"Not My Proudest Moment": 48 Times People Found Out They Were Doing Something Wrong

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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...

My mom refused to show me how to use a tampon because she thought I should stick to pads because they were "safer". This was back when googling how to do things wasn't an option, and I was the first in my friend group to get my period and a little sheepish about it.

So basically I was shoving that sucker up there with the entire applicator for like 2 years, wondering why tampons didn't seem to work that well for me.

It wasn't until I was in high school, and one of my friends went on a c*****e against "plastic waste" and started advocating for tampons with no applicators that all of a sudden I realized I had massively f****d up.

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....

For years I would struggle to take the cap off new deodorant (the one under the lid). It always is so stuck down onto the deodorant stick.

I had an "ah-ha" moment a year or so ago that I could simply crank the deodorant stick up until the cap could easily be removed.

I'm 34. It took me until age 34 to realize this.

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.”.

Back in the early 2010s, my boyfriend and I had a PlayStation that we used for Netflix etc since we didn’t have a smart tv. The controller was on such a short cord that we would always have to get up from the couch to change the program or push any buttons. My boyfriend also used to have to sit on the floor up close to the tv to play his video games, since the cord was so short.

One day my brother came to visit. We put something on Netflix, and got up to use the remote like we always did. My brother proceeds to unplug the controller, hands it to us, and says “you realize this is a WIRELESS controller right?”

We are dumbfounded. Why would there be a cord coming from it? Turns out that’s just to charge our wireless controller.

Mind. Blown.

So I had always assumed that gas stations had pipes that led to a nearby oil plant or something. I live in Houston so during hurricane Harvey in 2017 there was so much news about the gas stations being empty because they weren't being filled. I was in the car with my sisters and we were talking about it and I mentioned I don't understand how the gas supply was limited when the pipes are underground and not affected by the flooding. They both looked at me with the most confused faces ever and one of them said "you do know that trucks come to fill up gas stations right...?" And I was completely shook by this and had no idea and they asked me "so when you see the big trucks at little gas stations in the city with the tubes in the ground what do you think they were doing??" And I replied "... filling up their gas..." Not something I did wrong but definitely something I thought wrong for 17 years.

Found out I was lighting incense wrong. Boyfriend and I got a bunch to add to our collection of nice smells and we would light them and they would just start a little inferno. Convinced we were buying cheap, garbage incense we stopped using them. I proceed to buy a different brand in a hope those would work. I test light and same thing it just goes up in an inferno. Roommate informs us you are supposed to blow them out once they catch. Oops.

One day I used the key fob to remotely start my dads car. It was an”oh s**t” moment for him. Two years and he didn’t realize he had this handy little function.

Not cause I’ve been doing something wrong my entire life but saw it wrong. I’m colorblind and my entire life I thought peanut butter was green until I turned 19. And when I found out it was brown my mind was blown. It took so long because no one really talks about the color of things like that.

Living in a foreign country where I was actively learning the language. Social cues go a long way when learning a language on the spot. That being said, someone once said a phrase to me while serving a hot dish, which I assumed as meaning "excuse me". After going through crowds and lines, replicating the same phrase in an attempt to be respectful of those around me, I abruptly found out that the phrase actually meant "enjoy". Hind sight, completely makes sense. The odd looks I would get by saying "enjoy" while squeezing past people all of a sudden made sense..

Edit: Wowzers, y'all really know how to make a grown man blush! Thanks for the gold and silver you beautiful beautiful strangers. I'm glad my mistakes bring such enjoyment and hilarity to the world 😂.
So this happened while I was living in Vietnam. The phrase was "xin mời". It was even more deceiving because it was similar to the phrase for "sorry" which is "xin lỗi"...That was year 1. The following 3 years were full of similar mistakes. Tonal languages are tough!

I grew up without a mom. She passed when I was 6. I was afraid to ask my dad how to put a tampon in. One day I made a comment (about age 18) to some friends that tampons hang out too far out your bajingo and made me feel like I waddled when I walk. My friend asked me how I put them in. I thought it would get stuck up there and wasn’t inserting it far enough. Did it wrong for about 5 years. My friends still make fun of me for it. I can’t help but use the dead mom card, but looking back it’s pretty common sense how to shove it up there.

Edit: for all those asking: I didn’t really feel comfortable with my body, so I’m not sure I really understood what the directions were asking. For others asking: my dad was a really good dad. Obviously he made some general mistakes as a parent (as all parents do) but as a substitute mother he did a great job. He taught me how to shave my legs (funny voices and all) and he was a Girl Scout troop leader for almost 10 years. He tried to figure out how to French braid, and he did comb my nasty a*s ratty hair on a daily basis.

I was dating an asian woman some years ago, and when we got Chinese takeout, she completely unfolded the box and laid it flat like a plate.

She said that was by design, and for the life of her could never understand why her friends always scooped it out onto another plate when the box *was* the plate.

I now do this all the time and it weirds people out.