People have been sharing the ‘common knowledge’ things they didn’t learn ’til so much later in life – 17 eye-openingly belated epiphanies
True wisdom comes from realising that the more you learn, the less you know. Although on the flip side, you can feel a bit stupid if you were oblivious to common knowledge.
Reddit user FriendshipOk7636 invited people to share the things they learnt embarrassingly late in life, and they even got the ball rolling by sharing their own awkward oversight:
‘I had no idea there were snakes in the UK until two years ago (I’m 24) and I felt like such an idiot. How did I go that far into my life without knowing that?’
Brace yourself for an epiphany, here are the top replies…
1.
‘That newborn babies need feeding every two to three hours day and night at first. I thought you fed them in the daytime and they slept at night like the rest of humanity.
‘Found out shortly before my first was born.’
-rcgl2
2.
‘I didn’t really know what a catheter was until I had one.
‘Like, I knew it was a piss bag you plugged into your peehole, but I sort of assumed that just took care of it when you needed a piss.
‘I didn’t realise that it completely disabled your bladder, so you’re both always pissing and never pissing, the urine just goes straight from being made in your kidneys into the bag, do not pass go, do not collect £200.’
-Banes_Addiction
3.
‘I thought ponies were baby horses until I was in my early 20s 😬’
-alinalovescrisps
4.
‘think it was last year I discovered that holes on a golf course get moved around. had never considered it and had no clue, always baffled me how people could be members at one place for so long.’
-pleasedontwearthat
5.
‘i thought spaghetti junction was in italy 😞’
-KibbleCrashout
6.
‘I had a teacher in primary school who apparently only discovered sea horses are real, and not mythical like unicorns, on our school trip to an aquarium.
‘She literally fainted.’
-JennyW93
7.
‘I was about 30 before I knew that gherkins were cucumbers!’
-Bore_Da_Pawb
8.
‘I was 18 when I learnt that reindeer were real and not just mythical Christmas beasts.’
-runrunrudolf
9.
‘I’m very into space, always have been, but I was in my mid twenties before I understood the physics behind going into orbit.
‘I had always just assumed that once you got high enough, you stopped experiencing gravity and started floating around.
‘It took seeing a launch for me to realise rockets aren’t just about going up, all that power is mostly about getting going sideways really really fast. Fast enough that, once you’re up there, you’re falling around the earth as quickly as you’re falling towards it. Otherwise you just fall back.
‘You’re not floating around because there’s no gravity in orbit, you’re floating around because you’re in freefall.
‘For someone who had always claimed to be really into all things space, this did feel like a pretty embarrassing thing to be learning at that stage.’
-Nw5gooner