What have you discovered you were doing wrong for a long time?

jsdratm · 1 year

[deleted]

VisualSourceSafe · 1 year

My parents used to tickle my armpits when I was younger while saying "I'm going to gobble your goopies." I thought goopies == armpits until I was 20 and while tickling my girlfriend, she said "You're gonna do WHAT to my WHAT?!"

I asked my parents about it -- they did it on purpose.

Thanks mom and dad.

franticzoe · 1 year

When I was around four-five years old, when I had wiped my ass I always left a wad of toilet paper there, between the ass cheeks, for extra protection or something, I'm not really sure anymore. So yeah, I'd generally walk around with a wad of toilet paper up my ass.

One day I slept over at a friends house and the parents helped me change clothes or something. Damn near called the social services.

mrbubblesort · 1 year

When I was a kid, I thought the phrase "brought to you by" was a single word because they always said it so fast in commercials. I'd try looking up "braughtoyubuy" or "bratooyoubi" etc. in the dictionary, but I could never find it. I just assumed it a German word or something. I was in middle school before I saw it on a poster one day in the lunchroom and it clicked.

bobindahood · 1 year

When I was a kid I sometimes had to take medicine via suppository. I always inserted the thing in my anus the wrong way. You would tend to think the cone-shaped side goes first, well you're wrong . The trick is to insert the other way around so it goes deeper when your anus shuts.

kslez · 1 year

I type about 90 WPM with only 4 fingers (pointer and middle on each hand). I didn't realize I was doing it wrong until I entered the workforce and people stared at me in awe. My coworker likes to bring people to my cube and force me to type for them, then call me a velociraptor.

MainstreamHipster · 1 year

This is all the way down here. But holy shit this is the kicker.

I didn't know girls didn't have dicks until 5th grade.

zombieunicorn · 1 year

I had a box of rubber bands that kept popping open and spilling rubber bands in my desk drawer. Could not, for the life of me, think of anything that might keep that box shut.

SuperNashwan · 1 year

Until I was 21 I thought the second hand on a watch was the one that counted minutes. As in, it's the 2nd hand...

Until then whenever I heard someone say "Does your watch have a second hand?" I would always think to myself, of course! What good would it be without?

rjukan · 1 year

For some reason it took me 20-odd years before I realized we have opposable thumbs, not disposable ones. Never stopped to think that my thumbs really weren't disposable...

pygmy · 1 year

signing off 'chow' instead of 'ciao'

mortified when I realised it.

R_Arctor · 1 year

"intents and purposes" not "intensive purposes"

danic85 · 1 year

I called ! an 'explanation mark' until I was 12.

Haden888 · 1 year

Probably buried under everything but oh well.

Before I discovered how to masturbate, I would just sit there and watch porn.

Jrix · 1 year

I didn't take hot showers until my late teenage years. (15 or 16)

I always felt hot water was a novelty to be used on certain occasions, and a waste of energy.

So one time we moved into a new house that had the water temperature and pressure on the same rotation of the knob.

So I couldn't have high pressure without hot water.

I complained to my parents how dumb that was, because now it forces people to use hot water for showers.

The conversation that ensued made me feel really strange.

And I have been taking non-shivering showers ever since.

syuk · 1 year

Shave, shower then shit

Should be

Shit, shower and shave

fallenangel42 · 1 year

All my life, I've had good, legible handwriting in cursive and print. At the age of 24, a friend remarked that I hold my pen 'wrong' (hard to describe but the callus develops on my fourth finger not my third). If I try to hold a pen the 'right' way my writing goes to shit completely. Until very recently, I hadn't been even remotely aware that everyone else didn't write the same way I did.

KorgRue · 1 year

Not realizing that the acronym for the personified Uncle Sam is US, or United States. It dawned on my just yesterday. Previously I just thought they were personifying America as a whole for the old war posters and never realized that they were actually just personifying an acronym for United States. I have to believe I am not the only one who was doing it wrong in my (mis)understanding of the meaning behind Uncle Sam.

pvnotp · 1 year

Even though I knew that the word pronounced "a-rye" meant the same thing as the word spelled "awry", I somehow thought that they were different words and that the latter was pronounced "awe-ry". It wasn't until I was a college senior that I figured it out.

trav268 · 1 year

I always thought pickles were its own vegetable.

When I turned 22 I learned that they were "pickled" cucumbers.

SlyRax · 1 year

I'm 26, a few months ago reddit taught me you could push in the ends of a tin foil box and the tin foil will never fall out. Blew my mind

vinegar · 1 year

Three days ago I noticed a "new" traffic light on a road I travel frequently. Apparently I've been blowing through it for years.

sgrace575 · 1 year

For years I thought "prima donna" was "pre-madonna"

YarrMateys · 1 year

Screw a thread about this, I'd like it in book form. Discoveries can be ordered A-Z. As someone with the common sense of a newly-gravity-stricken whale, I would buy at least 3 copies.

AYmalik · 1 year

Shampoo.

I always used to work in shampoo before I stepped into the shower/got wet at all, and always wondered why it was so difficult and disgusting to use shampoo. I would then wash it out.

Then one day I looked at the instructions...

cakethrower · 1 year

I was talking to my husband about our furniture the other day and he said "chester drawers." I told him that it wasn't "chester drawers"; it is "chest of drawers." I think his brain almost exploded.

joetromboni · 1 year

For all my life up until my mid 20's I ordered my steaks well done (probably because that's how my mom made them for me).

Then one awesome night I was bbq'n and ran out of propane, the steak was medium rare at the time, and I was hungry so I said fuck it and ate it anyway. I can't believe how much better it was then the dry, grey, leather I ate for 25 or so years.

rebadiculous · 1 year

When I was in high school Blink 182 released an album called Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. I never understood why they would call it that since there seems to be a syntax/grammar problem (eg, shouldn't it be Take Off Your Jacket and Pants). About a year and a half ago, my best friend said the title outloud and I said outloud OH I GET IT. I'm 24. I'm not sure why I never got this, it's not like I don't say wicked inappropriate things all the time. Now it's my new favorite thing to say and everyone is like hey, way to be so 2002.

Bob3333 · 1 year

I only discovered last year that for my whole life I had been using toilet seat covers incorrectly. In a moment of genius I realized that they should go on the toilet in the opposite direction I had always been placing them. I used to place them with the flap hanging at the back of the toilet, but realized that the flap should be hanging at the front. Once I realized the fit was better I also noticed that the flap at the front serves two purposes: 1) to protect your junk from touching the filthy inner rim of the toilet, and 2) to hang in the water stream so that a flush sucks the cover in without manual intervention.

See here.

fatherdougal · 1 year

Apparently it's "only child" not "lonely child"

mexipimpin · 1 year

Preparing pancake batter; I usd to mix that stuff like a mo-fo. Breakfast has gotten a lot better since I learned otherwise.

onlycallisto · 1 year

Not me, but my mother had one that merits telling. She was a vegetarian when she met my dad in her late 20s, but apparently still had pepperoni on pizza, because she thought it was a vegetable.

[deleted] · 1 year

Bobby Hill: What do you tell someone who wants their steak well-done?

Hank Hill: You politely but firmly ask them to leave.

I_hate_bottles · 1 year

I always pronounced 'Espresso' as 'Expresso'. Took me until I was about 15 to figure it out.

admiralwaffles · 1 year

I used to just sit down and slide into bed. Now, I take a running leap, rotating 180 degrees in the air, so I'm facing the ceiling when I land in the warm embrace of my bed.

175Genius · 1 year

Cheetos. Never knew about chopsticks.

GAMEOVER · 1 year

I pronounced vise (like the clamp) as "vize" or "v-eyes" (long i sound). I also once acted like a complete smartass when a history major friend of mine brought up "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." I said, like a douchebag, "Decline and Fall? Isn't that the same thing? I think you mean Rise and Fall" and since I said it with a straight face everyone else agreed.

So... stay humble even when you think you're right. Also don't believe everything someone says just because they sound smart and make you laugh.

Dalonger · 1 year

I thought a tampon was a German dog, and that type O blood was green. Cursed older sister!!

iamfucking12 · 1 year

i used to masturbate sideways

saladpower · 1 year

Apparently everyone else write their O's counter clockwise.

It makes no sense to me. If I'm going from left to right and end drawing my O's going this way -> it goes into the next letter faster.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm right handed.

Bumgill · 1 year

Brushing my teeth. From as far back as I can remember until I was in middle school, I didn't use to rinse my mouth out after spitting.

TheSeeker00 · 1 year

I swallowed the toothpaste until the age of 14. Yes, I swallowed the toothpaste.

EDIT: Wow. I realized it was fucked up after a friend saw me doing it while crashing at his house. Didn't realize my health was at such risk! Lessons to be passed on to my children. Thank-you, reddit! :-)

tsphan · 1 year

I used to pronounce "we" as "ve" until 6th grade.

When I heard someone pronounce it as "we", I told him he was pronouncing it wrong. The small art class was basically laughing at me for the whole day. After that, it still took me months to correct the pronunciation.

Oddly, I took speech therapy class since kindergarten and my teacher never caught it.

EDIT: Just to clarify, it was only the word "we", which I thought had special pronunciation. I could pronounce weekend just fine.

aolley · 1 year

thinking other people had a similar thought process and thinking other people remember things

entropikone · 1 year

Up until i was about 19/20 years old i was using the wrong social security number, none of my jobs were recorded....i now have very little credit

Frijid · 1 year

Apparently not all the ladies like their ass slapped when I'm drunk.

memeparrot · 1 year

Pronouncing Led Zeppelin's song "D'yer Mak'er" wrong. It's pronounced "Jamaica."

otterberg1 · 1 year

When jerking off in the shower conditioner works a million times better than soap or shampoo. You don't work up a bubbly froth.

jonsayer · 1 year

Highlighting text:

http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/cne3g/til_doubleclickdrag_select_text_by_words_not_just/

dcannons · 1 year

My family called eyelashes, "eye winkers". Don't ask me why, I've no idea. But up howls of laughter from my laughter from my classmates cured me of saying it.

sweepy · 1 year

the song was "secret agent man", not "secret asian man".

glinsvad · 1 year

Based my internet procrastination on Digg.

errerr · 1 year

Opening a banana from the stem.

area · 1 year

Slicing a tomato.

I always sliced a tomato parallel to its plane of symmetry, starting with halving it through where it attached to the vine.

Turns out, the way to do it is to cut it in a manner so that you end up with 'top' and 'bottom' bits of a tomato, rather than sides. This way, the seeds don't fall out, and stay in the slices.

AdmCrunch · 1 year

Saying "ex cetra" instead of et cetera.

NeverEverAlways · 1 year

Did wrong: It's yo-sim-it-ee. Not Yose-eh-mite.

Did better: Forget "phillips" and "standard". Screwdrivers (and screws) are plus or minus.

fiercelyfriendly · 1 year

Commenting too late on Reddit to pick up any karma.

parm · 1 year

Anemone is spelled and pronounced anemone, not anenome. Took me until my mid-20s, that one.

xflashbackxbrd · 1 year

Tying my shoes in an unorthodox way

Cenzo · 1 year

How to chop an onion.

Reduced my onion chopping time by an order of magnitude.

OfficeLinebacker · 1 year

When I was younger I wondered why people argued over why the kids in Asia were a bad thing or a good thing. It made no sense to me, until I was in high school and learned the word was "euthanasia".

notcaptainkirk · 1 year

When I have cereal, I pour the milk in first.

HideousInfant · 1 year

a year or two ago, I realized that you're not supposed to whip out the whole package, your dongle and your sack when you take a piss. I'm 16. For 14/15 years of my life, I was "that guy"

EDIT -- I have reverted to no longer giving a fuck. As of now, I will see every piss-stop at a urinal as an opportunity to aerate my scrotum.

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