We all have an "ah-ha" moment every now and then but have you ever stopped and realized something so obvious you felt silly for not knowing about it much, much sooner? If you have, you're not alone. These people share the really obvious things they didn't figure out until embarrassingly late in their lives. Basically, we're just a whole bunch of idiots wandering around trying not to bump into each other.
#1 Alphabet Source
The word alphabet comes from alpha beta.
#2 Identical Friends
So there are these two girls. They sit opposite me at lunch. I'd say perhaps an hour of time a day, these girls are sat directly in front of me. Five hours a week, twenty-odd weeks before I'd noticed. So a hundred hours of being next to these two girls... "Oh my god. You two are identical twins."
[Deleted]
#3 Toaster Numbers
The numbers on a toaster aren't intensity. It's duration.
#4 Cruella De Vil
When I found out that Cruella De Vil was a play on the words cruel devil.
#5 Yo Serio
When I studied in Mexico my Spanish skills were pretty rudimentary. The first month I was there I somehow confused "Lo Siento" with "Yo Serio." So when I bumped into someone on the street, instead of saying "I'm sorry", I would look at them sincerely and say "I'm serious." Once I figured this out it explained a lot of strange looks.
#6 Where's My Flashlight?
While camping I spent five minutes looking for my flashlight with my flashlight.
#7 Light Switch
We had a light switch in my house that I did not notice for ten years. I was fascinated by it for a week after I discovered it.
#8 Not Laundry Detergent
That the laundry detergent I had been using for nine months was actually fabric softener.
#9 Mysterious Bathtub
I've been living in this house for a year now. There is a button in my bathroom that will fill up the bathtub automatically. I don't even have to turn the taps. I'm still too scared to play with the toilet controls. I think some of them are for ladies only; I pressed the pink button and it washed my undercarriage.
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#10 Ketchup Cups
That you can open up the ketchup dipping cups at restaurants.
#11 Pipe Cleaners
When my wife was younger she worked in a convenience store. A guy came in and asked for some pipe-cleaners. She said that they might be with the stationary. He had to point out they're behind her, with the pipes. To this day, she still insists their primary purpose is "to make farmyard animals."
#12 Paper View
For years and years, I thought Pay Per View was Paper View. My Dad laughed so hard when he found out...
#13 Blind Shop
There used to be a blind shop near my grandmother's house. We would drive past it, and I always thought of it as an accessory shop for blind people. One day I realized, it was a blind shop, as in curtains and blinds.
#14 Soduko Tricks
This is one I'm particularly ashamed of. Worst of all it was well before my drug days, so I can't blame it on that. But I got the sodoku demo cartridge for the original DS and played the game quite frequently, always struggling a bit with each game. Sodoku is a great game. I never needed to buy it because the demo version was giving me hundreds of hours of fun in itself!
Of course, the demo was always just the one game over and over, for years I would play it thinking I was getting a new game each time. I don't know what is wrong with me, but I just never noticed. And I struggled with each game as if I were playing it for the first time. I should probably have mentioned this to my doctor.
#15 IHOP
IHOP = International House of Pancakes I actually thought they were two different chains. "Why are we pulling into the IHOP parking lot? I thought we were going to the International Hou-- OH MY GOD." I was all excited, too, 'cause I thought I'd never been to an International House of Pancakes before.
#16 In the Car
I have more than once driven into my apartment's parking lot and thought "Oh my god. My car is gone. I got towed again" before realizing I'm driving my car.
#17 What's the Time?
In one of my classes in high school, I always used to ask the guy sat next to me for the time. He would always be able to give me the right time, without looking at his watch or phone, even though I couldn't see a clock anywhere in the room. I'd ask him how he always knew the time, and he said that he could tell by the positions of the shadows around the room. After a year of believing this, I noticed there was a clock right there on the wall in front of me.
#18 Zooey Deschanel's Sister
That Bones is Zooey Deschanel's sister. Blew my mind this morning.
#19 Chick-fil-a
Up until about a month ago, I thought Chik-fil-a was pronounced "chik-fill-ah." When someone pronounced it correctly I literally slapped my forehead... "Of course... as in fillet."
#20 Pop-Tarts
Until three weeks ago at the ripe old age of 28, I never knew that Pop-Tarts go in the toaster. I thought Pop-Tarts was just a clever name. My parents never did that for us we just took them to school in all their silvery package glory. I was bored and reading the pantry one day. Surprise, surprise, there were the toaster instructions. I then tried it in the toaster. It was a life changing moment.
#21 Visa Card
When I was a teenager I thought that Visa was forcing people from other countries to get a credit card if they wanted to stay in the U.S.
#22 Mr. Mackey
Mr. Mackey's name on South Park. The two prominent sounds in his name are that of the M and K...Mmmmmkay?
#23 Mattress Double Meaning
For many years, I didn't get the double meaning from the Sleepy's mattress commercials.
Trust Sleepy's......for the rest of your life!
Then one day I was driving with my wife, and the commercial came on. I said, "Why would I want a Sleepy's mattress for the rest of my life? Aren't you supposed to replace them every 10 years or so?" She patiently explained the double meaning, and also that I'm an idiot. Which is apparently true given the evidence.
#24 Bicycle Tubes
I was in my thirties before I figured out that girls' bicycles have a lower top tube so they can be ridden more easily and modestly in a dress. I always thought it should be boys' bikes that had the lower tube because duh, nut danger.
#25 Cupboards
Cupboards are so named because they are literally boards you put your cups on... only took 24 years.
#26 Forgetful
I frequently feel like I am forgetting something. On my way to work, I always do a complete mental checklist to make sure I'm good to go. I'll be driving and I'll go "bra, undies, shirt, pants, socks, shoes, watch, okay. I'm dressed. My hair is tied back. I have my lunch, my purse, my coat, my ID badge to get past security and into work." SEVERAL times I still feel like I am missing something.
On more than one occasion, I've been close to work and gone "MY KEYS!" and turned around, only to a few minutes later realize...."I'm an idiot. Stupid!" All my keys are on one key ring. I'm DRIVING my car, thus, I clearly didn't forget my keys. It takes me way longer than it should to realize this every single freaking time it happens. I'm truly an idiot sometimes.
#27 Back to the Future
Back when I was in film school we were in our school's theatre watching Back to the Future. Approximately 80 minutes in, a girl shouts out in disbelief "Oh my god I get it! BACK... to the.... FUTURE!"
#28 Soft Drinks
Soft drinks. They aren't hard (alcoholic). I don't know what took me so long.
#29 Hidden Door Handle
My mom and dad were looking at a house for sale. They were being shown around inside by the man and woman who currently lived there. While being shown the dining room, the woman showed my mother the nice sliding doors that hid inside the wall. My mother wanting to see if the doors rails still worked properly opened the doors the full way (so the door was completely hidden inside the wall). The woman jumps forward saying "Oh no! You've pushed them too far! This always happens to us with new people! The doors are too far in the wall, and it takes us forever to pry is out cause we can't reach it."
My mother looks at her quite shocked (as my then family home had the same style of door) and grabbed the hidden handle on the door and easily pulled the door out. The woman and her husband stood there in shock and later explained that they used to get in fights over this door for years. My parents laughed and left. They never bought the house.
#30 Afternoon
A few weeks ago I, for the first time, understood why afternoon is called afterNOON. I felt so dumb, and my roommates weren't impressed.
#31 Apartment Appliances
After looking at dozens of places and much careful consideration, I moved into my beautiful, perfect, beachfront apartment one month ago. Two weeks back, I went to make cookies. No oven.
#32 Creepy Tuxedo Town
Got lost driving upstate NY by myself once, at 1AM. I took a wrong turn trying to get to Route 17, and wound up in a little town that clearly wasn't where I wanted to be. It was a bit foggy and my phone (EVO) was constantly rebooting and I didn't have a GPS. Nothing was open. Streets were completely vacant. No signs of life at all. It was a bit creepy.
It got creepier when as I was driving around trying to find a way back to the highway I noticed that there were tuxedo shops everywhere. It seemed like every other shop was a tuxedo shop. Why would a town need so many tuxedo shops? It got to the point where I was in a near panic state. I started driving faster through this little town, counting tuxedo shops. I stopped counting at 15 and concluded I was the protagonist in a twilight zone episode.
Panic set in. I drove. Anywhere. Anywhere where there isn't a tuxedo shop. Turn around and just keep going. Don't stop. Finally, I see the highway. I drive the wrong way up the ramp, cross over the median and get the hell out of there. Traffic rules be damned I was going to be trapped in some odd little town seemingly in the middle of nowhere that consisted of tuxedo shops. I was picturing every person coming out wearing tuxedos trying to get me to stay. Forever.
I finally escaped and got to my destination. I didn't tell a soul about it for about a year. One day my wife and I are driving the same route and I tell her about the strange little town where all the shops were tuxedo shops... Turns out I was in Tuxedo, NY.
#33 Catching Pokemon
I used to play Pokemon Red as a little boy. I couldn't read English since my native language is Dutch therefore I skipped the tutorial and didn't know I could CATCH the Pokemon. I played it for over two years with just one Pokemon until a friend told me I could use a Poke-ball to catch them.
#34 Eeyore
He's called Eeyore because that's the sound a donkey makes...
#35 Hide and Go Seek
When I told my brother when he was about eight or younger years old that I had hidden something and he had to find it, he would always look in the most difficult spots to hide objects. I always placed the toy or whatever on the counter or table, out in the open, and it took him forever to notice the obvious. He's not stupid, he's just always making things difficult.
#36 Arrested Development
Arrested Development is about a family in arrested development and an arrested developer.
#37 Californication
It took me until season 4 to realize that the series Californication has "fornication" in it.
#38 Bandaid Color
That Bandaids are supposed to resemble the color of skin so they blend in. I was probably 22 or so before I made that realization. Even as a white person, I never realized they were tan/beige to match skin tone; I just thought it was a random color they chose for that particular product.
#39 Flo Rida
It took me a good year and a half to realize that the rapper "Flo Rida" is just Florida with a space in it.
#40 Ticket Number
Ok, so once or twice a month we order takeout from a burger shop near our house. Every time I call up and make an order, at the end of the conversation, whoever I'm talking to usually says something along the lines of "Okay that'll be 15 minutes and it's 42." The number at the end changes every time, and I assumed they were telling me how much it was. I'd do the math on my way there and get confused because it was always wrong.
One day, after about six months of this happening, and having ordered a fair bit of food, the young boy said, "Ok thanks, that's 116." I thought they can't be serious, we didn't order that much! I went down and it was about 50 bucks. I asked why they always quote the wrong price, and the lady said loudly "Oh darling that's not the price that's your ticket number!" prompting laughs from everyone in the store.
#41 Mr. A to Z
I never noticed that in the Jason Mraz song Wordplay when he says Mr. A to Z he is spelling Mraz. I didn't notice this for about two years.
#42 Cool Mom
#43 Hey Jude
For a long, long period of time, I thought that the famous Beatles song started "Hey Jew...." It always struck me as very odd and I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried, see how it fit in with the rest of the song. However, for some weird reason I never checked out the lyrics. Across the Universe was a huge "Oooh, now I get it" moment for me.
#44 Piglet is a Piglet
Despite Piglet being called Piglet I assumed he was a mouse for most of my childhood/teenage years. Turns out he's a piglet and that's why he's called Piglet.
#45 Every Kiss Begins with Kay
"Every kiss begins with Kay" also means "Every kiss begins with the letter K" I felt pretty stupid.
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