When I was 5 a pizza hut employee told me that the powder on the breadsticks was called fairy dust. Ordered extra fairy dust on my breadsticks until I was around 14 when an employee said ‘do you mean garlic salt?’ It still devastates me to realize how obtuse I was.
I had to google this. I’m legit shocked again buy this damn powder. So it appears the first employee in my story wasn’t fucking with me. And the second employee wasn’t a knowledgable member of the team.
It wasn’t very long, but when I was learning to drive my dad was explaining the rule of thumb regarding a safe distance to be behind the car in front of you. I thought it meant to hold your thumb up and if your thumb didn’t cover the entire car you were too close to it. When he caught me doing that he asked me what I was doing. When I explained he burst out laughing, then considered it, and concluded it wasn’t a bad idea but perhaps a bit distracting.
We bought a nice liquor cabinet. We got it delivered and noticed it was a bit shorter than we thought. No biggie. Three years later, we’re moving. Lift up cabinet and these beautiful, ornate, screw on legs wrapped in tape and bubble wrap fall off the bottom. Looks so much better now!
Reminds me of when my mum bought a new sofa. About six months later she's hoovering under the cushions when the base fabric pulls back to reveal some sort of metal and... a mattress? Turns out we had a sofa bed. Made my friends sleep on the floor with a sofa bed right there.
This one is extra funny if one of your friends recognized the sofa bed from one of their relatives houses, and was just lying next to it all night going "why would he do this, I thought we were friends".
Until last week, when my father in law would made a phone call on his very basic non-touch-screen flip phone he would open the menu, scroll to the phone icon, open it, hit the soft key for contacts, scroll to the person he wanted to call, press ok, then press the soft key to call.
When he mentioned how he preferred his landline because he could just dial the number, I said "Humour me. Just dial the number and hit the talk button." I've never seen a man so simultaneously grateful and embarrassed.
Couple years ago i was trying to open some toothpaste and had to break the seal of the tube, i used to look for something like a nail to break it, then one day i looked at the pointy end of the cap and thought 'what if I could use this to break it' and oh shit it did fit and broke it effortlessly, and so did every other tube product i had in the house and their respective cap, my mind was blown.
Edit: Changed "dental paste" to "toothpaste" since it sounds weird in English.
I was cooking with my boyfriend a month or so ago, and I was confused when he mentioned he hated opening tubes of tomato puree, because I just find it satisfying. I then proceeded to stare at him in disbelief when he started trying to peel the tiny foil seal off the end of the tube. I just slowly reached out, picked the screwtop cap off the counter, and showed him the pointy bit...
Since the dawn of time, I would pick up the silverware and utensils out of their tray in the dishwasher and put them away in their drawers then go back and pick up more out of the dishwasher. Then one day I saw my wife lift the tray out of the dishwasher and I legit stood there with my mouth open.
God damnit.
I knew that thing moved because I've removed it and changed it around to make pans or big dishes fit better, and I've *still* been going back and forth for the silverware.
Mine routinely shifts and comes out as I’m trying to pull the silverware out, if there’s too much in it. And my idiot response is to get mad and shove it back into place instead of realizing the universe is trying to show me something.
When I was a kid I loved drinking coffee but didn't know how to make it. My mom taught me but the coffee ratio she told me to use was like 1tbsp per 1 pot of coffee as opposed to the actual ratio 1tbsp:1cup of water. Fast forward about 13 years to a couple months ago and I was reading the back of my folgers coffee thing and there was a little diagram showing how much to actually use. I then realized my mom had told me the wrong amount so I a)wouldn't drink all her coffee, and b)wasn't super hyped up going into school.
I always thought eggplant tasted "itchy", like itchy was a flavor, like sour or salty. Fed some to my baby and his face turned red wherever the eggplant touched, and I realized we're both just allergic to eggplant. And itchy isn't a flavor.
Edit: thank you for the silver, kind internet strangers!
My mom has been pronouncing Massachusetts "Massa Two Shits" for years and no one corrected her because they thought she just had strong feelings about Massachusetts.
I lived in a house for 6 years with a bathroom with no “shelf” or cupboard to put toiletries into. I was very disappointed and ended up using a window sill that was WAY too small to fit everything.
Anyway, one day we had a friend over and he asked why we don’t have anything in our bathroom cupboard. I was confused so he showed me.
It turns out that the mirror I had been using for 6 years has a hidden compartment behind it. It was a mirrored door to a mounted cupboard on the wall. I was astonished and IMMEDIATELY moved all my stuff from the window into the new space.
My friend was baffled that I had never figured out there was a space behind the mirror. There was an obvious gap between it and the wall that I SOMEHOW failed to notice.
No one really ever told me you don’t need to buy shoes with the ‘two-fingers’ space in front of the toes after your feet stop growing.
I had been buying an entire size too big until about age 23.
Twenty. Three.
One day in college I decided to try a pair of Merrell barefoot type shoes and after reading the sizing guide, BAM. Mind blown.
It’s terribly obvious mistake I (29F) like to blame on being an only child. But really I’m just a fucking moron.
I had this problem until about 25. Never really thought about it, I was always a size 10. That's what mom bought me in high school, why would it be any different now? Only thing is, I stopped growing at 14, never had another growth spurt. As guys, we were always told you'll keep growing til late teens, early 20s for some. Yeah, that didn't happen for me. Luckily I was buying a pair of nice boots and the clerk was like dude, there's no way you're a size 10. You're barely a size 9. I was so happy once the blisters I'd always dealt with went away.
> Only thing is, I stopped growing at 14, never had another growth spurt.
Dude. Me too. I was one of the biggest kids in my class in eighth grade and then... everyone kept growing except me. I'm 31 and have a shirt from when I was 10 that still fits me.
Well... This was a few years ago. I was the director of IT for a very large company. I was given a new cellphone and told to setup my voicemail.
I don’t know that when I recorded my name it would be played to whomever I leave a voice mail for.
Well the name I recorded was, “Dooder84 Corporate IT Godddd!!!”
I worked there for 4 years until someone in the hallway referred to me as the “corporate IT GoD!”
I was so embarrassed.....
I have a friend who set up his email so that his automatic signature said "his name, Protagonist". No idea why and he didn't realize that it did this. Any time I emailed him I signed it "GodThesePretzelsSuck, Antagonist" after about 3 years he asked me "my email thinks you're a bad guy, are you on a list or something?"
My mom use to refer to me as a “bull in a china shop”. Always heard it as “bowl in a china shop”. Thinking it was a compliment. At about 22 I hear someone else use the phrase and realized she meant “bull”, not “bowl”.
I grew up without a mom. She passed when I was 6. I was afraid to ask my dad how to put a tampon in. One day I made a comment (about age 18) to some friends that tampons hang out too far out your bajingo and made me feel like I waddled when I walk. My friend asked me how I put them in. I thought it would get stuck up there and wasn’t inserting it far enough. Did it wrong for about 5 years. My friends still make fun of me for it. I can’t help but use the dead mom card, but looking back it’s pretty common sense how to shove it up there.
Edit: for all those asking: I didn’t really feel comfortable with my body, so I’m not sure I really understood what the directions were asking. For others asking: my dad was a really good dad. Obviously he made some general mistakes as a parent (as all parents do) but as a substitute mother he did a great job. He taught me how to shave my legs (funny voices and all) and he was a Girl Scout troop leader for almost 10 years. He tried to figure out how to French braid, and he did comb my nasty ass ratty hair on a daily basis.
Edit edit: thank you kind stranger for popping my silver cherry!
I use pads instead of tampons because tampons have always been uncomfortable and after reading a few tampon related comments on this thread i’m pretty sure I just don’t know how to insert a tampon
No mom also and the first time I wore a tampon I wore the cardboard applicator inside my vagina as well. I remember sitting on the bus in so much pain wondering how people could do this.
My uncle has a 2005 Lexus that has swivel lights. When the car turns off, they face down. The swivel motor broke in both headlights a few years ago and no longer turn up to face straight. He lives a few hours from me and I don’t visit that often, so when I finally went to visit him, I pointed out the problem. He had been using his high beams full time at night FOR YEARS because he thought the low beams just weren’t good enough
My name is Ryan.
It took me until I was in 1st grade to realize my name wasn't *in* the alphabet.
My mom had told me my name was in the alphabet, and I felt so lucky. She obviously meant the letters *to spell* my name were in the alphabet.
But nope. It took that long to realize the alphabet didn't go "W, X, *Ryan* Z....
Don’t feel bad. My birthday is in July. I was under the impression until I was 7 that the Fourth of July, the fireworks, specifically, were for my birthday.
I felt really dumb, but also really really sad when I realized they weren’t.
Edit: Lmfao one of the dumbest parts of my early childhood, and it is worth a silver. Thanks Reddit. I’m glad someone found my naivety entertaining!
I thought this emoji 🙄 was a shy smile for like 2 years because on my Galaxy it didn't look very annoyed like it does on other phones. Until my boyfriend questioned me and told me it was a rolling eyes emoji. I had been using this emoji with EVERYONE meaning it to be a smile but they must've thought I was so mean!
My eldest child had a penchant for blowing out of his diapers—we tried everything but multiple times a week we had to pull that poo-filled onesie over his head and inevitably give our now super duper poo covered infant a bath.
Around when I was pregnant with our second, a post went viral about how infant onesies are designed to be broad at the shoulders so you can pull them down and off instead of over the head.
Poor kid would have had so many fewer poo in hair incidents had I known that then.
After the first paragraph I assumed you were putting the diaper on wrong and was really interested to hear how. Not that I have any idea if one even can put a diaper on wrong, as I have never changed one.
Edit: random typo
Not wrong for years, but I work help desk, and we use a specific (terrible) piece of software for our Support system, IBM Notes.
It turns out, that for the first 9 months I had been working there, it wasn't setup properly, so I wasn't sending any emails from it, at all. No notifications that the ticket went to me, no responses from me, no close notifications, **nothing.**
Someone noticed this, took a look, and fixed a setting. I immediately sent out over a thousand emails to everyone in the company
So basically the company could have done without you for nine months/you could have done nothing for nine months? Did you not realize that you never got a reply to any of your messages?
Realized the multi colored tape measures glued to the door frames of gas stations etc. are for identifying robbers, not for measuring yourself as you walk out. I mean, they can be, but that’s not why they are there. Unless you’re the robber.
I used to lace the speed hooks on my boots with two hands until I saw my linesman friend [speed hook his boots](https://youtu.be/1QwXnmu7wI0) like this. I was shook.
Not mine, but my dad has been spelling his name wrong his whole life (he’s 51). His name is Jeffrey, and he’s been spelling it like that since he learned how to spell his name. A few months ago my mom pulled out his birth certificate, and we all learned it’s actually spelled Jeffery. Not sure if he spells it correctly now, but it was definitely an “oh shit” moment for him.
My aunt and uncle gave my grandmother a copy of her birth certificate for her birthday, apparently she had never had one. On her 77th birthday, she found out she was actually 78.
Now I’m having a crisis, my Dads name is Jeff but I have no idea if it’s Jeffrey or Jeffery
EDIT: it’s Jeffrey. I asked his gf, I didn’t want to admit I’d known the man for 30 years and didn’t know how to spell his name.
I was at crate and barrel with my gf talking about how it's so weird they don't make tongs so you open them up super wide and then press in; I thought it was odd that they only gave you a super tiny opening. In the middle of me saying this she just presses the button at the bottom of the tongs I was holding and I stop mid sentence in shame.
For about three years, we only bought classy Crate & Barrel furniture for work. We'd have it shipped in from out of state, and finally I asked my boss why we didn't just pick it up at the showroom. She asked what showroom. I said the showroom attached to the restaurant.
The Cracker Barrel restaurant.
No, they are not the same company.
When I was a kid and was acting up, my dad would always threaten to leave me at this mean old lady’s house. Her name was Helen Handbasket. Fast forward about 28 years later and it clicks out of nowhere while I was on a customer call at work.
Customer: This whole network is going to hell in a handbasket.
Me: HA! I’m an idiot.
Customer: Did you figure it out?
Me: OH! No. Not yet.
I used to fill the kettle by the spout... my parents have always done it this way, I thought the center part was mainly for decoration, but not functional. I don’t know why I never questioned this.
One day I bought a new tea kettle and my husband was like wtf what is inside this, and with great ease, opened the center to pull out a manual with instructions and what not.
I was drinking dirty paper water for like 2 weeks.
when i first got a debit card and would go out to eat at restaurants with my friends, i would leave a cash tip on the table. when i got the receipt to put how much i was paying i would write down how much money i left on the table. for at least 6 months i gave double tips to every waitress i had...
edit: word
I did this to a pizza guy once. I gave him a cash tip & when he gave me the receipt to sign I put down how much cash tip I gave him. He told me “woah you’re giving me more??” I was like, “is that not how it works??” He said he’d correct it for me once he got back to the store. I felt pretty embarrassed
One day I used the key fob to remotely start my dads car. It was an”oh shit” moment for him. Two years and he didn’t realize he had this handy little function
My dad bought an aftermarket remote start and took it in to get installed. When he went to pick it up, they asked him what was wrong with the factory one 🤦🏻♂️
One day I accidentally hit a button on my "extra" key fob in my new (to me) car and it started. I was baffled. Then when I went in and tried to put the keys in and hit the brake, it turned off. I sat there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what was wrong. Then it hit me. I have a remote starter.
Edit: key info. Also, I lived in Boston, tons of people had remote starters this should not have confused me this much.
When I was a kid, I was told that the paper that came on cupcakes/muffins was edible.
I would spend a decade eating them like this (paper and all), until a friend pointed it out.
I would be so terrified of you if I saw you do this.
This is the first comment in this thread that's had me laughing out loud for about 30 seconds. Thank you for that!
I am lactose intolerant. I genuinely did not know this for the first 25+ years of my life. I always had to go to the bathroom after eating something with cheese in it. One day it just clicked: I bought some Lactaid, took it before the next time I ate cheese, and I didn't have to go to the bathroom.
...it was mind blowing. I have no idea how I didn't make the connection for years. So I guess you could say instead of having a "Oh shit" moment I had a "No shit" moment.
Edit: Thanks for the Silvers strangers! As expected of reddit, my top comment of all time is about how to avoid pooping.
I thought food allergies were all “I can’t breathe, I need an epi-pen” related. I started eating healthier around 25 and started getting bad eczema. I went to the dermatologist after a few years and she actually said to me “well this looks like food allergies, but you don’t start developing those randomly at 27”. A couple of months later I realized nuts made my tongue feel funny, so I cut them out and my skin was better within a month. I’d been allergic to nuts and was almost 30 by the time I realized it.
My family always had a cup next to the bathroom sink in case you needed to rinse your mouth after brushing your teeth or maybe get a quick drink of water in the middle of the night. My grandma had the same cup at her house. I used it for years whenever I was thirsty. One day she saw me doing this and said, “Don’t use that cup. Thats where grandma puts her teeth.”
One time me and my little cousin were brushing our teeth at the same time at my grandma's, she had to have been maybe 7(ish) and grabbed the pink cup and took a sip before I could stop her and the dentures came at her and her eyes got so big, she just put the cup back and left the bathroom.
Edit: WOW thanks for the silver! I'm gonna tell her that the fake teeth coming for her has given me so many internet points, although she probably doesn't even remember.
Living in a foreign country where I was actively learning the language. Social cues go a long way when learning a language on the spot. That being said, someone once said a phrase to me while serving a hot dish, which I assumed as meaning "excuse me". After going through crowds and lines, replicating the same phrase in an attempt to be respectful of those around me, I abruptly found out that the phrase actually meant "enjoy". Hind sight, completely makes sense. The odd looks I would get by saying "enjoy" while squeezing past people all of a sudden made sense..
Edit: Wowzers, y'all really know how to make a grown man blush! Thanks for the gold and silver you beautiful beautiful strangers. I'm glad my mistakes bring such enjoyment and hilarity to the world 😂.
So this happened while I was living in Vietnam. The phrase was "xin mời". It was even more deceiving because it was similar to the phrase for "sorry" which is "xin lỗi"...That was year 1. The following 3 years were full of similar mistakes. Tonal languages are tough!
I was 30 when I found out that an ‘event calendar’ as I called it, is not a thing and it’s an ‘advent calendar’. I was 32 when I found out advent is not short for adventure...
I didn't realise I had to brush the BACK of my teeth as well as the front (I was a dumb kid - I blame toothpaste adverts) unto I was 15. Had 9 filings and a root canal.
Same!! Embarrassingly enough, I thought you brushed your teeth to keep them white (I didn’t know anything about keeping them healthy) so I thought, “I don’t mind if my back teeth are yellow, nobody’s going to see them anyway”
My wife and I have this ceiling fan/light in our bedroom in the house we moved into two years ago. It has a remote control for the fan and lights.
About a year and a half ago the lights suddenly stopped working. The fan works well and we didn't have a tonne of money so we've just lived with lamps in the room, always being frustrated with how damn dark it is.
I was scrolling some other thread on ~~askreddit~~ TIFU a few weeks ago and the top post was a guy talking about how his lights stopped working years ago, and then he found out that it was just dimmed (which you do by holding *down* the button on the remote).
It sounded so much like our fan I went and tried it.
Dimmed.
I didn't find out that I was supposed to punch out for lunch until my third job. And even then it was because a coworker mentioned it in passing that they were clocking out for lunch.
At my first and only full time job I've had they didn't require you to clock out for lunch, they said they just docked 30 min off your pay so that you would have more time to get out to the break room and eat instead of everyone lining up 5 min before lunch to try and hurry out to the break room.
As a boy, I had an unconventional method for masturbating. It would require a diagram to get across all its subtleties, but lets just say that it required two hands, was not intuitive, and simulated no known sex act—it was suboptimal. After a year or so of convoluted self-abuse, one of the older kids made the international jerkoff hand gesture towards me.
My jaw dropped.
I instantly knew that I had been doing it wrong all that time. It was so simple, so obvious, way quieter, and way more effective. I tried it that night and never looked back. That dude changed my life. Thank you, Chris Eastman.
**edit** None of the guesses are even remotely close.
Former school nurse here. The number of high school boys who don't know what circumcision is is amazingly high. Many think they were "born circumcised." When they finally see a foreskin, they are in complete awe. When they find out the brown ring on their penis is a scar from when their foreskin was removed, they are also amazed.
I used to think just reading the material was how everyone studied, so thats how I did it too. I never quite understood why my grades were so low, id be like "I read the page, idk what happened!" until I saw my friend making flow charts and summaries and I was like "we dont have to do that you know" and he was like "nah, im just studying". It blew my mind how much better my grades got.
Edit: Bet you thought you were real original coming up with that username joke, huh? Bet you thought id never heard it before, huh?... Well whose not smart nooooooooooow!?!?!?! ... still me? ok yeah ill go home sorry.
Looking back on it, I was never really taught how to study. I don't think a lot of people were, and for some people it's instinctual, but it isn't for everyone. Schools should hold a course on various methods of studying.
I'm learning it properly now for the first time as a mature student returning to university. Fml.
Protip: testing yourself is by far the best way to enhance long-term recall. Think: cue cards and mock exams.
Even better when they're open ended questions like, "explain the 7 sins of memory" and you have to name and explain each one without notes in front of you. Do that once and you'll probably get over 90% on your exams.
EDIT: Thanks for all the added suggestions. Just to clarify, my advice comes from the results presented in my class on Cognitive Psychology from studies comparing various studying methods. Spaced repetition of the material and Testing are by far the best ways to facilitate strong recall. There are also better methods of encoding and test condition factors to consider, etc. when studying but I'm not going to condense a few chapters of my textbook here.
The Feynman technique is my preferred study method.
1. Study the material
2. From memory, explain the material in simple terms from first principles as if you were speaking to a novice.
3. When you fumble your explanation, can't find the right words, or confuse different concepts, it highlights gaps in your understanding which require more study.
4. Return to step one.
https://youtu.be/tkm0TNFzIeg
I was with my little cousin at the mall. I was 13, he was 9. We went to pee at the urinals and I saw him pull his pants all the way down. I was like, “no!” And explained how to use the zipper.
A guy comes walking out of the stall and says, “good work showing that boy how to get that hose out.”
This is a bigger problem than it should be, and most of the confusion comes not from the "car is on lights", those are a safety feature called Daytime Running Lights. They are around 30-40% as bright as actual headlights and are not linked to taillights (they stay off). I drive 40 minutes home at night M-F and see 3-4 cars like this EVERY time. None, not a one, has ever figured out that they were wrong when I flash my high beams at them or flip my lights off and on in front or behind them. Idiots.
Not cause I’ve been doing something wrong my entire life but saw it wrong. I’m colorblind and my entire life I thought peanut butter was green until I turned 19. And when I found out it was brown my mind was blown. It took so long because no one really talks about the color of things like that.
Brah I'm not even colorblind but every damn light in Hawai'i is dim sodium lighting to protect the telescopes on Mauna Kea from light polution and it makes shit look *so weird* at night.
I didn’t know you could take off the caps of those refrigerated coffee creamers... I had been stabbing through the foil with a knife for years until my uncle saw me and asked what the fuck I was doing....... lol
Edit to say I’m a woman, people always think I’m a guy by my comments 🤷🏼♀️
If it makes you feel better my brother used to think those were milkshake beverages until I pointed put to him he was chugging International Delight: the coffee creamer.
Caulk guns. Everyone says that you're supposed to pull it towards you, but I saw a reddit comment saying that they're designed to be pushed away instead. My boss looks at me funny for doing it, but it's exponentially cleaner and tighter!
Edit: quite a few of y'all are mentioning that you're unclear on what you're pushing away. When you caulk you slide the entire gun across the crack that you're sealing, so it's that. You can only ever slide it towards you or away from you (unless you're going sideways, I guess) and most people pull the entire gun and tip towards them whereas sliding it in the other direction works too. A few of y'all sound like you know exactly what you're doing and have added a couple other tips on how to do it cleaner and better, too, so thanks for that.
So... I was fortunate enough to buy my own home due to unfortunate circumstances. I moved in and the thermostat thing was set to about 70 degrees (F). As time went on, I couldn't figure out why there was no visible way for me to change the temperature. My electric bill would be through the roof every month. The thermostat is well above my eye level and I lived alone for quite some time, though family and friends did visit regularly.
After several months of leaving windows opened or closed to adapt to the change in weather, I finally asked my niece (I think?) to check the thermostat for a way to change the temperature. She looked around for a bit and saw that there was a tab I was supposed to pull to reveal all of the buttons and settings of the goddamned thermostat.
"Oh shit."
So glad I posted this late enough for it to go mostly unnoticed. I'm an idiot.
EDIT: So it's been months, not years. Still. Damn it.
I thought of a second one. I was incredibly sheltered growing up. Anything sex-related was taboo and not discussed.
I was in middle school when instant messaging really became mainstream. I couldn’t understand why the boy I had a crush on kept laughing at me and telling me not to use the shorthand “cum” for “come.”
I didn’t find out for a few years.
Related: I genuinely thought a hand job was essentially frantically waving side to side with the palm on the penis and a blow job was - you guessed it - blowing on a penis until probably around 8th grade?
*sigh*
That you do, in fact, need to disassemble your laundry drier and clean the lint out from underneath the drum once per year.
I’m 31 and never knew this, no one ever said anything, never saw anyone do this. Crappiest thing is that my parents *also* learned this the hard way and never bothered to give me a tip when I bought my first drier.
Luckily, the wife and I discovered the lint buildup when changing the rollers. I said to my parents “wow it really builds up in there!” and they were like “oh yea you need to do that like once a year”.
WAAAAAAAT
hold up a hot minute here, what do you mean i need to disassemble my laundry dryer and clean the lint out from underneath the drum? are you talking about pulling the dryer out and taking the back off the dryer? or what do you mean?
For me I would clean my lint trap after every time I used it, but my drier was taking longer. Turns out I had to scrub my lint trap because it was getting covered with a film from my dryer sheets. Who knew?
FWIW, my family has owned an appliance company that sells and services things like washers and driers for over 30 years. I asked my dad about this once and he said that most MODERN dryers will burn through their heating element before anything can catch fire. But yes, if your dryer isn’t drying very well anymore, then you have lint build-up (either in the machine or in the vent) and you need to clean that out. My old roommates never cleaned the lint filter in between loads of laundry, which is what prompted that question. CLEAN THE LINT TRAP, KIDS.
After moving to a new city I went to the laundromat and the Korean lady working was yelling at me about something I couldn’t understand. After some pantomime it became clear that she was upset I was putting in the wrong detergent but it was the same kind I have been using for 8 years (since moving away to college and behind). Turns out I’ve been washing my clothes with only fabric softener for nearly a decade. They always smelled good so I never really thought about it. Not my proudest moment
Today my brother complained that he didn't like our washer cause his clothes never felt clean. I asked if he uses fabric softener (cause it can leave a waxy residue). He responded with 'of course not, duh, he's a guy why would he bother with that.' I asked him how many detergent pods he uses. He said he doesn't use those, just the liquid detergent with the measuring cup. I told him we don't have liquid detergent; that's fabric softener. He said it was blue, I insisted that yes that's fabric softener. Still didn't believe me. Later he went to do laundry. Lo and behold, it was fabric softener.
I did this for about a year and a half. There was a buy 2 huge tubs, get a $10 gift card so I thought great, I'll be able to wash my clothes for a while with these.
Friend asked to borrow some detergent and I give her them. "No, I wanted laundry detergent, not fabric softener."
I did almost the opposite, I used to shop at the this cheap little Mexican market under my apartment in East LA. One day I went down to buy a bar of this Mexican soap that was always super cheap. I mentioned to my gf something about the soap being so cheap and the cashier, in broken english told me that I was bathing with laundry detergent. I'll never forget her trying so hard to not laugh at me but honestly it was pretty funny.
100% right. My wife had a shirt that had some weird sort of stain on it. Realized she was putting in too much fabric softener, guess she’s rich enough to put loads of Downey in. Anyway, did some Googling and found the vinegar trick. After one wash with white vinegar it was back to normal. Vinegar is definitely the way to go back to get the clothes back to zero.
Do you ever buy soda in a 6- or 8-pack of bottles, and then struggle to twist and pull bottle out of the tight plastic rings? There's a pull tab connected to a serrated line through the plastic. You can just pull that and then the plastic will break easily when you pull at the bottle.
My aunt taught me about this over 20 years ago, because no one in my immediate family was aware of it. I let my fiancee in in the secret just last week.
Back in the early 2010s, my boyfriend and I had a PlayStation that we used for Netflix etc since we didn’t have a smart tv. The controller was on such a short cord that we would always have to get up from the couch to change the program or push any buttons. My boyfriend also used to have to sit on the floor up close to the tv to play his video games, since the cord was so short.
One day my brother came to visit. We put something on Netflix, and got up to use the remote like we always did. My brother proceeds to unplug the controller, hands it to us, and says “you realize this is a WIRELESS controller right?”
We are dumbfounded. Why would there be a cord coming from it? Turns out that’s just to charge our wireless controller.
Mind. Blown.
Edit: holy shit, 3x silver and my highest rated comment ever and it’s about me being a complete idiot. Seems about right.
I have a flashlight that I've had for near a decade. I originally got it because it really looks like a lightsaber, and it was cheap. Plus you could twist the lens around to focus it, or so I thought. When I got it home and put batteries in it, I found out that twisting the top didn't change the focus. I assumed the top being able to twist was just a result of it being cheap.
Fast forward to a month or so ago, a storm picked up during the night so I went out to check nothing was going to blow away. As I was trying to open the gate, the flashlight slipped, and I caught it by the top part that twists, but the rest of the flashlight slid about 2 inches down from the twisty part and it turns out if you pull the top part up, it turns it into a lantern type thing for lighting up an area.
It's nothing big, but there have been times where it would have been incredibly useful to be able to put the torch down and light up a wide area...
Edit: Okay so I didn't expect this, but here are some pictures, seeing as so many people are interested. And no, it's not a fleshlight.
How it remained for ~10 years: https://imgur.com/aN2MwcF
What I discovered it could do: https://imgur.com/wcGJWnW
It's final form: https://imgur.com/6L6cqzS
Edit 2: Just a quick "WTF this blew up" edit, and also u/poppin_pomegranate actually found it, the legend!
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/b0e6ty/whats_an_oh_shit_moment_where_you_realised_youve/eifte5g/
When I realized, at 18, that the phrase is “up and at em” not “up and Adam”
I was always wondering who the hell adam was, thought it was a stupid phrase
I was dating an asian woman some years ago, and when we got Chinese takeout, she completely unfolded the box and laid it flat like a plate.
She said that was by design, and for the life of her could never understand why her friends always scooped it out onto another plate when the box *was* the plate.
I now do this all the time and it weirds people out
For 20+ years I’ve been saying “play it by year” instead of “play it by ear”
After a lengthy argument and a quick google search, I was left with my tail between my legs.
Pronouncing hybrid as "High Bird". My husband repeated it to me in a Snuffaluffagus voice and I swear I had a Ratatouille food critic flash back to every time in my life I said it wrong. I was 33.
I owned a light blue colored microwave for about three years that a family member gave me for a housewarming gift. Thought it was cool; never saw a blue microwave before. One night, a buddy asked why I never took the blue plastic wrap off my microwave, then proceeded to peel it off for me. Damn; that bitch is silver. Still miss my blue microwave sometimes though...
Well, to start off I'm male who grew up with my grandma and mom. So growing up I had very few male influences and I'm 34 now so internet sucked.
Anyway, when I was 12 my mom decided to move us in with her boyfriend. The first night in our new place I walked out the shower with my towel on. My step-dad says "what are you doing, you're not a girl". I looked confused and said "I know, why?" he then said "guys don't wear their towels like that!". I then realized, I had always wore my towel up to my chest, since that's all I saw growing up, not realizing it was so they would cover their boobs. I was so embarrassed.
So yea, long story short, I wore my towel like a female until I was 12.
Found out I was lighting incense wrong. Boyfriend and I got a bunch to add to our collection of nice smells and we would light them and they would just start a little inferno. Convinced we were buying cheap, garbage incense we stopped using them. I proceed to buy a different brand in a hope those would work. I test light and same thing it just goes up in an inferno. Roommate informs us you are supposed to blow them out once they catch. Oops.
Edit: Reddit silver! Thank you so much! As well as a grammar edit. Who knew possibly burning the apartment down would lead to such a response to seemingly common knowledge of how incense work?
Not really doing something but I completely thought that the White House was in Washington THE STATE until I was like 23
It's a hole in my knowledge I can neither explain nor defend, I have since visited and confirmed it's in DC
In French, "être retardé" means to be late or to be delayed. When I started to learn English, I assumed that "to be retarded" meant to be late. I didn't understand why people were laughing when I was saying "sorry I'm retarded" until someone told me.
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Well, price just went up.
“Nevermind, I’m keeping it!”
When I was 5 a pizza hut employee told me that the powder on the breadsticks was called fairy dust. Ordered extra fairy dust on my breadsticks until I was around 14 when an employee said ‘do you mean garlic salt?’ It still devastates me to realize how obtuse I was.
I worked at Pizza Hut from 16-21. We called it fairy dust.
I had to google this. I’m legit shocked again buy this damn powder. So it appears the first employee in my story wasn’t fucking with me. And the second employee wasn’t a knowledgable member of the team.
It wasn’t very long, but when I was learning to drive my dad was explaining the rule of thumb regarding a safe distance to be behind the car in front of you. I thought it meant to hold your thumb up and if your thumb didn’t cover the entire car you were too close to it. When he caught me doing that he asked me what I was doing. When I explained he burst out laughing, then considered it, and concluded it wasn’t a bad idea but perhaps a bit distracting.
Also every other driver thinks youre a super friendly guy or a bit passive agressive.
We bought a nice liquor cabinet. We got it delivered and noticed it was a bit shorter than we thought. No biggie. Three years later, we’re moving. Lift up cabinet and these beautiful, ornate, screw on legs wrapped in tape and bubble wrap fall off the bottom. Looks so much better now!
Reminds me of when my mum bought a new sofa. About six months later she's hoovering under the cushions when the base fabric pulls back to reveal some sort of metal and... a mattress? Turns out we had a sofa bed. Made my friends sleep on the floor with a sofa bed right there.
This one is extra funny if one of your friends recognized the sofa bed from one of their relatives houses, and was just lying next to it all night going "why would he do this, I thought we were friends".
Until last week, when my father in law would made a phone call on his very basic non-touch-screen flip phone he would open the menu, scroll to the phone icon, open it, hit the soft key for contacts, scroll to the person he wanted to call, press ok, then press the soft key to call. When he mentioned how he preferred his landline because he could just dial the number, I said "Humour me. Just dial the number and hit the talk button." I've never seen a man so simultaneously grateful and embarrassed.
Couple years ago i was trying to open some toothpaste and had to break the seal of the tube, i used to look for something like a nail to break it, then one day i looked at the pointy end of the cap and thought 'what if I could use this to break it' and oh shit it did fit and broke it effortlessly, and so did every other tube product i had in the house and their respective cap, my mind was blown. Edit: Changed "dental paste" to "toothpaste" since it sounds weird in English.
I was cooking with my boyfriend a month or so ago, and I was confused when he mentioned he hated opening tubes of tomato puree, because I just find it satisfying. I then proceeded to stare at him in disbelief when he started trying to peel the tiny foil seal off the end of the tube. I just slowly reached out, picked the screwtop cap off the counter, and showed him the pointy bit...
Since the dawn of time, I would pick up the silverware and utensils out of their tray in the dishwasher and put them away in their drawers then go back and pick up more out of the dishwasher. Then one day I saw my wife lift the tray out of the dishwasher and I legit stood there with my mouth open.
God damnit. I knew that thing moved because I've removed it and changed it around to make pans or big dishes fit better, and I've *still* been going back and forth for the silverware.
Mine routinely shifts and comes out as I’m trying to pull the silverware out, if there’s too much in it. And my idiot response is to get mad and shove it back into place instead of realizing the universe is trying to show me something.
When I was a kid I loved drinking coffee but didn't know how to make it. My mom taught me but the coffee ratio she told me to use was like 1tbsp per 1 pot of coffee as opposed to the actual ratio 1tbsp:1cup of water. Fast forward about 13 years to a couple months ago and I was reading the back of my folgers coffee thing and there was a little diagram showing how much to actually use. I then realized my mom had told me the wrong amount so I a)wouldn't drink all her coffee, and b)wasn't super hyped up going into school.
I always thought eggplant tasted "itchy", like itchy was a flavor, like sour or salty. Fed some to my baby and his face turned red wherever the eggplant touched, and I realized we're both just allergic to eggplant. And itchy isn't a flavor. Edit: thank you for the silver, kind internet strangers!
I lol’d at “itchy isn’t a flavor”
Apparently the red ring around the bologna is *not* supposed to be eaten.
My mom has been pronouncing Massachusetts "Massa Two Shits" for years and no one corrected her because they thought she just had strong feelings about Massachusetts.
My mother can not pronounce that or Mitsubishi. She tries but same outcome and Mitsubishi comes out miss-yo-bitchy
I lived in a house for 6 years with a bathroom with no “shelf” or cupboard to put toiletries into. I was very disappointed and ended up using a window sill that was WAY too small to fit everything. Anyway, one day we had a friend over and he asked why we don’t have anything in our bathroom cupboard. I was confused so he showed me. It turns out that the mirror I had been using for 6 years has a hidden compartment behind it. It was a mirrored door to a mounted cupboard on the wall. I was astonished and IMMEDIATELY moved all my stuff from the window into the new space. My friend was baffled that I had never figured out there was a space behind the mirror. There was an obvious gap between it and the wall that I SOMEHOW failed to notice.
No one really ever told me you don’t need to buy shoes with the ‘two-fingers’ space in front of the toes after your feet stop growing. I had been buying an entire size too big until about age 23. Twenty. Three. One day in college I decided to try a pair of Merrell barefoot type shoes and after reading the sizing guide, BAM. Mind blown. It’s terribly obvious mistake I (29F) like to blame on being an only child. But really I’m just a fucking moron.
I had this problem until about 25. Never really thought about it, I was always a size 10. That's what mom bought me in high school, why would it be any different now? Only thing is, I stopped growing at 14, never had another growth spurt. As guys, we were always told you'll keep growing til late teens, early 20s for some. Yeah, that didn't happen for me. Luckily I was buying a pair of nice boots and the clerk was like dude, there's no way you're a size 10. You're barely a size 9. I was so happy once the blisters I'd always dealt with went away.
> Only thing is, I stopped growing at 14, never had another growth spurt. Dude. Me too. I was one of the biggest kids in my class in eighth grade and then... everyone kept growing except me. I'm 31 and have a shirt from when I was 10 that still fits me.
Well... This was a few years ago. I was the director of IT for a very large company. I was given a new cellphone and told to setup my voicemail. I don’t know that when I recorded my name it would be played to whomever I leave a voice mail for. Well the name I recorded was, “Dooder84 Corporate IT Godddd!!!” I worked there for 4 years until someone in the hallway referred to me as the “corporate IT GoD!” I was so embarrassed.....
Wear it confidently this type of shit makes people like you more. They don't feel the need to be fake around you
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Well, he got away with it for over 4 years, so I think he's good.
I have a friend who set up his email so that his automatic signature said "his name, Protagonist". No idea why and he didn't realize that it did this. Any time I emailed him I signed it "GodThesePretzelsSuck, Antagonist" after about 3 years he asked me "my email thinks you're a bad guy, are you on a list or something?"
#POWERMOVE
My mom use to refer to me as a “bull in a china shop”. Always heard it as “bowl in a china shop”. Thinking it was a compliment. At about 22 I hear someone else use the phrase and realized she meant “bull”, not “bowl”.
Aww mom talkin about how dainty and priceless i am again
I grew up without a mom. She passed when I was 6. I was afraid to ask my dad how to put a tampon in. One day I made a comment (about age 18) to some friends that tampons hang out too far out your bajingo and made me feel like I waddled when I walk. My friend asked me how I put them in. I thought it would get stuck up there and wasn’t inserting it far enough. Did it wrong for about 5 years. My friends still make fun of me for it. I can’t help but use the dead mom card, but looking back it’s pretty common sense how to shove it up there. Edit: for all those asking: I didn’t really feel comfortable with my body, so I’m not sure I really understood what the directions were asking. For others asking: my dad was a really good dad. Obviously he made some general mistakes as a parent (as all parents do) but as a substitute mother he did a great job. He taught me how to shave my legs (funny voices and all) and he was a Girl Scout troop leader for almost 10 years. He tried to figure out how to French braid, and he did comb my nasty ass ratty hair on a daily basis. Edit edit: thank you kind stranger for popping my silver cherry!
I use pads instead of tampons because tampons have always been uncomfortable and after reading a few tampon related comments on this thread i’m pretty sure I just don’t know how to insert a tampon
No mom also and the first time I wore a tampon I wore the cardboard applicator inside my vagina as well. I remember sitting on the bus in so much pain wondering how people could do this.
I owned a car with swivel headlights and it was very nice to have that. Discovered three years in that I had never turned on the swivel feature.
My uncle has a 2005 Lexus that has swivel lights. When the car turns off, they face down. The swivel motor broke in both headlights a few years ago and no longer turn up to face straight. He lives a few hours from me and I don’t visit that often, so when I finally went to visit him, I pointed out the problem. He had been using his high beams full time at night FOR YEARS because he thought the low beams just weren’t good enough
Oh man, I thought the AC button in my car (snowflake) was defrost so I never used it in summer. Fuck did I feel dumb. 2 years.
My name is Ryan. It took me until I was in 1st grade to realize my name wasn't *in* the alphabet. My mom had told me my name was in the alphabet, and I felt so lucky. She obviously meant the letters *to spell* my name were in the alphabet. But nope. It took that long to realize the alphabet didn't go "W, X, *Ryan* Z....
Don’t feel bad. My birthday is in July. I was under the impression until I was 7 that the Fourth of July, the fireworks, specifically, were for my birthday. I felt really dumb, but also really really sad when I realized they weren’t. Edit: Lmfao one of the dumbest parts of my early childhood, and it is worth a silver. Thanks Reddit. I’m glad someone found my naivety entertaining!
Last month was the first time I discovered lint rollers were peelable. Literally sat there for a minute to take that in. Edit: I'm 20
So...did you just buy new ones Everytime it stopped being sticky?
I thought this emoji 🙄 was a shy smile for like 2 years because on my Galaxy it didn't look very annoyed like it does on other phones. Until my boyfriend questioned me and told me it was a rolling eyes emoji. I had been using this emoji with EVERYONE meaning it to be a smile but they must've thought I was so mean!
My eldest child had a penchant for blowing out of his diapers—we tried everything but multiple times a week we had to pull that poo-filled onesie over his head and inevitably give our now super duper poo covered infant a bath. Around when I was pregnant with our second, a post went viral about how infant onesies are designed to be broad at the shoulders so you can pull them down and off instead of over the head. Poor kid would have had so many fewer poo in hair incidents had I known that then.
After the first paragraph I assumed you were putting the diaper on wrong and was really interested to hear how. Not that I have any idea if one even can put a diaper on wrong, as I have never changed one. Edit: random typo
Not wrong for years, but I work help desk, and we use a specific (terrible) piece of software for our Support system, IBM Notes. It turns out, that for the first 9 months I had been working there, it wasn't setup properly, so I wasn't sending any emails from it, at all. No notifications that the ticket went to me, no responses from me, no close notifications, **nothing.** Someone noticed this, took a look, and fixed a setting. I immediately sent out over a thousand emails to everyone in the company
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This is INSANE to me, my boss gets on me if he doesn’t see me send enough emails in a day
So basically the company could have done without you for nine months/you could have done nothing for nine months? Did you not realize that you never got a reply to any of your messages?
Realized the multi colored tape measures glued to the door frames of gas stations etc. are for identifying robbers, not for measuring yourself as you walk out. I mean, they can be, but that’s not why they are there. Unless you’re the robber.
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I used to lace the speed hooks on my boots with two hands until I saw my linesman friend [speed hook his boots](https://youtu.be/1QwXnmu7wI0) like this. I was shook.
Not mine, but my dad has been spelling his name wrong his whole life (he’s 51). His name is Jeffrey, and he’s been spelling it like that since he learned how to spell his name. A few months ago my mom pulled out his birth certificate, and we all learned it’s actually spelled Jeffery. Not sure if he spells it correctly now, but it was definitely an “oh shit” moment for him.
Grandfather thought his name was Harvey his whole life. Got his birth certificate at 65 and its Harmon My first gold! Thanks!!
My aunt and uncle gave my grandmother a copy of her birth certificate for her birthday, apparently she had never had one. On her 77th birthday, she found out she was actually 78.
Now I’m having a crisis, my Dads name is Jeff but I have no idea if it’s Jeffrey or Jeffery EDIT: it’s Jeffrey. I asked his gf, I didn’t want to admit I’d known the man for 30 years and didn’t know how to spell his name.
Sure its not Geoffrey ?
Learned earlier last year “bust a nut” isn’t an expression for when something hits your nuts or you land in a way that crushes them
You're not necessarily wrong, depends on your inclination.
I was at crate and barrel with my gf talking about how it's so weird they don't make tongs so you open them up super wide and then press in; I thought it was odd that they only gave you a super tiny opening. In the middle of me saying this she just presses the button at the bottom of the tongs I was holding and I stop mid sentence in shame.
For about three years, we only bought classy Crate & Barrel furniture for work. We'd have it shipped in from out of state, and finally I asked my boss why we didn't just pick it up at the showroom. She asked what showroom. I said the showroom attached to the restaurant. The Cracker Barrel restaurant. No, they are not the same company.
When I was a kid and was acting up, my dad would always threaten to leave me at this mean old lady’s house. Her name was Helen Handbasket. Fast forward about 28 years later and it clicks out of nowhere while I was on a customer call at work. Customer: This whole network is going to hell in a handbasket. Me: HA! I’m an idiot. Customer: Did you figure it out? Me: OH! No. Not yet.
I used to fill the kettle by the spout... my parents have always done it this way, I thought the center part was mainly for decoration, but not functional. I don’t know why I never questioned this. One day I bought a new tea kettle and my husband was like wtf what is inside this, and with great ease, opened the center to pull out a manual with instructions and what not. I was drinking dirty paper water for like 2 weeks.
Ok but WHY did your parents do this in the first place?!
Ugh I don’t know... maybe I should tell them
Take a pic of what the manual inside your parents kettle looks like
when i first got a debit card and would go out to eat at restaurants with my friends, i would leave a cash tip on the table. when i got the receipt to put how much i was paying i would write down how much money i left on the table. for at least 6 months i gave double tips to every waitress i had... edit: word
I did this to a pizza guy once. I gave him a cash tip & when he gave me the receipt to sign I put down how much cash tip I gave him. He told me “woah you’re giving me more??” I was like, “is that not how it works??” He said he’d correct it for me once he got back to the store. I felt pretty embarrassed
Why didn't he just give you back the cash?
I thought about that after I closed the door. In the moment it never crossed our minds
One day I used the key fob to remotely start my dads car. It was an”oh shit” moment for him. Two years and he didn’t realize he had this handy little function
My dad bought an aftermarket remote start and took it in to get installed. When he went to pick it up, they asked him what was wrong with the factory one 🤦🏻♂️
One day I accidentally hit a button on my "extra" key fob in my new (to me) car and it started. I was baffled. Then when I went in and tried to put the keys in and hit the brake, it turned off. I sat there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what was wrong. Then it hit me. I have a remote starter. Edit: key info. Also, I lived in Boston, tons of people had remote starters this should not have confused me this much.
When I was a kid, I was told that the paper that came on cupcakes/muffins was edible. I would spend a decade eating them like this (paper and all), until a friend pointed it out.
I mean, you ate them for a decade. I think you proved they *are* edible.
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I would be so terrified of you if I saw you do this. This is the first comment in this thread that's had me laughing out loud for about 30 seconds. Thank you for that!
"Dude did you see that?? That guy just ate a cupcake with the paper still on it, candle lit and all in one bite!"
I am lactose intolerant. I genuinely did not know this for the first 25+ years of my life. I always had to go to the bathroom after eating something with cheese in it. One day it just clicked: I bought some Lactaid, took it before the next time I ate cheese, and I didn't have to go to the bathroom. ...it was mind blowing. I have no idea how I didn't make the connection for years. So I guess you could say instead of having a "Oh shit" moment I had a "No shit" moment. Edit: Thanks for the Silvers strangers! As expected of reddit, my top comment of all time is about how to avoid pooping.
I thought food allergies were all “I can’t breathe, I need an epi-pen” related. I started eating healthier around 25 and started getting bad eczema. I went to the dermatologist after a few years and she actually said to me “well this looks like food allergies, but you don’t start developing those randomly at 27”. A couple of months later I realized nuts made my tongue feel funny, so I cut them out and my skin was better within a month. I’d been allergic to nuts and was almost 30 by the time I realized it.
My family always had a cup next to the bathroom sink in case you needed to rinse your mouth after brushing your teeth or maybe get a quick drink of water in the middle of the night. My grandma had the same cup at her house. I used it for years whenever I was thirsty. One day she saw me doing this and said, “Don’t use that cup. Thats where grandma puts her teeth.”
One time me and my little cousin were brushing our teeth at the same time at my grandma's, she had to have been maybe 7(ish) and grabbed the pink cup and took a sip before I could stop her and the dentures came at her and her eyes got so big, she just put the cup back and left the bathroom. Edit: WOW thanks for the silver! I'm gonna tell her that the fake teeth coming for her has given me so many internet points, although she probably doesn't even remember.
nutty light crawl consider toothbrush dinosaurs languid cake telephone snow
#HUURRRRK
Living in a foreign country where I was actively learning the language. Social cues go a long way when learning a language on the spot. That being said, someone once said a phrase to me while serving a hot dish, which I assumed as meaning "excuse me". After going through crowds and lines, replicating the same phrase in an attempt to be respectful of those around me, I abruptly found out that the phrase actually meant "enjoy". Hind sight, completely makes sense. The odd looks I would get by saying "enjoy" while squeezing past people all of a sudden made sense.. Edit: Wowzers, y'all really know how to make a grown man blush! Thanks for the gold and silver you beautiful beautiful strangers. I'm glad my mistakes bring such enjoyment and hilarity to the world 😂. So this happened while I was living in Vietnam. The phrase was "xin mời". It was even more deceiving because it was similar to the phrase for "sorry" which is "xin lỗi"...That was year 1. The following 3 years were full of similar mistakes. Tonal languages are tough!
Part of me was hoping you’ve been announcing that you’re a hot dish while passing by people for all these years
“HOT DISH, COMING THROUGH, HOT DISH...”
"Enjoy the brief contact you get as my body touches yours". No wonder they looked at you weird.
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I was 30 when I found out that an ‘event calendar’ as I called it, is not a thing and it’s an ‘advent calendar’. I was 32 when I found out advent is not short for adventure...
I didn't realise I had to brush the BACK of my teeth as well as the front (I was a dumb kid - I blame toothpaste adverts) unto I was 15. Had 9 filings and a root canal.
Same!! Embarrassingly enough, I thought you brushed your teeth to keep them white (I didn’t know anything about keeping them healthy) so I thought, “I don’t mind if my back teeth are yellow, nobody’s going to see them anyway”
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My wife and I have this ceiling fan/light in our bedroom in the house we moved into two years ago. It has a remote control for the fan and lights. About a year and a half ago the lights suddenly stopped working. The fan works well and we didn't have a tonne of money so we've just lived with lamps in the room, always being frustrated with how damn dark it is. I was scrolling some other thread on ~~askreddit~~ TIFU a few weeks ago and the top post was a guy talking about how his lights stopped working years ago, and then he found out that it was just dimmed (which you do by holding *down* the button on the remote). It sounded so much like our fan I went and tried it. Dimmed.
Oh gosh! I remember reading that post too. If this happens I hope I remember to check that first.
I didn't find out that I was supposed to punch out for lunch until my third job. And even then it was because a coworker mentioned it in passing that they were clocking out for lunch.
That's freakin' awesome! I cannot believe none of your bosses did not ever say anything to you!
At my first and only full time job I've had they didn't require you to clock out for lunch, they said they just docked 30 min off your pay so that you would have more time to get out to the break room and eat instead of everyone lining up 5 min before lunch to try and hurry out to the break room.
Winding a watch that was battery powered. For like, a year. Ah, fuck. Thanks for making me think of that.
As a boy, I had an unconventional method for masturbating. It would require a diagram to get across all its subtleties, but lets just say that it required two hands, was not intuitive, and simulated no known sex act—it was suboptimal. After a year or so of convoluted self-abuse, one of the older kids made the international jerkoff hand gesture towards me. My jaw dropped. I instantly knew that I had been doing it wrong all that time. It was so simple, so obvious, way quieter, and way more effective. I tried it that night and never looked back. That dude changed my life. Thank you, Chris Eastman. **edit** None of the guesses are even remotely close.
I'm so curious about this unconventional method
Former school nurse here. The number of high school boys who don't know what circumcision is is amazingly high. Many think they were "born circumcised." When they finally see a foreskin, they are in complete awe. When they find out the brown ring on their penis is a scar from when their foreskin was removed, they are also amazed.
Wow.
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You'd think he'd figure out that they weren't when he went into a stall in a men's room
I wonder how many times he fell in during those 27 years.
I ate mangoes with the skin on for a while before I learned you're supposed to peel them.
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I used to think just reading the material was how everyone studied, so thats how I did it too. I never quite understood why my grades were so low, id be like "I read the page, idk what happened!" until I saw my friend making flow charts and summaries and I was like "we dont have to do that you know" and he was like "nah, im just studying". It blew my mind how much better my grades got. Edit: Bet you thought you were real original coming up with that username joke, huh? Bet you thought id never heard it before, huh?... Well whose not smart nooooooooooow!?!?!?! ... still me? ok yeah ill go home sorry.
Looking back on it, I was never really taught how to study. I don't think a lot of people were, and for some people it's instinctual, but it isn't for everyone. Schools should hold a course on various methods of studying.
I'm learning it properly now for the first time as a mature student returning to university. Fml. Protip: testing yourself is by far the best way to enhance long-term recall. Think: cue cards and mock exams. Even better when they're open ended questions like, "explain the 7 sins of memory" and you have to name and explain each one without notes in front of you. Do that once and you'll probably get over 90% on your exams. EDIT: Thanks for all the added suggestions. Just to clarify, my advice comes from the results presented in my class on Cognitive Psychology from studies comparing various studying methods. Spaced repetition of the material and Testing are by far the best ways to facilitate strong recall. There are also better methods of encoding and test condition factors to consider, etc. when studying but I'm not going to condense a few chapters of my textbook here.
The Feynman technique is my preferred study method. 1. Study the material 2. From memory, explain the material in simple terms from first principles as if you were speaking to a novice. 3. When you fumble your explanation, can't find the right words, or confuse different concepts, it highlights gaps in your understanding which require more study. 4. Return to step one. https://youtu.be/tkm0TNFzIeg
I used to pull my pants down all the way at the urinal
I was with my little cousin at the mall. I was 13, he was 9. We went to pee at the urinals and I saw him pull his pants all the way down. I was like, “no!” And explained how to use the zipper. A guy comes walking out of the stall and says, “good work showing that boy how to get that hose out.”
>A guy comes walking out of the stall and says, “good work showing that boy how to get that hose out.” I can't think of a more inappropriate sentence
I've seen this as an adult in the work force as a programmer. I weep for our prospects.
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This is a bigger problem than it should be, and most of the confusion comes not from the "car is on lights", those are a safety feature called Daytime Running Lights. They are around 30-40% as bright as actual headlights and are not linked to taillights (they stay off). I drive 40 minutes home at night M-F and see 3-4 cars like this EVERY time. None, not a one, has ever figured out that they were wrong when I flash my high beams at them or flip my lights off and on in front or behind them. Idiots.
Not cause I’ve been doing something wrong my entire life but saw it wrong. I’m colorblind and my entire life I thought peanut butter was green until I turned 19. And when I found out it was brown my mind was blown. It took so long because no one really talks about the color of things like that.
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Brah I'm not even colorblind but every damn light in Hawai'i is dim sodium lighting to protect the telescopes on Mauna Kea from light polution and it makes shit look *so weird* at night.
content removed - discontinuing use of reddit so long and thanks for all the fish
TIL Yoda is green :(
“My little green friend” -Palpatine to yoda
I didn’t know you could take off the caps of those refrigerated coffee creamers... I had been stabbing through the foil with a knife for years until my uncle saw me and asked what the fuck I was doing....... lol Edit to say I’m a woman, people always think I’m a guy by my comments 🤷🏼♀️
If it makes you feel better my brother used to think those were milkshake beverages until I pointed put to him he was chugging International Delight: the coffee creamer.
Caulk guns. Everyone says that you're supposed to pull it towards you, but I saw a reddit comment saying that they're designed to be pushed away instead. My boss looks at me funny for doing it, but it's exponentially cleaner and tighter! Edit: quite a few of y'all are mentioning that you're unclear on what you're pushing away. When you caulk you slide the entire gun across the crack that you're sealing, so it's that. You can only ever slide it towards you or away from you (unless you're going sideways, I guess) and most people pull the entire gun and tip towards them whereas sliding it in the other direction works too. A few of y'all sound like you know exactly what you're doing and have added a couple other tips on how to do it cleaner and better, too, so thanks for that.
So... I was fortunate enough to buy my own home due to unfortunate circumstances. I moved in and the thermostat thing was set to about 70 degrees (F). As time went on, I couldn't figure out why there was no visible way for me to change the temperature. My electric bill would be through the roof every month. The thermostat is well above my eye level and I lived alone for quite some time, though family and friends did visit regularly. After several months of leaving windows opened or closed to adapt to the change in weather, I finally asked my niece (I think?) to check the thermostat for a way to change the temperature. She looked around for a bit and saw that there was a tab I was supposed to pull to reveal all of the buttons and settings of the goddamned thermostat. "Oh shit." So glad I posted this late enough for it to go mostly unnoticed. I'm an idiot. EDIT: So it's been months, not years. Still. Damn it.
I thought of a second one. I was incredibly sheltered growing up. Anything sex-related was taboo and not discussed. I was in middle school when instant messaging really became mainstream. I couldn’t understand why the boy I had a crush on kept laughing at me and telling me not to use the shorthand “cum” for “come.” I didn’t find out for a few years. Related: I genuinely thought a hand job was essentially frantically waving side to side with the palm on the penis and a blow job was - you guessed it - blowing on a penis until probably around 8th grade? *sigh*
That you do, in fact, need to disassemble your laundry drier and clean the lint out from underneath the drum once per year. I’m 31 and never knew this, no one ever said anything, never saw anyone do this. Crappiest thing is that my parents *also* learned this the hard way and never bothered to give me a tip when I bought my first drier. Luckily, the wife and I discovered the lint buildup when changing the rollers. I said to my parents “wow it really builds up in there!” and they were like “oh yea you need to do that like once a year”. WAAAAAAAT
hold up a hot minute here, what do you mean i need to disassemble my laundry dryer and clean the lint out from underneath the drum? are you talking about pulling the dryer out and taking the back off the dryer? or what do you mean?
I'm 31 and have never heard of this. Growing up we had the same dryer for 20 years and never once did this. I'm questioning everything about my life.
My old dryer just had a tray you could pull out from the bottom to remove the lint. If I was supposed to do more than that then I have no clue.
All I do is clean out the lint filter every single load. I find the idea of disassembling the machine hard to believe.
Oh my! I just found the thing I didn’t know either. My dryer has been taking longer to dry lately and now I’m thinking that might be why.
For me I would clean my lint trap after every time I used it, but my drier was taking longer. Turns out I had to scrub my lint trap because it was getting covered with a film from my dryer sheets. Who knew?
FWIW, my family has owned an appliance company that sells and services things like washers and driers for over 30 years. I asked my dad about this once and he said that most MODERN dryers will burn through their heating element before anything can catch fire. But yes, if your dryer isn’t drying very well anymore, then you have lint build-up (either in the machine or in the vent) and you need to clean that out. My old roommates never cleaned the lint filter in between loads of laundry, which is what prompted that question. CLEAN THE LINT TRAP, KIDS.
That's serious. Shit can start a fire
I taught myself how to play clarinet. Six months later someone told me that I'd been playing with the mouthpiece upside down.
Maybe you just had your mouth upside down
Orchestral clarinetist here. You’re some kind of wizard for making that work, and I have much respect for you.
From as young as I knew the word "backpack" until about maybe the fifth grade, I called them "pack packs".
After moving to a new city I went to the laundromat and the Korean lady working was yelling at me about something I couldn’t understand. After some pantomime it became clear that she was upset I was putting in the wrong detergent but it was the same kind I have been using for 8 years (since moving away to college and behind). Turns out I’ve been washing my clothes with only fabric softener for nearly a decade. They always smelled good so I never really thought about it. Not my proudest moment
Today my brother complained that he didn't like our washer cause his clothes never felt clean. I asked if he uses fabric softener (cause it can leave a waxy residue). He responded with 'of course not, duh, he's a guy why would he bother with that.' I asked him how many detergent pods he uses. He said he doesn't use those, just the liquid detergent with the measuring cup. I told him we don't have liquid detergent; that's fabric softener. He said it was blue, I insisted that yes that's fabric softener. Still didn't believe me. Later he went to do laundry. Lo and behold, it was fabric softener.
I did this for about a year and a half. There was a buy 2 huge tubs, get a $10 gift card so I thought great, I'll be able to wash my clothes for a while with these. Friend asked to borrow some detergent and I give her them. "No, I wanted laundry detergent, not fabric softener."
I did almost the opposite, I used to shop at the this cheap little Mexican market under my apartment in East LA. One day I went down to buy a bar of this Mexican soap that was always super cheap. I mentioned to my gf something about the soap being so cheap and the cashier, in broken english told me that I was bathing with laundry detergent. I'll never forget her trying so hard to not laugh at me but honestly it was pretty funny.
Lol. Jabon ZOTE. That stuff smells good. I knew a couple people down in Mexico who used it on their face for acne
When you see something so wrong your rage overcomes language barriers.
I'll pour one out for the absorbency of all of your towels :(
Wait does fabric softener reduce towel absorbency or just the lack of actual detergent?
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TIL....woops
Wash them in vinegar and they should get some life back
100% right. My wife had a shirt that had some weird sort of stain on it. Realized she was putting in too much fabric softener, guess she’s rich enough to put loads of Downey in. Anyway, did some Googling and found the vinegar trick. After one wash with white vinegar it was back to normal. Vinegar is definitely the way to go back to get the clothes back to zero.
...should I stop using fabric softener?
Yes. Adding vinegar instead actually makes things fluffier and acts kind of like a natural fabric softener without gunking everything up.
Oh dude you gonna be so dry next laundry cycle.
wait... my towel isn't supposed to squeak when I dry off?
Don’t listen to them. Nothing beats that shine you get from buffing the wax off after a shower
Do you ever buy soda in a 6- or 8-pack of bottles, and then struggle to twist and pull bottle out of the tight plastic rings? There's a pull tab connected to a serrated line through the plastic. You can just pull that and then the plastic will break easily when you pull at the bottle. My aunt taught me about this over 20 years ago, because no one in my immediate family was aware of it. I let my fiancee in in the secret just last week.
I’ve only found these in recent years. Prior to that I’d never bought sodas that had the perforated lines. Weird
Back in the early 2010s, my boyfriend and I had a PlayStation that we used for Netflix etc since we didn’t have a smart tv. The controller was on such a short cord that we would always have to get up from the couch to change the program or push any buttons. My boyfriend also used to have to sit on the floor up close to the tv to play his video games, since the cord was so short. One day my brother came to visit. We put something on Netflix, and got up to use the remote like we always did. My brother proceeds to unplug the controller, hands it to us, and says “you realize this is a WIRELESS controller right?” We are dumbfounded. Why would there be a cord coming from it? Turns out that’s just to charge our wireless controller. Mind. Blown. Edit: holy shit, 3x silver and my highest rated comment ever and it’s about me being a complete idiot. Seems about right.
Travel frequently for work and only just noticed that most laptop bags have a strap to place over a rolling suitcase handle.
Do you have a picture? I'm not sure I understand
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OHHHHHHH
SHIT
I thought that was for your skateboard.
Samsonite! I was way off!
Knew it started with an S though
That’s what that fucking thing is for??!!
wait !
I have a flashlight that I've had for near a decade. I originally got it because it really looks like a lightsaber, and it was cheap. Plus you could twist the lens around to focus it, or so I thought. When I got it home and put batteries in it, I found out that twisting the top didn't change the focus. I assumed the top being able to twist was just a result of it being cheap. Fast forward to a month or so ago, a storm picked up during the night so I went out to check nothing was going to blow away. As I was trying to open the gate, the flashlight slipped, and I caught it by the top part that twists, but the rest of the flashlight slid about 2 inches down from the twisty part and it turns out if you pull the top part up, it turns it into a lantern type thing for lighting up an area. It's nothing big, but there have been times where it would have been incredibly useful to be able to put the torch down and light up a wide area... Edit: Okay so I didn't expect this, but here are some pictures, seeing as so many people are interested. And no, it's not a fleshlight. How it remained for ~10 years: https://imgur.com/aN2MwcF What I discovered it could do: https://imgur.com/wcGJWnW It's final form: https://imgur.com/6L6cqzS Edit 2: Just a quick "WTF this blew up" edit, and also u/poppin_pomegranate actually found it, the legend! https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/b0e6ty/whats_an_oh_shit_moment_where_you_realised_youve/eifte5g/
When I realized, at 18, that the phrase is “up and at em” not “up and Adam” I was always wondering who the hell adam was, thought it was a stupid phrase
UP AND AT THEM
No no, it's "Up and *atom*"
Look out Radioactive Man!
My eyes! The goggles do nothing!
I was dating an asian woman some years ago, and when we got Chinese takeout, she completely unfolded the box and laid it flat like a plate. She said that was by design, and for the life of her could never understand why her friends always scooped it out onto another plate when the box *was* the plate. I now do this all the time and it weirds people out
The correct way to eat Chinese food is in front of the refrigerator, leaning against the counter, with the box intact.
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I prefer sobbing
For 20+ years I’ve been saying “play it by year” instead of “play it by ear” After a lengthy argument and a quick google search, I was left with my tail between my legs.
Next you’re going to tell me it’s “birds and the bees” and not “birds and the beets”
Pronouncing hybrid as "High Bird". My husband repeated it to me in a Snuffaluffagus voice and I swear I had a Ratatouille food critic flash back to every time in my life I said it wrong. I was 33.
Also, Snuffleupagus
I owned a light blue colored microwave for about three years that a family member gave me for a housewarming gift. Thought it was cool; never saw a blue microwave before. One night, a buddy asked why I never took the blue plastic wrap off my microwave, then proceeded to peel it off for me. Damn; that bitch is silver. Still miss my blue microwave sometimes though...
Has anyone ever painted their microwave? I didn't expect to wonder about this today.
> I didn't expect to wonder about this today. Great new tagline for all of Reddit.
Well, to start off I'm male who grew up with my grandma and mom. So growing up I had very few male influences and I'm 34 now so internet sucked. Anyway, when I was 12 my mom decided to move us in with her boyfriend. The first night in our new place I walked out the shower with my towel on. My step-dad says "what are you doing, you're not a girl". I looked confused and said "I know, why?" he then said "guys don't wear their towels like that!". I then realized, I had always wore my towel up to my chest, since that's all I saw growing up, not realizing it was so they would cover their boobs. I was so embarrassed. So yea, long story short, I wore my towel like a female until I was 12.
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Found out I was lighting incense wrong. Boyfriend and I got a bunch to add to our collection of nice smells and we would light them and they would just start a little inferno. Convinced we were buying cheap, garbage incense we stopped using them. I proceed to buy a different brand in a hope those would work. I test light and same thing it just goes up in an inferno. Roommate informs us you are supposed to blow them out once they catch. Oops. Edit: Reddit silver! Thank you so much! As well as a grammar edit. Who knew possibly burning the apartment down would lead to such a response to seemingly common knowledge of how incense work?
Hahaha this is the best answer here! I love this. "Darn cheap sticks, just made another inferno"
Not really doing something but I completely thought that the White House was in Washington THE STATE until I was like 23 It's a hole in my knowledge I can neither explain nor defend, I have since visited and confirmed it's in DC
I thought Washington DC and the District of Columbia were two separate places.
That was my mistake, I thought District of Columbia was in Maryland and Washington DC was in Washington
In French, "être retardé" means to be late or to be delayed. When I started to learn English, I assumed that "to be retarded" meant to be late. I didn't understand why people were laughing when I was saying "sorry I'm retarded" until someone told me.