If you ever put off cracking your knuckles or some other bone due to fears of arthritis, you’ve been the victim of a long-running misconception. If you just learned this now, congratulations and don’t feel bad, as it turns out, situations like this are surprisingly common.

We’ve gathered people’s stories of learning pretty useful things embarrassingly later in life. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites, take notes if you have to and if you’ve been in the same boat before, share your own thoughts and stories in the comments section down below.

1,

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 d**n 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.

2,

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.

3,

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.

4,

My SO and I were in a fight and he said “You are unbelievably selfish and impossible to talk to”. Somehow my defense mechanisms were not engaged at that moment because I *heard* him and realized it was true. I saw for the first time that I had been (mostly) an a*****e all my life – that is – super defensive and wrong about a lot of things (aka a “narcissist”). I have since had to *learn* how to be kind, to listen, to give back and while it has been very hard (I still cringe often when I think back on many moments in my life) I now know *I* was wrong, my life is so much better.

5,

Not me, but my Dad. I’m in the story, though.

We used to have this swingset, which had a kid’s swing on it. The kid’s swing would always fill up with a huge puddle of water when it rained. To combat this, my Dad would balance it upside down on the crossbar it hung from. I always wondered *why doesn’t he just drill a hole through the bottom to drain the water?* Then I thought, *that’s so simple a solution, he’s obviously thought of it, and why it’s a bad idea, and I’ll look like an idiot for suggesting it.*

So after a year of this, one day I hear him complaining while he’s balancing the swing. So finally I ask “why don’t you just drill a hole through the bottom of it?” He didn’t even say anything. He just looked at me like I was an idiot, and walked away. I was racking my brain, trying to figure out what obvious flaw in my plan I’m missing.

A few minutes later he comes back with a drill. That’s when I realized, the look wasn’t directed at me. The look was “why didn’t I think of that?”

I’ve started asking questions more often now.

6,

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. D**n; that b***h is silver. Still miss my blue microwave sometimes though…

7,

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.

8,

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…

9,

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.”.

10,

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….