Shattered illusions when you were very little?

I remember asking my mum how babies were born and her coy reply was something along the lines of "first the head appears then the shoulders" etc etc but as she didn't exactly say where the head appeared from I imagined her sitting up in a hospital bed with her best peach bedjacket on and her arms lovingly circled then, out of nowhere, a lovely little head materialised (a bit like the Cheshire cat now I think of it) followed by the shoulders etc etc! Needless to say, when I found out where babies ACTUALLY came from it was less of a disappointment more a traumatic event lol!

I firmly believed Mums laid an egg and had to stay in bed to hatch the baby out. I used to go and feed the hens with a neighbour so knew that's what they did and it seemed logical to me that must be how babies were born.

I also very proudly told my reception class at school aged 4 that my Daddy had discovered rice pudding in Africa. That was because he was in the army and stationed there after the war and used to send tea chests full of provision home periodically including a sack of rice. I was very puzzled when the teacher burst out laughing!

Going to church with my mum and singing “ oe’r moor and fen, and crag and torrent till the night be gone”. I asked what a Torrentill looked like, was it like a scarlet pimpernel? She laughed all the way home.

I was a lot older - about 11 when we moved house. My parents said they needed to buy turf to lay a new lawn. I came home from school very excited one day and announced to my parents and a room full of visitors that I'd found somewhere they could get some. I'd seen a sign saying Turf Accountants. I was mortified when they all laughed.

Oh, Margaret , hymns caused endless confusion. Like 'Gladly' my cross-s eyed bear. Why did she call
her bear Gladly if it was cross-eyed'?

Also my mum told me my tummy button was where I'd been attached to her inside her tummy. As she also had a tummy button I thought they had fitted together like a press stud.

All those road signs saying "cul-de-sac, not on housing estates but proper rural roads, I wondered how so many signs in different areas all went to the same place. Now all you get is the sign with a vertical white line & horizontal red line on top, not the same at all. Bit disappointed that cul-de-sac meant a road that didn't go anywhere

Reception pupils get very excited if they see teacher in the street because they think they live in the school

Does anybody remember Amami?
My poor dear Scottish granny had thin grey hair which she wore on a sort of roll around the back of her head/neck and I remember her telling my mum how she combed Amami through her hair after she washed it in the expectation of the lovely waves illustrated on the box

I was very excited one day because my parents were taking me to - Worlds End!
I imagined it as the edge where we could maybe fall off..... and it turned out to be an ordinary field with a hedge at the bottom. What a disappointment.

I idolised my mums younger sister she always smelled so nice and wore makeup. I overheard her talking to my mother one day saying ' musn't forget my evening in Paris.'
I was a' little girls should be seen and not heard' so as you may have guessed it took me some time to find out my aunt had not been to Paris.

I used to believe that your poo was stored in your bum cheeks and people with huge bums must've hardly ever went to the toilet.

I also had a great auntie who my grandma called "Mrs Nippy" I never understood why until years later I confronted my grandma and asked her why. She said "oh she was a barmaid and always walked around with her boobs out and her bum cheeks nipped in". Charming.

We were staying the night in a cheap hotel in Brussels when I was 7. Outside the window I could see loads of women, dressed in very little, standing on the pavement. Now and again one of them would get into a car.

My story of "What I did on my holidays" back at school included the bit about how ladies in Brussels worked very hard and very late, and had to stand around at the bus-stop for hours, hoping someone would give them a lift home.

My Dad convinced me that the TV had to be emptied of Indians on a Sunday morning, after we had watched Saturday evening Western. I was so so gullible

Written in buses in Manchester in the 1950s was an instruction: "Tender exact fare". It puzzled me for years why the fare should be a sweet and gentle thing...

When I was old enough to stay awake to see the New Year in - I had always thought the sky moved from one side to the other bringing in the New Year - so disappointed!

apropos hymns, the verse that to me ( amongst many) that sounded really peculiar was in ' O, worship the King'

Thy bountiful care, what tongue can recite
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light
It streams from the hills, it descends to the plain
And sweetly distils in the dew and the rain.

Now I see it all hinges on'Care' As a child, I thought the subject was 'Tongue and wondered when the miracle of this long pink tongue sneaking over and gleaming on the hills would happen

So many disappointments brought to mind with this thread!
When I asked my Mum where babies came from she told me Daddy gave her a special seed. The greengrocer sold packets of seeds, so I imagined him shyly asking for a baby seed!
I was 9 when 1969 became 1970 and I was allowed to stay up till midnight. I really expected everything to feel different as we moved into a new decade. I was so disappointed! I've always wondered about the young children when we moved into the year 2000. Were they disappointed?
The biggest disappointment though was, aged 12, when something happened (can't remember what) and I realised my Mum was in the wrong. I think I'd believed she knew everything and was always right until that point and I was hurt and disappointed.

My sister, cousins and I used to sleep at grandmas while our parents went out to the "beer bar" on a Saturday night. I always thought this place must be terribly sophisticated and we used to pretend we were going out to the beer bar with grandmas shoes and handbags. I always "ordered" a Babycham (in my pretend bar) as I had seen it on TV and loved the little bambi figure and the bubbles.

My two disappointments were first of all seeing Buckingham Palace (which wasn’t gold with turrets) and also my grandma saying we were going to my great aunt’s house on Shanks’s Pony!

I was wildly excited (aged 4) when I heard mummy tell a friend "My sister is coming for a visit". I made up endless dreams about this wonderful unknown person and was sadly disappointed when I found out the it was just Auntie S.!

I came home after one of my very first days at school and asked Mummy what the hymn "Jesus bits of shine with a poor clear light" meant. English was not my mother's first language, so I had to wait until Daddy came home for the explanation that our form mistress had been trying to teach us the hymn that begins "Jesus bids us shine with a pure, clear light, Like a little candle shining in the night.

being told I was adopted when I was 4

Maw I had forgotten about Amami, but my Grandpa who lived with us bought some, so my sister and I could have waves in our hair.
I suppose it was a forerunner of today’s mousse, but it made your hair horribly sticky and was one of the many things my mother disapproved of