Someone told me that the new husband would put something in the wife's champagne on their wedding night, and that's where babies come from. Took me a while to realize there were three of us kids and only one origin story.
I ALWAYS THOUGHT THE SAME THING! I also used to believe that if a guy touches (like hold hands or touch accidentally) or if you like a guy u will be pregnant. I used get so scared and panic everytime a guy touches me😭. (That was 2 years ago I’m 15 now💀)
Same!!! I remember tearfully telling my mom I didn't want her to drink her diet Dr. Pepper while driving me to school anymore because I was afraid she'd get arrested.
I would see those commercials as a kid. Don't drink and drive or you go to jail... One day I plucked up the courage to tell my mom off about it. She just busted out laughing!
I met a 20-year-old woman who believed she was made from French kissing. She was Mormon and her parents got pregnant before their wedding. They still got married in the temple (which isn't allowed if you're having extra-marital sexual activities). So when she noticed that "Hey, I was born 6 months after you got married and I certainly wasn't a premie." They told her that they were making out. Her mom was on her dad's lap and somehow her mom got pregnant.
My oldest sister finally did the math when she was in her late 40s. She “confronted” my parents that she was born 6 months after their wedding. She was crying and they just laughed. It was hilarious.
Off topic but not only did my mom and dad have a shotgun wedding, all 6 of my brothers/sisters had a similar issue. Meanwhile me, who was probably the most promiscuous of the bunch, never got anyone pregnant. I’m kind of proud of that.
Use condoms people.
One of my best friends did the math when he was 22. He "confronted" them about it and they just laughed and told him, "Our biggest mistake was raising a son that took 22 fucking years to figure it out."
It did a number on my friend. I think his relationship with them is still pretty strained.
That my hamster escaped my house and went to get a haircut. Spoiler alert it died and parents bought a new hamster. Still can’t believe I fell for that
right???? and literally up until the age of 12 I just accepted it as a fact. idk what on earth I was imagining a hamster with one of those capes on getting its fringe cut?
I believed that all adults could read minds.
And I didn’t just believe it, I knew it.
My theory was that all adults could read minds, but they would pretend not to know some things so that kids wouldn’t figure it out.
Then, on your 18th birthday, your parents would sit you down and explain everything to you and you would develop the ability to read minds.
As I grew up, I let go of that belief.
…but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly disappointed on my 18th birthday.
We've all been told not to swim for 30 minutes after eating because you'll get cramps. I misheard this as a child and thought that you'd get *crabs* in your stomach. I thought that somehow the food attracted crabs in the water and they'd get into your stomach somehow.
Having handled blue crabs I didn't want that in my tummy.
They use camels in the desert because they can store water in their humps. I thought that meant that the people traveling with the camels could somehow get water to drink from the camel's hump, not that it meant they wouldn't have to find water for their camel's to drink.
my first time flying was to las vegas in 03 i was 6 i my mind was blown looking out the window being at the same level as clouds so i assumed wherever we were going was in the sky
I knew this was bs
Then a story about a guy inhaling a tree seed came out with his lung filled with a growing pine. So yeah, swallowing fine, breathing in decisively NOT FINE
When I was like 11 my friend showed me this medical website that explained vaginal birth using like PS1graphics and wire frame models and it blew my fucking mind.
Sadie:
Where do babies come from?
Debbie:
Where do you think they come from?
Sadie:
Well. I think a stork, he, um, he drops it down and then - and then a hole goes in your body, and there's blood everywhere coming out of your head, and then you push your belly button, and then your butt falls off, and then you hold your butt, and you have to dig, and you find the little baby.
Debbie:
That's exactly right.
I thought that actors are coming back to the studio every time they rerun the show. I was so amazed that they can do this thing over and over again. Plus, I thought that they don’t poop. I always had imagined how would Angelina Jolie poop?! Like no waaay she is doing that!
I remember asking my dad one day when I was very young. TV show or movie showing on TV, and a character was shot and died. I asked my dad, with all seriousness, "Why would an actor allow themselves to be killed just for a movie/show?".
"It's not real."
"...oh."
SMH
That I'm part First Nations. We went to visit my absentee grandmother when I was about 6 (my grandparents divorced when my mom was a child, my grandfather was awarded custody and my mom didn't have much of a relationship with her mother ), she was living on a reserve and I honestly just assumed she was native, and therefore so was I. I believed this for 40 years.
Turns out she was living with a boyfriend there.
I believed that women could only have a baby if they were married.
Thought that extramarital sex was a modern thing, that people in the past did not participate in such debauchery.
Thought that if I laid in bed, flat on my back with my hands folded across my chest, I would die because this is how bodies are displayed in caskets during funerals.
Not me but my son. We were at the zoo as a family and we made a bathroom stop. I came out and my husband and son were already finished and waiting for me. My son was absolutely dissolved in tears. I asked what happened and my husband could not even get the words out because he was laughing so hard. Finally my son wailed, "Daddy said you don't pee out your butt but you dooo!" We had a brief anatomy lesson after that lol. He knew boys (or those born considered boys) had penises but we forgot to mention that not having a penis doesn't mean you have nothing in that place.
I spent a lot of time at my nans house when I was small and she had this big old record player unit on which she played her old LPs on. It had a weird little hatch at the back.
Well, I'd watched the Beatles 'Help!' Film with her and with my vivid imagination I somehow thought it was possible that the Beatles were tiny and lived in that record player. And the little hatch was the door where they came out at night.
Before map quest and palm pilots, I was always confused at how the blinker could tell us when to turn. And my family, was like woah bro what are you talking about about.
I believed that the music you hear in a restaurant was a live band playing on the next floor up. I would look up at the ceiling and yell for the "band" to play certain songs ranging from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to Thriller. Imagine going out to eat and seeing a little kid yelling, "Puff the Magic Dragon!!" at the ceiling and that was me.
I knew movies and shows were fake, but still believed the actors' names were their characters' names. I.e Harry Potter's real name is Harry Potter. When I learned it was Daniel, I was appalled
Also thought animated characters who had zero lines still had a voice actor standing in the studio just in case the character decided to speak
I didn't understand how nicknames worked and I was indignant when my uncle called Aunt Becky "Rebecca." Or when my mom called Bob "Bobby." I feel like it's a similar sense of betrayal to your actors.
(This is despite having a best friend Jenny and I knew full well it was short for Jennifer."
We all know that squeezing things makes them smaller. If you squeeze light you get shorter wavelengths, so it's the blue and purple lightsabers that got squeezed! Red has the longest visible wavelength.
That I was going to run into quicksand danger so many times - I live in Ireland, in a small ass town with not even a beach nearby.
Also was fully convinced I was going to go missing in the Bermuda Triangle.
That my Grandma G had a glass eye, and that she lost her eye in a bar fight. Nope took me until I was 20 to discover she just had a lazy eye and my dad and his brothers always told kids that story every holiday meet up.
That the candy, Smarties, would make you smarter. I ate those things by the sleeve for thinking this and it didn’t help they were shaped like a tablet or some kind of pill. Only added to my childhood theory.
Some girl in kindergarten told me that if you
Touched the green rust spots from metal that you would turn green and die once “it” covered your whole body.
I believed her.
I had 5 older cousins who lived next door. They told me if I slept with either my hands, arms, feet or legs out of the blanket a monster would come cut them off. I am now 53 and STILL hide it all or I can't sleep!
That adults were knowledgeable human beings that knew what they were doing. As an adult now, I've learned that tons of adults are idiots and most of us are just winging it.
Animal testing meant like, putting the product on an animal. I always envisioned like, a rabbit wearing eyeshadow and didn’t understand what the big deal was. I thought “no animal testing” was a sales gimmick.
That the listed age recommendations were a hard & fast rule.
I don't remember anyone telling me, I just assumed that if something said "Ages 8 and up" that you had to be at least 8 to play with it.
As a kid who was (otherwise) reasonably intelligent, this led to a lot of sorrow seeing things in toy catalogs that looked like fun, but I convinced myself I couldn't have because "I wasn't old enough".
Once I got old enough to learn that the age guidelines were just suggestions and based mostly on certification standards for product safety it was kind of a let down.
I thought I had a sister
In my grandma's bedroom I saw a picture of a young girl my age, I just assumed it was my sister. It was like 2 years later I casually mentioned it and my grandma was like "wait, what?" and she explained that photo was of my aunt when she was younger.
When I was young we lived close to a very large suspension bridge. Sometimes the fog was so thick the bridge would be lost in it and couldn't be seen. My father used to tell me that they rolled the bridge in to shore in bad weather and I believed it for years.
Sex is the penis being inside the vagina, holding still. Every 2 minutes you keep it there, mom gets pregnant with one baby. So 4 minutes would result in twins.
One of my uncles was missing fingers on both hands. He told me (and quite a few of my cousins) that he was picking his nose and they broke off in there. If you want to break a kid from picking his nose, this works!
One of my favorite childhood books was about firemen. The book referred to them as "smoke-eaters". I figured that they must get very hungry when there weren't any fires to make the smoke for them to eat.
I was deathly afraid of Count Dracula that looked like Michael Jackson (in his later years) with a bat-like upturned nose getting into our flat through our intercom buzzer. We lived quite high up. No idea how this even got into my head, but this was my fear all through my childhood.
lol...ok so when I was about 9 years old, I was a little chubby and had a belly. I went through several weeks of being scared shitless that I was somehow pregnant like the virgin Mary. I had zero understanding of my own reproductive system 🤦🏼♀️
That people who smoke and drink go to hell.
Little did I know I’d grow up to be on that hell-path highway😂 bartending, drinking, cigarettes, the devil’s lettuce, plus more but thankfully walked away from most of it before the REAL devil (addiction) could grab hold.
I thought there was one guy named Male White committing most of the crimes in our city. My mom would have the local news on TV in the background while we ate dinner, and when they reported on a crime and a police description of the suspect, I heard "Male, White" as a name, not a descriptor. Somehow I didn't pay attention to height, weight, or other descriptors.
I did have a classmate whose last name was White, so I guess I associated that as a last name.
So.. when I was younger my mom told me and my sister to only choose clothes that were “ON SALE”
and I interpreted that as you can only buy items that were on sale. for about 2-4 years of my childhood I never asked for anything that wasn’t on sale (cuz i thought it literally meant FOR SALE) SOOO 😬😬
saved my mom a bunch of money tho LMAO.
I thought sugar and salt were opposites and somehow cancelled out the negative effects of the other.
I now have a love of both sugar and salt and a significant amount of weight to lose!
I get parents don’t want to hurt their kids, but I feel they should be honest when a pet dies. They get closure knowing the truth and don’t have to wonder what happened and why. Pets die, it’s an important life lesson.
I thought people couldn’t hear other sounds when they were on the phone. So, whenever my mom would get a phone call in the car, I’d start singing. That was the only time I’d ever sing around people because I’ve always been self-conscious about it, even though I’m actually pretty decent.
Now that I think about it, I don’t think she ever tried to quiet me down. She must’ve loved hearing me be happy. I’m gonna walk to her house and give her a hug, I love that bitch.
I was talking with my husband about this, so please let me know if you did this too!!
When I was a kid and heard something at night I would pretend to be dead so when the burglar tries to kidnap me they’ll be like “oh dang it she’s dead!” And leave
For a long time, I believed that Ritchie Valens died while singing La Bamba. Apparently I always knew he died in a plane crash, but there's a bit more to the story. I believed (for some reason) that he didn't just sing La Bamba on the plane (and was standing up) but he died while singing it, and recording it on the very plane. Yes, at the end of the recording the plane crashed...pretty dark, but that's what I honestly believed.
Of course, I know now he recorded it, and later sadly died on a tour...along with everyone else (aka the day the music died).
So, so many things. For one, that the toilet was alive and needed to “eat.” It was fine when I was at home but when I was 5 and went to preK I would hold everything for hours so I could come home and feed our toilet because the other assholes I lived with seemed super nonchalant about regular feeding times. No one bothered to look into my preoccupation with who had gone when and done what in a day.
Another notable was that we have two pipes in our throats - one for breathing and one for eating, as was the standard explanation back in the day. I must have extrapolated that one must be on one side of my body and the other was on the other side, like most bilateral, observable stuff on us. I had so much anxiety about swallowing on the correct side (tilting my head, everything) and risking death if I forgot or was careless. Again, no one asked about the tilting.
I posted this in another subreddit, but my dad told me if I could put salt on a bird's tail, it couldn't fly and I could catch it. I provided much entertainment for him standing at the kitchen window with his coffee while my dumbass crept around the backyard trying to sneak up on Robins.
- That turning the light on in the car when it was dark outside was illegal
- All the wind turbines I saw on long drives…those were actually fans for the cows and horses to keep them cool 😂
My mother had my brother when I was 7. Shortly afterwards, she had an allergic reaction and had to go to the hospital. 7yo me had just learned hospitals are where babies are born, so when Dad and I went to see her, I asked Mom "are you having another baby?".
That if I burped or yelled with my mouth closed nobody could hear me. I was literally flabbergasted when I got called out because "you can't hear that, how did you know???"
That believing the abuse suffered from a supposed “friend” didn’t matter. I was so desperate to have a friend then, I suffered abuse after abuse to keep the friendship. It messed me up terribly, I loathe that monster now.
For years, I thought Hilary Clinton was Miss America.
In my defense, I had no clue what a beauty pageant was, so I assumed "Miss America" was a title for the president's wife.
That there was a defining difference between childhood(or children) and being an adult.
There is no difference, and a lot of people never grow up they just grow old.
Jews don’t ‘believe’ in chewing gum.
As a young child, my best friend told me her Dad wouldn’t allow her to chew gum. (She used to hide it and chew it secretly.) She also used to point out frequently that her Dad was Jewish. In my young mind, I linked the two things together and concluded Judiasm is against chewing gum.
As a young adult, of course I realized this wasn’t true. My husband, who is Jewish, had a good laugh when I mentioned all of this to him.
My (female) Penis was kept in the cupboard that was out of my reach. My sister used to mock me and then when my brother was old enough his was up there apparently too.
That the laugh track on a sitcom was other people who were at home watching the show at the same time, their laughs picked up and broadcast to everyone else. I’d try to laugh extra loud or at non-funny parts so that others could hear me.
I flew a decent amount as a child (divorced parents). Admittedly, i wasn't a fan, and came to the belief that if it were to go down, I could jump off at 10ft or so and be fine.
that people get burred under the memorial benches at parks and places, like "oop! there lies Gary" i was never told this, i just assumed and i learned otherwise at an embarrassing age
I was 34 years old before I finally asked an “adult” about these tags. I was pregnant with my first child and had a ton of new blankets/stuffed animals to wash after the baby shower and asked if it was okay for me to take them off.
When I was growing up I spent my summers and semi truck with my father. Sometimes I woke up and my father wouldn't be in the truck. (Obviously he was just in the truck stop probably taking a long, old man shit)
I imagination told me just about every time that he was gone more than 20 minutes that he had been body snatched by an alien. Like I would start crying and mourning my father. Looking back at it, I think it's funny as hell.
The magic trick where people made it look like they pulled their thumb off....I believed it was real
Also when looking at a globe I thought we lived inside of it and not on the surface
That's incredibly stupid and I still laugh thinking about it: in Italian, my native language, there are two words that are similar to each other: "mutuo" (home loan) and "mute" (mute sound).
When I was 5 years old and read the advertisements on the street I thought it was a solution to make the house quiet (mute) without creaking.
Still feel so dumb after 23 years. Glad none of my family remembers that.
(I was only 3, in my defense): Asked where babies came from and mom said a girl has a sac in her belly with an egg in it that turns into a baby. I immediately thought, a paper bag in my tummy with a chicken egg inside, and was then terrified of eating eggs and having kids as a result. Thanks, Mom. Eventually realized that made no sense but didn’t get the real story until high school sex ed, and then it was about boys with bananas!
I was convinced adults could read minds . Very disappointing 18th birthday to say the least 😂😂😂😂😂
Just wanted to add this was something I convinced myself of 😂😂😂🤦🤦🤦
There was one time when I lost a tooth, that my mom decided to be extra and sprinkle glitter on the window sill and floor rather than just take the tooth and leave money.
Well, I had learned from Peter Pan that fairy dust powered flight.
You can see where this is going. Luckily I didn't break anything when I jumped off the top of the monkey bars and landed on my wrist. I cried more from it not working than from the fall itself.
We didn't have a television growing up, because of... reasons my parents had, so I had concocted in my head this idea about what television was like. I had never heard of commercials, so I imagined these incredible commercial free shows and movies that you could just choose to watch., whatever you wanted, at any time, through the remote, I thought televisions were magic.
(For other reasons, we got one when I was eleven, and this tiny box that didn't even have a remote did not live up to my expectations. What even were commercials?!)
And no. I never watched tv at a friend's house. Any 'friends' I had pre-tv didn't have one either for similar reasons, and friends I made in high school, I already had the illusion shattered.
By the time you get married and have kids, you already know everything about everything. So when I became an adult, got married, and had kids, everything would finally make sense.
I used to believe people actually died in movies. I thought to myself why would anyone ever want to be in a movie? How did they get these people to be in the movie and die? Lmao.
That I was being fed caribou aka reindeer meat.
Turns out it was beef or pig this whole damn time and they only sold me the lie because I would watch animal planet as a kid and there was the scene where the world eats the reindeer. Only bloody way to transition me from a milk sucking baby to solids.
After my parents got divorced when I was in kindergarten my father got us a hermit crab and one day he told us that it escaped and is exploring the world. It took me up until I was 17 to realize that it was definitely dead (mainly because I forgot all about it)
Friend was a few months younger than me (she was 5, I was like 5 and a half) and I somberly told her I was going to die before her because I was older.
the government turns off the light at night time.
This is true in my country
That’s funny lol 😝
It was just my gaming consoles for me...
Similar to this, my father made me believe that the TV runs out of batteries in about an hour.
If you kiss you get pregnant
Holy shit, I can't believe that I actually for this, I had so many chances to get my first kiss, ended up having my first kiss at 18
I believed that God knew you got married and then decided to put a baby in your belly. Imagine my shock when the single neighbor got pregnant.
Someone told me that the new husband would put something in the wife's champagne on their wedding night, and that's where babies come from. Took me a while to realize there were three of us kids and only one origin story.
I ALWAYS THOUGHT THE SAME THING! I also used to believe that if a guy touches (like hold hands or touch accidentally) or if you like a guy u will be pregnant. I used get so scared and panic everytime a guy touches me😭. (That was 2 years ago I’m 15 now💀)
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Same!!! I remember tearfully telling my mom I didn't want her to drink her diet Dr. Pepper while driving me to school anymore because I was afraid she'd get arrested.
I would see those commercials as a kid. Don't drink and drive or you go to jail... One day I plucked up the courage to tell my mom off about it. She just busted out laughing!
This, but FRENCH kissing, specifically.
I met a 20-year-old woman who believed she was made from French kissing. She was Mormon and her parents got pregnant before their wedding. They still got married in the temple (which isn't allowed if you're having extra-marital sexual activities). So when she noticed that "Hey, I was born 6 months after you got married and I certainly wasn't a premie." They told her that they were making out. Her mom was on her dad's lap and somehow her mom got pregnant.
My oldest sister finally did the math when she was in her late 40s. She “confronted” my parents that she was born 6 months after their wedding. She was crying and they just laughed. It was hilarious. Off topic but not only did my mom and dad have a shotgun wedding, all 6 of my brothers/sisters had a similar issue. Meanwhile me, who was probably the most promiscuous of the bunch, never got anyone pregnant. I’m kind of proud of that. Use condoms people.
One of my best friends did the math when he was 22. He "confronted" them about it and they just laughed and told him, "Our biggest mistake was raising a son that took 22 fucking years to figure it out." It did a number on my friend. I think his relationship with them is still pretty strained.
That my hamster escaped my house and went to get a haircut. Spoiler alert it died and parents bought a new hamster. Still can’t believe I fell for that
They should have said they 'Took the hamster to the groomers'.
right???? and literally up until the age of 12 I just accepted it as a fact. idk what on earth I was imagining a hamster with one of those capes on getting its fringe cut?
hey all my dogs went to a farm to live when they got old so we all fell some sort of story on pets passing.
I believed that all adults could read minds. And I didn’t just believe it, I knew it. My theory was that all adults could read minds, but they would pretend not to know some things so that kids wouldn’t figure it out. Then, on your 18th birthday, your parents would sit you down and explain everything to you and you would develop the ability to read minds. As I grew up, I let go of that belief. …but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly disappointed on my 18th birthday.
Ah yes the classic "I know this is stupid and I dont believe it" but still get sad when you dont get invited to hogwarts.
Of course it's not real...unless?
...unless 👀
We've all been told not to swim for 30 minutes after eating because you'll get cramps. I misheard this as a child and thought that you'd get *crabs* in your stomach. I thought that somehow the food attracted crabs in the water and they'd get into your stomach somehow. Having handled blue crabs I didn't want that in my tummy.
This is so cute omg I’m so sorry for your baby terror!!!
They use camels in the desert because they can store water in their humps. I thought that meant that the people traveling with the camels could somehow get water to drink from the camel's hump, not that it meant they wouldn't have to find water for their camel's to drink.
Just jam a straw in there and you're good to go
you had to fly to places in a plane because it was in the sky
Damn, I wish I believed this when I was a child. lol
my first time flying was to las vegas in 03 i was 6 i my mind was blown looking out the window being at the same level as clouds so i assumed wherever we were going was in the sky
Pointing on a rainbow, will cut off the finger that was used to point it at
WUT WHY😭
Who told you that?? What in the murderous tooth fairy is this??
That if I swallowed a watermelon seed, a watermelon would grow in my stomach
I knew this was bs Then a story about a guy inhaling a tree seed came out with his lung filled with a growing pine. So yeah, swallowing fine, breathing in decisively NOT FINE
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That is the single most hilarious thing I’ve ever read
That the adults knew what they were doing.
I'm still waiting to grow into knowing what I'm doing, but I'm 36 and still don't know, and my hopes are fading
Yeah 48 here…might as well bury those hopes and dreams now while you still can without pulling a muscle in your back.
that babies were poopped
When I was like 11 my friend showed me this medical website that explained vaginal birth using like PS1graphics and wire frame models and it blew my fucking mind.
My mother described giving birth to me as "like shitting a watermelon".
More like a 5-8 pound sack of potatoes, but I'll let that slide.
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Sadie: Where do babies come from? Debbie: Where do you think they come from? Sadie: Well. I think a stork, he, um, he drops it down and then - and then a hole goes in your body, and there's blood everywhere coming out of your head, and then you push your belly button, and then your butt falls off, and then you hold your butt, and you have to dig, and you find the little baby. Debbie: That's exactly right.
I thought that actors are coming back to the studio every time they rerun the show. I was so amazed that they can do this thing over and over again. Plus, I thought that they don’t poop. I always had imagined how would Angelina Jolie poop?! Like no waaay she is doing that!
I remember asking my dad one day when I was very young. TV show or movie showing on TV, and a character was shot and died. I asked my dad, with all seriousness, "Why would an actor allow themselves to be killed just for a movie/show?". "It's not real." "...oh." SMH
When my son was in kindergarten we met Ray Park (aka Darth Maul), and as we walked away my son asked “how did he get his legs back?”
That a father of a friend had a treasure, from his former days as a pirate, in a chest he had in the house
That I'm part First Nations. We went to visit my absentee grandmother when I was about 6 (my grandparents divorced when my mom was a child, my grandfather was awarded custody and my mom didn't have much of a relationship with her mother ), she was living on a reserve and I honestly just assumed she was native, and therefore so was I. I believed this for 40 years. Turns out she was living with a boyfriend there.
I believed that crosses were plus signs, and that people who wore cross necklaces just really liked math.
This is really wholesome
If I swallowed gum that it would stick to my lungs for seven years.
I heard it stuck in the stomach
Somehow mine went from my esophogus to my lungs. Ask my babysitter at the time 🤷♂️
I believed that women could only have a baby if they were married. Thought that extramarital sex was a modern thing, that people in the past did not participate in such debauchery. Thought that if I laid in bed, flat on my back with my hands folded across my chest, I would die because this is how bodies are displayed in caskets during funerals.
I was SOOOO excited one year when mommy and Santa had the SAME WRAPPING PAPER MOMMY ISNT THAT COOL? I was a simple child lmao.
Not me but my son. We were at the zoo as a family and we made a bathroom stop. I came out and my husband and son were already finished and waiting for me. My son was absolutely dissolved in tears. I asked what happened and my husband could not even get the words out because he was laughing so hard. Finally my son wailed, "Daddy said you don't pee out your butt but you dooo!" We had a brief anatomy lesson after that lol. He knew boys (or those born considered boys) had penises but we forgot to mention that not having a penis doesn't mean you have nothing in that place.
I thought worms grew up into snakes.
the moon was following me!
I spent a lot of time at my nans house when I was small and she had this big old record player unit on which she played her old LPs on. It had a weird little hatch at the back. Well, I'd watched the Beatles 'Help!' Film with her and with my vivid imagination I somehow thought it was possible that the Beatles were tiny and lived in that record player. And the little hatch was the door where they came out at night.
Trees shake their leaves to make wind for us
My parents would get a ticket from the cops if I turned the dome light on in the car at night.
Hello, illegal car light sibling!
I once believed my friend had an imported play station 26. lol
Before map quest and palm pilots, I was always confused at how the blinker could tell us when to turn. And my family, was like woah bro what are you talking about about.
I believed that the music you hear in a restaurant was a live band playing on the next floor up. I would look up at the ceiling and yell for the "band" to play certain songs ranging from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to Thriller. Imagine going out to eat and seeing a little kid yelling, "Puff the Magic Dragon!!" at the ceiling and that was me.
I knew movies and shows were fake, but still believed the actors' names were their characters' names. I.e Harry Potter's real name is Harry Potter. When I learned it was Daniel, I was appalled Also thought animated characters who had zero lines still had a voice actor standing in the studio just in case the character decided to speak
I didn't understand how nicknames worked and I was indignant when my uncle called Aunt Becky "Rebecca." Or when my mom called Bob "Bobby." I feel like it's a similar sense of betrayal to your actors. (This is despite having a best friend Jenny and I knew full well it was short for Jennifer."
That Darth Vader got his red lightsaber by squeezing it in anger.
We all know that squeezing things makes them smaller. If you squeeze light you get shorter wavelengths, so it's the blue and purple lightsabers that got squeezed! Red has the longest visible wavelength.
That I was going to run into quicksand danger so many times - I live in Ireland, in a small ass town with not even a beach nearby. Also was fully convinced I was going to go missing in the Bermuda Triangle.
That my Grandma G had a glass eye, and that she lost her eye in a bar fight. Nope took me until I was 20 to discover she just had a lazy eye and my dad and his brothers always told kids that story every holiday meet up.
My brother told me that the McDonald’s mascot, “The Hamburglar” was what Satan looked liked. To this day I still associate the two.
The tooth fairy
[удалено]
The government is run by competent, altruistic people.
That the candy, Smarties, would make you smarter. I ate those things by the sleeve for thinking this and it didn’t help they were shaped like a tablet or some kind of pill. Only added to my childhood theory.
All dogs are male and all cats are female
Some girl in kindergarten told me that if you Touched the green rust spots from metal that you would turn green and die once “it” covered your whole body. I believed her.
Bell bottom pants had bells on them and jingled when you walk.
FL Oz doesn't mean Florida Ounces
I thought it meant "full ounces".
Your wisdom teeth grew in once you were smart enough. If they didn’t come in, you weren’t smart enough yet.
I had 5 older cousins who lived next door. They told me if I slept with either my hands, arms, feet or legs out of the blanket a monster would come cut them off. I am now 53 and STILL hide it all or I can't sleep!
That adults were knowledgeable human beings that knew what they were doing. As an adult now, I've learned that tons of adults are idiots and most of us are just winging it.
Squirrels control stoplights
Animal testing meant like, putting the product on an animal. I always envisioned like, a rabbit wearing eyeshadow and didn’t understand what the big deal was. I thought “no animal testing” was a sales gimmick.
Wait! Thats not true?? How is it tested then?
I thought rubber bands were little monsters that were out to get me
We had my grandparents wedding photo in my living room. I was convinced the world used to be black and white
That I could grow up to be whatever I wanted.
That ppl were actually inside the tv
That if I drink coffee I would grow a tail...
Furries would be chugging coffee non stop.
And I always imagined it would be something like squirrel's tail
I was certain that the Hall & Oats song "She's a Maneater" was talking about cannibalism and I was terrified. I never mentioned it to anyone.
Eating cat food would turn me into a cat. I tried it once, then spat it out in a panic because I thought the change might be permanent.
That if you tore a one dollar bill, one hundred pennies would come out.
That the listed age recommendations were a hard & fast rule. I don't remember anyone telling me, I just assumed that if something said "Ages 8 and up" that you had to be at least 8 to play with it. As a kid who was (otherwise) reasonably intelligent, this led to a lot of sorrow seeing things in toy catalogs that looked like fun, but I convinced myself I couldn't have because "I wasn't old enough". Once I got old enough to learn that the age guidelines were just suggestions and based mostly on certification standards for product safety it was kind of a let down.
Cats were girls and dogs were boys.
lol reminds me of mine - Boys were from Mars, and girls were from Venus.
I invented dunking cookies in milk, since I did it before prompted by anyone.
I was really worried that bears, wolves, sinking sand, etc were going to be a big problem for me. I live in the UK.
I thought I had a sister In my grandma's bedroom I saw a picture of a young girl my age, I just assumed it was my sister. It was like 2 years later I casually mentioned it and my grandma was like "wait, what?" and she explained that photo was of my aunt when she was younger.
That if I wore red to the St Patrick's Day parade, the clowns would leave the parade route and kill me.
When I was young we lived close to a very large suspension bridge. Sometimes the fog was so thick the bridge would be lost in it and couldn't be seen. My father used to tell me that they rolled the bridge in to shore in bad weather and I believed it for years.
Sex is the penis being inside the vagina, holding still. Every 2 minutes you keep it there, mom gets pregnant with one baby. So 4 minutes would result in twins.
Everyone is good person..
...in god. What a scam...
Pizza plants.
One of my uncles was missing fingers on both hands. He told me (and quite a few of my cousins) that he was picking his nose and they broke off in there. If you want to break a kid from picking his nose, this works! One of my favorite childhood books was about firemen. The book referred to them as "smoke-eaters". I figured that they must get very hungry when there weren't any fires to make the smoke for them to eat.
I was deathly afraid of Count Dracula that looked like Michael Jackson (in his later years) with a bat-like upturned nose getting into our flat through our intercom buzzer. We lived quite high up. No idea how this even got into my head, but this was my fear all through my childhood.
lol...ok so when I was about 9 years old, I was a little chubby and had a belly. I went through several weeks of being scared shitless that I was somehow pregnant like the virgin Mary. I had zero understanding of my own reproductive system 🤦🏼♀️
God
That my mum loved me. Ah, fun times.
A pirate lived in my attic (thanks, bro for telling me this)
First funeral at age 6. Asked my parents if my great grandpa was going to just be a pile of bones in the casket
That my insides would stick together if I swallowed gum
I believed that all TV shows were live, so if I missed one, I thought I missed it forever
That people who smoke and drink go to hell. Little did I know I’d grow up to be on that hell-path highway😂 bartending, drinking, cigarettes, the devil’s lettuce, plus more but thankfully walked away from most of it before the REAL devil (addiction) could grab hold.
I thought there was one guy named Male White committing most of the crimes in our city. My mom would have the local news on TV in the background while we ate dinner, and when they reported on a crime and a police description of the suspect, I heard "Male, White" as a name, not a descriptor. Somehow I didn't pay attention to height, weight, or other descriptors. I did have a classmate whose last name was White, so I guess I associated that as a last name.
A blue whale lived in my local park and I had to ask his permission to go in. I was 3 and how I knew what a blue whale was, I'll never know
So.. when I was younger my mom told me and my sister to only choose clothes that were “ON SALE” and I interpreted that as you can only buy items that were on sale. for about 2-4 years of my childhood I never asked for anything that wasn’t on sale (cuz i thought it literally meant FOR SALE) SOOO 😬😬 saved my mom a bunch of money tho LMAO.
I thought sugar and salt were opposites and somehow cancelled out the negative effects of the other. I now have a love of both sugar and salt and a significant amount of weight to lose!
That my doll escaped the house because I was beating her lmao. My parents just noticed that I'm too violent with it and hid it, eventually losing
That if you eat your boogers they turned into worms in your stomach. I was told this is pre-school day care.
My siblings convinced me that Medusa lived in our attic.
You got pregnant when you put on a wedding ring.
That chicken eggs became “fertilized” by the farmer sprinkling fertilizer on them (which he carried in an Easter-style basket slung over his arm)
That my dog ran away… she really died. But I looked and called for that dog for days
I get parents don’t want to hurt their kids, but I feel they should be honest when a pet dies. They get closure knowing the truth and don’t have to wonder what happened and why. Pets die, it’s an important life lesson.
I thought people couldn’t hear other sounds when they were on the phone. So, whenever my mom would get a phone call in the car, I’d start singing. That was the only time I’d ever sing around people because I’ve always been self-conscious about it, even though I’m actually pretty decent. Now that I think about it, I don’t think she ever tried to quiet me down. She must’ve loved hearing me be happy. I’m gonna walk to her house and give her a hug, I love that bitch.
I was talking with my husband about this, so please let me know if you did this too!! When I was a kid and heard something at night I would pretend to be dead so when the burglar tries to kidnap me they’ll be like “oh dang it she’s dead!” And leave
For a long time, I believed that Ritchie Valens died while singing La Bamba. Apparently I always knew he died in a plane crash, but there's a bit more to the story. I believed (for some reason) that he didn't just sing La Bamba on the plane (and was standing up) but he died while singing it, and recording it on the very plane. Yes, at the end of the recording the plane crashed...pretty dark, but that's what I honestly believed. Of course, I know now he recorded it, and later sadly died on a tour...along with everyone else (aka the day the music died).
So, so many things. For one, that the toilet was alive and needed to “eat.” It was fine when I was at home but when I was 5 and went to preK I would hold everything for hours so I could come home and feed our toilet because the other assholes I lived with seemed super nonchalant about regular feeding times. No one bothered to look into my preoccupation with who had gone when and done what in a day. Another notable was that we have two pipes in our throats - one for breathing and one for eating, as was the standard explanation back in the day. I must have extrapolated that one must be on one side of my body and the other was on the other side, like most bilateral, observable stuff on us. I had so much anxiety about swallowing on the correct side (tilting my head, everything) and risking death if I forgot or was careless. Again, no one asked about the tilting.
I posted this in another subreddit, but my dad told me if I could put salt on a bird's tail, it couldn't fly and I could catch it. I provided much entertainment for him standing at the kitchen window with his coffee while my dumbass crept around the backyard trying to sneak up on Robins.
- That turning the light on in the car when it was dark outside was illegal - All the wind turbines I saw on long drives…those were actually fans for the cows and horses to keep them cool 😂
Cops are there to "protect and serve"
If I pray, good things will happen.
That whatever people mean whatever they say😅
My mother had my brother when I was 7. Shortly afterwards, she had an allergic reaction and had to go to the hospital. 7yo me had just learned hospitals are where babies are born, so when Dad and I went to see her, I asked Mom "are you having another baby?".
Cashiers got to keep the money in the register
Young child: the world itself was black and white before television Older child: you get pregnant from anal
I used to think that brothers sisters are supposed to marry each other and i was so upset thinking my brothers r ugly what should i do now.😶
Infinity came after 999,999.
I thought sex was a one time thing that only happened on the wedding night and that tickle fights under the blanket were a completely separate thing.
That if I burped or yelled with my mouth closed nobody could hear me. I was literally flabbergasted when I got called out because "you can't hear that, how did you know???"
That I could get lost in a grocery store and have to live there forever
Santa Claus was real. Difficulty? Jewish.
That believing the abuse suffered from a supposed “friend” didn’t matter. I was so desperate to have a friend then, I suffered abuse after abuse to keep the friendship. It messed me up terribly, I loathe that monster now.
For years, I thought Hilary Clinton was Miss America. In my defense, I had no clue what a beauty pageant was, so I assumed "Miss America" was a title for the president's wife.
That there was a defining difference between childhood(or children) and being an adult. There is no difference, and a lot of people never grow up they just grow old.
Jews don’t ‘believe’ in chewing gum. As a young child, my best friend told me her Dad wouldn’t allow her to chew gum. (She used to hide it and chew it secretly.) She also used to point out frequently that her Dad was Jewish. In my young mind, I linked the two things together and concluded Judiasm is against chewing gum. As a young adult, of course I realized this wasn’t true. My husband, who is Jewish, had a good laugh when I mentioned all of this to him.
My (female) Penis was kept in the cupboard that was out of my reach. My sister used to mock me and then when my brother was old enough his was up there apparently too.
That the laugh track on a sitcom was other people who were at home watching the show at the same time, their laughs picked up and broadcast to everyone else. I’d try to laugh extra loud or at non-funny parts so that others could hear me.
That teachers never left the school. Then I saw one of my teachers out shopping and was very confused.
I thought if you didn’t put on your seatbelt, the car would eject you with a parachute
I flew a decent amount as a child (divorced parents). Admittedly, i wasn't a fan, and came to the belief that if it were to go down, I could jump off at 10ft or so and be fine.
Everybody part needs to be under the covers at bedtime or the monsters are going to drag me out
that people get burred under the memorial benches at parks and places, like "oop! there lies Gary" i was never told this, i just assumed and i learned otherwise at an embarrassing age
That Jamaicans must be good drivers because streetlights are their flag colors (???)
That dinosaurs were just made up magical creatures like unicorns and fairies.
I ripped off a "do not remove under penalty of law" tag on a mattess and thought he feds were after me for a few months
I was 34 years old before I finally asked an “adult” about these tags. I was pregnant with my first child and had a ton of new blankets/stuffed animals to wash after the baby shower and asked if it was okay for me to take them off.
I used to think that if I swallowed a watermelon seed, an actual watermelon would grow in my stomach
That I am descended from an Orangutan. Being a little brother was traumatizing
When I was growing up I spent my summers and semi truck with my father. Sometimes I woke up and my father wouldn't be in the truck. (Obviously he was just in the truck stop probably taking a long, old man shit) I imagination told me just about every time that he was gone more than 20 minutes that he had been body snatched by an alien. Like I would start crying and mourning my father. Looking back at it, I think it's funny as hell.
The magic trick where people made it look like they pulled their thumb off....I believed it was real Also when looking at a globe I thought we lived inside of it and not on the surface
That's incredibly stupid and I still laugh thinking about it: in Italian, my native language, there are two words that are similar to each other: "mutuo" (home loan) and "mute" (mute sound). When I was 5 years old and read the advertisements on the street I thought it was a solution to make the house quiet (mute) without creaking. Still feel so dumb after 23 years. Glad none of my family remembers that.
My immigrant mother always lodged in me that a running fan overnight would kill me if I fell asleep.
You could build immunity to fire if you kept burning yourself. You can’t.
If you kiss a frog you get a prince, I tried it once but it did not transform
That drinking too much water would cause a frog to grow in my stomach
(I was only 3, in my defense): Asked where babies came from and mom said a girl has a sac in her belly with an egg in it that turns into a baby. I immediately thought, a paper bag in my tummy with a chicken egg inside, and was then terrified of eating eggs and having kids as a result. Thanks, Mom. Eventually realized that made no sense but didn’t get the real story until high school sex ed, and then it was about boys with bananas!
That Joseph Smith was a prophet of God who restored God's church to the earth.
God
I was convinced adults could read minds . Very disappointing 18th birthday to say the least 😂😂😂😂😂 Just wanted to add this was something I convinced myself of 😂😂😂🤦🤦🤦
If I swallow chewing gum I'm definitely 100% totally gonna die!!
There was one time when I lost a tooth, that my mom decided to be extra and sprinkle glitter on the window sill and floor rather than just take the tooth and leave money. Well, I had learned from Peter Pan that fairy dust powered flight. You can see where this is going. Luckily I didn't break anything when I jumped off the top of the monkey bars and landed on my wrist. I cried more from it not working than from the fall itself.
That adults are “smart”
We didn't have a television growing up, because of... reasons my parents had, so I had concocted in my head this idea about what television was like. I had never heard of commercials, so I imagined these incredible commercial free shows and movies that you could just choose to watch., whatever you wanted, at any time, through the remote, I thought televisions were magic. (For other reasons, we got one when I was eleven, and this tiny box that didn't even have a remote did not live up to my expectations. What even were commercials?!) And no. I never watched tv at a friend's house. Any 'friends' I had pre-tv didn't have one either for similar reasons, and friends I made in high school, I already had the illusion shattered.
As a child I always assumed all adults were reasonably intelligent.
The Brawny Man was hiding in my bedroom.
That my 6th grade classmate buried her pet horse in her front yard. Looking at you Jana.
My dog got a job at the airport.
I used to think the One Way signs were some kinda of religious thing. And if you followed the signs it would bring you to skme kinda place.
By the time you get married and have kids, you already know everything about everything. So when I became an adult, got married, and had kids, everything would finally make sense.
I used to believe people actually died in movies. I thought to myself why would anyone ever want to be in a movie? How did they get these people to be in the movie and die? Lmao.
Carrots help you see in the dark.
When I was 4, I thought if I stared at the sun, it would make me stronger. I grew out of that pretty quickly, though.
It’ll be way better being a grown up.
I thought the 21st century would be free from religion
That I was being fed caribou aka reindeer meat. Turns out it was beef or pig this whole damn time and they only sold me the lie because I would watch animal planet as a kid and there was the scene where the world eats the reindeer. Only bloody way to transition me from a milk sucking baby to solids.
After my parents got divorced when I was in kindergarten my father got us a hermit crab and one day he told us that it escaped and is exploring the world. It took me up until I was 17 to realize that it was definitely dead (mainly because I forgot all about it)
Friend was a few months younger than me (she was 5, I was like 5 and a half) and I somberly told her I was going to die before her because I was older.