What do you remember from childhood that you didn't 'get' at the time?

[CornField]

Two things:

My mom and I were traveling and stopped at a rest stop along the Interstate into St. Louis. On the bathroom wall was written: "Here I sit, broken hearted. Tried to shit, but only farted." At the time I just didn't get the potty-humor of it. I kept wondering, "Why would anyone really want to poop?"

My uncle told a joke to my father about an airplane having to make an emergency landing because a man snuck into the women's bathroom. He enjoyed the automatic butt wiper and the automatic butt-powderer, but lost his head over the automatic tampon-puller.

Curious why the mind elects to remember things that it doesn't even understand. LOL!

[Alexodin]

1. I remember thinking that if you turned the TV off

it would start the movie again at the place you stopped.

Didn't take long to figure out that wasn't the case.

That was when I was quite young but I also thought the world was far more orderly than it is until I was about 19 and realized that the world is in a semi state of chaos.

Yet later in life I didn't understand why some companies intentionally lost or wasted money but there are lots of reasons why they might do that. I'm still figuring stuff out too.

[trof]

22. I thought the same about radio.

I guess because my mom turned it on at the same time every day to listen to her soaps and they always picked up right where they'd left off.
Welcome to DU.
:hi:

[RedG1]

70. you had a premonition of TiVo

:)

[wildhorses]

2. did not understand synchronized stoplights...

my Granpa who was a Judge claimed that they knew he was coming and turned green just for him....
















































did I mention that I am a dumbass?

[begin_within]

3. Women's restrooms have automatic butt wipers? I remember thinking...

that the people who did the nightly news on TV had to have other jobs too, since they were only on TV for 30 minutes a day, and how could they possibly pay the bills on that? My dad laughed and explained it to me. I also thought for a while that if you threw a heavy object and then ran and caught it, you would fly along with it. And for a long time (around 3 to 4 years of age) I thought that all cats were girls and all dogs were boys. If I saw a mother cat with kittens nursing, I would think "look how they take after their father."

[Dangerously Amused]

6. Oh! I thought that too!

Cats are girls and dogs are boys.

[marigold20]

24. Yes, the cats are girls and dogs are boys theory was mine too!

My stupid older brother really teased me about that.

When I was five, I asked my mom when she was going to start sewing her wedding dress. I couldn't wait since I knew she'd be so beautiful in the dress. I was crushed to find out she and Dad were already married!

[Dangerously Amused]

26. Hee hee. I saw their wedding pictures,

...and got upset because they obviously didn't invite me, since I didn't appear in any of them.


:7

[giant_robot]

4. In old gangster movies...

...when they said, "Kill him! He knows too much!" I thought that gangsters went around killing smart people. I wasn't so sure about school after that. :scared:

[CornField]

15. LOL!!

Maybe my 14-yr-old thinks that (aces standardized tests, but won't do homework to save her soul). LMAO!! It would explain a great deal.

[Dangerously Amused]

5. When I was about four,

my Grandmother referred to my mother as a "saint". I believed her, and was in awe. After that I would try to spy on Mom to see if she flew around the house, or lit her halo up, when she thought nobody was looking.


:rofl:

[Jigarotta]

7. I recall being berated for impersonating an aardvark that

scared the hell out of my lil sister.

Never heard of an aardvark before, not in my dictionary at all at that time.

[uppityperson]

8. some Mom joke that my friend laughed and laughed about

I didn't understand the joke, my mother said at least my friend did. I asked my friend later and she said she didn't get it either but my mom looked so disappointed she wanted to make her happy.

And another punch line, but not the joke "moby dick".???

[LibDemAlways]

9. Dupe.

[LibDemAlways]

10. When I was in first grade, a neighbor asked

my mom if she wanted to form a carpool. I couldn't imagine a car with a pool in it, but I thought it was a great idea. I was really disappointed when I discovered what it meant.

[malmapus]

11. The whole Castle Anthrax part of Monty Python and the Holy Grail

lol and the fact my mom asked my dad if I should be watching that part. But I didn't get any of it back then, I just saw all these girls in white and this knight wanting to find this grail.

[NewJeffCT]

61. And, after the spankings...

the ... wink wink, nudge nudge.

[Cannikin]

12. I didnt get what Cyndi Lauper's 'She-Bopp' song was about for years

[ScreamingMeemie]

17. Cyndi would be happy! I remember in an interview she said she

had hoped kids would not "get" it until they were much older. She wanted young kids to think it was about dancing. :D

[Kire]

30. I don't get it now.

What is She-bop, like sex or something?

[bigwillq]

31. Self pleasure (nt)

[Kire]

33. Ha Ha, thanks. nt

[wickerwoman]

13. I called my brother a "trouser snake" at the dinner table

in front of my parents. I got it from Ferris Bueller's Day Off but didn't understand it until the moment it was past my lips.

Whoops. ;-)

[Dangerously Amused]

27. I was looking through my Dad's old war books when I was about 8,

...and read a short story in which two soldier friends lost contact with each other, each worrying that the other had been killed, then suddenly ran into each other some time later. The first soldier to greet the other did so saying, "Bill, you old bastard, where've you been?!?..." Hmmm. Bastard. That was a new word for me. But it obviously was a term of endearment, given the context. I wanted to show off my new word. So when Dad came home from work that night...

"Dad, you old bastard! Where've you been?!"


Dad was - NOT - impressed with my new word.

[begin_within]

14. Aerial tramways, ski lifts and skyway rides scared me. Not because of the

height in the air, but because I couldn't see why they didn't just slip down the wires. It was years before I could get on the skyway at Disneyland. The one at the San Diego zoo is scary because halfway through the ride, it goes over a canyon and then you are suddenly hundreds of feet above the ground and if you look down it is dizzying. I still have never been on the Palm Springs aerial tramway yet, though I do want to go on it sometime.

[Nikia]

16. What "Going to bed with" and "Sleeping with" meant

I didn't understand why a woman would want to divorce her husband just because they caught someone sleeping with their sister.
I thought that perhaps they were just watching a television show and both got tired and fell asleep. No big deal.
It wasn't until I got a little older that I understood that these meant sex.
I don't think adults should have such conversations around children.

[Cos]

46. I think they should

... but I also think they should tell children what it means, without embarassment.

[Catchawave]

18. The Bidet

[Gormy Cuss]

19. My father only worked on Saturdays.

On Saturdays he did handyman tasks for a local convent school. They paid him minimunm wage and sent him home with with surplus school items like Bibles, notebooks, old desks, etc.

During the week my father got us out of bed, made breakfast, and sent us off to school. He was there when we came home and ate dinner with us. He was there to give us a good night kiss. I think I was about 6 or 7 before my older sister explained to me that he worked something called the 'graveyard shift.'

;)

[SKKY]

25. That's a very nice story.

[Gormy Cuss]

42. My father still likes to repeat that story to his friends.

I really thought the convent gig was his only job. Ever notice there are no graveyard shift workers on TV?:D

[djeseru]

20. I used to think that birthdays changed.

If your birthday was on the 12th, the next year it was on the 13th. I remember the goofy look on my mom's face trying to explain that one to me. lol!

[LaurenG]

21. Well I asked my dad

what f u c k meant when I was about 5. It had been engraved on sign that I'd seen and I kept repeating the letters over and over again so I could ask him what it was. When I got home he was doing some maintenance to the car and I asked him, he told me to go ask my mother. They never told me. I had to find out in the third grade from a kid in my class.

[AlCzervik]

23. All in the family, curb your dog.

[yewberry]

28. I thought the NH state motto was a threat.

"Live free or die!"

Also, my brother told me that department store mannequins were people who'd gone to Hell, and this was their punishment. Yeeks.

[CornField]

59. LOL! I had two brothers like that.

They were always telling me things that weren't true just to scare the crap out of me.

[Kire]

29. Snake in your car.

One day my Grandmother came for a visit and my father tricked her into believing there was a snake in her car. I asked my Dad what was so funny and he said it was "just a joke".

So my other Grandmother called that night from 100 miles a way and asked if I knew any jokes. I said, "Snake in your car."

[bigwillq]

32. I use to call everyone a "jerk off"

when I was a youngster. My mom and dad use to yell at me, saying it was a "bad word".
Didn't realize until later on what that word actually meant.

:)

[Burma Jones]

34. Jokes about Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors

[miss_american_pie]

35. My dad used to watch MASH

I couldn't figure why that man dressed up in makeup and dresses when he looked so ugly in them.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

43. I liked to watch that all the time because of Clinger.

I thought it was so silly.
Duckie

[Arugula Latte]

36. It was 1969 and I was three.

A bunch of kids and I were riding around in the back of a friend's dad's truck on the cul de sac, making a certain hand gesture that I later learned was a peace sign and saying "Peas!" ... At least that's what I thought at the time. I never questioned why we would proclaim the name of a vegetable so loudly.

Also, I remember using a funny voice which involved slurring "s"s. I said: "I'm shitting" meaning "I'm sitting." My sister and her friends tattled on me. I got in trouble, but I didn't understand why I got in trouble.

[momophile]

37. Benny Hill

I didn't realize how degrading it was, I just thought it was funny to see this old guy chase young ladies around. I was maybe 8. And no, my parents did not let me watch it - I watched behind their backs.

[Nikia]

50. My grandparents watched that show with my little brother

They also watched South Park with him. This started even before kindergarten.

[Left Is Write]

38. Watergate.

[hopein08]

39. Two stories about me and one about my sister...

One, I never liked being taken to the grocery store and seeing "Ground Chuck" because I had an a first cousin and a second cousin who were both named Chuck and I didn't like the idea of eating something that they could have been related to!

Two, I saw the year 1988 with the copyright symbol on a McDonald's Happy Meal and it completely freaked me out because it was 1990 and I thought that the food had been made in 1988!!! It took awhile for my mom to explain that one...mostly because my sister and my dad were laughing at me too hard!

This is a story about my sister...we're only 18 months apart so we used to take baths together when we were little and one time my mom told her to pull the plug to drain the tub and she refused because she was worried about getting sucked down. After that, she made me sit closer to the drain just in case the plug came out a bit...I'd be the one to go down. I'm not sure how she got that idea.

[DawgHouse]

40. I once rode my bike at full speed to the radio station

because Donnie Osmond was on the radio at the time. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I found out the radio stations played records :( But I did make friends with the radio guy and he let me come visit fairly often after that.

[Cos]

47. I didn't understand what "dead" meant

October 1973, I was almost 3 years old. There was a picture in the newspaper of a bunch of people in military uniform standing at attention in neat rows, outdoors somewhere. A posed shot. I asked who they were, or why that picture was there, or something like that, and my mother told me it was because they were all dead. In hindsight, I understand that this was probably a picture of one of the many reserve units mobilized to the Golan rapidly in the first few days of the war, and destroyed entirely. At the time, I saw a group of people standing and looking at the camera, and an unfamiliar word, "dead". I asked what that mean, and she said it meant they can never come home to their families. I imagined some invisible force holding them where they were, standing there, unable to leave.

I don't remember whether, at the time this happened, my father was back home or not. I'm pretty sure this was before he returned. I knew that he would sometimes go off to the reserves ("the army", I didn't know what "reserves" meant separately from that) and come back a few days later. Everyone told me that he was just out doing the same thing as always, but I could tell they were scared and something was different, I just didn't know what it was. I don't think I even realized there was a connection between the persavise fear, and the photo I was asking about.

< Context: Israel >

[Cos]

48. (that was a reponse to the main post)

Sorry, DU's user interface still confuses me. (I know what's going on, but intuitively, based on what I know from all other online discussion boards, the way things work here cause me to click the wrong links all the time)

[Redneck Socialist]

56. LOL! I screw up on other boards all the time...

because I'm so used to DU's format.

Welcome to DU. :hi:

[Hotler]

41. Saving money!

Learn to put a few bucks away every pay period and leave it alone.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

44. There's a famous show house in Rio called Canecão.

I thought it was a giant coffee/beer mug by the street. (That's what it means in Portuguese -- Big Mug) Was very disappointed when I saw it was just a boring-looking building.

[Hugin]

45. I remember watching my Mom write a letter and as she finished each word...

She'd go back and dot the eyes and cross the tees.

I asked her what she was doing and she explained it as finishing
the word by doing something to the eyes and crossing the tees.

I was fasinated... I watched some more and then I asked, "Do
the eyes watch the words?" I can remember not understanding
the crossing part at all. I don't remember her answer if she
did at all. She might not have understood what I was thinking.

I thought they were little eyes to watch the word.

Must've been very very young when this happened because I've
known how to write myself since before I was in Kindergarten.

Strange how you remember stuff like that.

Well, *ARE* they eyes to watch the words?

[Wapsie B]

49. Sex.

I'll admit it.

[Hugin]

52. I had some strange ideas about that too.

Mostly about the physical arrangements.

[Wapsie B]

53. I knew one person was on top of the other

but beyond that I was at a loss. It took awhile for me to piece things together because few people were forthcoming with any details even if they were getting some. And I didn't do the youthful experimentation thing either. I was every fundie parent's dream; no sex, drugs, booze and did what I was told. Now I question everything and believe very little.

Sorry. rant over.

[NewJeffCT]

60. me, too on that one

I won't go into details, but needless to say there was a reason I was voted "Shyest" in my class in high school

[Nikia]

51. I didn't realize "Put to sleep" meant they killed the pet

I thought that they were put into something like a medically induced coma and still dreamed. I was very sad to learn that it meant that they were killed.

[northzax]

73. that's ok, I once had a dog

that was very aggressive, she was 3/4 german shepherd and 1/4 red wolf. I was the only person, at ten, who she would listen to. Eventually, she was sent to live on a farm in michigan.

I'm sure she lived a long and happy life on that farm, right? still pisses me off.

[leeroysphitz]

54. Peace with honor... nt

[justgamma]

55. We took a tour of Niagra Falls

I was about 8 or 9. The tours were given in a 6 passenger car. There were 3 of us and a couple taking this tour. The driver was a different nationality. I want to say from Mexico. The couple were black. The driver told them to get in the front seat and gave my parents a "look", like he dared them to say anything. I can still hear the woman say " You want US in the front?"
To my child's eyes this was only logical. I'm sure my folks never gave it a second thought, but that scene stuck with me.
It was only when I got older that I even realized that there was discrimination in the world and these people were surprised to just sit in front.

[Redneck Socialist]

57. Where babies come out of a woman...

I wasn't too clear on female anatomy at the time, but I was pretty sure babies came out the anus. Hey stuff came out of MY anus so it only made sense that babies came out of a woman's anus. It seemed logical at the time. :shrug:

[Shine]

58. Time: I never "got" how it could be quarter to six and five forty-five

at the same time! :shrug: It was a complete mystery to me, the whole telling time thing.....

hehehehe.

[NewJeffCT]

62. I used to confuse "euthenasia" with "Youth in Asia"

I would wonder why they were talking about young children in Asia that way.

[peekaloo]

63. Butter came from butterflies.

but they didn't taste like butter. :dunce:

[Blue Diadem]

64. I saw a box of napkins in my Mom's dresser drawer

and thought that since they said sanitary napkins that they were just dinner napkins that were more sanitary. I didn't understand why she'd hidden them in her dresser. I pulled one out and looked at it and realized they weren't what I thought and quickly put it back in the box in Mom's drawer. I had no idea what those were until I turned 10. It's funny because I remember the light bulb moment when my Mom pulled one out along with the belt to show me what they were and how they were used. Gosh that was the dark ages..belts..ugh.

[DS1]

65. I never got that "Last Dance with Mary Jane" was about drugs

Tom Petty laughs at me

[WritingIsMyReligion]

66. I BEGGED my mom to explain to me how sex worked.

I couldn't get my head around it.....Why anyone would want something jammed up her was beyond my elementary school mind.

:rofl:

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

67. My childhood confusion...

The sixties were a weird time to be a little kid. Among many confusing things, I remember how much I admired Sen Mike Mansfield because he was opposed to the Vietnam War (my brother was sweating the draft at the time), and how disappointed I was to learn that he had killed Sharon Tate and all of her friends.

[achtung_circus]

68. I got very upset in a store.

I was shopping with my Dad, he paid by check and I thought it was because we had no money and were poor and started crying.

I was about 3.

[twenty2strings]

69. I found out that when you had sex,something came out...

So I thought that men peed inside women. Well, okay. It feels good to pee,but why all the fuss?

[nuxvomica]

71. The "old man's pencil"

It was a joke pencil my dad had that was made of rubber so it always drooped instead of holding straight. I thought it was funny cuz pencils aren't supposed to droop. I brought it to Boy Scouts and my dad got real mad at me even though the other dad's thought it was funny.

[calico1]

72. I remember being very little and hearing people talk

about the "flea market" or going to the "flea market" and wondering to myself why on Earth anyone would want to go there? Of course I thought you bought fleas there.

Also I remember looking at an old picture album with my mom and aunt and them commenting on the pictures. These photographs were mostly from the 40's and 50's so they were all black and white. My mom would say something like "oh, remember that blue dress you loved so much?" to my aunt and I would think to myself "what blue dress? That dress is gray." I did not understand that even though the pictures were b&w people were still in color.

My little sister thought for the longest time that "human being" was "human bean" and she never quite understood what a human bean was. :)