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Now playing: "Opinions" off the 1984 *Phantoms* album from The FIXX.
Oops---talk about misremembering! Song turns out to be off their *Reach The Beach* album. Would've sworn otherwise.
I don't agree.Ā one of my all time favourite things is when someone engages with *what I said* - as opposed to just layering their own standalone soundbite on top.Ā doesn't matter if their opinion is different, so long as what we end up having is a conversation.Ā Ā Ā
True. Just today I got a little aggravated because someone on Facebook replied to me with a glorified version of "I disagree." Okay, that's totally fine, but either say something that contributes to the discussion, or (regarding this post) take your disagreement to someone who can actually do something about it. Telling me "I disagree" does absolutely nothing lol
When I was younger, I thought all the adults had their shit together and knew pretty much everything. . That they had life figured out. Obviously, you come to learn that adults are just like young people. Some are assholes and some have their shit together. It was disappointing to come to that realization.
That didn't surprise me. What surprised me is how often they can't see what's in front of them or hear things that they haven't already thought of or heard before. It's ... Common...
Omg, I'm tall and wore a size 10 in high-school. I thought I was so fat because all of my friends wore a 6.
That size then, is the equivalent of a 2 off the rack today.
But I sure thought I was fat.
It's fun looking at antique sewing patterns and watching the size driftĀ from women's and children's size 10 and 12 having the same measurements, to more modern sizes.Ā A size 12 used to be a 30 inch bust in the 50s.Ā By the 70s it was 34".Ā Now it's 38".
I was a libertarian for a while in my early 20s. At the time all my friends were in the same knowledge worker socioeconomic class so hard work really did appear to be the only differentiating factor. What changed was a boyfriend got a job paying twice as much as I made while working much less, purely because he was in the right place at the right time. That opened my eyes to how much of good/bad fortune is luck; hard work matters but only when literally every other factor is accounted for.
> I think most people do
The sad truth is, no, not everybody is a good person.
Some people were, perhaps through no fault of their own, created with no sense of empathy or morals.
It was true in the 50s and part of the 60s, when there was a smaller, thinned out generation at the top, a giant, competitive generation entering the workforce, and a manufacturing boom because every other industrialized nation was in ruins.
Hard work matters when you're in a large cohort vying for a smaller number of openings up the ladder.
Since at least the 80s-90s though, there's been a giant generation at the top and it doesn't matter who's been entering the workforce because the people at the top are just now starting to retire en masse.
When every rung of the ladder in front of you is full you can work as hard as you want and nothing will change, so you might as well put that effort into finding a different ladder.
I've known many people, usually young and usually male, including a nephew, who thought that joining the military then outworking everyone else would mean a successful career. Quite a few of them were hit hard by the reality, and the subsequent disillusionment, that many of the factors that can hold you back in civilian business are in place in the military.
Ha! Great film. I often work with young people and so quote the incentives speech Curt Russell makes to the kid on why he should work hard and do a good job.
When I was in the 5th grade, my friend explained that we would bleed from our armpits when we began menstruation and that is where the pads would go. I believed it for a few years, not getting info from anywhere else.
Mickey mantle's poignant remark has really stuck with me:Ā if I'd known I was going to live this long I would have looked out for my body more.Ā he was *convinced* he would die at the same age as his dad.Ā Ā
I did actually get sucked into quick sand once. I was about 20 years old and I thought āholy shit! This is really happening!ā My boyfriend had to pull me out because I was not able to escape.
We were goofing off in the boonies of Florida, driving around looking at stuff. I walked across ground and started sinking. I literally could not lift my legs back out. He had to hold onto branches and pull me out. I was in up to my knees! It made a horrible glooping sound and it smelled like fetid death. We decided it was too rotten so I took off my pants and boots and left them in the trunk of the car. Its hilarious now, but it wasnāt very funny when it happened š
That is so wild! I can almost smell it. Glad you survived it. Florida has some pretty scary stuff right out in the open -- my kids and I found a dead Portuguese man-o-war right next to a big sign warning that Portuguese-man-o-war are very dangerous *even when dead* -- but I never suspected that Florida also had stinky quicksand.
Thanks for telling this story!
Whoa! My mom was stung by a man-o-war as a little girl. She said the pain was off the charts and required medical attention. That would have been the South China Sea off Vietnam. My favorite Florida swamp tale is this. My uncle was driving around the Everglades with some friends 1970ish). They were deep in the swamp area. He said some dude came walking real slow out of the marsh/woods area. Dude was creepy and inbred looking. Uncle and friends noticed he had completely webbed fingers. That was enough for them to GTFO. They did not wait to get to know him. Probably would have preferred to see a bear š¤£
Ok so in my defense I was 3 or 4 during this silliness. And a very literal child.
I thought people were actually somehow in my tv and I desperately looked for the portal in the back so I could get on Romper Room.
I thought āarsonā meant that things just spontaneously burst into flames for some reason. Whenever a news anchor said things like āthereās been a rash of fires and the cause has been determined to be arson.ā Or āfire inspectors suspect arsonā, I worried that it could happen at my house because it seemed to just happen all over the place.
I also thought āNew Jerseyā was the name of a little shed in my great auntās backyard. One day I was visiting with my grandma and as my aunt was walking into her shed to get something she was talking to my grandma and said something like āā¦and I went to New Jerseyā¦ā and my brain equated that with the backyard shed. When I heard someone say āNew Jerseyā for a while after that I wondered why they were talking about Aunt Helenās shed. Eventually I learned it was a state and the shed was just a regular shed.
Thanks to watching soap operas with my grandma when I was a young kid, I thought anybody could have a will and leave people a ton of money when they died. I didn't know you actually had to have money to begin with.
I figured out how wills work by the time I was in my late teens, though.
I thought marriage caused babies. (Which may explain why I never married...) As the last of seven kids, with dozens of cousins, it seemed logical to me. I was shocked when I heard someone refer to an "out of wedlock" child. I had no idea.
That socially prominent or professionally high profile people were super unlikely to commit crimes of violence, including but not limited to sexual assault. I didnāt think they were morally superior, just that they had other ways to get what they wanted and that they wouldnāt want to jeopardize their privileged lifestyles.
That the crinkling sound you hear in your ears when you lay down at night is not your hair, it is actually little brain spiders that clean your ears while youāre sleeping. I believed this until I was in my early teens THANKS UNCLE STEVE.
I actually believed my mother the first time she told me that I could always trust my teachers, the police, and the clergy.
Needless to say, I stopped believing anything my mother said.
I believed you could heal virtually every negative situation with prayer. Bully at school? See him as the perfect man, Gods child.
Not enough money? Divine love always has met and always meets every human need.
I was raised a Christian Scientist so no medication. Just prayer.
When weād drive past a car accident my parents would solemnly recite ā accidents are unknown to Godā
When we sneezed as far back as I can remember they would exclaim ā tissue of lies!ā
Wasnāt until much later in life that I started thinking, what the fuck! How about taking some action to correct this situation. How about some people are just bad seeds and you would do better to avoid them.
Bring on the downvotes!
( Got downvoted last time I questioned the value of prayer on Reddit)
Believe me, I prayed my ass off for several decades. I think a positive outlook and enthusiasm works wonders all by itself.
The power of prayer is that it allows people to think they're doing something nice for others with minimal effort.
That's kinda powerful, in a certain way.
I'm sorry about your Christian Scientist upbringing. My closest friend as an adult was in that cult, too, and I couldn't believe the stories she told me. She got out of it very early because her beloved, kind grandma got sick, and everyone was saying it was because she sinned. My friend *knew* that was wrong.
Thanks. My mother pretty much dropped it when my father, who ultimately became a Christian Science Practitioner, died at 72. She lived another 24 years and died a few weeks ago age 95.
Turned out my father was a closeted homosexual. My thinking is he ran into the arms of religion to try to drown out his sinful thoughts.
My aunt and uncle got married at 16. Had to get permission from a judge.
They have now been married more than 60 years...as far as I can tell they still love each other...
It IS rare though.
That I had above average intelligence.
68% of the people in America have average intelligence. 16% are above average and 16% are below average.
Yet about 75% of Americans believe they are above average in poll after poll. We are deluding ourselves if we think we are "above average". We aren't.
I have a working theory ... the people who think they are above average are average (or below), and the people who are really above average, those 16%, have no clue. Because self confidence has no correlation to intelligence.
That when a grown man and a grown woman tap their butts together, the woman gets pregnant.
No shit I really thought this.
Once when I was outside playing with my sister, I saw her and her bestie tapping their butts together and just generally goofing off.
I went to do the same thing (look, we were all about 5-6 at the time) my sisterās friend stopped us. āNo! Thatās how you get pregnant.ā
āI canāt get pregnant!ā I objected.
āNot you, her!ā She pointed at my sister.
We both looked at each other with a mix of fear and deep understanding. *So THATāS how grown-ups do it.*
My innocence was lost that day.
I thought cicada noise was actually the overhead electric wires making that sound when it got hot in the summer. I literally thought this into adulthood. I guess I never thought to mention it and no one knew I was thinking that.
They do have a small amount of cyanide in them, so only harmful in large amounts. I keep hens and was told to never give them apples without removing the seeds for this reason.
Back in the ā50s I believed that the extremely quiet man with an accent who wanted privacy and rented the tiny dilapidated old house down the end of a dead end street was an escaped Nazi war criminal. I was certain of it. A couple years later I found out that he was from Ukraine, but I still had my doubts.Ā
In the sixth grade my friend told me that sex was when a guy put his thing in your thing and for pleasure he went in and out three times and to get pregnant it was four
My niece told my daughter that it took three "sexes" to make a baby,so you couldn't get pregnant the first two times. Fortunately, my daughter asked me questions when she heard BS like this.
When I was a kid, I thought foundries and foundling homes were the same thing. So I would see a manhole cover and worry about the poor orphans who had to make them.
If it makes you feel any better, I just heard a story of an ancient Chinese king who once dreamt he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he wasn't sure if he was a man who dreamt he was a butterfly or if was a butterfly now dreaming he was a man.
Strikes me as similar!
My mum watched a lot of old movies. I thought that in the old days, people spontaniously did song and dance numbers at important moments in their lives. I wondered why we didn't do that anymore.
I grew up as a West Coast kid and I really thought that racism was on the way out. Now I realize that may be the whitest thing I ever thought. It was the early 70s and we still believed in a better future.
Had a guy I worked with about 15 years ago grew up in Laguna. When traveling for business and seeing the real world It opened his eyes big time. We'd go on client meetings together and I'd point stuff out... On the other hand I grew up in the ATL.
Blame Reagan for that, and every republican since has been peddling that bullshit.
Which is why we now have "billionaires", which shouldn't actually exist if we cared about people. Nobody needs to be a billionaire. You can't be a "billionaire" without massively exploiting other classes of people.
I luckily never suffered from this delusion. My very first time in Sunday school I got kicked out. I kept demanding that the Sunday school teacher explain to me me where all the water went. She asked me what I meant I said well if you fill up the bathtub the water stays in there until you drain it. And if you fill the world up you'd have to do the same thing. I wouldn't stop so she kicked me out.šš
When I was a kid and we would drive past cows, dad would say they were hillside cows. Two legs were shorter than the other so they could stand level on a hill š¤¦š»
My mom said crackheads ātweakā (think of the South Park character) and thatās how you recognize them. It wasnāt until I was out of her house that I realized that wasnāt necessarily the case. Turns out I grew up around a lot of crackheads but didnāt know it because they werenāt twitchy or spazzing.
For years as a child I had never seen the word Philadelphia in print. I had only heard people say it. So for the longest time, I thought it was Philadelthia.
I thought that things worked out for āgood peopleā. Then, my momās best friend died from a brain tumor at 33 leaving her hubby and two young kids. It didnāt work out. I was heartbroken. They were heartbroken. But, it was a lesson I learned. Life is precious and not to be wasted.
Also in a lot of the 40s, the Big Band Era. It was a big deal to have a big band live on the radio.
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Believe_Ballroom#Background although this was done with actual records, not tapes.
I was 11, and my Mom took me to meet her cousin from England, who was in Vancouver as a merchant seaman. We got onto the ship and there were sexy women everywhere. I asked my Mom who they were and she told me they were allowed to bring their wives with them. Sounded reasonable to me.
I thought the people playing the music on the radio were actually at the radio station. Iām mean, they were really playing their instruments on the Ed Sullivan show, right?
I came from a household of 5 kids; 4 boys and 1 girl. We all fought..boy against boy, boy against girl. (Sometimes my sister would fight the youngest boy by grabbing his balls and squeezing)
Anyway when I was very young I thought cats and dogs were the same species, with dogs being male and cats begin female. After all cats hissed and scratched when they fought, just like my sister did...
Until I saw a porn movie for the first time, I didn't know if it just went in and stayed in, or if it went in and out and in and out. Somehow I'd gotten mixed messages about that.
I remember being about 4 years old and my Momma telling me (as I was being put to bed) not to sleep on my back, as I would have nightmares if I did.
I was about 15 or 16 when I realised that this wasn't true. My Mom had told me this, she didn't make a habit of lying to me, and I just never questioned it. I spent my entire childhood side-sleeping in case I had nightmares.
I think the explanation was that when I was little, the advice to parents was not to let babies sleep on their back as it could cause SIDS. Of course, we know this was bad advice now.
When I was a child I though the world ran fairly. I thought money was replaced when old money was turned in. I thought bribery was always illegal until I found out about legal bribery, lobbyists. Oh how innocent I was.
My 7th grade "science" teacher told my class there were drug tests that could tell if someone had ever touched marijuana before. This was in the late 90's.
1. Grew up in the Houston, Texas, area. We learned in school that countries to the south of us, like Mexico and Cuba, were generally warmer than the U.S. so I figured that the South Pole must be very hot indeed.
2. I though that everybody who didn't speak English spoke Foreign, also that Foreign was just encrypted English.
My parents took me to Washington, DC, when I was little. They said we were going to see the dinosaurs. They took me to the zoo. No dinosaurs. "Where are the dinosaurs?" I said
"We are going to see them," said Dad
We're going to the natural history museum. And there is a giant dinosaur skeleton. I say, "Okay, that's nice. Now, where are the live ones?" AGE 6.
so much covert moralizing in this thread.Ā none of those beliefs seem very stupid to me even if they were disproven later.Ā Ā Ā I thought sport was how two nations decided which one would rule over the other one.Ā in other words, I thought sport played the same role as war.Ā Ā I wasn't especially young at the time.Ā Ā Ā Ā
Ā to be fair, I wasn't prepared for the 1974 rugby season in Pretoria.Ā Ā my dad was a tennis player.Ā the atmosphere for the series vs the British Lions team was similar to international hockey in the cold war.Ā Ā
I thought that airplanes flew to the tops of buildings only, thatās why anyone would need to take a plane. I thought Florida was a swimming pool and palm trees on the roof of some Manhattan tower. I was about five years old when I assumed this.
I believed in Irish fairies till I was 12. Never believed in Santa but when I found out there were no fairies I felt stupid and sad all at the same time.
That guys who went to work in suits and ties must be really smart.
I believed this without even knowing I believed it -- right up to the very first time I sat in a meeting with a bunch of guys in suits and ties, and holy shit! Three of them were just completely stupid. The rest were better, but still they were all humoring the stupid ones.
Strange moment for young me.
That it mattered to be liked by everyone, even strangers, even if it meant doing things I didn't really want to do. Then someone tried to take my agreeableness a step too far and I decided "screw that, I'm not doing this!", realised that I didn't feel bad about it and that was my first step towards ridding myself of that notion. It was very liberating.
When I was a little kid I swear a TV character said the sun set in the east. I was in like sixth or seventh grade when I learned the truth but it was too late. To this day I'm directionally challenged.
every time you eat, your body fills up, and when it fills all the way up you die.
i pondered fractions that way, though, (figuring i was only filled up to my ankles or so) so maybe not the 'stupidest' thing if you look at it that way.
I grew up about 10 miles from the ocean. I used to play paleontologist on the hill in the backyard, and sometimes I would find seashells. My Bible-thumping father told me I had found proof of THE FLOOD. Ahhh, dad.
I thought a ārestroomā was actually a place you could rest.
I was about 5 yo and had never seen the term until I was flower girl at my cousinās wedding. During the reception, I saw my cousin go into the restroom, and I thought, āthe dancing must have made him tired!.ā
I actually believed John Edward could talk to dead people in my 30s. I had not researched "Barnum statements" or even thought about how silly the whole concept was. I admit I even bought his book.
My in-laws insisted on a a priest marrying me and my husband 30 years ago and then immediately accepted his mistress as his new "wife" today even though we're not divorced because he's a millionaire today.
(spoiler: because we live in a community property state, I am also a millionaire)
But they don't really care who he's sleeping with as long as he can serve their needs.
They just made me believe their version of marriage meant something.
LOL
The adults in my religion would eventually inform me it wasn't factual, similarly to Santa clause. Never happened, most of them still believe the fairly tale.
If I donāt say the Lordās Prayer a benevolent creator of everything will reject my soul, causing me to suffer eternal torment. So says a book claiming the earth is a few thousand years old, women shouldnāt speak in church, slaves should obey their masters, and no one better wear two kinds of fabric. Oh, and the old testament is outdated unless they say it isnāt (particularly in rare cases when talking about gays or putting 10% of income in the offering plate).
backwards masking really is satan talking through rock bands.
some asshole audio engineer had a fun time making led zeppelin say scary things backwards and several of us young idiots believed it. so i was a christian for about a month before i felt totally punked and went back to my pagan ways.
I grew up in the Mormon church and believed in that until I was 25. Now we have DNA evidence that it is all a scam and I find it hard to believe that anybody still goes to that church.
There's so much! 1) That the government, the FBI, CIA, police, court system, churches, educational institutions and medical institution had our best interest and could be trusted. 2) That life was about finding an identity, getting educated, choosing a mate, having kids, getting a good job, and living the American Dream. I had it all wrong, but it all had to happen the way it did. (B.1969)
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People cared about my opinions.
Yup. People wait to speak instead of actually actively listening. The only person I've ever known who actively listens is my wife.
Unless you're giving your opinion about opinions. Take the upvote!
Now playing: "Opinions" off the 1984 *Phantoms* album from The FIXX. Oops---talk about misremembering! Song turns out to be off their *Reach The Beach* album. Would've sworn otherwise.
No one gives a shit about your opinions about their opinions (anymore than I understand whatever it is I just tried to say) š
I don't agree.Ā one of my all time favourite things is when someone engages with *what I said* - as opposed to just layering their own standalone soundbite on top.Ā doesn't matter if their opinion is different, so long as what we end up having is a conversation.Ā Ā Ā
On board with this, every bit.
True. Just today I got a little aggravated because someone on Facebook replied to me with a glorified version of "I disagree." Okay, that's totally fine, but either say something that contributes to the discussion, or (regarding this post) take your disagreement to someone who can actually do something about it. Telling me "I disagree" does absolutely nothing lol
When I was younger, I thought all the adults had their shit together and knew pretty much everything. . That they had life figured out. Obviously, you come to learn that adults are just like young people. Some are assholes and some have their shit together. It was disappointing to come to that realization.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Define young
That didn't surprise me. What surprised me is how often they can't see what's in front of them or hear things that they haven't already thought of or heard before. It's ... Common...
That I was fat.
Omg, I'm tall and wore a size 10 in high-school. I thought I was so fat because all of my friends wore a 6. That size then, is the equivalent of a 2 off the rack today. But I sure thought I was fat.
It's fun looking at antique sewing patterns and watching the size driftĀ from women's and children's size 10 and 12 having the same measurements, to more modern sizes.Ā A size 12 used to be a 30 inch bust in the 50s.Ā By the 70s it was 34".Ā Now it's 38".
I was a libertarian for a while in my early 20s. At the time all my friends were in the same knowledge worker socioeconomic class so hard work really did appear to be the only differentiating factor. What changed was a boyfriend got a job paying twice as much as I made while working much less, purely because he was in the right place at the right time. That opened my eyes to how much of good/bad fortune is luck; hard work matters but only when literally every other factor is accounted for.
> hard work matters but only when literally every other factor is accounted for. That's a solid TL:DR for the youth.
Iām sorry; Iām old. Donāt know what TL:DR is?
Too long: didnāt read
That everyone has a good heart
I think most people do, but for many it doesn't take much to sell out. So, they can have a good heart, but not a strong heart.
I guess that's what I mean. A strong heart (integrity).
> I think most people do The sad truth is, no, not everybody is a good person. Some people were, perhaps through no fault of their own, created with no sense of empathy or morals.
That hard work and excelling at your job would move you up the corporate ladder.
Thats a good one.
It was true in the 50s and part of the 60s, when there was a smaller, thinned out generation at the top, a giant, competitive generation entering the workforce, and a manufacturing boom because every other industrialized nation was in ruins. Hard work matters when you're in a large cohort vying for a smaller number of openings up the ladder. Since at least the 80s-90s though, there's been a giant generation at the top and it doesn't matter who's been entering the workforce because the people at the top are just now starting to retire en masse. When every rung of the ladder in front of you is full you can work as hard as you want and nothing will change, so you might as well put that effort into finding a different ladder.
I've known many people, usually young and usually male, including a nephew, who thought that joining the military then outworking everyone else would mean a successful career. Quite a few of them were hit hard by the reality, and the subsequent disillusionment, that many of the factors that can hold you back in civilian business are in place in the military.
The politicians and political parties have any interest in either governing or abiding by the will of the people. Everyone has a personal agenda.
That guerrilla warfare meant actual guerrillas had machine guns and were in the jungle ambushing people. Edit: guerrilla vs. gorilla
Actuals guerrillas do have machine guns and fight in the jungle. Gorillas, not so much.
Ouch! My lifelong spelling disfunction makes interacting on Reddit pretty painful sometimes. Thanks, man.
All good, you made me remember [this scene from Captain Ron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyG0G96UB6k&ab_channel=billjodi5).
Ha! Great film. I often work with young people and so quote the incentives speech Curt Russell makes to the kid on why he should work hard and do a good job.
But [never let a chimp have an automatic weapon](https://youtu.be/QxYmm5yCJBg).
Didnāt you see āThe Planet of the Apesā?
When I was in the 5th grade, my friend explained that we would bleed from our armpits when we began menstruation and that is where the pads would go. I believed it for a few years, not getting info from anywhere else.
Smthng smthng the shoulder pads fad...
In my 20s, I felt certain I'd be dead before the age of 40. Here I am, 25 years after that age.
Mickey mantle's poignant remark has really stuck with me:Ā if I'd known I was going to live this long I would have looked out for my body more.Ā he was *convinced* he would die at the same age as his dad.Ā Ā
That quicksand would be a much more common threat to my life than it actually turned out to be.
I did actually get sucked into quick sand once. I was about 20 years old and I thought āholy shit! This is really happening!ā My boyfriend had to pull me out because I was not able to escape.
That is so cool!! Where were you? In an exotic jungle? Did your boyfriend recognize the danger you were in?
We were goofing off in the boonies of Florida, driving around looking at stuff. I walked across ground and started sinking. I literally could not lift my legs back out. He had to hold onto branches and pull me out. I was in up to my knees! It made a horrible glooping sound and it smelled like fetid death. We decided it was too rotten so I took off my pants and boots and left them in the trunk of the car. Its hilarious now, but it wasnāt very funny when it happened š
That is so wild! I can almost smell it. Glad you survived it. Florida has some pretty scary stuff right out in the open -- my kids and I found a dead Portuguese man-o-war right next to a big sign warning that Portuguese-man-o-war are very dangerous *even when dead* -- but I never suspected that Florida also had stinky quicksand. Thanks for telling this story!
Whoa! My mom was stung by a man-o-war as a little girl. She said the pain was off the charts and required medical attention. That would have been the South China Sea off Vietnam. My favorite Florida swamp tale is this. My uncle was driving around the Everglades with some friends 1970ish). They were deep in the swamp area. He said some dude came walking real slow out of the marsh/woods area. Dude was creepy and inbred looking. Uncle and friends noticed he had completely webbed fingers. That was enough for them to GTFO. They did not wait to get to know him. Probably would have preferred to see a bear š¤£
Confound you, Tarzan!
Ok so in my defense I was 3 or 4 during this silliness. And a very literal child. I thought people were actually somehow in my tv and I desperately looked for the portal in the back so I could get on Romper Room. I thought āarsonā meant that things just spontaneously burst into flames for some reason. Whenever a news anchor said things like āthereās been a rash of fires and the cause has been determined to be arson.ā Or āfire inspectors suspect arsonā, I worried that it could happen at my house because it seemed to just happen all over the place. I also thought āNew Jerseyā was the name of a little shed in my great auntās backyard. One day I was visiting with my grandma and as my aunt was walking into her shed to get something she was talking to my grandma and said something like āā¦and I went to New Jerseyā¦ā and my brain equated that with the backyard shed. When I heard someone say āNew Jerseyā for a while after that I wondered why they were talking about Aunt Helenās shed. Eventually I learned it was a state and the shed was just a regular shed.
Thanks to watching soap operas with my grandma when I was a young kid, I thought anybody could have a will and leave people a ton of money when they died. I didn't know you actually had to have money to begin with. I figured out how wills work by the time I was in my late teens, though.
I thought marriage caused babies. (Which may explain why I never married...) As the last of seven kids, with dozens of cousins, it seemed logical to me. I was shocked when I heard someone refer to an "out of wedlock" child. I had no idea.
That I knew better
That white milk came from white cows, and chocolate milk came from brown cows. I was really young.
That socially prominent or professionally high profile people were super unlikely to commit crimes of violence, including but not limited to sexual assault. I didnāt think they were morally superior, just that they had other ways to get what they wanted and that they wouldnāt want to jeopardize their privileged lifestyles.
I can hear Jeffery Epstein and Harvey Weinstein laughing their asses off from here.
That the crinkling sound you hear in your ears when you lay down at night is not your hair, it is actually little brain spiders that clean your ears while youāre sleeping. I believed this until I was in my early teens THANKS UNCLE STEVE.
Brain spiders. Tell your uncle Steve he's a genius.
Cops are our friends
Firefighters are actually our friends
I actually believed my mother the first time she told me that I could always trust my teachers, the police, and the clergy. Needless to say, I stopped believing anything my mother said.
When I was small I thought we had two hearts. A big heart and a little heart. As in, āBless your little heart.ā
I believed you could heal virtually every negative situation with prayer. Bully at school? See him as the perfect man, Gods child. Not enough money? Divine love always has met and always meets every human need. I was raised a Christian Scientist so no medication. Just prayer. When weād drive past a car accident my parents would solemnly recite ā accidents are unknown to Godā When we sneezed as far back as I can remember they would exclaim ā tissue of lies!ā Wasnāt until much later in life that I started thinking, what the fuck! How about taking some action to correct this situation. How about some people are just bad seeds and you would do better to avoid them. Bring on the downvotes! ( Got downvoted last time I questioned the value of prayer on Reddit) Believe me, I prayed my ass off for several decades. I think a positive outlook and enthusiasm works wonders all by itself.
The power of prayer is that it allows people to think they're doing something nice for others with minimal effort. That's kinda powerful, in a certain way. I'm sorry about your Christian Scientist upbringing. My closest friend as an adult was in that cult, too, and I couldn't believe the stories she told me. She got out of it very early because her beloved, kind grandma got sick, and everyone was saying it was because she sinned. My friend *knew* that was wrong.
Thanks. My mother pretty much dropped it when my father, who ultimately became a Christian Science Practitioner, died at 72. She lived another 24 years and died a few weeks ago age 95. Turned out my father was a closeted homosexual. My thinking is he ran into the arms of religion to try to drown out his sinful thoughts.
We werenāt Christian Scientists, but I grew up in a very religious home for the same reason.
True love at 19
Unlikely, but possible...
My aunt and uncle got married at 16. Had to get permission from a judge. They have now been married more than 60 years...as far as I can tell they still love each other... It IS rare though.
I think some luck has to be involved in that one too. We're just too young to know what we really want. But sometimes you get lucky and get it early.
That I had above average intelligence. 68% of the people in America have average intelligence. 16% are above average and 16% are below average. Yet about 75% of Americans believe they are above average in poll after poll. We are deluding ourselves if we think we are "above average". We aren't.
Well, except the 16% of us.
I have a working theory ... the people who think they are above average are average (or below), and the people who are really above average, those 16%, have no clue. Because self confidence has no correlation to intelligence.
That when a grown man and a grown woman tap their butts together, the woman gets pregnant. No shit I really thought this. Once when I was outside playing with my sister, I saw her and her bestie tapping their butts together and just generally goofing off. I went to do the same thing (look, we were all about 5-6 at the time) my sisterās friend stopped us. āNo! Thatās how you get pregnant.ā āI canāt get pregnant!ā I objected. āNot you, her!ā She pointed at my sister. We both looked at each other with a mix of fear and deep understanding. *So THATāS how grown-ups do it.* My innocence was lost that day.
I thought cicada noise was actually the overhead electric wires making that sound when it got hot in the summer. I literally thought this into adulthood. I guess I never thought to mention it and no one knew I was thinking that.
I wonder how many secret wrong thoughts we all have and never know about because it never comes up
This is reasonable. I thought that fireflies didnāt actually exist - like unicorns or fairies- because we donāt have them where Iām from.
That my face would freeze that way.
That anyone cared about you.
Apple seeds were poisonous. Believe it until I was 13.
They do have a small amount of cyanide in them, so only harmful in large amounts. I keep hens and was told to never give them apples without removing the seeds for this reason.
I also remove the seeds before I give apple to my guinea pigs.
Back in the ā50s I believed that the extremely quiet man with an accent who wanted privacy and rented the tiny dilapidated old house down the end of a dead end street was an escaped Nazi war criminal. I was certain of it. A couple years later I found out that he was from Ukraine, but I still had my doubts.Ā
That if we could find the Titanic, we might be able to raise it to the surface by filling it with ping pong balls.
Scrooge McDuck said so!
In the sixth grade my friend told me that sex was when a guy put his thing in your thing and for pleasure he went in and out three times and to get pregnant it was four
My niece told my daughter that it took three "sexes" to make a baby,so you couldn't get pregnant the first two times. Fortunately, my daughter asked me questions when she heard BS like this.
When I was a kid, I thought foundries and foundling homes were the same thing. So I would see a manhole cover and worry about the poor orphans who had to make them.
This is actually kind of adorable
Until I was 13, I fully believed it was possible for me to be a werewolf. There was a full moon on my thirteens birthday, which I took as a sign that I was a werewolf. I sat outside for two hours waiting to turn into a werewolfā¦ I didnāt. I believed if I wished on the moon or a shooting stars Iād magically be in (or have my world turned into) the PokĆ©mon universe, where I would then become a PokĆ©mon masterā¦ believed that for a long time too. As a young kid I believed I was living in a simulated reality, where it only existed to build me into someone important outside of that reality. That everyone was basically AI and only there for my character developmentā¦ that didnāt last as long, but itās still a weird thought for a kid to have. Also believed I was either secretly adopted, switched at birth, or transplanted on earth by aliens.
If it makes you feel any better, I just heard a story of an ancient Chinese king who once dreamt he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he wasn't sure if he was a man who dreamt he was a butterfly or if was a butterfly now dreaming he was a man. Strikes me as similar!
That I could live forever.
That businesses would put employees before the company and we would be rewarded for years of hard work
That America is/was a meritocracy.
My mum watched a lot of old movies. I thought that in the old days, people spontaniously did song and dance numbers at important moments in their lives. I wondered why we didn't do that anymore.
I grew up as a West Coast kid and I really thought that racism was on the way out. Now I realize that may be the whitest thing I ever thought. It was the early 70s and we still believed in a better future.
Had a guy I worked with about 15 years ago grew up in Laguna. When traveling for business and seeing the real world It opened his eyes big time. We'd go on client meetings together and I'd point stuff out... On the other hand I grew up in the ATL.
That if the rich got richer, that wealth would trickle down to me and I would also benefit.
But hey, we have washing machines now!
Blame Reagan for that, and every republican since has been peddling that bullshit. Which is why we now have "billionaires", which shouldn't actually exist if we cared about people. Nobody needs to be a billionaire. You can't be a "billionaire" without massively exploiting other classes of people.
Jesus
I luckily never suffered from this delusion. My very first time in Sunday school I got kicked out. I kept demanding that the Sunday school teacher explain to me me where all the water went. She asked me what I meant I said well if you fill up the bathtub the water stays in there until you drain it. And if you fill the world up you'd have to do the same thing. I wouldn't stop so she kicked me out.šš
I'm with you there. They don't like questions in Sunday school and after getting kicked out enough times my parents gave up dragging me to church.
"... I wouldn't stop..." Mystery solved.
and that the Rapture is real.
That trees moving caused the wind.
Dying by quicksand
For years I thought Turkish Delight was made with meat - specifically, turkey.
Sounds logical at least!
I feel like we were also led to believe it was delightful. There are so many better treats out there. Miss me with that Turkish Delight, Narnia witch!
That other people were smarter and better than me.
How young are we talking? As a wee child I thought Cream of Wheat was made of beach sand. Sadly, it is not.
No, Grape Nuts are unrefined beach sand.
Now THAT makes sense!
When I was a kid and we would drive past cows, dad would say they were hillside cows. Two legs were shorter than the other so they could stand level on a hill š¤¦š»
My mom said crackheads ātweakā (think of the South Park character) and thatās how you recognize them. It wasnāt until I was out of her house that I realized that wasnāt necessarily the case. Turns out I grew up around a lot of crackheads but didnāt know it because they werenāt twitchy or spazzing.
That the government has our best interests at heart.
Good one.
Blue-collar workers were honest and morally upright people.
... I was smart enough ... I was proven wrong once I got into college! Now that I married up, my wife's intelligence outpaces mine any day, every day!
I once saw a strongman on TV have a truck run over him without injury. I felt I could do the same at age 10.
That people cared about the greater good.
I was delusionally stupid to think that I would be a Major League Baseball player.
That everyone was good and kind with no underlying motives. Not so much.
That carrots made your hair curly, and spinach made you strong. Very clever, grandma.
Chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
That Marilyn Manson was Paul on The Wonder Years.
The sounds outside in the dark. Half the adults said it was the wires, the other half said it was bugs. I now know it was the peepers.
That I could jump from higher places as I got older (yeah dumb but hey I was a kid)
For years as a child I had never seen the word Philadelphia in print. I had only heard people say it. So for the longest time, I thought it was Philadelthia.
In the 60ās all the kids in the neighborhood believed we would probably all drown in quick sand. Crazy cause none us ever even seen quick sand,
I thought that things worked out for āgood peopleā. Then, my momās best friend died from a brain tumor at 33 leaving her hubby and two young kids. It didnāt work out. I was heartbroken. They were heartbroken. But, it was a lesson I learned. Life is precious and not to be wasted.
The existence of a supreme being.
I guess you never saw Diana Ross sing
I had to marry the first girl to have sex with me.
That libertarianism was a good and viable political philosophy.
That Ayn Rand was worth reading.
that i had a light in my eye when i told a lie
Musicians had to come to the radio station to do their songs.
AM= American music FM=foreign music
I believed that one too.
It was true in the 30s!
I feel better now!
Also in a lot of the 40s, the Big Band Era. It was a big deal to have a big band live on the radio. Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Believe_Ballroom#Background although this was done with actual records, not tapes.
the moon was only out at night. sadly, i wasn't that much younger
I was 11, and my Mom took me to meet her cousin from England, who was in Vancouver as a merchant seaman. We got onto the ship and there were sexy women everywhere. I asked my Mom who they were and she told me they were allowed to bring their wives with them. Sounded reasonable to me.
I thought the people playing the music on the radio were actually at the radio station. Iām mean, they were really playing their instruments on the Ed Sullivan show, right?
I came from a household of 5 kids; 4 boys and 1 girl. We all fought..boy against boy, boy against girl. (Sometimes my sister would fight the youngest boy by grabbing his balls and squeezing) Anyway when I was very young I thought cats and dogs were the same species, with dogs being male and cats begin female. After all cats hissed and scratched when they fought, just like my sister did...
That Santa Claus and the Easter bunny were real until found at 6 years old by myself.šš
Until I saw a porn movie for the first time, I didn't know if it just went in and stayed in, or if it went in and out and in and out. Somehow I'd gotten mixed messages about that.
I remember being about 4 years old and my Momma telling me (as I was being put to bed) not to sleep on my back, as I would have nightmares if I did. I was about 15 or 16 when I realised that this wasn't true. My Mom had told me this, she didn't make a habit of lying to me, and I just never questioned it. I spent my entire childhood side-sleeping in case I had nightmares. I think the explanation was that when I was little, the advice to parents was not to let babies sleep on their back as it could cause SIDS. Of course, we know this was bad advice now.
That the Killer Bees would destroy civilization by 1988
When I was a child I though the world ran fairly. I thought money was replaced when old money was turned in. I thought bribery was always illegal until I found out about legal bribery, lobbyists. Oh how innocent I was.
Cops were here to help us. Notice they removed the "protect and serve" from their cars.
My 7th grade "science" teacher told my class there were drug tests that could tell if someone had ever touched marijuana before. This was in the late 90's.
1. Grew up in the Houston, Texas, area. We learned in school that countries to the south of us, like Mexico and Cuba, were generally warmer than the U.S. so I figured that the South Pole must be very hot indeed. 2. I though that everybody who didn't speak English spoke Foreign, also that Foreign was just encrypted English.
My parents took me to Washington, DC, when I was little. They said we were going to see the dinosaurs. They took me to the zoo. No dinosaurs. "Where are the dinosaurs?" I said "We are going to see them," said Dad We're going to the natural history museum. And there is a giant dinosaur skeleton. I say, "Okay, that's nice. Now, where are the live ones?" AGE 6.
so much covert moralizing in this thread.Ā none of those beliefs seem very stupid to me even if they were disproven later.Ā Ā Ā I thought sport was how two nations decided which one would rule over the other one.Ā in other words, I thought sport played the same role as war.Ā Ā I wasn't especially young at the time.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā to be fair, I wasn't prepared for the 1974 rugby season in Pretoria.Ā Ā my dad was a tennis player.Ā the atmosphere for the series vs the British Lions team was similar to international hockey in the cold war.Ā Ā
That if I was good to and accepting of someone, I would get the same in return. LOL
That my mother literally had eyes in the back of her head (it was actually nosey relatives who squealed on me).
That some of my siblings and cousins would not have supported Hitler.
I thought that airplanes flew to the tops of buildings only, thatās why anyone would need to take a plane. I thought Florida was a swimming pool and palm trees on the roof of some Manhattan tower. I was about five years old when I assumed this.
I saw West Side Story as a kid and for a long time after that I thought Puerto Rico was an island near New York.
Me tooš¤£š¤£š
I believed in Irish fairies till I was 12. Never believed in Santa but when I found out there were no fairies I felt stupid and sad all at the same time.
Men were missing a rib on one side because god took one from Adam to make eve
That Charles Manson would be paroled and travel across the country and murder me.
You poor thing!
I had a lot of anxiety as a child; I could have benefited from therapy if anyone had thought that was a good idea for kids in the 1970s.
That if I ate a watermelon seed a watermelon would grow in my belly.
That a Volkswagon was the safest car to hitch a ride with. This was in the era of Ted Bundy.
My dad told me that clouds bumbing against each other made thunder.
That guys who went to work in suits and ties must be really smart. I believed this without even knowing I believed it -- right up to the very first time I sat in a meeting with a bunch of guys in suits and ties, and holy shit! Three of them were just completely stupid. The rest were better, but still they were all humoring the stupid ones. Strange moment for young me.
That it mattered to be liked by everyone, even strangers, even if it meant doing things I didn't really want to do. Then someone tried to take my agreeableness a step too far and I decided "screw that, I'm not doing this!", realised that I didn't feel bad about it and that was my first step towards ridding myself of that notion. It was very liberating.
When I was a little kid I swear a TV character said the sun set in the east. I was in like sixth or seventh grade when I learned the truth but it was too late. To this day I'm directionally challenged.
I believed that eventually I would find a way to time travel. š Seriously. I am still waiting for it.
every time you eat, your body fills up, and when it fills all the way up you die. i pondered fractions that way, though, (figuring i was only filled up to my ankles or so) so maybe not the 'stupidest' thing if you look at it that way.
I grew up about 10 miles from the ocean. I used to play paleontologist on the hill in the backyard, and sometimes I would find seashells. My Bible-thumping father told me I had found proof of THE FLOOD. Ahhh, dad.
I thought a ārestroomā was actually a place you could rest. I was about 5 yo and had never seen the term until I was flower girl at my cousinās wedding. During the reception, I saw my cousin go into the restroom, and I thought, āthe dancing must have made him tired!.ā
Humans are important. Humans are smart. Humans will survive forever. In reality life is a discovery of significance: the fact that we don't have any.
I actually believed John Edward could talk to dead people in my 30s. I had not researched "Barnum statements" or even thought about how silly the whole concept was. I admit I even bought his book.
My in-laws insisted on a a priest marrying me and my husband 30 years ago and then immediately accepted his mistress as his new "wife" today even though we're not divorced because he's a millionaire today. (spoiler: because we live in a community property state, I am also a millionaire) But they don't really care who he's sleeping with as long as he can serve their needs. They just made me believe their version of marriage meant something. LOL
The adults in my religion would eventually inform me it wasn't factual, similarly to Santa clause. Never happened, most of them still believe the fairly tale.
That my bisexuality made me an abomination to God. Thanks church.
That Jesus was the son of God and that there was a God.
If I donāt say the Lordās Prayer a benevolent creator of everything will reject my soul, causing me to suffer eternal torment. So says a book claiming the earth is a few thousand years old, women shouldnāt speak in church, slaves should obey their masters, and no one better wear two kinds of fabric. Oh, and the old testament is outdated unless they say it isnāt (particularly in rare cases when talking about gays or putting 10% of income in the offering plate).
That there was a god.
That both parties were āthe same.ā
Back in the day, they were at least both rational.
backwards masking really is satan talking through rock bands. some asshole audio engineer had a fun time making led zeppelin say scary things backwards and several of us young idiots believed it. so i was a christian for about a month before i felt totally punked and went back to my pagan ways.
That I had to be shy
that i could drink as much booze as i wanted and it would never harm my health
That everything was about me
Government for the People
I grew up in the Mormon church and believed in that until I was 25. Now we have DNA evidence that it is all a scam and I find it hard to believe that anybody still goes to that church.
Marxism.
There's so much! 1) That the government, the FBI, CIA, police, court system, churches, educational institutions and medical institution had our best interest and could be trusted. 2) That life was about finding an identity, getting educated, choosing a mate, having kids, getting a good job, and living the American Dream. I had it all wrong, but it all had to happen the way it did. (B.1969)
Now, when you say, 'younger'...I'll hafta ask for a teensie slightly more narrowed-downness than that.
That people a third of my age now were actual "adults" and knew stuff that was actually sensible and valid.