People Are Revealing The Things They Learned Embarrassingly Late In Life, And I Am Truly Confused How They Didn't Figure Them Out Sooner
We've all been in a situation where we found out something we took as 100% fact was actually 100% incorrect. And recently, Reddit user Curious-2577 was ~curious~ about that when they asked this question: "What’s something you learned 'embarrassingly late' in life?"
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Lots of people responded to the thread with the things they thought and believed to be true but were completely wrong. Here are some of the top and best comments:
1."That the Porta Potty doesn’t somehow know when someone’s inside. That the sign only changes to 'occupied' when you physically lock the door. Many people walked in on me during my childhood."
"After the first one didn't you think, Even if the sign outside says occupied, I better lock it this time."
2."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?"
"Would 100% fat not just be... literal fat?"—HandLion
3."My BF makes fun of me to no end for this one. When I was a kid, I had A Goofy Movie on VHS tape, and at the end, it had a Disney remix of 'Mambo No. 5' (🎶A little bit of Mickey in my life / A little bit of Goofy by my side🎶)."
"Guys, my parent owned a Buick from the ‘70s that had an old tape deck and a nonworking radio, so we listened to cassette tapes and I almost never heard top 40 or modern pop music as a kid, and I thought that was the real version of that song until I was 25.
I had NO IDEA that it was about a dude banging a bunch of chicks until I heard it in a grocery store and I was fucking scandalized."
Ariola
4."That a coma was 'A' coma. Until I was probably 19 I thought you fell into 'acoma.'"
"For the longest time I thought astigmatism was 'a stigmatism.' So I think we cancel each other out!"
5."Not that it was late in life — but later on the topic — but euthanasia. I couldn't figure out why people cared about what the under-18 crowd in China and India were doing. I kept hearing 'youth in Asia.' It was about two weeks later when my girlfriend brought it up and I was finally like, 'Can you explain this to me?'"
"Dude, same! It wasn't until I was reading something in a class in high school or college and someone read euthanasia that my mind was fucking blown. I felt so freaking dumb, LOL."
6."I thought Mick Jagger’s name was McJagger, and people just never said his first name for some reason."
7."That women’s garments have different button arrangements then men’s."
"This was done to make it easier for the right-handed handmaiden to dress the lady!"
8."Not me, but it's hilariously stupid so I have to share. My sister is one of the smartest people I have ever known. Like never gotten a B in her entire school life. She's now a doctor of physical therapy who runs her own clinic. This woman at 31 years old called the family one day and says, 'Did you guys know it's called fall because leaves fall off the tree?' This woman can tell you the name of every muscle in your body and this is what she comes up with, LOL!"
9."Jackalopes are mythical creatures. I learned this when I was 18, I think? To be fair, I've seen a platypus, rhino, and a giraffe — and those are some BS animals."
10."That I was in fact NOT missing a testicle. Thought there was supposed to be three until I was like 14 years old."
"😂 What made you think there were three?"
11."That paprika is just dried and powdered bell peppers."
"I just learned that coriander spice is just cilantro seeds."
12."When I was in college (21 or 22 years old), I was getting ready to go out and it hit me like a lightning bolt: if you just thread the small end of the belt through your belt loops all the way around, literally any belt can fit your pants! Because up until then, I thought sometimes I just had belt loops that were too small for certain belt buckles."
"I ran out to my friends and was like, 'Guys — check this out!' as I proceeded to demonstrate for them what I had just learned. I genuinely thought they'd be excited for me? It was then I learned that everyone else on earth knew the right way to wear a belt except my dumb ass. Unbelievable how many times up until then I spent trying to jam the buckle side in first and coming to the conclusion I just needed bigger belt loops."
"OMG, I'm cackling at you showing your friends."
13."There’s an arrow on the gas gauge in virtually every car that points to the side your gas cap is on."
"And, also, most of the time the gas hose is in fact long enough to reach the other side. I want to emphasize this — you can in fact easily get the nozzle to your car if you pull up enough so it only has to cover the backside of your car — not the whole length of say, a big ass van."
14."That Jacques Cousteau was a real person. I always just thought he was a fictional character like Sherlock Holmes until I was in my thirties."
15."That the saying is: 'Nip it in the bud' and not in fact 'Nip it in the butt.'"
"Screenshot taken. Sent to my husband."
16."My sister was in her fifties 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)."
17."That pineapples grow in the ground, and not in a tree."
18."Narwhals are real animals. I thought they were mythical like unicorns."
"The exact same thing happened to me with seahorses 😅."
19."I suspected it was the same with lots of people, but I found out it wasn't 'gorilla warfare' but 'guerrilla warfare' in my twenties. The disappointments of growing up...they just keep coming."
20."I did not know that pickles were made from cucumbers until I was 24 and in the middle of getting my bachelor's."
21."I thought ponies were just baby horses until the age of 23."
"I always thought ponies were just child horses, then I was at work one day and a girl was saying how she wanted a pony because she didn’t think she could handle taking care of a full-sized horse, and I told her that I thought that was a little naïve since it would eventually become a full-sized horse.
She looked at me like I was an idiot (which I was/am) and asked, 'Hold on…do you think ponies are just baby horses?' To which I replied '… Are they not?'So yeah, turns out I’m a fucking dummy 🤷♂️. I never really had any experience with horses so I just knew that ponies were small horses and assumed that it was like how puppies were child dogs, ponies were therefore child horses."
"They’re not? 😂"
You can read the full thread of responses on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
