What did you discover relatively late on in life that everyone else had known for years?

I didn't learn that the digits in the answers in the 9 times table always add up to 9 until doing an OU degree. Could have done with that in primary school. But I've learnt much more interesting stuff here today

I was 55 before I understood the ,why did the chicken cross the road ? joke ....to get to the other side .
to get to the OTHER SIDE ! Where the ghosts are ! ?

Oh the benefits of a Scottish education! I never liked geography, but I still managed to absorb the principles of gravity, the earth's rotation on its axis and Mercator's principle in the admittedly few moments when I actually bothered to listen to the boring woman who taught us.

But I do remember puzzling over what "Jesus bits of shine" meant ("Jesus bids us shine") in Primary 1 and it took me a very long time to work out that only the speaker in the nursery rhyme "As I was going to St. Ives" was actually heading in that direction.

The meaning of several rude words, which my 13 year old son had to explain to me in my thirties.

Can't find a petrol icon on my Jazz.

Just found out a few weeks ago that Oxo cubes need to have the little flaps pulled out to squash the cube and then opened. I have always opened them and then squashed them.

grandtanteJE65 - I had an English and Scottish education ?

Some of you might appreciate the title of a book I once read: "Blessed Art Thou a Monk Swimming"!

Still wondering how anyone could NOT have realised Freddie Mercury was gay!

A very jolly thread, thank you. x

That Roy Orbison wasn’t blind.

I was in my 50s when I discovered on another forum that people actually performed willingly some of the sex acts I had read about!Sheltered life.

That Roy Orbison wasn’t blind

Wait...what??!

Good thread SirChenjin

My friend and her husband belonged to a French twinning group. They had a pair of twins and I honestly believed it was to enable families who had twins to meet up and socialise. ?

I didn’t know that about the chicken joke ?

I had a half brother; what a shock that was.

That Penelope was not pronounced Pena-lope (as in skip-a -rope)!
Oh the laughs had at my expense! The bosses wife was called Penny....

I was in my 20s before I discovered that the metal clips used to close men's shirt cuffs are cuff links. I had always thought they were called cufflings. How daft is that?
And to my utter shame the whole family then adopted the word.

Great thread SirChenjin and having read the entire thing, I've learned things tonight that many of you knew, and I still didn't know.

Not saying what they were though.

I don't believe that about the chicken joke! I thought it was just one of those childish jokes like the one about the dog: my dog's got no nose joke beloved of 4 year olds.

I don’t believe it either Callistemon!

I’m certainly a lot wiser after reading this thread - great posts everyone!

My 12 year old came home from Scouts with this gem of wisdom (as befits boys of that age) - there are more bum cheeks in the world than people! I suppose if I’d stopped to think about it....

That astronauts don't wear heavy boots in low gravity because that's not how gravity works

Their boots are huge because they have thermal layers to keep their tootsies warm.

I was informed by an 11 year old whilst watching a soap where one actor was wearing his hair in a ponytail “ Under every ponytail is an a@#ehole”. ?

To help all understand, the petrol filler is on the same side of the car as would normally be the driver's door. Hence british designed and built cars have it on the right, our driver's side, cars made and designed in other countries have it on the left, their normal driver's side.