Anyone else suddenly realize something obvious about themselves?
I was 41 years old before I realized that I have a remarkably long torso compared to my legs. Not that I look freakish or anything, but once my wife pointed it out to me, it all made sense: Oh, that’s why my shirts always seem so short. That’s why I’m much taller than people when we’re sitting next to each other but not when we’re standing.
Now I buy the extra long shirts and t-shirts, and they fit sooo much better.
Apparently anyone else can glance at me and see this, but I went four decades without realizing. Anyone else??
That I was circumcized.
For years I tried to understand what the heck “circumcision” meant. In Catholicism you celebrate Jan. 1 as The Feast of the Circumcision. But thet tapdance around actually explaining what it means. I looked it up in the dictionary, and learned that it was “the cutting off of the foreskin”, so I looked up “foreskin”, and that didn’t help. No pictures. And everything I could see on my own model looked vital – I couldn’t see anyone cutting any of it off. Everyone I knew was circumcized, so there weren’t any living examples I ever saw in the showers at the Y or anything.
Then I found a medical encyclopedia with a set of very detailed drawings showing how to perform a circumcision, and all was answered.
Of course, I was 12 or something, so looked at today it wasn’t all that long I’d been in the dark. But back then, of course, it was my entire life.
The dictionary also made me a very younf hypochondriac for a while. And it answered some basic questions about Girl Parts. But not enough. There’s nothing like hands-on experience.
It took me until this year to realize that I am effectively a speed addict. That is, having grown up since early childhood gorging on sugar and caffeine I’m habituated to blood sugar rushes. I’m prone to paranoia and fits of rage when “high”, and depressed and lethargic when not. My moods now make a lot more sense.
That I am not mechanically inclined. :smack:
I suffer from a marked absence of shoulder. I have areas where my arms attach to my torso, but the downslope is so severe that it often makes clothing look decidedly odd. I was about 25 when I figured it out.
My mother (who has shoulders like a linebacker) perpetually asks me to try something on, then holds the shoulders of the garment up like I’ll magically expand to fill them.
I have had recurring dreams about losing or breaking teeth all my life. It was only recently that I thought to link them to my severe teeth-grinding problem.
Me too! (about the teeth). Those dreams get very scary, and painful.
It took me entirely too long to realize that yes, I AM sensitive emotionally, and that’s not a bad thing or a sign of weakness as my parents tried to convince me. :rolleyes: It’s actually one of my BETTER traits and I’m more than okay with it.
Ah, good on you. I’m still working on the second part of that. 
For most of my life I thought that Molly Hatchet was a woman heavy metal singer, a la Joan Jett or something. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it was a bunch of dudes.
And that’s about yourself, how, exactly? 
When I was younger I consdered myself low-key and mellow. I listened to Jimmy Buffett constantly and tried to be a beach bum. I was was driving somewhere when I was about 28 or so and other driver annoyed me and I let out a string of invective that blistered the paint on my truck. I turned to the person in the passenger seat and said “I’m not really mellow, am I?”
She laughed at me. For a long time.
Bleah. I think it’s about how clueless I am about some things, I guess. As far as really *personal * stuff, maybe that I had two hammertoes?? They really are gross, but I just thought they were weird toes. I never had a name for them until I showed them to my mom.
I remember when I first noticed that I had a birthmark close to my right elbow. It was an amazing feeling to realize that I apparently had never looked at that part of my body before.
It took until the age of 20 for me to realize that I was lactose intolerant. I only rarely drink milk, see - and I have such a ‘mild’ level of intolerance that milk is about the only thing that’ll set it off in a reasonable serving. So about once a month from the age of 12 onward I’d get terrible abdominal pain and other unpleasant symptoms (eight or so hours after having milk; the time made it much more difficult to identify the pattern) and write it off as just having chronic digestive issues.
I only finally figured it out after reading about the condition and its frequency in people of Asian descent, and gradually making the connection over the course of a few months. None of my immediate family have trouble with it, for the record.
Wow. Creepy and somewhat cool, in a “didn’t know anyone else had those dreams” kind of way, and yes, those dreams are way toooo convincingly real and squicky. Ugh.
I was well into my twenties before I realized that I have short fingers, and really, really short pinky fingers. My mother was not so much surprised at this revelation since she’d apparently always been aware of it. She might have mentioned something to me.
I was almost 30 (!) when I read a book about the highly sensitive person and had a huge revelation. I finally learned that I wasn’t just a fuckup, or a weirdo… I was actually wired differently than most of the rest of the population! Here I was trying to live like most other people, with lots of change and noise and company and parties, and kicking myself for not being able to just deal and go with the flow, for so long. My fear of being alone and my emotionally sensitivity (not to mention my physical sensitivity ifyouknowwhatimean) did not combine well with my propensity for bad boys, and let’s just say some bad decisions were made.
The past few years I’ve made sure to live life on my terms. I learned it’s okay to put my own needs first in order to be a good mom, employee, friend, and relative. I’ve created a personal policy of being physically and emotionally comfortable as much as possible, and I make sure to get lots of time alone.
And it’s made all the difference in my life. If I hadn’t learned this about myself and changed my life because of it, I don’t even know where I’d be right now.
Shocking revelation of my mid-20s: I am actually an optimist.
I recently realized that I’ve always treated everyone around me like crap. I was lucky that some of my friends stuck by me anyway, and I’ve stopped doing that. 
Uh, bodily structure speaking, I recently realized that I don’t have straight hair. Since 7th grade I’ve had really short hair and I recently let it grow out, only to find out that I now have “wavy” hair that won’t stay in one place for the life of it.
~Tasha