You Won't Believe The Basic Facts That Took These People Wayyyyy Too Long To Learn
We all know the "I was today years old when I learned..." moments that leave us facepalming ourselves. Reddit user CelesteAvoir asked this question: "What is something you learned embarrassingly late?"
Lots of people responded to the thread with their embarrassing confessions. Here are some of the best comments:
1."I've never heard someone say Yosemite out loud. I've been reading it as Yo-sem-ight."
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."
3."How to spell 'garuntee'—still working on it."
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."
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."
6."Pumpkin spice does not actually taste like pumpkin."
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."
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."
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."
10."A girl I knew thought roadside memorials were actual graves."
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.'"
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."
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."
14."That a quart is a quarter of a gallon."
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."
16."It’s 'chest of drawers' and not 'Chester drawers.'"
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."
18."I thought the term 'birthday suit' meant a suit you're literally supposed to wear on your birthday."
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."
20."I thought 'cattle' was a closely related but separate species of cow until like grad school."
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."
22."Rhode Island isn’t an island. I learned that at 53 years old."
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."
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."
25."That PC means Personal Computer."
26."It's 'coleslaw' not 'coldslaw'. I just...never looked at the menus too hard."
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.
You can read the full thread of responses on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
I love learning about people's embarrassing realizations. Please share something that took you way too long to learn in the comments below and you may see it in a future BuzzFeed post!
