GTKY: Childhood Misunderstandings

purplegoldfish2 · April 2018

Saw this question online: What’s the weirdest/funniest thing you remember misunderstanding as a kid?

purplegoldfish2 · April 2018

I thought pubic hair was pronounced public hair and was afraid to get any because I didn’t want to show my privates in public. (Never mind that I never saw anybody else doing it, I was still scared I would have to.)

sliztee · April 2018

I interpreted TLC's song Waterfalls as such:

Don't go, Jason Waterfalls.

I thought he was a person...and really loved the outdoors.

chopchop25 · April 2018

From when I was SUPER young...I thought that girls also peed standing up. Thankfully my mom corrected this one pretty quickly. It's still not fair, though!

chyvie · April 2018

oh this one will be fun - I have two!
My first was when I was learning to say my name I couldn't say Ch-antel I kept saying Cant-el and people would say why can't you tell? They totally thought I was afraid of stranger danger!
Another one was I thought pop (soda) was for adults only. My parents would never let me drink it until I was older (like 12) and I felt so grown up!

bel194 · April 2018

I was legit terrified of immaculate conception when I was younger. I thought it was something that frequently happened to women. I was also 9 when I started menstruating and knew that it was related to being able to get pregnant, but didn't get a full "birds and the bees" talk until later unfortunately, so I would have nightmares about being the first pregnant fifth grader at my school.

cjx95 · April 2018

I thought babies were made by kissing somehow until about 5th grade when we had a sex ed class for the day. Cleared that up pretty quick.
Also until recently actually I though the song "who are you" by The Who went "whooo Wally, who who, who who" I happened to look up something about csi and saw that was in fact not what it was called or how it was sung

rc-cola · April 2018

Also a TLC one- for scrubs I thought it was “he sits on his touchas” rather than “broke ass” and I was thrilled that TLC was apparently Jewish.

knottieamusements · April 2018

Man, I was in my late 20’s before someone corrected one of my childhood goofs (and I still struggle with it).

I thought that the word “facet”, like the facets of a diamond, was pronounced faw-cet. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can blame that on growing up in Oklahoma.

DunkinDecaf · April 2018

Can’t remember any good ones of mine off the top of my head, but H had a great one. When his dad left for work every morning his mom would say “daddy’s gotta go make the bacon!”. When he was about 8 he asked his dad to bring some extra bacon home from work, found out his dad didn’t make bacon for a living and he was devastated.

hellopartyof5 · April 2018

Idk if this is really a misunderstanding, but a kid being ridiculous. When I was in 5th grade my dad took me to London and we went to the London dungeon. 2 things from there absolutely terrified me.

1. They would explode the persons stomaxh by putting a tube down their throat. I was super concerned about what would happen if they put it down into the persons lungs. I then would consciously swallow because I was scared spit would fall into my lungs and kill me. #anxiety

2. Jack the Ripper. I was terrified he would find me. Didn't matter that he would be ancient and only killed prostitutes. Lol

knottieamusements · April 2018

@DunkinDecaf - oh... this reminds me of a real whopper...

Apparently, when I was in elementary school, my parents got a call from my teacher. When asked what my Dad did for a living, I told them he sold drugs. As he was, in fact, a pharmacist, this was an entirely true statement. But, I guess I can understand how it would have been misunderstood.

SawyerRichardson · April 2018

Along the same lines of what Dad does for a living, when I was little my dad worked for a company that compiled addresses to send out all those annoying flyers and crap you get in the mail. Well I was little, so my mom just told me that dad works for a "junk mail" company. Well I took junk mail to mean garbage and told everyone that my dad was a garbage man. I guess I was too young to realize garbage men don't wear suits to work!

RosieMommy2016 · April 2018

I thought the song "Bad Medicine" by Bon Jovi was saying "Bob Nelson". Wasn't sure who Bob Nelson was, but Bon Jovi was really into him.

nugget2ehf · April 2018

@knottieamusements I have quite a few mispronunciations coming from Oklahoma, though I like to say I don't have much of an accent (unless drunk or mad). My husband makes fun of me, but he's learned English as a second language, except he's been here since he was 9, so his English is fine. But lots of fun mispronunciations happening in our house.

nugget2ehf · April 2018

I legitimately didn't know the full meaning of "hump day" until I was several years into adulthood. Probably because I didn't think about it that hard. But I thought it was something dirty, a day where you humped to get through the rest of the week (which I guess isn't a terrible idea).

cdepperschmidt · April 2018

I read the word schedule and “seclude” until I was ten.

kiwi2628 · April 2018

On a spelling test in like 1st or second grade was the word 'favorite'. I spelled it 'favourite' and my teacher marked it wrong. I about lost my shit telling the teacher she was wrong and I KNEW it. Why? Well I learned to spell that word from a book I had, and the book was English (like from England) and thats how they spelled it. I brought the book into class the next day and my teacher had to explain that while we speak English, there are a lot of differences. I never got why people here called them elevators instead of lifts....thanks mom.

sammierose464 · April 2018

I was pretty naive until about 14 or 15 (but damn did I make up for that...). I remember watching Dumb and Dumber and the scene where they're building a snowman. He takes the nose and eyes and puts them on the snowman as a penis and balls. I was so confused as to what the coal below the carrot was for. I hadn't fully learned male anatomy yet. My friend just laughed at me for being confused.

elothair · April 2018

@kiwi2628 My mom is American and we spell lots of things slightly different in Canada - favourite, colour, etc. and she used to always mess me up trying to correct me! It drove my teachers nuts that I would say ‘Zee’ instead of ‘Zed’ for the letter Z!

nasalot188 · April 2018

@kiwi2628 @elothair ah yes the canadians put 'u' in everything too. Favourite, colour, labour etc. I always wonder if the US Bump ladies just think i cant spell Haha

I am embarrassed to say that I had no idea what jet lag meant until I was like 14. I literally thought it meant your legs were sore or asleep

red riding hood · April 2018

I got detention for making a "racist" remark in kindergarten because I didn't understand why we were out of school for Martin Luther king day but not black Friday. So glad that was explained by my parents before I got older ugh. I was an awkward child lol

macheno · April 2018

When I was little, I hadnt really eaten spicy foods and I thought hot peppers- jalapeños, habañeros-were physically hot. Every time I tried to touch them at the grocery store my mom would say "those are hot, don't touch". I thought I would get burned.

pajamstagrams · April 2018

In elementary school, I'd occasionally eat the school meals. I really liked the breakfast sausage they had there. For some reason, I didn't know what to call them, so I continually referred to them as "juicy meat sticks". My mom loved that and would repeat that story over and over when I was older. So embarrassing.

wolfpackgrl718 · April 2018

This one is embarrassing! I dont know why- but before I was taught about periods and all that fun stuff, I thought a period was a period sized scab you got on your lady parts that would bleed every month. Every month it would be in a different spot. lol

tropical1982 · April 2018

We'd drive by a cemetary on the highway and I always wanted my mom to take us to that "park". It was a beautiful park with lots of flowers - why didn't she take us there?!?! It was a cemetary without tombstones, all were plaques on the floor so you couldn't see them from the road. I always though cemetary = tombstones. Talk about being disappointed when I found out it was a cemetary.

sunnyknightsarah · April 2018

This was my brother not me but I still think it's great. In elementary school we had the D.A.R.E. program to teach us to stay away from drugs. Right after my brother went through this program, he saw my mom in the bathroom, with her face in the sink against a little mirror. He got freaked out thinking that she was doing cocaine, as he just learned about. A few days later, he saw her again with the mirror but this time she was pulling a necklace out of the sink and commented she finally got it. It finally clicked for him she was just trying to see jewelry she dropped down the drain lmao

sunnyknightsarah · April 2018

And one of mine is that I thought a "topless bar" was a restaurant that had no roof hahaha

jomama1618 · April 2018

My little cousin, not me. They were doing the D.A.R.E. program. (My aunt sitting in the back of the room because she works there.) They were talking about never taking drugs. My sweet naive kindergarten cousin raises his hand as high as he can. When the officer called on him, he stood up and very loudly announced "I only take the drugs my mommy gives me!". And promptly sat down, beaming with pride. My Aunt was trying to hide. She then had to explain to everyone that she was not in fact drugging her young child. My cousin was currently on the tail end of an amoxacillin course for strep and took vitamins daily. He's an adult now and still hasn't lived that down.

Apparently D.A.R.E. failed to convince him street drugs and meds were different.

cdepperschmidt · April 2018

My Dad was never Mr. Attentive when he took us to the store. We would often get left in an aisle or wander to a different one. This one time when I was maybe 4 or 5 I wandered in the bakery section and helped myself to cookies that were in the plastic bins to buy by the pound because I thought they were free.

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