Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I didn't realise until I was well into my teens that I had been consistently misreading the word everyone said as halcyon as halycon

I had been doing this until maybe two years ago.

This is gonna sound pretty moronic, but...

I just figured out last night what those old-timey photographers were doing underneath those big black curtain hoods before taking a picture.

i know, isnt it gross

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

http://www.myfineartphotos.com/antiquecameraframed%20sm%20proportioned.jpg

^^ Not reviewing replay footage.

Thanks to a Xmas gift (2 days ago) explaining the origin of phrases, I now fully understand & appreciate the meaning of "Revenge is a dish best served cold" - always thought the cold designated a loss of passion, rather than the passage of time. I always thought that was a particularly irrelevent and counterintuitive idiom. Seems so obvious now!

aw no-one said 'where babies come from'

It's the "...and how they get there" part that's more pertinent

Myonga i think it's your old interp that was right - basically, "don't give them the pleasure of getting hot under the collar"

Only, like, 2 years ago did I learn that there is no north pole (i.e. a landmass), as well as that it's Sherbet, not Sherbert.

okay, i just learnt both of those things

there's not even a glacier at the northpole? how sad. santa must get awfully wet.

that <a href=;this</a> existed and that carole was quite so lovely

guh sorry, this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I35WA_BSi_w

Sty-vuh-sint.

I just figured out last night what those old-timey photographers were doing underneath those big black curtain hoods before taking a picture.

So what is it, I still don't know?

Setting up the photographic plate, so it didn't get exposed to light?

Ah, okay. That makes sense.

I guess I thought it had something to do with avoiding the glare of sunlight as the photographer got his subject into focus, but that only goes to show that I never really put any thought at all into why the hood was there in the first place.

I used to work at one of those Wal-Mart studios, and we'd have to change out the negatives by sticking the whole camera into a black bag and switching everything around blindly. I remember watching my boss do it the first time for me, and she got those dull shark eyes as she was focusing on something she couldn't see and my solitary thought at the moment was "Well, I bet that's the same look she gets when she's using the toilet paper."

Because I am shockingly old (for an ILXor), anything I learned recently or am likely to learn from now on qualifies.

Red, green, and yellow capsicums are all the same thing, at different stages.

PP's last graf is splendid!

It was YESTERDAY, watching A Christmas Story for the first time in many years, that I realised I've always pronounced Terre Haute, the Indiana town, incorrectly, at least if Jean Shepherd is any guide and I think he is. I always said "Terry Hot" but Shep says "Terrah Hote"!

I just remembered something. It was ages before I worked out what "watersports" meant, in a sexual sense. There used to be adverts in the back of newspapers for "watersports" videos, usually with the subheading "BUY NOW BEFORE THEY ARE BANNED!". And I used to think, "why would the government ban videos of people waterskiing and windsurfing?"

those italics make your thoughts sound like maxwell smart.

"why would someone throw a shoe at the President?"
http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2005/news/051010/dadams2.jpg

I only recently learned why football pundits always criticise strikers for not shooting into the far corner when coming in from the wing. Fifteen years of hearing that cliche, and Lee Dixon was the first pundit ever to explain it

"you couldnt get me in the same room as a ouija board"

I'm 35 and been on this board such a long time but only now discovered SS is a GIANT.

I only learned to drive a few months ago. :-(

Is it cause keepers always guard the near post?

(NB all I know about feet hockey was learned ages 5-12)

keeper more likely to deflect shot into play again if saved?

Yes, it's because if the keeper saves he's likely to parry it into the path of a fellow striker. I'd always found it easier to tuck it in at the near post myself - no team player, me

I just remembered something. It was ages before I worked out what "watersports" meant, in a sexual sense. There used to be adverts in the back of newspapers for "watersports" videos, usually with the subheading "BUY NOW BEFORE THEY ARE BANNED!".

Haw, I learnt that in 1987 through a teen girls' magazine's review of Alison Moyet's album Raindancing (I had older stepsisters, you see). According to the review, she had wanted it to be titled Watersports, but was DENIED by The Man at the record company because of ^^^.

Puns department: Johnny Marr is (roughly) 'I'm angry' in French.

Oh yeah! It's more like "I've had enough", but yeah.

I relate to a lot of these. I remember imagining racehorses inside the TV as a child.

i was shockingly old when i learned the smiths blew

nobody told me that beards were itchy!

only for some people...never had that problem.

your skin is obv too womanly.

apply conditioner

I didn't know that luggage went into airplane cargo holds until I was about 14. I just thought there was a massive series of underground tubes/conveyor belts that whisked luggage to other parts of the continent. I only questioned this when I first contemplated how luggage got over the ocean. I made the mistake of asking this aloud in front of some friends who looked at me like I was crazy/making a bad joke and then I finally learned how the great modern phenomenon of air travel truly works, the end.

salsa shark, are you familiar with the burrito tunnel?

why tits bounce

Also soap operas were so poperas in my head until a revelatory moment I can still remember, when I was sitting on the stairs at home. I realised it was nothing to do with the fact they were 'so popular'

This is awesome! I love it when someone's misconception is more logical than the truth.

Me, I learned last year (age 42) that ponies are not just really young horses.

i learned that ingmar and ingrid bergman were NOT brother and sister only a couple of years ago

Right. They're mother and son, of course.

no, they are the same person, before and after sex change. Surely everyone knows this?

nobody told me that beards were itchy!

― Bus to Yoker (dog latin), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 5:30 AM (7 hours ago)

there's that day and a half when stubbly turns to furry, and then after that it's ok

...unless you are not, in fact, a person with a beard, but rather a clean shaven-person who is kissing the person with the beard, in which case the only way to stop the itching and scratching is to grow a beard of your own so as to cushion yourself from the other person's beard. this works best if both of you are men.

or a dwarf woman

not all dwarf women have facial hair, coffeetripperspillerslyricmakeruppers (Latham Green).

Me, I learned last year (age 42) that ponies are not just really young horses.

Me too.

They can still be if you want them to be. Just like how rhinos are obese unicorns.