What's an 'oh shit' moment where you realised you've been doing something the wrong way for years,

We bought a nice liquor cabinet, We got it delivered and noticed it was a bit shorter than we thought, No biggie, Three years later, we’re moving, Lift up cabinet and these beautiful, ornate, screw on legs wrapped in tape and bubble wrap fall off the bottom, Looks so much better now,
Reminds me of when my mum bought a new sofa, About six months later she's hoovering under the cushions when the base fabric pulls back to reveal some sort of metal and,,, a mattress, Turns out we had a sofa bed, Made my friends sleep on the floor with a sofa bed right there,

When I was 5 a pizza hut employee told me that the powder on the breadsticks was called fairy dust, Ordered extra fairy dust on my breadsticks until I was around 14 when an employee said ‘do you mean garlic salt,’ It still devastates me to realize how obtuse I was,
I worked at Pizza Hut from 16-21, We called it fairy dust,
I had to google this, I’m legit shocked again buy this damn powder, So it appears the first employee in my story wasn’t fucking with me, And the second employee wasn’t a knowledgable member of the team,

It wasn’t very long, but when I was learning to drive my dad was explaining the rule of thumb regarding a safe distance to be behind the car in front of you, I thought it meant to hold your thumb up and if your thumb didn’t cover the entire car you were too close to it, When he caught me doing that he asked me what I was doing, When I explained he burst out laughing, then considered it, and concluded it wasn’t a bad idea but perhaps a bit distracting,

Until last week, when my father in law would made a phone call on his very basic non-touch-screen flip phone he would open the menu, scroll to the phone icon, open it, hit the soft key for contacts, scroll to the person he wanted to call, press ok, then press the soft key to call,

When he mentioned how he preferred his landline because he could just dial the number, I said ,Humour me, Just dial the number and hit the talk button,, I've never seen a man so simultaneously grateful and embarrassed,

I had a (used) car and didn't realize until a couple years later that it had remote start,
Person buying my now-more-used car, this has remote start,
Me, no,
Person, (pushes button, starts car)
Me,

Couple years ago i was trying to open some toothpaste and had to break the seal of the tube, i used to look for something like a nail to break it, then one day i looked at the pointy end of the cap and thought 'what if I could use this to break it' and oh shit it did fit and broke it effortlessly, and so did every other tube product i had in the house and their respective cap, my mind was blown,

Edit, Changed ,dental paste, to ,toothpaste, since it sounds weird in English,

Since the dawn of time, I would pick up the silverware and utensils out of their tray in the dishwasher and put them away in their drawers then go back and pick up more out of the dishwasher, Then one day I saw my wife lift the tray out of the dishwasher and I legit stood there with my mouth open,
God damnit,

I knew that thing moved because I've removed it and changed it around to make pans or big dishes fit better, and I've still been going back and forth for the silverware,

My mom has been pronouncing Massachusetts ,Massa Two Shits, for years and no one corrected her because they thought she just had strong feelings about Massachusetts,
My mother can not pronounce that or Mitsubishi, She tries but same outcome and Mitsubishi comes out miss-yo-bitchy

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 lol’d at ,itchy isn’t a flavor,

No one really ever told me you don’t need to buy shoes with the ‘two-fingers’ space in front of the toes after your feet stop growing,
I had been buying an entire size too big until about age 23,
Twenty, Three,
One day in college I decided to try a pair of Merrell barefoot type shoes and after reading the sizing guide, BAM, Mind blown,
It’s terribly obvious mistake I (29F) like to blame on being an only child, But really I’m just a fucking moron,

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,

I owned a car with swivel headlights and it was very nice to have that, Discovered three years in that I had never turned on the swivel feature,
Oh man, I thought the AC button in my car (snowflake) was defrost so I never used it in summer, Fuck did I feel dumb, 2 years,

My mom use to refer to me as a ,bull in a china shop,, Always heard it as ,bowl in a china shop,, Thinking it was a compliment, At about 22 I hear someone else use the phrase and realized she meant ,bull,, not ,bowl,,
Aww mom talkin about how dainty and priceless i am again,

Well,,, This was a few years ago, I was the director of IT for a very large company, I was given a new cellphone and told to setup my voicemail,

I don’t know that when I recorded my name it would be played to whomever I leave a voice mail for,

Well the name I recorded was, ,Dooder84 Corporate IT Godddd,,,,

I worked there for 4 years until someone in the hallway referred to me as the ,corporate IT GoD,,

I was so embarrassed,,,,,
Wear it confidently this type of shit makes people like you more, They don't feel the need to be fake around you,

Last month was the first time I discovered lint rollers were peelable, Literally sat there for a minute to take that in,

Edit, I'm 20,
So,,,did you just buy new ones Everytime it stopped being sticky,

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,,,,
Don’t feel bad, My birthday is in July, I was under the impression until I was 7 that the Fourth of July, the fireworks, specifically, were for my birthday,

I felt really dumb, but also really really sad when I realized they weren’t,

Edit, Lmfao one of the dumbest parts of my early childhood, and it is worth a silver, Thanks Reddit, I’m glad someone found my naivety entertaining,

Apparently the red ring around the bologna is not supposed to be eaten,

Not wrong for years, but I work help desk, and we use a specific (terrible) piece of software for our Support system, IBM Notes,

It turns out, that for the first 9 months I had been working there, it wasn't setup properly, so I wasn't sending any emails from it, at all, No notifications that the ticket went to me, no responses from me, no close notifications, nothing,

Someone noticed this, took a look, and fixed a setting, I immediately sent out over a thousand emails to everyone in the company,

You work in IT and managed to keep your job without sending emails for 9 months, that's impressive,

My eldest child had a penchant for blowing out of his diapers—we tried everything but multiple times a week we had to pull that poo-filled onesie over his head and inevitably give our now super duper poo covered infant a bath,

Around when I was pregnant with our second, a post went viral about how infant onesies are designed to be broad at the shoulders so you can pull them down and off instead of over the head,

Poor kid would have had so many fewer poo in hair incidents had I known that then,

After the first paragraph I assumed you were putting the diaper on wrong and was really interested to hear how, Not that I have any idea if one even can put a diaper on wrong, as I have never changed one,

Realized the multi colored tape measures glued to the door frames of gas stations etc, are for identifying robbers, not for measuring yourself as you walk out, I mean, they can be, but that’s not why they are there, Unless you’re the robber,

Not mine, but my dad has been spelling his name wrong his whole life (he’s 51), His name is Jeffrey, and he’s been spelling it like that since he learned how to spell his name, A few months ago my mom pulled out his birth certificate, and we all learned it’s actually spelled Jeffery, Not sure if he spells it correctly now, but it was definitely an ,oh shit, moment for him,
Grandfather thought his name was Harvey his whole life, Got his birth certificate at 65 and its Harmon,
My aunt and uncle gave my grandmother a copy of her birth certificate for her birthday, apparently she had never had one, On her 77th birthday, she found out she was actually 78,

I lived in a house for 6 years with a bathroom with no ,shelf, or cupboard to put toiletries into, I was very disappointed and ended up using a window sill that was WAY too small to fit everything,

Anyway, one day we had a friend over and he asked why we don’t have anything in our bathroom cupboard, I was confused so he showed me,

It turns out that the mirror I had been using for 6 years has a hidden compartment behind it, It was a mirrored door to a mounted cupboard on the wall, I was astonished and IMMEDIATELY moved all my stuff from the window into the new space,

My friend was baffled that I had never figured out there was a space behind the mirror, There was an obvious gap between it and the wall that I SOMEHOW failed to notice,

Learned earlier last year ,bust a nut, isn’t an expression for when something hits your nuts or you land in a way that crushes them,
You're not necessarily wrong, depends on your inclination,

Not me but my husband, He was talking about a guy he knew who had a super busy job, but there were a lot of ,french benefits,,

I laughed and said ,it sounded like you just said french benefits,, He looked super confused and said that's what he had said,

He'd thought since he first heard the term that fringe benefits were called french benefits, He had never seen it written down and just misheard people when they'd said it before,

I still laugh about it sometimes, and will ask him if he wants me to buy some baguettes for him to take to work to give to his employees as french benefits,

I was at crate and barrel with my gf talking about how it's so weird they don't make tongs so you open them up super wide and then press in, I thought it was odd that they only gave you a super tiny opening, In the middle of me saying this she just presses the button at the bottom of the tongs I was holding and I stop mid sentence in shame,

For about three years, we only bought classy Crate & Barrel furniture for work, We'd have it shipped in from out of state, and finally I asked my boss why we didn't just pick it up at the showroom, She asked what showroom, I said the showroom attached to the restaurant,

The Cracker Barrel restaurant,

No, they are not the same company,

when i first got a debit card and would go out to eat at restaurants with my friends, i would leave a cash tip on the table, when i got the receipt to put how much i was paying i would write down how much money i left on the table, for at least 6 months i gave double tips to every waitress i had,,,

edit, word,
I did this to a pizza guy once, I gave him a cash tip & when he gave me the receipt to sign I put down how much cash tip I gave him, He told me ,woah you’re giving me more,,, I was like, ,is that not how it works,,, He said he’d correct it for me once he got back to the store, I felt pretty embarrassed,
Why didn't he just give you back the cash,

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,
Ok but WHY did your parents do this in the first place,,
Ugh I don’t know,,, maybe I should tell them,

One day I used the key fob to remotely start my dads car, It was an,oh shit, moment for him, Two years and he didn’t realize he had this handy little function,
My dad bought an aftermarket remote start and took it in to get installed, When he went to pick it up, they asked him what was wrong with the factory one,

I am lactose intolerant, I genuinely did not know this for the first 25+ years of my life, I always had to go to the bathroom after eating something with cheese in it, One day it just clicked, I bought some Lactaid, took it before the next time I ate cheese, and I didn't have to go to the bathroom,

,,,it was mind blowing, I have no idea how I didn't make the connection for years, So I guess you could say instead of having a ,Oh shit, moment I had a ,No shit, moment,

When I was a kid, I was told that the paper that came on cupcakes/muffins was edible,

I would spend a decade eating them like this (paper and all), until a friend pointed it out,
I mean, you ate them for a decade, I think you proved they are edible,
fruit stickers are edible too, just because you can, doesn't mean you should,

When I was a kid I loved drinking coffee but didn't know how to make it, My mom taught me but the coffee ratio she told me to use was like 1tbsp per 1 pot of coffee as opposed to the actual ratio 1tbsp,1cup of water, Fast forward about 13 years to a couple months ago and I was reading the back of my folgers coffee thing and there was a little diagram showing how much to actually use, I then realized my mom had told me the wrong amount so I a)wouldn't drink all her coffee, and b)wasn't super hyped up going into school,