 and literally learnt it from this post (and even googled it to make sure this is not a wind-up)... In my defence, I grew up in a city and have only seen a real cow a number of times.
When you do something wrong but with enthusiasm, and someone says, “A for effort,” I didn’t understand that it meant an “A” as in school report card grades. It never made sense because in my head, “E” is for Effort, like “C” is for Cookie. I finally had someone explain it to me sometime after I turned 30.
When I was a kid back in the early 90’s I was obsessed with WWF wrestling. It didn’t hit me until years later that The Undertaker’s managers name, Paul Bearer, wasn’t his real name.
The black market isn't an actual market.
As a child I thought it was something to do with the slavery we learned about at school. Also another expression we heard a lot was "the criminal underworld" which I thought was a gang of crooks who lived in the subway.
That when more than one person tells you they saw your husband with a woman who wasnt you, in his car, more than once, it probably means hes cheating on you, regardless of what he says.
"You can't have your cake and eat it" doesn't mean "you can't obtain your cake then eat it"; it means "you can't still possess your cake after having eaten it".
That the saying is “kit and caboodle” and not “kitten caboodle.” Until I found out the real saying, I always pictures a big basket filled with kittens.
I thought that ponies were baby horses till I was like 24.
The rapper Flo Rida is from Florida.
That ringing in the ears is not a normal thing everyone experiences or a superstition that someone is talking about you. I was 30 when I realized that it is tinnitus, and not normal even though I've had it since I was around 13 (too loud music).
I've had it all my life. I can't remember ever not having it.
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Tinnitus is also a symptom of temporomandibular jaw disorder (aka TMJ disorder) . You don't need to have damaged your hearing to get tinnitus, which is what I've got. :(
Me too. Had a TMJ surgery as jaw used to freeze when I laughed, sneezed, ate, yawned etc. Still got Tinnitus.
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I hope people who listen to loud music through ear buds, read this.
Yeah, just as many others, 20 years late. I never believed that, but now i learned the hard way, that LOUD MUSIC DAMAGES THE HEARING. It really should be campaigned more widely so the information can get to young people and they will learn from our mistakes.
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I started wearing ear plugs at concerts way too late. But when I did, I discovered the concert is more enjoyable. You hear the music at a level of "loud" that is comfortable, you can hear the different instruments easier and you don't hear the what can be very annoying crowd much.
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It's somewhat normal as you get older. But you should still get it checked because it's hard to tell what level of it is normal and what level is damage
People naturally assume that their lived experiences are common. If you have always had a thing, it's not weird, it's just how it is -- you have no other point of reference. So lots of people have had this experience of suddenly realizing something isn't normal, and for many things outside of tinnitus.
I was born with it 😅 I had no idea it wasn't normal untill I casually mentioned it during a conversation with my mum.
I've had pulsatile tinnitus since I was little. Basically I can hear my heart beat in my ears the whole time. It's awful
Thought so to, been suffering since I was a child! The saying “the silence was deafening” made me think that in silence, it was normal to feel like you have a neutered fairy screeching inside your head!
Tinnitus is nasty, esp. when the barometric pressure changes. The really bad news is that it worsens with age.
My mom always had tinitus and didn’t know it was weird until she was 40+ and it somehow came up in conversation about how silence sounds. She mentioned it sounded like a sea and little bells and everyone else just looked ar her funny.
My dad casually mentioned the other day he’s had tinnitus for the past 30 years…baffling that he never let on
I've had it since I was 30. 65 now. It happened after surgery on both ears. It hit me in the middle of the night waking me out of a sound sleep. I still had the ear plugs in from the surgery. The doc has to be the one to take them out after 10 days. With the plugs in it sounds like a fire alarm going off in your head. I'm used to it too. I think if I suddenly could hear silence again I'd have panic attacks.
It's not the same thing. I have tinnitus, it's a constant ringing. I still get these sudden loud rings in a different note in my ears,I assume the ringing means.
Wow! I'm not the only one who hears different notes! I also hear different frequencies. I'm so glad to find this out.
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I have a Tinnitus since i was 12 because some iron poles from a construction site fell from a crane that was supposed to lift them over a hedge, crashing on the street. The part that held them got ripped apart. Luckily I didn't got smashed, but I'll always have that ringing in my ears.
Same here my friend. I only discovered this two yeara ago. I really thought evveryone experienced ringing of some sort. I've had tinnitus at least a decade, certainly for as long as I could remember.
That lambs were the same species as sheep.
Yup, lambs grow up to be sheep, not like ponies that do not grow up to be horses.
That the saying is “nip it in the bud” NOT butt.
Note: this post originally had 40 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Off topic but does anyone has a problem with their notifications? It's been couple days now that my notifications are not active, cannot see any response and can't even see the settings of the notifications.
Yes, haven't had notifications showing for almost a week.
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For years, I thought the Underground Railroad was an actual subterranean railway, and I couldn't figure out how southern slave owners didn't know about these rails running under their plantations.
I feel like most of us thought the Underground Railroad was literally like a subway for slaves, lol. I hope you like me weren’t too old when you figured it out.
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I feel a lot smarter than most of the people who posted, that's for sure. That they didn't learn some of this stuff until adulthood is mind-blowing
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I learned at age 30 or so that baby carrots are just shaved down large carrots. I thought they grew like that, like cherry tomatoes.
Some are, some aren't. Real baby carrots are harvested young aka before fully grown as they are a different taste and texture. Many are just chopped to size though.
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When I was 14 I visited family friends in Europe and one day at dinner we were talking and it suddenly occurred to me that the Toastmasters groups my dad had been going to for years were *not* a well done bread fan club but a group of people working on their public speaking skills. My non native English speaker dinner companions didn’t let me live that one down for days 😂😂🤦♀️
Aussie here. I remember reading an American novel when I was a kid. So long ago now, I can't remember the title, but it was set in the 1950s and the gist of it was, that the mother sent 10-year-old Johnny to the drugstore. I was horrified. "They have stores that sell drugs in America? And they send their 'children' there?" (In Australia, we have "pharmacies" or "chemists" and they don't have soda fountains).
Yes, as I grew up in the UK, I remember being puzzled at drugstore. Once I knew it was proper medicines, I thought they sold nothing else, just a shop full of different types of pills.
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I thought Alaska was an island because of the way it was presented on the U.S maps. I was 23 when I was watching some movie where the protagonist was driving to Alaska. I made some comment to my dad about that being impossible and he looked at me like I was the stupidest person in the world.
Is it really that uncommon in the US to see a globe? Or at least a world map? Or a map of "this is our continent where our country is on, name all countries/big cities/rivers/whatever" at school?
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There was an episode of Rugrats (the original one) called "The Trial" in which Tommy's clown lamp is broken and the babies hold a trial to find out who did it. Turns out it was Angelica (of course) and when the others ask Tommy what the adults will do to her, we hear off screen "Not the chair! Not the chair!" before it cuts to Angelica in a high chair. I used to wonder what was so terrifying about that chair. Years later, I finally realized it was a reference to the electric chair.
My mother, after searching and searching for any lost item...then finding it, would often exclaim "wouldn't you know, it's ALWAYS in the LAST place you look!" It wasn't until she was in her 60s I finally pointed out to her "mom of course it is,after you found it why would you still keep looking?" The light went off in her head. We had a good laugh. Miss and love you mom.
That's a pretty common phrase, but I would have thought everyone (by the time they were about 10) knew that it was a joke because, as you said, of course it's the last place :) Funny the things that just don't occur to you sometimes
Load More Replies... A few days ago it occurred to me that the 'Golden Arches' of MacDonalds make an 'M'. It was because a kid drew a pic of MacDonalds and mentioned something about the arches. Btw, it took me until adulthood to realize that 'Kanga' and her child 'Roo' (from Winnie the Pooh) make up 'Kangaroo'. This despite the fact that they are very clearly Kangaroos.
Add: "Jury rigged" and "Jerry rigged" are both saying used in common English and mean slightly different things. I belive Jury rigged means something that has a predictable or preset outcome. While, Jerry rigged means to use non-standard methods to make something work effectively enough.
Wow, another couple of terms I've never heard, I'm learning lots today.
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Until I was in my late 20s I thought an IV in your arm still had the needle attached! I used to try my damnest not to bend my arm for fear the needle would poke me somewhere else in my arm. Hahahaha
There are different types. The simplest form of intravenous access is by passing a hollow needle through the skin directly into a vein. The more recent ones I had were utilising a narrow catheter in the vein but before that? Needles.
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I used to think the meaning of the phrase "if a jobs worth doing, it's worth doing badly" was to not put in too much effort, i.e. life's too short to worry about work/ mowing the lawn/ doing dishes etc.
I thought the expression was, "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well," meaning if you're going to wash the dishes, you might as well do them properly!
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Used to bitch a lot about why does every mall/building parking zone has 2-3 parking spots for disabled,i was like “no way there is so many disabled people who drive in the town”. Basically one disabled person-one parking spot for disabled. Took me years to come up that one disabled person can,and in fact,does visit many different places in town
In my hometown, the service roads that border interstate highways are apparently called "frontage roads" and there are lots and lots of highway exits for "Frontage Rd." I'd probably been driving for 3-4 years before I realized that "Frontage Rd" wasn't a single long-a** road that wound through the entire city and crossed all the highways multiple times.
That's interesting, I've never heard that term before. I can't actually think of what we call them here.
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"To be or not to be". I didn't know what that meant until I heard David Tennant say it while doing Hamlet...
So why is Pitbull in the pic for this thread when he's not mentioned in it??
some of these were so obvious I don't know how people were ignorant of them. I don't want to believe my fellow man is that dumb.
You could try helping to explain instead of condemning.
Load More Replies... Off topic but does anyone has a problem with their notifications? It's been couple days now that my notifications are not active, cannot see any response and can't even see the settings of the notifications.
Yes, haven't had notifications showing for almost a week.
Load More Replies... For years, I thought the Underground Railroad was an actual subterranean railway, and I couldn't figure out how southern slave owners didn't know about these rails running under their plantations.
I feel like most of us thought the Underground Railroad was literally like a subway for slaves, lol. I hope you like me weren’t too old when you figured it out.
Load More Replies... I feel a lot smarter than most of the people who posted, that's for sure. That they didn't learn some of this stuff until adulthood is mind-blowing
Load More Replies... I learned at age 30 or so that baby carrots are just shaved down large carrots. I thought they grew like that, like cherry tomatoes.
Some are, some aren't. Real baby carrots are harvested young aka before fully grown as they are a different taste and texture. Many are just chopped to size though.
Load More Replies... When I was 14 I visited family friends in Europe and one day at dinner we were talking and it suddenly occurred to me that the Toastmasters groups my dad had been going to for years were *not* a well done bread fan club but a group of people working on their public speaking skills. My non native English speaker dinner companions didn’t let me live that one down for days 😂😂🤦♀️
Aussie here. I remember reading an American novel when I was a kid. So long ago now, I can't remember the title, but it was set in the 1950s and the gist of it was, that the mother sent 10-year-old Johnny to the drugstore. I was horrified. "They have stores that sell drugs in America? And they send their 'children' there?" (In Australia, we have "pharmacies" or "chemists" and they don't have soda fountains).
Yes, as I grew up in the UK, I remember being puzzled at drugstore. Once I knew it was proper medicines, I thought they sold nothing else, just a shop full of different types of pills.
Load More Replies... I thought Alaska was an island because of the way it was presented on the U.S maps. I was 23 when I was watching some movie where the protagonist was driving to Alaska. I made some comment to my dad about that being impossible and he looked at me like I was the stupidest person in the world.
Is it really that uncommon in the US to see a globe? Or at least a world map? Or a map of "this is our continent where our country is on, name all countries/big cities/rivers/whatever" at school?
Load More Replies... There was an episode of Rugrats (the original one) called "The Trial" in which Tommy's clown lamp is broken and the babies hold a trial to find out who did it. Turns out it was Angelica (of course) and when the others ask Tommy what the adults will do to her, we hear off screen "Not the chair! Not the chair!" before it cuts to Angelica in a high chair. I used to wonder what was so terrifying about that chair. Years later, I finally realized it was a reference to the electric chair.
My mother, after searching and searching for any lost item...then finding it, would often exclaim "wouldn't you know, it's ALWAYS in the LAST place you look!" It wasn't until she was in her 60s I finally pointed out to her "mom of course it is,after you found it why would you still keep looking?" The light went off in her head. We had a good laugh. Miss and love you mom.
That's a pretty common phrase, but I would have thought everyone (by the time they were about 10) knew that it was a joke because, as you said, of course it's the last place :) Funny the things that just don't occur to you sometimes
Load More Replies... A few days ago it occurred to me that the 'Golden Arches' of MacDonalds make an 'M'. It was because a kid drew a pic of MacDonalds and mentioned something about the arches. Btw, it took me until adulthood to realize that 'Kanga' and her child 'Roo' (from Winnie the Pooh) make up 'Kangaroo'. This despite the fact that they are very clearly Kangaroos.
Add: "Jury rigged" and "Jerry rigged" are both saying used in common English and mean slightly different things. I belive Jury rigged means something that has a predictable or preset outcome. While, Jerry rigged means to use non-standard methods to make something work effectively enough.
Wow, another couple of terms I've never heard, I'm learning lots today.
Load More Replies... Until I was in my late 20s I thought an IV in your arm still had the needle attached! I used to try my damnest not to bend my arm for fear the needle would poke me somewhere else in my arm. Hahahaha
There are different types. The simplest form of intravenous access is by passing a hollow needle through the skin directly into a vein. The more recent ones I had were utilising a narrow catheter in the vein but before that? Needles.
Load More Replies... I used to think the meaning of the phrase "if a jobs worth doing, it's worth doing badly" was to not put in too much effort, i.e. life's too short to worry about work/ mowing the lawn/ doing dishes etc.
I thought the expression was, "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well," meaning if you're going to wash the dishes, you might as well do them properly!
Load More Replies... Used to bitch a lot about why does every mall/building parking zone has 2-3 parking spots for disabled,i was like “no way there is so many disabled people who drive in the town”. Basically one disabled person-one parking spot for disabled. Took me years to come up that one disabled person can,and in fact,does visit many different places in town
In my hometown, the service roads that border interstate highways are apparently called "frontage roads" and there are lots and lots of highway exits for "Frontage Rd." I'd probably been driving for 3-4 years before I realized that "Frontage Rd" wasn't a single long-a** road that wound through the entire city and crossed all the highways multiple times.
That's interesting, I've never heard that term before. I can't actually think of what we call them here.
Load More Replies... "To be or not to be". I didn't know what that meant until I heard David Tennant say it while doing Hamlet...
So why is Pitbull in the pic for this thread when he's not mentioned in it??
some of these were so obvious I don't know how people were ignorant of them. I don't want to believe my fellow man is that dumb.
You could try helping to explain instead of condemning.
Load More Replies...