Stuff You Got Wrong As A Kid

I used to wonder about Mister Fogpatches. I thought his job was knowing the weather everywhere, and that he drove around the country to check he'd gotten it right. Mister Fogpatches in Scotland overnight, Mister Fogpatches in the West Country during the morning. He got around, that guy.

Bill Stickers was a fugitive without a face, but those threats were everywhere.... Bill Stickers will be prosecuted. All around my Granddads place in London, we were assured he'd be taken to task. What did he do? I guess I'll never know.

Don't get me started on 'Gorilla' Warfare. Dexterous, politicised, apes with machine guns, of course.

When I was learning the alphabet, I thought the middle bit - LMNOP - was a word. Elomenopy. Didn't know what it meant, didn't care either.

My cousin told me that in the olden days the IRA used to shoot people in the bottom and that it was called being 'shot in the Bogside'. Sometimes, they'd be shot in the willy, which would be called 'shot in the Falls Area' on the news. Made perfect sense. Still does, if I'm honest.

Anyone else get anything wrong when they were very young, or am I thick special?

The Backwards Man

I can't remember that far back any more.

The one thing every kid gets wrong though, they can't wait to get older. Youth is wasted on the young.

gandalf

When I was a kid I always thought that the Minister for Tourism was the Minister for Terrorism !!!

Ruu

Chief whip, whip cream..leather whip..what??

3rdDegree

I used to wonder was the pope REALLY invisible and if so, was I the only one who could see him?

dulpit

I was convinced that every town had a black market, and you needed to be in the know to find it - like it was in a warehouse somewhere...

8 Bit Girl

Didnt know the the real name for a vagina, so called it 'the front bum'

Til one day I fell off my bike and hurt my front bum on the saddle and my father asked why was I crying and I said I hurt my front bum.
He burst out laughing and without thinking said thats not what its called! I asked him angrily and crying, after he laughing at me hurting myself, whats it called then!!
He shut up fairly quickly then!

LDN_Irish

I thought 4 wheel drive meant all 4 wheels turned in the same direction at once. Hilarity at my expense ensued when I declared in front of the lads that a certain car couldn't have been 4WD because it wasn't doing that.

SouthernBelle

My uncle's friend used to get great stuff that 'fell off the back of a lorry' - radios, leather jackets, etc.

I thought he was the luckiest guy ever to always be in the vicinity when a lorry shed it's load!

Hammer89

I was under the impression that 'bumming' someone was when you bumped arses with them on a dancefloor, which means I claimed to have bummed a lot of my mum's friends at her 40th

After I fell into my Granddads flower border causing some damage, and blamed it on the dog, my Granddad told me that God was everywhere, sees EVERYTHING, and knows when kids fib.

The 'sees everything' bit made for some very uncomfortable times in the bath, or using the loo. I was not happy at God spying on me at all.

Realt Dearg Sec

Ruu wrote: »

Chief whip, whip cream..leather whip..what??

I still picture the party whip holding an actual whip, lashing it at the parliamentary party as they cower together at the far end of the room promising to do as they're told.

Ruu

Ruu wrote: »

Chief whip, whip cream..leather whip..what??

The party whip was taken out on special occasions, usually when there was music and canapes and birthday cake.

One eyed Jack

I remember getting very frustrated with one of my friends in primary school when she was trying to explain to me how pregnancy works. I couldn't get my head around it at all as it sounded absurd on so many levels! :pac:

Mackman

I used to think the Tanaiste was the female Taoiseach

Adorable

I tried to get pregnant once when I was 6. Of course, my understanding of pregnancy was pretty misconstrued back then. I essentially thought that all you had to do was to get married and lay in bed with your husband until you felt something kicking inside of you. :P

Jesus Wept

^ are you suggesting this isn't the case?

HughWotMVIII

I love this thread!

1. When I was four, a substitute teacher announced in class that our class teacher wouldn't be coming in for a while because she had lost her son. I thought she had to be the stupidest person alive to lose a child; I mean, how could anyone be so careless?

It wasn't until my biological dad passed not long after and my uncle was explaining to my cousins that I had lost my dad that I finally made the connection.

2. When I was 8 one of my cousins had a baby out of wedlock; she was 19. I heard all the grownups whispering about how shocked they were that such a good girl had had a baby out of wedlock. I had been told that only bad girls had babies out of wedlock so I simply didn't understand how Alice, who I knew to be a good girl, had had a baby out of wedlock.

I figured some malicious person had dropped the baby off at her front door - under the cover of darkness or something - just to besmirch her good name.


3. I thought that when people had sex, the foreskin rolled all the way back exposing a fleshy pink rod, like with the animals I had seen. I was convinced I would never have sex because it was the most barbaric, disgusting thing. It wasn't until I walked in on my cousins watching porn when I was about 16 that I learned it wasn't quite the same. You can imagine my relief .

4. I thought babies came out of the bum, like poo, until I was 13. My science teachers before that had somehow managed to avoid explicitly saying that they came out of the vagina. The anus stretches so it made the most sense to me. I couldn't imagine anything else.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Going to mass. :D

Specifcially, the line "blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus" never made sence to me: Jesus was a boy and didn't have a womb!

smash

Apparently erections were not to help you pee over tall objects.

Junkyard Tom

Candie wrote: »

Don't get me started on 'Gorilla' Warfare.

*slowly raises hand*

NSFW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAcTGE1woCQ

gramar

I used to think news readers could see into your living room.

An bhfuil cead agam dul amach go dti an leithreas...ok to there...mais e do thoil e...completely clueless as to what that last bit was about.

GAAman

The pronunciation of the the racing term "Grand Prix" much to the howls of laughter from any nearby adult....

Aglomerado

The Hail Mary: "Blessed art thou, a monk swimming"...

Funnily enough, I am reading Malachy McCourt's "A monk swimming" at the moment.

King George VI

My dad told me this so naturally as a child I believed it. I used to think camogie was underwater hockey for women

It never came up in conversation until I was 16 and watched camogie on the telly and realized I'd been bamboozled for nearly 10 years.

Polo_Mint

Growing up in the 80s I used to hear on the Radio about "Arms" being discovered in Fields, Houses , Farmyards and so on which were linked to " Republicans or Unionists.

I didnt know that "Arms" meant weapons and wondered why people were chopping up bodies and the Gardai would only find the arms

whiskeyman

I always thought jeans were made from cows - because cowboys wore them in ads etc...

Turtyturd

GAAman wrote: »

The pronunciation of the the racing term "Grand Prix" much to the howls of laughter from any nearby adult....

Along similar lines hour was pronounced as whore.

Also thought a cul de sac was a cuddly sac.

HalloweenJack

Used to think black people were actually white, they just had so many freckles that they all connected together to look black.

silverharp

I remember going to the states when I was 8 and couldn't accept that I couldn't get the BBC on the tv . there was some show I was following and it was before we had a video recorder.

Whitewinged

I was about 8 and still totally unaware of time and the teacher started teaching us to write the date above the page. I remember thinking "oh that's how it works". So time didn't exist for me up until about 1991.

I'm trying to teach my daughter now about the months of the year and things like that. She's 3 and a half and obsessed with growing older so she can go to a water park. She seems to be getting the hang of it but the other day she said something to me like "mam when you turn back into a baby, you will need a bottle". So she thinks you grow up and then go back.

mrsdewinter

When a news reader would say, 'A body has been found...' I thought police had found literally just a torso - no head, no arms, no legs...

I won't go into the weird sex myths I conjured up to fill in patchy 80s sex ed - but just a few weeks ago, I heard my niece say, 'It's funny that you can have a baby when you're 18 in Dublin - but you have to be 20 in...' and here she named the rural part of the west of Ireland she lives in.
Misinformation is alive and well, folks...

Turtyturd

I also thought facial hair was a characteristic you couldn't change. So I spent a few years of my childhood terrified that I would grow up to have a moustache.

RhubarbCrumble

Candie wrote: »

I used to wonder about Mister Fogpatches. I thought his job was knowing the weather everywhere, and that he drove around the country to check he'd gotten it right. Mister Fogpatches in Scotland overnight, Mister Fogpatches in the West Country during the morning. He got around, that guy.

My cousin had the same problem with Mr Fog. I can remember being about 6 or 7 and watching the weather forecast at our grandparents house, and my cousin bawling her eyes out when it was announced that "Mr Fog will be creeping all over the country later tonight" She was absolutely hysterical!

endacl

I thought the character played by Mr. T in the A-Team was called 'Big A'. Made sense. His team was called 'A', and he was the big one.

:embarrassed:

PixelTrawler

Cant remember the age I was but I remember having no interest in something called Knightrider because it was probably about horses and olden times.... I refused to watch it... Until one day I saw it by accident... Mind blown

gramar

mrsdewinter wrote: »

When a news reader would say, 'A body has been found...' I thought police had found literally just a torso - no head, no arms, no legs...

.

That reminds of when they'd say 'remains'...I always imagined bits and peices of the deceased and wonder why they never died intact.

LDN_Irish

A bit embarrassed but, I don't get the "mister fogpatches." Is it "mist and fog patches"? I don't think I've ever actually paid attention to a weather forecast.

Akrasia

Every time someone farted in my house, my father said 'Who has done an 'Air Freshener'

So I thought that was the word for fart

It was a bit embarrassing when going to an under 10s hurling match with a bunch of my team-mates crammed into the back of a parents car when someone farted and i said 'Who's done an Air freshener'

I think I defended myself for a minute or two 'Yeah, that's what they're called..'
until It dawned on me that my father had been taking the piss, consistently, for my entire life.

He also called that little broken castle on the Ennis limerick road 'Bun Mousey' because the bigger castle down the road is called Bunratty

Oh, and Santa lived on that wierd tower thing on the hill across from the Clare inn.

sbsquarepants

HalloweenJack wrote: »

Used to think black people were actually white, they just had so many freckles that they all connected together to look black.

That's more or less the case
We're all the same underneath!

I used to think that cats were female dogs:o

kylith

Akrasia wrote: »

He also called that little broken castle on the Ennis limerick road 'Bun Mousey' because the bigger castle down the road is called Bunratty

That's brilliant! Your dad's great. 😄

Bio Mech

I used to think there was a guy called Round John Virgin at the birth of Jesus, I asked my mother he was in the nativity scene once and learned of my error ("Round yon virgin, mother and child")

pawrick

For a long time as a child I thought if you ran fast enough you could take off and fly. I'd spend hours running around the garden trying to pick up speed. My parents probably thought I had some sort of a mental condition.

Gravity...before i know about it. I would sometimes see a helium balloon floating in the sky and have an mini freak out about how that could be me floating away, I'd ponder about what was stopping me from floating off and that maybe if I grew too tall the wind would catch me and lift me off in to the sky with no way down. I think this fed in to trying to fly so I could control it on my own terms and not just float in to space. I grew up near a factory producing medicines so possibly that had something to do with this?!

RobertKK

I am sure other highly intelligence children had similar problems as this...

This is about other children not being up to my intelligence level.

When I was in 6th class in Primary school back in the last 1980s, we were doing geography and we came to talk about Sri Lanka. I put my hand up and said there was guerilla warfare going on in that country. Everyone laughed at me thinking I had said there were gorilla warfare there.
So in their eyes I was wrong, and I was wrong for thinking they would know what I was talking about.
What was worse was the teacher didn't understand either, or at the very least didn't want to explain if he did know...making me look stupid.

FishOnABike

I remember thinking about prayers for the "fatally" departed - I mean was there any other kind of departed.

greenbicycle

I thought small those small annoying flys which are actually called Midges were called Midgets. I hated Midgets!

greenbicycle

When everyone said "thanks be to god" at the end of mass I thought everyone was really saying it cause they were glad mass had finally ended "thanks be to god thats over!"

qo2cj1dsne8y4k

i thought that the VW beetle was crammed full of actual insect beetles, and would freak out anytime I ever saw one, pure terrified I was

what a day

My Mrs phoned my sister in law the other day. The mrs is organizing her hens party.
My poor nephew heard part of the conversation and was so excited to come up to my house to see our new chickens!! His little heart broke when we told them its was a party for a bunch of oul ones!!

8 Bit Girl

Turtyturd wrote: »

I also thought facial hair was a characteristic you couldn't change. So I spent a few years of my childhood terrified that I would grow up to have a moustache.

All the mammies in my village had short hair, coincidence I suppose but one day I realised this and started bawling, thinking id have to cut all my hair off when I got older too.
Like it was some sort of requirement to be a mammy/older woman!

Gave my mother a good laugh with that one

Graces7

I can distinctly remember. although for how long evades ,e, thinking that babies were born fully dressed.. I was wise enough as a child to listen rather than speak...thankfully,