We all like to think that we’re up on the easiest, fastest, newest ways to get things done, or that we’ve got heads full of useless knowledge that only really comes in handy when playing Trivial Pursuit.

The truth is, though, that everyone has those aha moments that come wayyyyy too late – and these folks are no exception!

That one stings.

That calling someone simple is just a nice way of calling someone stupid.

Wife informed me of this, after 28 years of my grandma calling me simple.

It’s actually good you didn’t realize it then.

That when I was a kid and my dad would take me to the video store on Friday nights and he would go into the back room where only adults were allowed, that he was looking at p**n.

The octonauts.

i realized at the age of 26 that narwhals are real because they were on an octonauts episode

i walked into the room and was like, “i thought they only do real animals on this show” then the kids’ dad said, “you’re joking… right?”

I mean, that makes sense too.

That the phrase mint condition means like new because it’s the condition coins leave the mint in

i always thought it meant mint condition because mint makes u feel fresh….

That checks out.

I kept seeing the same Chinese characters on restaurant’s signs and I always wanted to know what it meant. A week ago I found out: they mean restaurant.

This one cracked me up.

I must’ve been around 11-12 years old, when I realized that “in order of appearance” during the end credits of a movie doesn’t list the actors/actresses by who is the most good looking.

Work smarter not harder.

I used to always pour water into our coffee maker one glass at a time. It was such a pain in the ass, especially to fill the reservoir to the number of cups I wanted.

Until I realized I could just fill the carafe with water, which has the exact same measurements, and pour the water in that way.

How come we never see that guy?

I learned a couple years ago that it’s not “The mayor of bad news” it’s actually “the bearer of bad news”. I’m 25.

Definitely not a thing.

I recently realized I was allergic to carrots. I just thought they made everyone’s mouth numb, you know, just like almonds….

I also learned recently that I have an almond allergy.

It all clicked.

Cilantro and Coriander are the same plant.

One time I was at a restaurant with a friend, sharing salsa and chips. I commented that the salsa had a very strong cilantro flavour, and she commented she couldn’t taste anything other than coriander.

We debated the issue for a few minutes, in disbelief that the other person was tasting something completely “different” and couldn’t pick up on the taste the other thought was prominent.

When I saw coriander seeds at the store a few weeks later I bought them to see what taste she had been talking about….and then the truth clicked.

A very common idiom.

I always thought “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too” was a weird saying because why wouldn’t I be able to eat my freaking slice of cake? It’s my cake.

Nobody was telling me that I can’t have my cake. Turns out they mean you can’t eat the cake while also still retaining it. Once it is eaten, it is gone. An idiom I did not understand until this year. I am 27.

The absence of a dock.

I only just today realized that the “walk the plank” plank on a boat is not a special addition pirates added to their ships as a means of public execution that looked like a little wooden diving board.

It is, in fact, the very same plank as the gangplank you’d normally use to get on and off of the ship. It is not the presence of the plank that is threatening, but the absence of dock.

Not that complicated.

This sounds ridiculous, but I recently found out about the term “knee jerk reaction”

My whole life I had been saying it how I heard it, and just figured it was spelled something like “neidric reaction” like it was some psychology term

They pretended to show more interest.

The first time I visited the USA I was on my own and in NY and going to all the museums. I kept seeing signs that said “No strollers” and thought, because we call strollers prams in the UK, that you guys are super strict about the proper amount of attention required to visit a museum. I actually pretended to show more interest than I had in order not to be thought of as some deadbeat out for a casual stroll.

It wasn’t until about day three that I saw a “No strollers” sign that included a graphic for idiots.

A too-smart toothbrush.

My boyfriend did not know that his electric toothbrush has a timer on it that goes off at 1 minute and 2 minutes. He actually returned it and got a new one thinking it was broken, since the “timer” is just a brief sort of pause/reduction in the vibration.

He would be like “wtf I literally just charged this f**king thing” thinking that the battery was already dying.

One day, and I can’t remember exactly what the conversation was, I brought up how I liked that my toothbrush let me know when I had brushed long enough, and it was like a lightbulb went off in his head and suddenly he put it together that that was what his toothbrush was doing all along.

It happens to the best of us, you know?

Good on these people for being able to laugh about it now!