An Education
I only realized that people shower daily when I was 16. I just had no idea. I had a bath once maybe twice a week, and thought that was standard. It wasn’t until I went to a boarding school that I realized people would usually shower daily. Thing is, I grew up in quite an isolated location in a foreign country with only my sister and alcoholic mom.
My mom didn’t so much as clean the house or cook food, she just drank. My sister and I weren’t really clued up on what normal families did. For as long as I remember, I cooked the stuff I could, washed my own clothes, if my mom was too wasted I would ride my bike (about five miles up steep hills) to school, and generally looked after myself. I didn’t know how often people changed bed sheets or brushed their teeth.
Simple things you’d usually learn from family went amiss. I didn’t even know how to wash dishes manually since we had a dishwasher. It was a weirdly embarrassing moment learning how different I’d been living before boarding school. I learned how to open bottles with a pair of keys for my mom while she drove before I learned that you shouldn’t drink and drive.
I knew we grew up a bit different, but entering the normal world was a big eye-opener.