I always LOVED to read as a kid and I had a very high reading level but I had absolutely zero common sense so I would misunderstand or just totally miss tons of things when I read, and it was only when I reread them later when I was older that i would be like “Oh…. I guess that makes sense.”
(I still do this sometimes to this day, because of my ADHD but it was definitely worse when I was a kid.)
What are your examples of that? Either as a kid, something you picked up later, or even just something dumb you missed as an adult but then picked up on a reread.
My absolutely dumbest one as a kid was when I read Harry Potter, I did not really fully understand the idea of calling people only by their surnames (and we usually use the phrase “last name” where I’m from so for a while I didn’t even know what a surname meant lmao)
So in the 4th Harry Potter book when Voldemort comes back, he sees his followers there, including Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. And I was so confused why his schoolmates seemed to be there and how they even knew Voldemort was there, and also why nobody at the school seemed to care that some of their students were being accused of being Death Eaters. Harry then specifically mentions Draco’s *dad*, so I got that but for some reason then I thought it was Malfoy Sr, and CRABBE AND GOYLE JR. Like I could not comprehend that the students Crabbe and Goyle also had fathers referred to as Crabbe and Goyle.
Not smart lmao
by MakoFlavoredKisses
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I got exposed to *To Kill a Mockingbird* when I would say I was a little too young for it, I’d say I was around 12 or 13. There was a lot of things in that book that make a lot more sense when you have a 21 year olds understanding of the world. I mean to reread it again now that I’m in my 30’s.
I didn’t realize Holden Caulfield’s history of abuse until I read *Catcher* again just recently.
I didn’t know why Jake couldn’t get with Brett in The Sun Also Rises, lol. What was wrong with him? I was 12.
I read “prep” by Curtis Sittenfeld when I was 13 and misread the MC as being from India when she was actually from Indiana the state. I thought she was an Indian International student going to boarding school on the east coast for 80% of the book until she started talking about how white she looked and I checked again.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac. There’s a section where the narrator is sleeping with this single mother and promising her all these things and trying to find a way to take her back home. Eventually parting ways to “send for her after I find a way home” as soon as they’re parted he’s hitting up his Aunt for money to return home and never talks about the woman and her son again.
At 16 I missed it when I re-read it at 26 it made me realize what a POS He was.