20 Times Adults Finally Learned Basic Facts

I recently asked the BuzzFeed Community to share a time they had to teach someone something they should have known about WAY earlier in life. Here are their responses:

1. "I once had a coworker who I had to teach how to peel an onion. I was in charge of a team meal so we made lasagna. I asked him to cut the onions and came back 15 minutes later to check on him, and he was still trying to use a potato peeler to hack off the outermost layer of the onion."

— silkysnail31

2. "I worked as a medical assistant in a urology clinic. I had to teach that a woman’s urethra and vagina are two separate holes to WAY too many adult patients/coworkers."

— grosland2

3. "My friend had had her license for about four months and thought you could still turn left on a red light. Apparently, she did that on her driver's test and nobody said anything, so she just assumed she could do that. She was driving us to get sushi and I said, 'You..weren't supposed to do that??' and she nonchalantly said, 'Oh, wait really?' It's been three years since then and we still laugh about it."

—Anonymous, Maryland

4. "My husband has had dogs all this life. When we got our own, I realized he was not using dog poop bags properly. He didn’t open the bags and just used them to pick up the turd and walk them to the trash."

— marcicl

5. "My ex didn't know that when you buy paint, the cans on the shelf all have white paint and the color gets mixed in when you buy it. Whatever color we were looking for, he searched on the shelf for ages before finding me somewhere else in the store to be like, 'I don't think they have any of that color paint here."

— emilyv11

6. "I had to teach my old landlord that the lid of the slow cooker is loose for a reason, and, if it wasn't, pressure would build and soon there'd be a much bigger problem than the lid being loose. This man is a university professor."

— hobbitgirl96

7. "In college, I had to teach my RA how to boil pasta. She came into the community kitchen with the dry pasta noodles in cold water in a pot. She didn't know that you're supposed to let the water come to a boil before putting the pasta in."

— justchillman

8. "My brother owned his own home fairly early. The amount of things he didn’t know blew my mind. He couldn’t figure out why his dishes weren’t getting clean — turns out he had blocked the detergent dispenser from opening with tall pans."

—40, Canada

9. "I had to teach a 25 year old how to clean a toilet."

—52, Canada

10. "I had a friend that didn’t know how to eat an orange. He would peel it and then bite it like an apple. His world was turned upside-down when I showed him the slices already in the orange."

—Anonymous, US

11. "I recently just taught my wife that whenever you're on a website, if you need to get back to the homepage, you just need to click on their logo on the top left corner. She had no idea and always used to retype the website address into the search bar to go back home."

—40, Vancouver

12. "I really had to teach my older sister that the expression was, ‘Bless you,” and not 'Blesh you.' She was 27 years old at the time."

—22, Ohio

13. “That you shouldn't put a cast iron frying pan in the dishwasher.”

— cynthiam21

14. "An ex asked me what a period was. We were 18."

—21, US

15. "My mom (a young 66) and I (36) FaceTime at least once a week and have been for years. She called me up a few days ago to ask, 'Where do I look to ensure I’m making eye contact?' I said, 'Uhhhhh... the camera.' She responded with 'please act like this phone call didn’t happen' and hung up!"

—36, Tennessee

16. "Many times I have had to teach friends, family, and even my spouse, that you can tell which side of the car the gas tank is on by looking at the dashboard. That’s what the arrows are there for, people!"

— shinyoctopus73

17. "That you need to add water to Campbell's condensed soup."

—70, Virginia

18. "My friend (32) was telling me about her snowglobe collection and I jokingly asked if she kept it on the windowsill, to which I received a confused '...yes?' I then had to explain to her about light refraction through what is essentially a magnifying glass and how many house fires are started this way. I made sure she moved them somewhere safe and I'm so glad I mentioned it."

—30, UK

19. "I had a co-worker who had no idea that the sun rose in the East and set in the West."

—50-ish, Maryland

20. "In my early thirties, I had a 46-year-old neighbor who I was friends with. One day we were talking in his garage, and I mentioned how I’d grown up on a farm that raised beef cattle. He said, 'Hold up. So beef comes from cows? Then where does chicken come from?' I replied, 'Yes, and chicken comes from chicken.' He said, 'Oh. I thought chicken came from cows. Chick-fil-A has cows in their commercials.' I said, 'Well that’s because the cows want you to eat the chickens, not cows.'"

—Brian, 47, Georgia

Is there something YOU taught someone that they probably should have already known? Let us know in the comments!

Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.