If you often find yourself standing in a group nodding along, and pretending to understand what everyone is talking about, you're not alone.
Here are 35 people who share the moments where they finally caught onto things everyone else knew.
After The Noon
A few weeks ago I, for the first time, understood why afternoon is called afterNOON.
I felt so dumb, and my roommates weren’t impressed.
Bar2692
Pure Evil
When I found out that Cruella DeVille was a play on the words cruel devil.
_The_Mammoth_
IHOP
IHOP = International House of Pancakes
I actually thought they were two different chains. “Why are we pulling into the IHOP parking lot? I thought we were going to the International Hou– OH MY GOD.” I was all excited, too, ’cause I thought I’d never been to an International House of Pancakes before.
xHaZxMaTx
Hard Drinks?
Soft drinks. They aren’t hard (alcoholic). I don’t know what took me so long.
Damned Credit Comapanies
When I was a teenager I thought that Visa was forcing people from other countries to get a credit card if they wanted stay in the US.
_Mr_Quagmire_
Twinkle Twinkle ABC
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star has the same tune as The ABC song.
[deleted]
Look At Those Curtains
There used to be a blind shop near my grandmother’s house. We would drive past it, and I always thought of it as an accessory shop for blind people. One day I realized, it was a blind shop, as in curtains and blinds.
ifeelsosoft
Ovenless
After looking at dozens of places and much careful consideration, I moved into my beautiful, perfect, beach front apartment one month ago.
Two weeks later, I went to make cookies.
There is no oven in this apartment.
[deleted]
My Clothes Are So Soft
That the laundry detergent I had been using for 9 months was actually fabric softener.
EMartinez86
You’ve Pushed Them Too Far!
My mom and dad were looking at a house for sale. They were being shown around inside by the man and woman who currently lived there. While being shown the dining room, the woman showed my mother the nice sliding doors that hid inside the wall. My mother, wanting to see if the doors rails still worked properly, opened the doors the full way so the door was completely hidden inside the wall.
The woman jumps forward saying “Oh no! You’ve pushed them too far! This always happens to us with new people! The doors are too far in the wall, and it takes us forever to pry is out cause we can’t reach it.”
My mother looks at her quite shocked (as our family home had the same style of door) and grabbed the hidden handle (the type where you push the top of the handle and a little hook pops out the bottom of the handle) on the door and easily pulled the door out.
The woman and her husband stood there in shock and later explained that they used to get in fights over this door for years. My parents laughed and left. They never bought the house.
[deleted]
Tick-Tock
In one of my classes in high school, I always used to ask the guy sat next to me for the time. He would always be able to give me the right time, without looking at his watch or phone, even though I couldn’t see a clock anywhere in the room. I’d ask him how he always knew the time, and he said that he could tell by the positions of the shadows around the room.
After a year of believing this, I noticed there was a clock right there on the wall in front of me.
j3107
Sound of Sunlight
For the longest time I just assumed that buzzing cicadas was just the sound that the hot sun makes. Then one day I was like, “Wait, the sun doesn’t make sounds …”
tallgordon
Scar
When I found out that Scar is called that because he has a Scar.
I Got Towed Again
I have more than once driven into my apartment’s parking lot and thought, “Oh shoot. My car is gone. I got towed again,” before realizing I’m driving my car.
Baaaabytiiiiger
The Pop
Until 3 weeks ago at the ripe ol’ age of 28. I never knew that Pop Tarts go in the toaster. I thought Pop Tarts was just a clever name. My parents never did that for us, we just took ’em to school in all their silvery package glory. I was bored and raiding the pantry one day. Surprise, surprise there was the toaster instructions. The worst part was when I told my fiancée, who you could imagine, said, “What the heck do you think pop stands for?” I then tried it in the toaster. It was a life changing moment.
RydotGuy
“Chik-Fill-Ah.”
Up until about a month ago I thought Chik-Fil-A was pronounced “Chik-Fill-Ah.”
When someone pronounced it correctly I literally smacked my forehead… “Of course… as in fillet.”
olafthebent
Don’t Press The Pink Button
There is a button in my bathroom that will fill up the bathtub automatically. I don’t even have to turn the taps.
I’m still too scared to play with the toilet controls. I think some of them are for ladies only; I pressed the pink button
and it washed my balls. I’ve been living in this house for a year now.
[deleted]
Where’s That Pesky Flashlight
While camping I spent 5 minutes looking for my flashlight with my flashlight.
Stump-Chunkman
Rudimentary
When I studied in Mexico my Spanish skills were pretty rudimentary. The first month I was there I somehow confused “Lo siento” with, “Yo serio.” So when I bumped into someone on the street, instead of saying, “I’m sorry,” I would look at them sincerely and say, “I’m serious.” Once I figured this out it explained a lot of strange looks.
_Tucky_duck_
I Found… It In My Hand
When I was younger, I thought I had lost my GameBoy Pocket. This being my most treasured possession, I began a journey throughout the house to find it. I searched everywhere. From my room, which I practically turned upside down, to my living room, where I proceeded to check under every couch and chair in the vicinity. Lo and behold, I found it in my hand after about thirty minutes of searching. The mind of an eight-year-old is a wondrous thing.
Youknowmealready
Moose On The Loose
I used to work overnight shifts, and then I got off work I would go to Denny’s and grab dinner because it was the only place that was open that early. So one day, I get out of my car and start walking to the door when I notice everyone looking DIRECTLY AT ME from the restaurant. EVERYONE. Even the cooks. I check my zipper and it’s not open… I look around and nothing. Odd. I keep walking to the door. They start pointing vigorously. I look at my zipper again, then around… NOTHING!
Someone opens the door enough to stick their head out and yells, “For goodness sake, Get IN HERE!” I look around and point at myself to say “ME”? I speed up to the door and THEN reflected in the glass I see the HUGE bull moose 10 feet behind me. Once safely inside I see it had damaged 3 cars and was frothy at the mouth (not Rabies we found out later, just confused and pissed). The police showed up and tranqued him.
Bookon
Alpha-Bet
The word alphabet comes from alpha beta.
[deleted]
DEMO MODE
This is one I’m particularly ashamed of. Worst of all it was well before my drug days, so I can’t blame it on that. But I got the sudoku demo cartridge for the original DS and played the game quite frequently, always struggling a bit with each game. Sudoku is a great game. I never needed to buy it because the demo version was giving me hundreds of hours of fun in itself!
Of course the demo was always just the one game over and over, for years I would play it thinking I was getting a new game each time. I don’t know what is wrong with me, but I just never noticed. And I struggled with each game as if I were playing it for the first time. I should probably have mentioned this to my doctor.
[deleted]
Toastiness
The numbers on a toaster aren’t intensity. It’s duration.
Duvidl
Tuxedo, NY
I got lost driving upstate NY by myself once, at 1:00 AM. Took a wrong turn trying to get to Route 17, and wound up in a little town that clearly wasn’t where I wanted to be. It was a bit foggy and my phone was constantly rebooting and I didn’t have a GPS. Nothing was open. Streets completely vacant. No signs of life at all. It was a bit creepy.
It got creepier when as I was driving around trying to find a way back to the highway I noticed that there were tuxedo shops everywhere. It seemed like every other shop was a tuxedo shop.
Why would a town need so many tuxedo shops? It got to the point where I was in a near panic state. I started driving faster through this little town, counting tuxedo shops. I stopped counting at 15 and concluded I was the protagonist in a twilight zone episode.
Panic set in. I drove. Anywhere. Anywhere where there isn’t a tuxedo shop. Turn around and just keep going. Don’t stop. Finally I see the highway. I drive the wrong way up the ramp, cross over the median and get the hell out of there. Traffic rules be damned I was going to be trapped in some odd little town seemingly in the middle of nowhere that consisted of tuxedo shops. I was picturing every person coming out wearing tuxedos trying to get me to stay. Forever.
I finally escaped and got to my destination. I didn’t tell a soul about it for about a year.
One day my wife and I are driving the same route and I tell her about the strange little town where all the shops were tuxedo shops…
Turns out I was in Tuxedo, NY.
0xabad1d3a
Look At All That Paper
For years and years I thought Pay Per View was Paper View. My Dad laughed so hard when he found out…
TMTC
I Can See The Light
We had a light switch in my house that I did not notice for ten years.
I was fascinated by it for a week after I discovered it.
_Nobby_Nobbs_
Of Course The Pokeballs
I used to play Pokemon Red as a little boy. I couldn’t read English since my native language is Dutch therefore I skipped tutorial and didn’t knew I could CATCH the Pokemon
I played it for over two years with just 1 Pokemon till a friend told me I could use a Pokeball to catch them.
Epiccookiejar
Eeyore
He’s called Eeyore because that’s the sound a donkey makes…
siananigans
“OH SHOOT! MY KEYS!”
On my way to work I always do a complete mental checklist to make sure I’m good to go. I’ll be driving and I’ll go “bra, undies, shirt, pants, socks, shoes, watch, okay. I’m dressed. My hair is tied back. I have my lunch, my purse, my coat, my ID badge to get past security and into work.” SEVERAL times I still feel like I am missing something. On more than one occasion, I’ve been close to work and gone “OH SHOOT! MY KEYS!” and turned around, only to a few minutes later realize….”I’m an idiot. Jeeeeeez!” All my keys are on one key ring. I’m DRIVING my car, thus, I clearly didn’t forget my keys. It takes me way longer than it should to realize this every single freaking time it happens. I’m truly an idiot sometimes.
VikingHedgehog
Cali-fornication
It took me until season 4 to realize that the series _Californication _has “fornication” in it.
[deleted]
Throwback
Back when I was in film school we were in our schools theatre watching back to the future. Approximately 80 minutes in a girl shouts out in disbelief “oh my god I get it! BACK… to the…. FUTURE! “.
Mind=Blown
Cupboards are so named because they are literally boards you put your cups on… that one only took me 24 years.
Enigmaticfirecracker
Tubes
I was in my thirties before I figured out that girls’ bicycles have a lower top tube so they can be ridden more easily and modestly in a dress. I always thought it should be boys’ bikes that had the lower tube because, uh, y’know.
Twins!
So there are these two girls.
They sit opposite me at lunch. I’d say perhaps an hour a day, these girls are sat directly in front of me. Five hours a week, twenty-odd weeks before I’d noticed. So a hundred hours of being next to these two girls…
“Shoot. You two are identical twins.”
LeSwordfish