Things you have realized long after the fact (and possibly obvious in hindsight)?

[Luna the Great of all the Russias 2,985]

Are there some things that you have realized only after a long period of time (and was possibly obvious in hinsight)?

Somehow, I thought the expression "hear ye, hear ye" were single words (something like "hearee, hearee").

[TBD 17,254]

Santa Claus is not real. But then again,

 

[Evil Pink One 13,507]

Chewing gums get stuck in your stomach and can kill you.

[Lord Chin Chin 1,209]

That putting frozen pizza in microwave is a bad idea

[Splashee 28,564]

Not in the case of telling people something, and then changing my mind later. But there have been times I have realized mistakes way too late, especially as a child.

[ExplosionMare 18,064]

I tend to miss very obvious things a lot, like I’ll stare at a math problem for hours thinking it’s impossible only to realize I forgot a - or something later

[Espy Vibe 4,298]

Math problems will be written sometimes as a little story purely for reading comprehension.

Like, the "This person had 4 apples and then ate 2 of them, how many do they have left?" kinds. 

I always just thought they wanted to make it annoying for us students.

[Luna the Great of all the Russias 2,985]

I only recently realized that the word "warrior" contains the word "war".

[Samurai Equine 51,715]

Have I got a story for you~!
But the subject matter is kind of dark, so I'll hide it behind spoilers for now.

Spoiler

Once upon a time, the famous rock band The Beatles made a song called "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". It had some pretty dark lyrics contrasted against fun, whimsical music. And most everyone that heard it interpreted the word "hammer" literally. However, a friend of mine from middle school once told me that a "hammer" is also that fin you see at the back of most guns and pistols, which is used to strike the percussion cap/primer (or a separate firing pin) to ignite the propellant and fire the bullet. In old westerns, gunslingers would sometimes pull the hammer instead of pulling the trigger. Because of this, I thought I was smarter than everyone else. I thought Maxwell was actually shooting his victims with a gun rather than hitting them on the head with a hammer.

Turns out, after believing this for YEARS, I was the one who was wrong. Turns out, Paul had seen some bizarre, avant-guarde theater play where a killer uses a strangely-shaped weapon. Something that kind of looks like a hammer of sorts. The lyrics was never about a gun. It was always about an actual hammer. I doubt everyone know the inspiration behind the song, but still, I feel so ridiculous wasting my time on a misconception all these years...

 

[Casey Pones 95]

• Just the other day I remembered a line from that episode of South Park where Cartman was saying how his jokes are much better then that of Family Guy and he's furious that everyone thinks his humour is the same as theirs. "I am nothing like Family Guy! When I make jokes, they're in inherent to a story. Deep situational and emotional jokes, based on what is relevant and has a point! Not just one random interchangeable joke after another!" For years this statement made no sense to me as Cartman's jokes are always so hateful and juvenile. Then I suddenly realized, in this scene, Cartman must be a metaphor for South Park's humour and how people compare the two shows.

 

• I once found a book entitled "Honey I shrunk the kids." And thought the film must have been based on it. I didn't know at the time or until later that people made films into books as well as the other way around.

 

• When I was a kid one of my favourite shows was Oh Mr Toad by Cosgrove Hall. In one episode Mr Toad tried to build a time machine based on H G Wells' The Time Machine. For some time I thought the book had detailed plans on how to build one. Turned out to be just a general physical description.  

 

• For most of my life I didn't know computer animation or images were made up of thousands of tiny squares called pixels. I thought if you looked closely you would just see smooth continuing lines like in real life.

 

• For years I thought Elton Jhon's rocketman was a song about being high on drugs, but thinly vailed as a song about being an astronaut abut in a way that it was deliberately obvious at to what it was really about. Like the song was saying sarcastically "High on drugs? Nooooo I'm about being an astronaut (Nudge nudge, wink wink.)" Then I looked it up and it really is about being an astronaut.

 

• Comic books hire different writers over time to replace the original writers and keep it going.  

 

• For many years I truly thought the relationship between a script writer and a studio was exactly the same as an author and a publisher. That is you would write something, submit it and if they liked it they would make it and you'd have complete creative control. Then I read a web page entitled "Why there are so many terrible movies" that I learned scriptwriters are actually at the bottom of the totem pole.

 

• I used to think scripts had to contain detailed information on every single movement the actors made, down to the degree of the angles made by their hand gestures. And that actors were expected to do exactly what the script said all the time like puppets, I was shocked to learn otherwise.

 

• George's Marvellous Medicine was always one of my favourites of Roald Dahl's books, still is. But now I realise how potentially dangerous it is to tell kids they can create magic potions you can drink using paint, anti-freeze, household cleaners and veterinary medicine. Guess this is why it's just about the only Roald Dahl book they've not made into a film.

 

• Recently, how silly the film Batman Forever is now that I've seen films like The Batman and Batman Begins. Still prefer Batman Forever to the Nolan films though.

 

• Also, in the film V for Vendetta, Britain has been taken over by a fascist government called Norsefire. A vigilante named V conceives of a brilliant plan to take them down which he represents with a domino topple . For years I couldn't figure out the meaning of the last domino that wouldn't fall. I thought it was just some pretentious piece of abstractionism. Until I realised that the last domino represents V himself, that he is the fatal flaw in his own plan and cannot be a part of his solution. It wasn't until I saw The Winter Soldier and a documentary about the French Revolution, that I realized how Norsefire's or V's plans worked respectively. And it wasn't until years after I saw it that I realised it was a compilation of America's anxieties at the time it was made. Namely the just-started Iraq War, attacks with biological weapons and the 0/11 conspiricy theory. I think V for Vendetta was the first truly deep film i managed to understand.

 

• Incidentally my brother's big on Soviet Union history and yet for years he thought the film Red Dawn was about a war between humanity and werewolves. How he came to this assumption I don't know but he never bothered to verify it until I urged him to actually see the film.

 

• Schools rarely teach you the actual kind of knowledge you really should have. Like what the value of democracy is, what kind of country you live in, what is and isn't illegal, how to generally keep house and (most bafflingly) how to find work, which is the main point of school isn't it?

 

• Thinking My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic was a simple, shallow show only for little girls. 

Edited July 14, 2024 by Casey Pones
Suddenly remembered something else to go in it.

[Rafa Stary 3,148]

This one always makes me laugh  There is this Brazilian meme that used to be very popular years ago, it's a guy screaming "Ó O GÁS!" which can be translated to something like "LOOK AT THE GAS!" or "THERE IS THE GAS!", now, even though all the videos I watched that used this meme were obviously from Brazil, for some reason, I thought the meme was actually American, I thought that the guy was actually screaming in english "OOOH GUYS!", and I was so sure about it that I just spent years completely believing that it was a American meme, It was just when the meme lost its popularity that I dscovered it was actually a Brazilian meme and I genuinely almost couldn't believe it at the time, it truly shocked me , seriously, listen to it and tell me if it doesn't sound like he's screaming "OOOOH GUYS!"

 

[Fluttershutter 2,489]

On 2021-09-07 at 7:03 PM, TBD said:

Santa Claus is not real. But then again,

 

On 2021-09-07 at 7:03 PM, TBD said:

Santa Claus is not real. But then again,