" A young lady I knew recollect roadside commemoration were actual graves . "
We all know the “I was today years old when I learned…” moments that leave us facepalming ourselves. Reddit userCelesteAvoirasked thisquestion: “What is something you learned embarrassingly late?”
1.“I’ve never heard someone say Yosemite out loud. I’ve been reading it as Yo-sem-ight.”
— Asleep - Trifle-8645
2.“That the “ABC” song and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” song have the same melody. I was 27-years-old when I realized it. Blew my mind then.”
— khitanona
3.“How to spell ‘garuntee’—still working on it.”
— willieandthets
4.“The meaning of the word ‘beastiality.’ I said it to hype up my friend’s trombone-playing skills in 9th grade and the look on his face afterward.”
— Upbeat_Tension_8077
5.“I once accidentally shouted ‘I love necrophilia!’ during my class in 10th grade. I had just read a book about a young teenage necromancer and got the words mixed up. We can cringe together.”
— asterierrantry
6.“Pumpkin spice does not actually taste like pumpkin.”
— MAMidCent
7.“That West Virginia doesn’t mean the western part of Virginia. I learned that when I was 13, even though the 50 states were part of my 3rd grade curriculum.”
— rosyred - jackass
8.“When I turned 21, all I knew was that wine is red or white. I tried to order white wine and the waiter asked which one. I asked what they had and picked the one I felt most confident pronouncing.”
— ForestWanderingOne
9.“Carrot cake is really made with carrots. I thought because they usually pipe a little carrot on the top and the fact you ate it around Easter they just called it that for no other reason.”
— Garden_Circus
10.“A girl I knew thought roadside memorials were actual graves.”
— Midlifetoker
11.“That POW MIA wasn’t pronounced phonetically as ‘pow-me-ah.’ My husband had quite the laugh a few years back when I pointed out someone else also had a ‘pow-me-ah flag.'”
— damnuge23
12.“Hump day is referring to the middle of the week, like over the hump, and not the day everyone humps. I always found it weird at my office job when someone would say happy hump day, like dude I’m pretty sure you can’t say that here. I was 27 when I realized.”
— Paranoid_Orangutan
13.“Until 2018, I thought Elon Musk was a kind of truck stop bathroom cologne, from the makers of Jovan Musk. I really wish it was true.”
— Longjumping_Choice_6
14.“That a quart is a quarter of a gallon.”
— thamonsta
15.“I thought everyone got a vacation for their birthday. Mine is on December 28, so I had no school for 20 years. At my first job, I went to my boss and complained they scheduled me. I was so surprised.”
— AffectionateSun5776
16.“It’s ‘chest of drawers’ and not ‘Chester drawers.'”
— Jwalkinworm
17.“That it’s the ‘bad moon is on the rise,’ not the ‘bathroom on the right.’ I ruined that song for my mom when I told her what I heard.”
— Conscious_Abroad_877
18.“I thought the term ‘birthday suit’ meant a suit you’re literally supposed to wear on your birthday.”
— SteadfastEnd
19.“The little arrow on my dash beside the gas pump icon points to the side of the car with the gas door. Rental cars were a 50-50 shot of getting it right if I forgot to look first before driving, so it was a good thing to learn…at 40 years old.”
— LemmyLola
20.“I thought ‘cattle’ was a closely related but separate species of cow until like grad school.”
— AstroWolf11
21.“Until I was 19, I thought fly fishing was fishing out of a plane or helicopter. I figured it just flew really low and slow and that they had really long fishing lines.”
— bananafishin
22.“Rhode Island isn’t an island. I learned that at 53 years old.”
— vanbrima
23.“A cup is a unit of measurement. I always wondered how you could have one cup of something in a recipe when everyone has different cups.”
— TheDemonMaker
24.“My uncle once told me if I got a thousand bee stings I’d die. He meant all at once. For years, I thought he meant cumulatively. And I kept count.”
— isaacgunson
25.“That PC means Personal Computer.”
— reelbigcasey
26.“It’s ‘coleslaw’ not ‘coldslaw’. I just…never looked at the menus too hard.”
— ArchDragon99
27.And lastly, “When I was a super little, whenever I put my socks on, I thought I kept guessing correctly which one was my left sock and which was my right sock. Little did I know, socks didn’t work like gloves.
— jeremyhayes
You can read the full thread of responses onReddit.
Note : Some responses have been edited for distance and/or pellucidity .
