Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
35 Of The Most Obvious Things People Have Only Just Realized And Shared In This Online Group (New Answers)
Listen up, we’re going to let you in on a little secret: everybody has gaps in their knowledge! No matter how smart or experienced we are, there’s at least one thing that slips through the cracks. You know, that awakening moment or fact that is so painfully obvious, it catches us by surprise and makes us wonder how we managed to breezily move through life without acquiring such basic information.
But the good news is that it’s never too late to learn. Luckily for us, anonymous Redditors are setting out to teach us about these little things and life-changing bits of wisdom to save us from any future embarrassment. In several 'Ask Reddit' threads, thousands of people stepped forward to reveal the common things they realized at a hilariously late age, and they didn’t hold anything back.
We at Bored Panda have gone through the community to gather some of the best responses about obvious things that apparently were not evident enough. Enjoy reading through these illuminating stories and hit upvote on your favorite ones. Keep in mind that this is a shame-free and safe space, so if you have had any blind spots you recently discovered, be sure to let us know about them in the comments. We’d love to hear them!
Psst! If you’re in the mood for even more common things that people somehow missed, check out our previous pieces about them here, here, and here.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
I had two uncles when I was growing up who did everything together, both had YMCA-style moustaches, never had any girlfriends, and lived together with three cats.
Didn't realise they weren't just close friends until I was sixteen. "Oblivious" doesn't even come close.
Katie Lutesinger 2 years ago
My mother says when she was a kid she had an relative who she only realised much later was almost certainly a lesbian. It just wasn't something you talked about openly back then.
RELATED:
#2
i couldn't swallow pills until a month ago and when i finally did it my mom applauded me with tears in her eyes and wrote it down in my baby book. i'm 23.
#3
My dad once told me that the word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary. 18 years later, I got the joke.
Juan Ghote 2 years ago
How do you keep a fool in suspense? Head back here tomorrow to find out!
#4
So a little back story first. I was a really annoying and persistent child. My mother used to tell me that I couldn't accompany my parents out to dinner because "children aren't allowed in restaurants."
Fast forward 20 years and my girlfriend and I are out to eat. When a child runs by being a little shitball I say, "Remember when children weren't allowed in restaurants?"
No...nobody does.
iseefractals 2 years ago
Wow, remember when parents were actually considerate of others? I miss that.
#5
I thought orgasm was a nice word for fart when I was 10. Told my mom I had so many orgasms that my stomach hurt.
#6
I went to Catholic schools growing up. Other kids went to public schools. I thought there were two religions: Catholic and Public.
#7
As a kid my uncle would play this joke where he would put his hand on your head and make like a jellyfish squeezing your head a little, and say “this is a brainsucker, know what it’s doing? Starving!”
I would always laugh but did not get it until I was like 25
#8
I don't know why but whenever someone mentioned that a piece of furniture (or often the dashboard of a nice car) was walnut, I kind of thought they meant the nut and shells all crushed up and smoothened and I wondered how they did it. Then, in my thirties, I realised they probably make it from the tree. Felt like a right walnut that day.
#9
that I couldn't drink my problems away and that drinking was the problem.
4 years sober
Matt MacFarlane 2 years ago
Yeah, I can relate...get drunk to avoid your problems..later you're just broke and hungover.....and your problems are still there.
#10
That setting boundaries is a necessary part of life and whoever calls you "rude" because of it has a problem.
#11
I always thought that if a guy didn't hold his penis while he was peeing, that it would whip around like a fire hose.
Wax0nWax0ff 2 years ago
As the lone girl in a house full of boys, I clean up enough floor pee to confirm that this surely must be true
#12
That the opposite sex does not owe me anything for my kindness.
troufaki13 2 years ago
Not just the opposite sex. And being kind is a reward in itself, you don't anything in return :)
#13
There is a difference between "dish soap" and "dishwasher soap.".
I was a rookie in the fire house and put the dishes into the dish washer after morning oats and lunch. I proceeded to the load the dish detergent tray with the same soap that I was using to scrub the dishes in the sink...poor choice.
We wind up running a few calls in the afternoon on the engine. When we finally get back to the station and I'm restocking/wiping the rig down, my captain walks out and asked if I started the dishwasher. I said yes. Then we proceeded to go into the kitchen where there was literally a three feet deep sea of bubbles in the kitchen. The engineer and firefighter on duty thought it was hilarious, as did my captain, but being the rookie, I was embarrassed as hell. I opened a door to the outside and used our ventilation fan to blow as much of the suds as I could out the door. After restarting the dishwasher, more of these bubbles started coming out of the dishwasher. I had to rinse that dishwasher out so many times to get rid of all of the residue from the dish soap. The crazy part is, I didn't put that much soap into the machine.
And that, kids, is how I earned the nickname, "Bubbles."
TLDR: Don't put dish soap into a dishwasher...dishwasher soap only.
Edit: I was 21 when this happened.
Pumpkin Spice 2 years ago
Cue me sprinting to dump 3 mls. of Dawn into the dishwasher to check...
#14
As a young child, I would tell my father, "Dad, I'm hungry." He would stop whatever he was doing, extend his hand, and say, "I'm Bill." It infuriated me. For years this went on.
One day, I say, "I'm tired." He responds his usual response and I begin to say, "Daaaaa.....Oh! Oh my god! I GET IT!"
There are very few times I've seen my dad laugh that hard. I was 18.
lacampbell 2 years ago
When I said “I’m thirsty.” My mom would say, “I’m Friday, come back Saturday, and we’ll have a Sundae.” So I was looking for the pun with Bill. 😂
Robert T 2 years ago (edited)
My dad used to have a colleague at work called Peter Knight. And every time he said his name, he would follow it with "before you go to bed" and we all laughed. It took me quite some time into my adulthood to figure out that it sounded like "pee tonight before you go to bed".
Gvendolina Kacirova 2 years ago
Can someone please explain to a non-native speaker? He just introduced himself, what did the son find out?
Lazy Panda (she/her/hers) 2 years ago
We usually introduce ourselves to someone by saying "I'm [name]." The dad's joke is that the kid is introducing themselves as "I'm Hungry" so he introduces himself back with his name "I'm Bill."
Load More Replies...
Segovax the Pict 2 years ago
I'd say, "Dad, make me a sandwich." And he would wave his arms and say, "Poof, you're a sandwich!" I love my dad.
A Thousand Years Wide 2 years ago
Mine would respond to "I'm hungry" with, "hi I'm Friday". I still don't get it...
#15
Until i was 19 and away at college i did not know that milk curdles or bread molded. I grew up in a family of 8 and we went through that stuff so fast.
#17
Fruit Loops are all the same flavor. I was 27, and I still remember the shock of finding out Toucan Sam had been lying to me my whole life.
#18
Octopuses have BEAKS
Edit: OK NERDS "OCTOPI" ISN'T THE ONLY TECHNICALLY CORRECT TERM AND I'M NOT CHANGING IT.
#19
when i was about 9 my mother told me that a slut is a woman who likes to have fun. i started describing myself as a slut and i did for about a year or 2
WordWeaver 2 years ago
How come it's the females that get the nasty names? Why not the males? Double standards? Patriarchy?
#20
That driving with the light on in the car was not illegal. I remember my mom saying that as a child.
#21
Oh this question was meant for me.
I was 16 years old when I learned “flooriting” was not a word.
I grew up watching a LOT of SpongeBob and it was my favorite show. In the show, SpongeBob always fails his driving test because he will always “floor it” instead of driving slowly. When I was little I thought that “floorit” was a single word that meant to go fast and always assumed that someone could be “flooriting” or going very fast.
Fast forward to driving school. I’m in the car with the instructor and another student. I’m driving slowly on the highway and someone aggressively passes me. I made some nervous comment like “man, he’s really flooriting!” And the car just gets really quiet for a second. Then the other student in the car goes, “flooriting? What?”
And that’s when I realized. It all crashed down on me at once. FLOOR IT. It was two different words. It meant putting the gas pedal on the floor. I was shook. I kinda gasped and couldn’t even respond because I was overwhelmed.
It’s been 8 years and I still have never had such a strong, sudden realization of anything. And secretly I still kinda use “flooriting” in my head sometimes.
#22
An old co worker was 21 or 22 when he discovered that Ponies aren't just juvenile horses, but like another thing entirely. He spent an entire day walking up to anyone he could find going "Hey did you know" it was hilarious.
#23
I was like 10 when I found out I'm Indian. From India. Little kid me always thought it meant I was Native American and I told people as much until around third grade when I found out that India is a country.
censorshipsucks 2 years ago
Yeah I wish they'd rename the real Americans a proper name to stop this confusion. I always have to say "Indian indian like from subcontinental india".
#24
It took me 10 years and $20,000 to figure out how credit cards were supposed to be used.
#25
That narwhals were real. I genuinely thought they were myth until I saw them on a David Attenborough documentary.
Mind. blown.
#26
I just recently learned that when you buy a stick deodorant, you can remove the little plastic protective cover by just rotating the feed wheel at the bottom. You DON'T need to use your teeth like a fucking animal.
#27
Black people don't have an extra muscle in their leg that makes them better at sports. (I grew up in a very racist small Kansas town.) Was actually taught that by a fifth grade teacher. Found out in college when my ignorance made me look like a bigot.
#28
At seven years old, I realized that the moon is not the back of the sun.
A few years later, it turns out that no matter how good you are to your cat, it doesn't grow up to be a dog.
#29
I didn’t know how to write in print until my first year of college. Up to that point, I only learned cursive, and my teachers were so happy that someone willingly used cursive that they just went along with it.
Stephanie Did It 2 years ago
When I was in first grade in 1963 we learned to print and in the next couple of years we'd ask our friends, "have you started real writin' yet?" To me cursive was Real Writin'. It still is.
#30
I asked my senior year drama teacher if I could go to the nurse because I just queefed in the bathroom. Learned the hard way that's not same as throwing up.
#33
the end pieces of a loaf of bread keep the bread fresher, longer, so you should not eat them until the very end of the loaf.
This I learned at 52.
#34
I was deep into my teens when I realized it’s “make ends meet” instead of “make end’s meat”. I always visualized it as procuring the last bit of food you could in tough times. Wrong!
Laura Carney 2 years ago
I was in my mid to late 20s when I read on closed captions "London Bridge is falling down". Until that very moment I had always believed it was "London Bridges" like multiple bridges were falling. Lol
#35
That the delete key on the keyboard deletes to the right of the cursor. Backspace deletes to the left and I would always move the cursor to hit backspace instead of just hitting delete.
What do you think ?
Deborah Harris 2 years ago
My Daughter realised at the age of 22 that Diana Princess of Wales wasn't welsh :D
Snorky The Pig 2 years ago
I used to think that during sex, the penis went into the vagina like a hotdog into a bun. Years later I learned about erections and where all the holes are.
Anthony Parisi 2 years ago
As a kid, I thought planes leaving behind a fuel exhaust trail were actually "skyscrapers". (It looked like they scraped the sky!) :-))
broken_guy 2 years ago
lol i just found out that pickles aren't a different vegetables and that they are in fact cucumbers
JJ 2 years ago
Usually they are a different kind of cucumber than those mostly used for salads. Pickle cucumbers are smaller, a bit harder to bite and have a bigger, harder peel with small thorns (very small, they don't hurt that much, but you can feel them). You can use them freshly, too, though, but many people dislike the peel. I only grow those pickle cucumbers because they seem to be more resistant.
Load More Replies...
similarly 2 years ago
Until I was in college, I used the spelling "artical" for magazine or news articles, and "article" for government documents. Somehow got it confused with principal and principle maybe? I was in high school before I learned that facade is pronounced with a soft c (hence the funny tail on the c in French.) I'd only ever seen it in print, and had never heard it pronounced until then, so I did the obvious and called fay-kade.
Kyle D 2 years ago
As someone who received no sex education in school or at home, and no experience around them and the subject honestly never having occurred to me since as said, I never saw any others first hand, I was an almost embarrassing age when it dawned on me after a comment that was made to me, that all boys are born uncircumcised. I presumed it was like being born with blue eyes, or black hair. You were born with foreskin or you weren't. And if you happened to be, the parents removed it, depending on religious beliefs.
Yu Pan 2 years ago
I thought people could only have sex if they are fully naked. My friends laughed at me. I was 17.
Load More Replies...
Aileen 2 years ago
I used to think that getting engaged to someone was just another way of saying you were going steady with them. So I remember telling one of my friends, "My mom says I can't get engaged until I'm at least sixteen!" And was surprised when she gave me a weird look and said that she was told that 21 is the minimum age (or so her mom told her).
pandamonium 2 years ago
I recently found out that in the song Gaston from Beauty And The Beast that he says "so I'm roughly the size of a barge" (a barge being a large boat) i always thought he said roughly the size of a bard (a bard being a poet who traditionally told epic tales and such and was usually a small man) so i was always really confused by that but then one day my friend told me it was barge and not a bard and explained to me what a barge was and it all makes sense now. As a highschool theatre geek I'm very disappointed in myself for not realizing that sooner!
Giles McArdell 2 years ago (edited)
Banoffee pie, I thought "banoffee" was an Italian word until I was well over 30, penny dropped in a restaurant when I was pointing at the menu saying to a friend "hey, Banoffee pie has bananas and toffee in it" - "Dude, it's literally in the name" - "What?... Ohhhh"
JustinTime 2 years ago
I first heard Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” when I was 12. I didn’t realize it was about sex until I was 30.
Aroace tiger (she/they/he) 2 years ago
The other day a guy I know found out there were more than 6 months in a year. He's said a lot of dumb things tbh.
Sardonyx_3 2 years ago
idk why you were downvoted. Here's an upvote to stop you from getting banned. :)
Load More Replies... Deborah Harris 2 years ago
My Daughter realised at the age of 22 that Diana Princess of Wales wasn't welsh :D
Snorky The Pig 2 years ago
I used to think that during sex, the penis went into the vagina like a hotdog into a bun. Years later I learned about erections and where all the holes are.
Anthony Parisi 2 years ago
As a kid, I thought planes leaving behind a fuel exhaust trail were actually "skyscrapers". (It looked like they scraped the sky!) :-))
broken_guy 2 years ago
lol i just found out that pickles aren't a different vegetables and that they are in fact cucumbers
JJ 2 years ago
Usually they are a different kind of cucumber than those mostly used for salads. Pickle cucumbers are smaller, a bit harder to bite and have a bigger, harder peel with small thorns (very small, they don't hurt that much, but you can feel them). You can use them freshly, too, though, but many people dislike the peel. I only grow those pickle cucumbers because they seem to be more resistant.
Load More Replies... similarly 2 years ago
Until I was in college, I used the spelling "artical" for magazine or news articles, and "article" for government documents. Somehow got it confused with principal and principle maybe? I was in high school before I learned that facade is pronounced with a soft c (hence the funny tail on the c in French.) I'd only ever seen it in print, and had never heard it pronounced until then, so I did the obvious and called fay-kade.
Kyle D 2 years ago
As someone who received no sex education in school or at home, and no experience around them and the subject honestly never having occurred to me since as said, I never saw any others first hand, I was an almost embarrassing age when it dawned on me after a comment that was made to me, that all boys are born uncircumcised. I presumed it was like being born with blue eyes, or black hair. You were born with foreskin or you weren't. And if you happened to be, the parents removed it, depending on religious beliefs.
Yu Pan 2 years ago
I thought people could only have sex if they are fully naked. My friends laughed at me. I was 17.
Load More Replies... Aileen 2 years ago
I used to think that getting engaged to someone was just another way of saying you were going steady with them. So I remember telling one of my friends, "My mom says I can't get engaged until I'm at least sixteen!" And was surprised when she gave me a weird look and said that she was told that 21 is the minimum age (or so her mom told her).
pandamonium 2 years ago
I recently found out that in the song Gaston from Beauty And The Beast that he says "so I'm roughly the size of a barge" (a barge being a large boat) i always thought he said roughly the size of a bard (a bard being a poet who traditionally told epic tales and such and was usually a small man) so i was always really confused by that but then one day my friend told me it was barge and not a bard and explained to me what a barge was and it all makes sense now. As a highschool theatre geek I'm very disappointed in myself for not realizing that sooner!
Giles McArdell 2 years ago (edited)
Banoffee pie, I thought "banoffee" was an Italian word until I was well over 30, penny dropped in a restaurant when I was pointing at the menu saying to a friend "hey, Banoffee pie has bananas and toffee in it" - "Dude, it's literally in the name" - "What?... Ohhhh"
JustinTime 2 years ago
I first heard Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” when I was 12. I didn’t realize it was about sex until I was 30.
Aroace tiger (she/they/he) 2 years ago
The other day a guy I know found out there were more than 6 months in a year. He's said a lot of dumb things tbh.
Sardonyx_3 2 years ago
idk why you were downvoted. Here's an upvote to stop you from getting banned. :)
Load More Replies... You May Like 35 Times Older People Failed At “Surfing The Net” But Provided Some Comedy Gold (New Pics) 30 Times People Tried Their Hand At Gardening And Ended Up Hilariously Disappointed (New Pics) 50 Hilarious Advertising Fails You Might Find Hard To Believe Were Actually Approved (New Pics)
Justinas Keturka
Viktorija Ošikaitė
Eglė Bliabaitė
Related on Bored Panda
