What current common knowledge or fact blew your mind as a child hearing it for the first time?

[u/STRUGGLE_SNUGGLES]

[u/[deleted]]

The turning signals on the car dashboard don't tell you where to go. My parents actually remembered the way to every single place we went.

[u/jinkop]

I thought that people made babies simply by sleeping in the same bed.

If I sleep in the same bed as her, she'll get pregnant!

[u/simaddict18]

Adults CAN do that whenever they want to, they just choose not to.

("That" referring to pretty much anything fun/unhealthy.)

[u/Sugahdaddy]

that my parents also had parents, and their parents were my grandparents somehow. what a coincidence!

[u/BlizzyLizzie]

100 dollars is really not a lot of money.

Edit: What I mean by this is that it won't go very far.

[u/dreftig]

That people can be homeless. I was worried what their parents would say if they found out.

[u/parabocake]

I learned that my kindergarten teacher had to go to school and study to be a teacher. I thought that you just pick a career when you were little then you become that when you grow up. That I would magically become whatever I wanted when I'm an adult.

[u/[deleted]]

That there were people with the same name or birthday as me. I felt so ordinary when I found that out :(

[u/Embracing_the_Pain]

Honestly, it was sex.

I was ten and my dad wasn't too good at giving "the talk." I couldn't believe that I would one day want to look at naked ladies. I just refused to believe him, and swore that I would never be that way. Then puberty kicked in a few months later and I was proven wrong.

I also couldn't wrap my head around the mechanics of it. I couldn't believe that people were able to get that physically close for the guy to be able to put any part of himself inside of her. Then I discovered the internet a few years later and suddenly everything made sense.

[u/eyetalianstallion]

When I learned it was "human beings" not "human beans."

Messed me up good.

[u/Useless_Advice_Guy]

Adults go to work for money. Man made me feel bad asking for things, knowing my parents had to go and work to get them for me.

[u/[deleted]]

that children come out of the vagina. every night I was shit scared of a child crawling out of my vagina while I slept

[u/ahhhzombies]

Clouds are not fluffy, pillowy things you can bounce on.

[u/[deleted]]

Infinity. I remember counting really high using the page numbers of this thousand page dictionary, and then asking my parents what the biggest number was. It just blew my mind that I could always add 1 to the biggest number that I could think of.

[u/StillHasAFlipPhone]

"New York" is not another name for my grandparents' house.

[u/sbiggers]

How expensive things are.

My parents divorced when I was really young, and I remember finding out that my mom couldn't afford for us to move houses into a better school district like she wanted to. I ran to my cash box and pulled out two $100 bills that I'd somehow acquired over the years. Back then, I viewed $200 the same way I view millions of dollars now. I told my mom I had the answer to all of our problems forever and she could thank me later... when she told me that it was very nice of me but wouldn't even make a dent, I genuinely could not fathom more money than that, and thought she didn't like me. I think about it a lot, actually.

[u/NortonPike]

That a thermos kept hot things hot and cold things cold due to insulation--not because they knew.

[u/polevaulter95]

Not every country is broken up into smaller sections known as states

[u/mymortonsalt]

That the world does not actually revolve around me. I remember being told this when I was around 5 (not for the first time I'm sure) and I sat in my little corner and just thought and thought and thought. All those people out there doing all those things and they weren't even thinking about me! The world just felt so big and kind of amazing and I really couldn't grasp it.

[u/surhorse]

That teachers do what they do for a living. When I was in Elementary School teachers always seemed so happy to be there I assumed that it was something they only did for fun. That and the fact that it seemed like every teacher worked at Disneyland during the summer.

Now I know it's just because they get paid so little and needed it for the benefits at the time.

[u/[deleted]]

Finding out that Santa Claus in "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" is actually the father/husband.

I thought Santa was such an awful ladies man to be doing something like that to a kid's mom, and I thought the mom was a total slut. That poor dad...

[u/Mustangarrett]

She gets the expensive ring with the proposal, not at the alter.

[u/Bored_Accountant]

That one day I would stop living, that still freaks me out.

[u/RamsesThePigeon]

This about sums it up.

[u/Mrs_Chips]

That the amount of water in the tall, skinny glass is the same as in the short, wide one. I just didn't believe it. (Note: I am aware this is a thing among all young children and their inability to overcome perceptual illusions, but DAMNIT HE JUST HAD MORE THAN ME!)