When it comes to life, it’s all about seeing things as a journey rather than a destination. No one should ever feel like they’ve finished learning and growing.
That said, there are some things we should probably learn early on in life. If you’ve ever been embarrassed by your lack of common knowledge, check out the r/AskReddit thread, “What did you learn at an embarrassingly late age?” You’ll find your people in the comments.
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No kittens for you.
“That it’s not Kitten Caboodle, but Kit and Caboodle. My mental image of a basket full of cute little kittens was shattered.”
I think they’re considered ‘eggs.’
“I had always thought eggs were considered ‘dairy’ on a food pyramid. I could’ve sworn that’s just what I was taught but nope they’re poultry. I guess because eggs and milk and cheese are in the same place in the grocery store, my mind just decided they should be considered dairy.”
Technically the truth.
“I didn’t get the jewelry store slogan ‘Every Kiss Begins With Kay’ until I was well into adulthood. I grew up hearing it phonetically on cable TV and I was like ‘yup, checks out, the word ‘kiss’ begins with ‘k.'”
Were you salty when you found this out?
“I was 20 years old when I learned that salt lamps are indeed made of salt.
I always thought that it was plastic carved into a rock-like shape.”
It isn’t slowsand, that’s for sure.
“That quicksand is real. I honestly thought it was made up in movies to scare people and was like an urban legend that kept getting passed around the internet. I was 25 when I watched a documentary on a survival experience where a lady was in the jungle and got trapped in some quicksand. I paused it and started ranting and raving about how dumb it was when my husband finally showed me his phone proving that quicksand is actually legitimate.”
The discovery of hot water.
“That hot water making cleaning dishes 100x easier. I was 18 when I learned that. Before that I just washed them in cold water and got annoyed when some stuff was difficult to take off.”
Common misconception.
“That the Underground Railroad was not a choo-choo train that traveled beneath the ground to free slaves.”
It just means salted.
“Corned beef wasn’t made by cattle that were strictly fed corn. My mom couldn’t stop laughing.”
Unicorns of the sea.
“That narwhals are real. I thought they were cute mythological creatures, until I saw a brooch a friend had and asked if it was part of the company’s mythological line. She asked me if I thought narwhals were myths, like unicorns. I laughed and said of course they are.”
What about penguins?
“That puffins are in fact NOT extinct. I had a 3rd grade teacher misinform me. I found the truth as a teenager in an embarrassing group setting where I was quite confidently wrong.”
Bra knowledge.
“That if you wear a white bra, you can see it through a l white shirt, but if you wear a nude colored bra, you can’t. I was 40 when a coworker shared this with me.”
I…kinda thought this, too.
“I thought the D is Disney was just some random symbol, kinda like a backwards G. It took me until like 7th grade to realize it and even as an adult I still can’t unsee the backwards G.”
Who’da thunk it?
“That horse poop contains hay that comes from the inside of the horse.
For the longest time (24 years…), I thought that someone would put hay over horse poop to cover it – similar to picking up after your dog.”
Poor LeBron never had a choice.
“The the longest time I always heard of sports teams ‘drafting’ people. And I am tall, so as a kid I was constantly afraid I’d get drafted for the state basketball team just out of the blue, I thought it worked like a military draft.”
When you realize your vision is lacking.
“That I needed glasses. At age 21 my friends were hassling me about being dyslexic because I kept getting words mixed up (second year at Uni). Until then, I had just been reading by looking at the shape of words and guessing the words based on the context and wider story. I had been reading this way for years and survived Uni before finding out my prescription was +1.50. The optometrist said it was amazing I hadn’t noticed.”
This person would be terrible with pranks.
“‘TP’ stood for Toilet Paper. I thought to ‘TP someone’s house’ you just put toilet paper over it to look like a teepee.”
If that were the case, why would anyone drink milk?
“Wasn’t until I was 21 when I drank Lactose Free milk and DIDN’T go sit on a toilet for an hour that I realized I am lactose intolerant. I thought it was normal to poop constantly after drinking milk.”
They stayed with a nice farm family.
“I learned, when I was 46 years old, that my pet ducks we had as children, did not in fact fly south for the winter. Every winter.
“My entire family laughed at me when my mom let that little fact slip, after she had a few too many glasses of wine.”
I rotate my tires every time I go for a drive.
“‘Rotating tires’ doesn’t mean spinning them around in place like you’re in a Fast and the Furious movie. It means you swap each of their positions on the car.
“For example, you might move the left-front tire to the left-back position, and vice versa, and the same for the right.”
Everyone learns eventually.
“Santa isn’t real. All the kids said it, but I knew for a fact that my mother couldn’t afford even a fraction of the presents that we ended up with every Christmas. It MUST have been Santa!”
