It’s tricky being a parent. On the one hand, you want your children to be curious and willing to learn about the world. But on the other, there are some things you don’t ever want them to ask you about, especially in front of other people.
They’ve been chatting about this on the AskReddit page after user Previous_Tackle3439 posed this question:
What did you ask your parents as a child, but didn’t realise it was something vulgar?
And people had lots of examples of the ways in which they’d embarrassed their parents as little kids.
1.
‘I once asked my mom what a blowjob was because I thought it meant blowing air into someone’s mouth like CPR.’
–IndividualThroat4024
2.
‘Similar, I thought it had to do with styling hair with a blow dryer. I had my older brother and friend to thank for that one.’
–TheNJGM
3.
‘Mine was ‘What’s a boner?’. We had just watched some movie that used the term. My mother is in the medical field, and big on being precise about things (not sugar coating them for kids), so she very nonchalantly gave me a breakdown of exactly what a boner was. I was 6, lol.’
–ender4171
4.
‘I was at a farm show as a kid and I called the combine harvesters ‘concubines’. My dad absolutely lost it, my mom didn’t think it was funny.’
–BerserkRage1066
5.
‘We went to a fancy restaurant and they had oxtail soup on the menu. In German it’s called Ochsenschwanzsuppe – ‘schwanz’ being the tail, but also a colloquial word for dick. So I naively asked my parents and their friends which part of ox it would be, the tail or the penis. Everyone was laughing out loud except my parents.’
–Nice_Pattern_1702
6.
‘I didn’t ask but yelled at my older brother in front of them, calling him a dildo. I was maybe 8 or 9. I thought it meant he was being mean.’
–Steambunny
7.
‘My mom lives to tell this story. At a young age I asked her what the box of Maxipads were in the bathroom. She didn’t want to explain the menstrual cycle to a 5 year old so she told me they were big band-aids. A few weeks later I fell outside and scraped my forehead. So I went inside and put the big band-aid right on my forehead.’
–kloiberin_time
8.
‘I asked a similar question but about condoms. My mom just said it’s a glove for your penis. I don’t think I asked any follow up questions. I look forward to funny questions from my kids.’
–sth128
9.
‘I was 11 and got very into writing stories. I wanted to be a published author and often excitedly read my stories aloud to my mother. I used the word ‘ejaculated’ a LOT. The thesaurus had told me it was a synonym for ‘exclaimed’ but hadn’t specified that it was an old synonym no longer used in that context.
My poor mother never said anything.’
–RiskyMama
10.
‘I saw a bumper sticker that said ‘Honk of you’re horny’, complete with a picture of the devil. I didn’t realise what it meant and thought it was hilarious. I pointed it out to my mother, who looked at me aghast, as though I had lost my mind.’
–caliphone
11.
”What is a condom?’ I was thinking of a condominium.’
–Da1976
