When I was about 7 years old, my father brought me to his work to sing Christmas carols to his colleagues. I was thrilled to get them into the holiday spirit (and loved the attention of having everyone listen to my beautiful voice), so I belted out each song loud and proud. And while singing Feliz Navidad (a classic), I confidently sang the line “prospero año y felicidad” as “prospero baño y felicidad”. If you’re not familiar with Spanish, instead of “year”, I was saying bathroom.
As mortifying as this experience was for child Adelaide, it’s a great story to tell today. And apparently, it is incredibly common for kids to hilariously misunderstand adults. Reddit users have been sharing the common words and phrases they misunderstood as children, and their stories are much more hilarious than mine.
We’ve gathered some of the best ones down below, including some you may be embarrassed to admit you can relate to, so be sure to upvote all of your favorites. Let us know in the comments if you or your little ones were ever confused by any of these terms or sayings, and then if you’re interested in checking out another Bored Panda article featuring adorable ways kids misunderstand adults, look no further than right here.
#21
My dad's friend said his hairline was receding. I thought he meant "re-seeding", like he was growing more hair. I said, "Hopefully it doesn't seed too much. You don't want to look like a werewolf."
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108points
#22
For the longest time when I was little I used to think "Jesus Christ!" was "cheesy crust"... I was pretty confused in church. It wasn't until halfway through first grade did I actually confront my mother about it and ask why they kept talking about toast.
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102points
#23
When I was like 5 or 6, one of my dad's friends said that he was going to get a boxing match on *pay-per-view*, and I asked, "Why do you want to watch it on paper? It would look better on TV."
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97points
#24
I used to think that news reporting of a "body" or "bodies" being found or recovered excluded "head". I was horrified that all of these corpses had been beheaded and the heads were still missing.
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96points
#25
I always thought "Euthanasia" was "Youth in Asia" and couldn't figure out why it was a big controversial issue. Yeah there are kids living in asia, so what?
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90points
#26
I thought "human being" was "human bean" because of my parents' accent. Was always confused as to why I was a bean.
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88points
#27
When I was little, I thought "drinking and driving" meant the physical act of drinking a beverage, not just alcohol. One day when I was 6 I told my mother not to drink and drive while she sipped a Diet Pepsi and she just laughed at me
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87points
#28
I thought everyone lived to the exact same age. Like my brother taunted me for being three years younger than him, but in my mind it was no sweat because I was gonna be alive for 3 years after he died.
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85points
#29
My school had us selling chocolate bars as a fund raiser. I thought the guy was calling it a FUN raiser. I was very confused as to how this was supposed to be increasing the level of fun at the school. If anything it was making me have less fun.
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84points
#30
I thought for a couple months when I was young that when you said "it's a quarter past five" it meant 5:25 since a quarter was 25 cents. I proceeded to use dime and nickel to reference time
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81points
#31
Simply Prima donna I had never seen it writen down and was convinced it ment a time before Madonna was born
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81points
#32
When I heard phrases like "smoking kills" as a kid I genuinely thought you would just drop dead randomly. So when my dad would be smoking his cigarette I would start crying because I thought there was a chance he would just up and disappear.
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81points
#33
I used to mix up terrorist and tourist when I was younger and whenever I went to a foreign place I'd say "I'm a terrorist!"
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76points
#34
Pubic - always thought it was'public' and it just never made any sense....
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74points
#35
Black and white videos/pictures, I thought that people used to only see in black and white and that I was lucky to have the ability to see all the colours
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71points
#36
God Bless You.
I always heard people just say it quick and assumed for the longest time it was "gablesh you."
I was definitely not raised religious.
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70points
#37
Keep your nose clean. There was a line in a movie I was watching when I was six that was something like, "He's involved in all these illegal things but somehow still manages to keep his nose clean." and I thought it referred to nose picking so I thought it was hilarious. Like, this guy is super busy being a criminal but he still finds the time to mine for nose gold.
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69points
#38
i thought for a very (almost too long) time that an "only child" was pronounced "lonely child" because they had no siblings.
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69points
#39
Somehow I understood that mannequins in department stores were made from real people. My mom couldn't understand why I stayed so close when we went shopping
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68points
#40
"When I was growing up".
Adults use it to refer to their childhood, but I didn't understand that childhood to adulthood was a gradual transition. I thought it was a "Mario mushroom" type event that occurs at some point, only lasting a few seconds, and that all these "when I was growing up" stories all happened in those few seconds.
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62points