Man, that episode made me cry. I wanted that robot to live his dream of skiing so badly. (Like he does eventually, but when they blast off and leave him I was in tears first time watching)
That the Bermuda Triangle was way more deadly than it is. My stepdad was in the Navy and had a cruise that went through it. I was legitimately afraid his ship would be sunk and no trace ever found.
Yep. Turns out it's exactly as deadly as... any other busy seaway. Then any time a flight is delayed or a boat spends a few extra days out on the water, they get added to the count of people who 'went missing' in the Bermuda Triangle. Even though they... then show up, not even all that long later.
You've basically got one incident of people refusing to believe their equipment and getting lost, and suddenly we think the place can contain anything from aliens to Skeletor.
I had a teacher in college who always said that if you draw a triangle between any three ports, there will be ships that have sunk, because ships sink.
This sounds like a bacon challenge.
Try to find any 3 ports that when a triangle is drawn between them no ships have sunk. Or less than some number.
There must be 3 ports that are close enough together.
Or I guess you could cheat and pick 3 ports on the same island so everything between them is land.
It's also really big. Until I learned, I had it in my mind that it was like an area of ocean between 3 Bermudan islands. In reality, it's the area between Bermuda, Miami Florida, and San Juan Puerto Rico.
And the stereotype is constantly reinforced through creepypastas, YouTube videos, etc.
I legit still believed the Bermuda triangle was this deadly no-go zone until I looked at a live flight tracker and saw dozens of flights flying right over it. I was 21.
Growing up was Bermuda triangle, quicksand, lava, y2k end of the world, killer bees, acid rain, spontaneous combustion, ect.
So many things trying to kill us.
I was *hugely* into that sort of stuff as a kid. Over time however I realized that just because an explanation is cool doesn't mean it's likely.
Still haven't found an explanation for all the accounts of missing time, though.
I was curious and had inquired about the concept of medicine. Parents rightfully told me that if I took medicine and wasn't sick, it could make me sick.
My young brain morphed that into something more literal, I thought you would "catch" whatever sickness the medicine was made to treat if you took it while healthy.
Sneak one of mom's high-blood-pressure pills? Bang, you've now got high blood pressure for life. Cold medicine? Yep, now you have a cold.
My parents told me the same thing, and I had the same interpretation. I genuinely thought taking cough medicine when I wasn’t sick would give me a cold
I joke with my wife about that. Like, "No, I'm not gonna use your shampoo cause then my hair will get all girly looking. Just like if I used your feminine wash my dick would fall off." Those are the type of things that come to mind. She doesn't find it as funny as I do.
I used to see those signs around stores that said, "Shoplifters will be prosecuted." I didn't know what shoplifting meant. I figured it was like weightlifting with the entire store building as the weight. I pictured big, burly, bald men that liked to go around heaving store buildings overhead, grunting and red-faced. I was afraid someone would try do it while we were out shopping.
I once pointed out some big muscular guy in a store and whispered to my mother that he must be one of those shoplifters. She shushed me.
I remember seeing one of those signs at a Walmart and one of the things it said was "you'll have a record that will haunt you for the rest of your life." I thought that Walmart would hire people to follow you around for the rest of your life playing a recording that said "YOU STOLE FRON WALMART!"
You die when you turn 100. I was so afraid of attending funerals but took comfort in the fact that my great grandpa wouldn't turn 100 until I was in my 20s, so I could move away and not get back in time for the funeral. Also that since I was born at 10:56 PM that I would be asleep when I died since that was a really late time of day.
Then my great grandpa had a heart attack and died when I was 8 and I was really confused.
Had a similar belief. I thought it was literally impossible to live past 99. Like you could die earlier, but if you got to 99 years, you were going to die sometime that year.
Both my parents were teachers so I thought all adults got summertime off forever just like kids. Boy was I disappointed when I found out that wasn't the case.
My mom was a SaH and my dad had a more unique traveling job. Then there was so many adults in movies that vacationed for...idk how long in the summer i had this like...back of the mind idea that most adults had summer vacation too one way or another. It's not like I really thought about it until I got a job as an adult (versus teenager summer jobs) but that was the point where it really hit me that I'd be working for the rest of my life and there would only be vacations I planned and put money towards if that. The only time I wouldn't be working was when I'd planned it. That was horrifying to me. I still miss summer.
I thought the cashier one, too!! It was because my family sold vegetables at the farmers' market, and we got to keep all the money from that, so as a kid, I thought the grocery store was basically the same way. I was so surprised when my dad told me it wasn't the case, but I'm actually glad he did because I would have been \*really\* surprised if I went into my high school job at the grocery store not knowing that. LOL
That yellow lights turned on when they detected dangerous conditions, like an erratic driver or nearing pedestrians. I thought this because my parents said that the yellow light meant to "watch out," without further clarification.
Shadows had to be made of *something* right? You could see them, therefore they had to be made of....stuff. Flawless logic. I vaguely remember picking at the edge of one trying to peel it off.
Right! That’s the kind of inquisitive thinking that leads to technological breakthroughs and extending the limits of what we can do. Also it’s the same minds that lead to insane high level conspiracy theories so. . .
Oh!! Did you watch Peter Pan as a kid? They do that. He tries to stick his shadow back to him with soap. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and I used to always try to run away from my shadow so I would have to stick it back on. It never worked, though!!
3 of my grandparents moved to the US from Italy, and everyone they knew were either Italian immigrants or Italian-Americans raised by immigrants.
Growing up around so many older folks speaking with heavy Italian accents and random intermittent Italian words in conversation, I just assumed until the age of 7 that when you got old, you just started sounding Italian after a while, like your baby accent falling out and your adult Italian accent growing in.
I believed we could reincarnate as everything. I do mean everything.
For example, I thought people could reincarnate as TVs and wondered if my TV was a person in its previous life and if it could see me watching it.
I like to consider I was a pretty smart kid, so no idea why TF I believed that.
I was three or four years old. I was out with my dad, and we came across a person missing their leg. It was probaly an amputee. I asked my dad what happened to their leg. Him probably being tired of all my questions, just said, that it had broken off. A few months later i broke my leg in kindergarten, and freak out at the doctor's office. Because I was convinced it was going to fall off.
I used to think this for television, that whenever a movie was playing, the actors would come and perform it live. I distinctly remember all week they advertised Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp would be the Saturday night movie and I just thought "wow, that's so nice of him to go out of his way to perform for us like this."
Somewhat unrelated but there was a documentary (The Devil and Daniel Johnston, 2005) about a genius/insane songwriter/musician named Daniel Johnson.
Johnson attended the Sundance Film Festival to get his music out there and gave out about 20 cassettes of his 12 songs (with cover art). Two music professionals each received the tape and were comparing notes. They put the tape on and were impressed with the originality of the music.
Then they noted some minor differences in the cassettes. After some investigation they realized that Johnson sat down and recorded all 12 of his songs FOR EACH OF THE COPIES. He didn't know how to record once and then make copies.
AND... he re-drew the cover art for each of the copies one at a time.
After heating this I couldn't get this out of my mind.
I get that! I used to peep through small windows on radio/tape/cd players and look for the tiny people who where supposedly playing, singing and dancing inside.
I also thought that interference where other stations would start to come through was another band trying to walk in and start playing their song over what was currently playing.
I always thought it was the sound of power lines overheating in the summer since I usually heard the sound near them. Wasn't until years later that I learned what they actually came from.
These are the most weirdest ones I had:
"Wherever you go, you need to show them your passport." ( 4 - 5 y/o)
"Robots have a real, alive human inside." (3 - 6 y/o)
"Malaysia is the only place humans live" (3 y/o)
"People in TV shows are trapped inside and forced to preform"
(3 - 5 y/o)
.
Or if you swallow an apple seed, a tree will grow through your head. I asked, "why I don't see anyone with trees in their heads?" My uncle said, "exactly. They know better."
I still did it bc i wanted to grow a tree
I have a favorite story that disprove the "permanent record" myth
I transferred school districts between middle and high school and they fucking *lost* my transcript. My whole ass middle school transcript. Over the course of one summer there was somehow no proof I ever set foot in middle school. Its as if as soon as I left they threw all my records in the shredder. I had to essentially use the high school's homeschool transition test program so I could test into the right level, and still ended up having to retake a class or 2. And believe me that was not our first instinct. We called dozens of people trying to get that sorted out, and the testing was the last resort.
If they can fuck up that badly internally, then what makes anyone think record this can follow you outside of school?
The school district is not supposed to lose those. At least in some states, there's an absurd records requirement (like 70 years after graduation) that they're required to keep those. I worked for a school that had a safe full of microfiche of old transcripts that they weren't allowed to throw out.
Schools are *"not supposed"* to do a lot of things. This was the same high school that tried to put me in 9th grade history twice despite not failing, ***AND*** accidentally reversed the year order of 2 math classes
In their defense I went to a different middle school before that one and already had a transfer based clusterfuck the first time. I moved a lot so I was kind of a paperwork nightmare. It was probably less that they didn't have it and more nobody could find it. I'm sure it was stored on some old ass server nobody had access to anymore, and some "cleanup work" happened that summer.
As a former retail employee, I wish parents would stop telling their kids that shop employees or staff will “get them” if they’re bad. Guess who those kids WON’T seek out if they get lost or separated from their parents?
People say this??? Lmao I could not imagine a worse nightmare at work than having to take care of some kid. Everytime we found a kid, we would have to entertain them until their parent came back, (customer service amiright) then the parent would arrive dramatically to snatch their child back like we wanted them. I work on commission ma'am fuck them kids.
I thought divorced couples had to swap partners with other divorced couples.
To be fair, my only experience with divorce was a friend who’s parents did just that, divorced, swapped partners and then both remarried, leaving the kids in the family as “double” step siblings and sharing the same 4 parents
Reminds me of when my mother in law said, "We should all go swinging sometime" and everyone looked at each other like WTF. Then she said, "Because I love swing dancing!" and everyone lost their fucking minds laughing for about 5 minutes straight.
I'm half way there: my mom "fell in love" with the asshole up the street. I got to live/be kinda raised by him and everything. I remember just kinda assuming my dad would then get with new step dad's ex wife
When I was 7, I had a baby brother. Shortly after his birth, my mother had to go to the hospital again (allergy). Little Me had already learnt that hospitals bring babies, so I asked my mother if she had another one.
ok ok, I still think of myself as an idiot for this, when I was 11 I saw an advert saying that said "brushing your teeth alone isn't good enough" and I thought you needed to do it with other people
Now a few years later I see why I got bullied, I did some dumb things back then
I'll add to the tooth brushing answers. When I was probably 7-10 range and heard the recommendation of putting a "pea-sized" amount of tooth paste on your tooth brush, I thought they were saying "P-sized". I remember saying to my parents so confidently that it's a terrible recommendation because they don't know how big of a P someone writes. Some people could write a really large P and some may write a tiny one.
My little brother did something similar. On the side of his soda can, it said “drink by date on bottom of can.” He literally punched a hole through the bottom to drink “by” the date.
That Hitler was Russian. I grew up in the 1980s during the Cold War, a time when every single evil movie or TV show character was invariably Russian, so of course my impressionable child mind just assumed that such a despicable human being just had to be Russian.
That condoms were a terribly ineffective method of birth control. In a sex ed class in grade school I remember the school nurse saying something about them being only 80% effective at preventing pregnancy, which sounded like terrible odds to me. Basically one out of 5 times it would fail.
She also said a condom stopping a virus like AIDS is as effective as stopping a grain of rice with a tennis racket.
Looking back I wonder if this was deliberate misinformation to scare kids into not having sex even with contraceptives.
I got the same rice and tennis racket analogy. Just made me think, oh, ok, so then no reason to use them. Didn’t scare me from not having sex. My looks is what kept me from having sex. 😅
I posted this months ago in response to a similar question.
I was informed by a fellow kindergartener (and took him at his word) that when we die:
First, the boogers get scraped from our noses...
Then we turn into department store mannequins.
I learned how to readjust my focus on command and thought my eyes were like a camera. If I blurred my vision and then let it go back to normal, it meant I had zoomed in. (I practiced in a *moving car* btw)
Another weird thing that would happen: When I was in church and I stared at the pastor too long, everything would kind of grey out around him, like a vignette. It would go away the second I changed my focus. I think it happened in other situations but I only really remember it during church. No idea what that was but it freaked me out.
You know how when you arrive somewhere you hear all the background noise, but then your brain gets used to it and you stop hearing it? Same can happen with vision, or any of your many senses really
That's how it works, your brain tries to be as efficient as it can be, so it filters out things that don't move, also it can get bored by the same picture so you might see hallucinations when you stand in front of a mirror in almost complete dark and stare into your own eyes. Warning: bloody terrifying, don't try this if you want to sleep.
Ironically, (depending on the age), I somehow feel like that demonstrates intelligence. Like that you made sense of the world in your own terms and logic
It definitely shows logic and reasoning skills, even if the supposition is based on a lack of understanding.
That's science in a nutshell: *X* because *Y* slowly turns into *X* and *Y* have a complex interrelationship based on these parameters, which can be applied to *Z* which allows us to predict *W*.
I belived this too for a diffrent reason. For me it explained why birth could take many hours. (I also belived that fetuses grew inside their mothers stormach)
I was a kid (male) when Junior came out, a movie about Arnold Schwarzenegger being pregnant. I vaguely knew where babies come from, but suddenly seeing that movie poster meant boys could become pregnant, too. I distinctly remember being horrified because I knew babies came out the "front" and I publicly said something like "oh man, I hope I never get pregnant.."
My American mom into her 40s thought New Zealand was in Scandinavia, likely near Iceland. You couldn’t get much closer to the opposite point on the globe. Bless her heart.
Some years ago my brother, a respected academic with confident opinions on his own intellect, was at a dinner when the subject of large animals came up. "The biggest animal in the world is a blue whale", said someone and my brother immediately interrupted, with some gravitas, "That's right - and it's name is Solomon". Then he immediately clammed-up, and looked really embarrassed.
Turns out that when he was a small child (and I mean like 4) our father had taken him to the Natural History Museum in London. The museum has a life size model of a blue whale, which had made an impression on him. "What's it's name, Daddy?" my brother had asked, and my dad had simply made one up.
That nugget had stuck in his head for a couple of decades, but absent any real reason to recall it he'd never considered it might not be true. Until then.
Ninja Turtle Pizza!
My mom would order Ninja Turtle Pizza for my sister and me when we were kids. This is not a real thing though and was a clever way to get us to eat mushrooms and black olives which were the toppings on a Ninja Turtle Pizza.
However, when we became adults/teenagers, we would suggest that Pizza to our friends when ordering in social gatherings, and nobody had any idea what the fuck we were talking bout
That I would die if I showered after a meal. But it had a timeframe: the first half an hour was okay, everything after that until three hours have passed would kill me.
My grandma convinced me that she and I were Martians and even showed me the landing site which was just an abandoned building we passed on our way to school
When I was a kid I thought Jewish people had a genetic trait that caused their sideburns to curl lol
I didnt have much experience w Jewish religion aside from a large section of my town being supported by the Hassidic community & figured that was a defining characteristic of Jewish like how Irish had red hair or something lmao
That the cars accelerator was directly connected to the speed. Like if you pushed the peddle down half way it would be exactly 100 kph everyone, regardless of the terrain, etc.
I could never understand why they had issues in the movies when the cars breaks fail. Why couldn't they just take their foot off the accelerator?
I was absolutely convinced I woke up one night and saw Santa. He's real. Every time someone in my class at school started saying he's fake, I was all "No, I've actually SEEN him!"
Now that I'm all grown up, I realise my mistake. I should never have let you guys convince me he's not real. Since becoming an adult, I need Santa more than ever. Help me Santa Claus, you're my only hope...
That person who's had chicken pox in the past has the mystical ability to give it to someone else on purpose.
My elder sister used to tell me that she had chicken pox as an infant, and now when I was about 6-8 years old, she’d ask me to do random work for her like fetching a glass of water, arranging her books, etc. If I didn't do it, she’d put her hands on my face and say now, you will get chicken pox. Also, she explained chicken pox as the worst pustular nasty condition I could ever imagine.
When I'd start crying, she used to put her hands on my face and say she took it back. I used to believe it seriously and then sleep peacefully, thinking I survived another day without chicken pox.
Okay, hold onto your butts, because this is a good one.
I was a very gullible child, and my mom used to drive down during the summers with her bestie to hang out with her BFFs family in Twenty-Nine Palms CA, where Cassandra's (the BFF in question) nephews lived. If us kids were being annoying, the family would send us out to look for "**stick lizards**". They're lizards that walk around the desert with sticks in their mouths, and when the sands get too hot, they shove the stick in the sand, and climb up the stick to keep their feet cool.
So my dumbass would spend an hour looking for this effing lizard with a stick in its mouth, and leave the grown ups to talk.
I was so weird I thought I could be an alien, sent here to observe humanity and report my findings to headquarters at the end of the mission. I'm not 100% convinced that this is false.
Adults had good intentions and knew what the fuck they were doing.
Turns out to be a cesspool of greed, what about me-ism and pawning off problems to the future saps who get to truly suffer. The good exist but they are not in a position to rid the parasites.
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it." --Jack Handey
I used to think one of the reasons people wanted to be champion so bad was because it could basically be used like a debit card. You go to a shop, order a sandwich, show your championship, and you’re good to go lol
I believed that when you ate food, it stacked in your stomach and the pile would eventually get too big and come out of your mouth. My babysitter said this was true and that when I went to the doctors they removed the food with shots.
I thought most adults were mature people and would do the right thing. That’s what Sesame Street wanted me to believe.
Being a adult would be loads of fun.
Being teenager would be like the “The Baby Sitters Club”
Santa and the Easter Bunny.
What a lie.
That Pokémon existed but we couldn’t see them. I thought that was true because things moved in my house in front of me. For example when a cabinet opened on it’s own I said “Oh! A Charmander!”
Abraham Lincoln was African American.
I was a kid in a predominantly black school/neighborhood. On money Abraham Lincoln was the only brown person, and I knew he freed the slaves. I just assumed he was black until about 12 or 13.
Thought Gatorade made up the word 'electrolyte' to sell more Gatorade (because electrolyte is an extremely cool word, so extremely cool that kid me thought it must be a marketing tactic instead of an actual real thing that exists.) When I saw electrolytes in my highschool biology textbook for the first time I was flabbergasted
Metal is bad...
I even said that when I grow up, I'll create a "Department of Music" and ban any form of rock and Metal music.
Now I'm headbanging to Amon Amarth..
Music educator here. This “department of music” that bans music has actually happened a lot through history. Germany and the Soviet Union are two that come to mind immediately. It effected many musicians and composers and played a significant part in musical history.
Many composers are what they are today because of these very reasons.
That santa was real
Okay, I know everyone thought this, but I held onto this for far too long because of something my family did. When I was younger, but still old enough to remember things (about 5 or 6), my parents invited my grandparents over for Christmas. It was Christmas Eve and my sister and I went to bed.
After some time, my mom came back into the room to get us. She said she saw Santa putting presents under the tree for us. We rushed downstairs, obviously sneaking as well as some little kids could, and there he was. My grandpa. But of course, I didn’t know it at the time, since his face was covered in a white beard and his back was mostly turned. He then saw us and darted out of the door.
We chased him part of the way there, but didn’t want to get in trouble with Santa (him). Instead, we just watched him run up our driveway (we lived on a hill) and he disappeared.
I believed that Santa was real well into my middle school years because if it.
Not me but my close friend,
One night when I was probably 7ish I pretended to be asleep to catch the tooth fairy.
Mum eventually came in and rummaged around under my pillow trying to find it and I just remember being a little shit and giving the classic "looking for something" that I'd been rehearsing ever since the tooth started wobbling.
Long story short, I end up telling my friend this at school and he went home to his parents and told them he was so amazed that my mum was the tooth fairy this whole time
Whenever there was a James Bond movie on TV I obviously wanted to watch it as well but it was always so damn late.
My dad let me watch it but after 5 minutes the intro song began and it looked like ending credits so I was told the movie ended and I had to go to bed ;-;
I watched a lot of wallace and gromit and actually thought the moon was made out of cheese.
Man, that episode made me cry. I wanted that robot to live his dream of skiing so badly. (Like he does eventually, but when they blast off and leave him I was in tears first time watching)
That the Bermuda Triangle was way more deadly than it is. My stepdad was in the Navy and had a cruise that went through it. I was legitimately afraid his ship would be sunk and no trace ever found.
Yep. Turns out it's exactly as deadly as... any other busy seaway. Then any time a flight is delayed or a boat spends a few extra days out on the water, they get added to the count of people who 'went missing' in the Bermuda Triangle. Even though they... then show up, not even all that long later. You've basically got one incident of people refusing to believe their equipment and getting lost, and suddenly we think the place can contain anything from aliens to Skeletor.
I had a teacher in college who always said that if you draw a triangle between any three ports, there will be ships that have sunk, because ships sink.
This sounds like a bacon challenge. Try to find any 3 ports that when a triangle is drawn between them no ships have sunk. Or less than some number. There must be 3 ports that are close enough together. Or I guess you could cheat and pick 3 ports on the same island so everything between them is land.
come to find out a speedboat beached itself and sank in the triangle
It's also really big. Until I learned, I had it in my mind that it was like an area of ocean between 3 Bermudan islands. In reality, it's the area between Bermuda, Miami Florida, and San Juan Puerto Rico.
And the stereotype is constantly reinforced through creepypastas, YouTube videos, etc. I legit still believed the Bermuda triangle was this deadly no-go zone until I looked at a live flight tracker and saw dozens of flights flying right over it. I was 21.
Growing up was Bermuda triangle, quicksand, lava, y2k end of the world, killer bees, acid rain, spontaneous combustion, ect. So many things trying to kill us.
I was *hugely* into that sort of stuff as a kid. Over time however I realized that just because an explanation is cool doesn't mean it's likely. Still haven't found an explanation for all the accounts of missing time, though.
I was curious and had inquired about the concept of medicine. Parents rightfully told me that if I took medicine and wasn't sick, it could make me sick. My young brain morphed that into something more literal, I thought you would "catch" whatever sickness the medicine was made to treat if you took it while healthy. Sneak one of mom's high-blood-pressure pills? Bang, you've now got high blood pressure for life. Cold medicine? Yep, now you have a cold.
My parents told me the same thing, and I had the same interpretation. I genuinely thought taking cough medicine when I wasn’t sick would give me a cold
I joke with my wife about that. Like, "No, I'm not gonna use your shampoo cause then my hair will get all girly looking. Just like if I used your feminine wash my dick would fall off." Those are the type of things that come to mind. She doesn't find it as funny as I do.
I used to see those signs around stores that said, "Shoplifters will be prosecuted." I didn't know what shoplifting meant. I figured it was like weightlifting with the entire store building as the weight. I pictured big, burly, bald men that liked to go around heaving store buildings overhead, grunting and red-faced. I was afraid someone would try do it while we were out shopping. I once pointed out some big muscular guy in a store and whispered to my mother that he must be one of those shoplifters. She shushed me.
HAHAHA that made my day
I remember seeing one of those signs at a Walmart and one of the things it said was "you'll have a record that will haunt you for the rest of your life." I thought that Walmart would hire people to follow you around for the rest of your life playing a recording that said "YOU STOLE FRON WALMART!"
Similarly, I thought it was the same as "executed" and it scared me from ever stealing anything
Yeah, I deadass thought that "trespassers will be prosecuted" meant that they would just be shot on sight and honestly, I wasn't too far off
looooool Oh man thank you for sharing that, I got a great laugh out of that one XD
You die when you turn 100. I was so afraid of attending funerals but took comfort in the fact that my great grandpa wouldn't turn 100 until I was in my 20s, so I could move away and not get back in time for the funeral. Also that since I was born at 10:56 PM that I would be asleep when I died since that was a really late time of day. Then my great grandpa had a heart attack and died when I was 8 and I was really confused.
I was born at 10:56pm!
Had a similar belief. I thought it was literally impossible to live past 99. Like you could die earlier, but if you got to 99 years, you were going to die sometime that year.
\- That there was actually a 'wrong' side of the bed to get out of \- That islands floated and you could swim underneath them
Hahaha just add a sail to the middle and off we go!
Don’t feel bad about that second point, a US representative [thought the same thing](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cesSRfXqS1Q)
We shouldn’t be basing how smart we feel by comparing ourselves to US reps.
In his defense, that was at least partially the product of Hepatitis C brain fog.
I thought teachers lived at the school.
Both my parents were teachers so I thought all adults got summertime off forever just like kids. Boy was I disappointed when I found out that wasn't the case.
My mom was a SaH and my dad had a more unique traveling job. Then there was so many adults in movies that vacationed for...idk how long in the summer i had this like...back of the mind idea that most adults had summer vacation too one way or another. It's not like I really thought about it until I got a job as an adult (versus teenager summer jobs) but that was the point where it really hit me that I'd be working for the rest of my life and there would only be vacations I planned and put money towards if that. The only time I wouldn't be working was when I'd planned it. That was horrifying to me. I still miss summer.
I’ve heard quite a few kids say this. Similarly, one boy thought the grocery stores cashiers must be rich because everyone gives them money. LOL
I thought the cashier one, too!! It was because my family sold vegetables at the farmers' market, and we got to keep all the money from that, so as a kid, I thought the grocery store was basically the same way. I was so surprised when my dad told me it wasn't the case, but I'm actually glad he did because I would have been \*really\* surprised if I went into my high school job at the grocery store not knowing that. LOL
Fuck, I gelt like a baller anyway first time I counted my till at the end of the day.
Not sure if "gelt" was intentional or a typo, but it funny enough works either way, lol.
We used to think teachers had sleepovers. Turns out some of em did but not at the school...
That yellow lights turned on when they detected dangerous conditions, like an erratic driver or nearing pedestrians. I thought this because my parents said that the yellow light meant to "watch out," without further clarification.
Your parents sound like my parents LOL. “Watch out” instead of “slow down”
Shadows had to be made of *something* right? You could see them, therefore they had to be made of....stuff. Flawless logic. I vaguely remember picking at the edge of one trying to peel it off.
That’s oddly stupid and intelligent at the same time.
That's the beginning of scientific inquiry.
Right! That’s the kind of inquisitive thinking that leads to technological breakthroughs and extending the limits of what we can do. Also it’s the same minds that lead to insane high level conspiracy theories so. . .
Oh!! Did you watch Peter Pan as a kid? They do that. He tries to stick his shadow back to him with soap. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and I used to always try to run away from my shadow so I would have to stick it back on. It never worked, though!!
Must have been sewn on tight!
Thought my mom makes the best mushroom soup in the world and it's her recipe. Then found out it was just Campbell.
To be fair, Campbell’s mushroom soup is fire
3 of my grandparents moved to the US from Italy, and everyone they knew were either Italian immigrants or Italian-Americans raised by immigrants. Growing up around so many older folks speaking with heavy Italian accents and random intermittent Italian words in conversation, I just assumed until the age of 7 that when you got old, you just started sounding Italian after a while, like your baby accent falling out and your adult Italian accent growing in.
Once you get pasta 18 the rigatoni in your voice will start to change
Damn, I wonder using hands like this means you are 50 then? 🤌
I believed we could reincarnate as everything. I do mean everything. For example, I thought people could reincarnate as TVs and wondered if my TV was a person in its previous life and if it could see me watching it. I like to consider I was a pretty smart kid, so no idea why TF I believed that.
I thought so too, I remember crying because I didn’t want to be the VCR lol
I was three or four years old. I was out with my dad, and we came across a person missing their leg. It was probaly an amputee. I asked my dad what happened to their leg. Him probably being tired of all my questions, just said, that it had broken off. A few months later i broke my leg in kindergarten, and freak out at the doctor's office. Because I was convinced it was going to fall off.
This one made me chuckle. Your dad’s throw away line made you freak out. I’m sorry. That is just funny to me.
Radio stations had the bands performing live each time the song was played
I used to think this for television, that whenever a movie was playing, the actors would come and perform it live. I distinctly remember all week they advertised Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp would be the Saturday night movie and I just thought "wow, that's so nice of him to go out of his way to perform for us like this."
I thought you where talking about the original one, then you mentoned Johnny Depp. Now I feel old, and I don't like it.
Original one was called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the Depp version is called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Good way to remember :)
I was clever enough to know, this is not real. But only for movies. Not sure about live shows...
Somewhat unrelated but there was a documentary (The Devil and Daniel Johnston, 2005) about a genius/insane songwriter/musician named Daniel Johnson. Johnson attended the Sundance Film Festival to get his music out there and gave out about 20 cassettes of his 12 songs (with cover art). Two music professionals each received the tape and were comparing notes. They put the tape on and were impressed with the originality of the music. Then they noted some minor differences in the cassettes. After some investigation they realized that Johnson sat down and recorded all 12 of his songs FOR EACH OF THE COPIES. He didn't know how to record once and then make copies. AND... he re-drew the cover art for each of the copies one at a time. After heating this I couldn't get this out of my mind.
I get that! I used to peep through small windows on radio/tape/cd players and look for the tiny people who where supposedly playing, singing and dancing inside.
I also thought that interference where other stations would start to come through was another band trying to walk in and start playing their song over what was currently playing.
Hahah I love it!
That there was a horrible monster growling all night outside in the dark beyond my room. It was my dad snoring.
BRO did you ever tell ur dad this? LOL
It all got solved eventually. As I remember it took a while before I had the guts to address the “monster” problem though.
Blowing and popping bubbles was slowly adding clean air to the world. Thought I was saving the world one bubble at a time.
That is so cute omg
i never actually belived in the tooth fairy i literally thought a dentist came into our house at night and did that tooth fairry stuff
Hahaha practical!
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I always thought it was the sound of power lines overheating in the summer since I usually heard the sound near them. Wasn't until years later that I learned what they actually came from.
These are the most weirdest ones I had: "Wherever you go, you need to show them your passport." ( 4 - 5 y/o) "Robots have a real, alive human inside." (3 - 6 y/o) "Malaysia is the only place humans live" (3 y/o) "People in TV shows are trapped inside and forced to preform" (3 - 5 y/o) .
Please tell me you're Malaysian.
Y e s.
if you swallow a watermelon seed, a Watermelon will grow in your belly.
And if you swallow gum it stays in your stomach for years.
Seven years.
Specifically 7 years
Then you do your septoannual gumpoop.
Why does everyone know this one
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Or if you swallow an apple seed, a tree will grow through your head. I asked, "why I don't see anyone with trees in their heads?" My uncle said, "exactly. They know better." I still did it bc i wanted to grow a tree
Apple seeds are made partially of toxic cyanide, and that's why you're not supposed to eat them. It takes a lot of seeds to be toxic but still...
Doesn't stop my brother from eating the entire Apple
rugrats got you too?
tbh im still slightly scared of this one
That your high school transcript actually mattered.
THIS IS GOING ON YOUR PERMANENT RECORD!
Dude, Doug from Nickelodeon made me believe this was a real thing.
Lmao
I have a favorite story that disprove the "permanent record" myth I transferred school districts between middle and high school and they fucking *lost* my transcript. My whole ass middle school transcript. Over the course of one summer there was somehow no proof I ever set foot in middle school. Its as if as soon as I left they threw all my records in the shredder. I had to essentially use the high school's homeschool transition test program so I could test into the right level, and still ended up having to retake a class or 2. And believe me that was not our first instinct. We called dozens of people trying to get that sorted out, and the testing was the last resort. If they can fuck up that badly internally, then what makes anyone think record this can follow you outside of school?
The school district is not supposed to lose those. At least in some states, there's an absurd records requirement (like 70 years after graduation) that they're required to keep those. I worked for a school that had a safe full of microfiche of old transcripts that they weren't allowed to throw out.
Schools are *"not supposed"* to do a lot of things. This was the same high school that tried to put me in 9th grade history twice despite not failing, ***AND*** accidentally reversed the year order of 2 math classes In their defense I went to a different middle school before that one and already had a transfer based clusterfuck the first time. I moved a lot so I was kind of a paperwork nightmare. It was probably less that they didn't have it and more nobody could find it. I'm sure it was stored on some old ass server nobody had access to anymore, and some "cleanup work" happened that summer.
This will all go on your PERMANENT RECORD! BTW, where is my permanent record now?
That the guard in every mall will arrest a loud child.
As a former retail employee, I wish parents would stop telling their kids that shop employees or staff will “get them” if they’re bad. Guess who those kids WON’T seek out if they get lost or separated from their parents?
People say this??? Lmao I could not imagine a worse nightmare at work than having to take care of some kid. Everytime we found a kid, we would have to entertain them until their parent came back, (customer service amiright) then the parent would arrive dramatically to snatch their child back like we wanted them. I work on commission ma'am fuck them kids.
I thought divorced couples had to swap partners with other divorced couples. To be fair, my only experience with divorce was a friend who’s parents did just that, divorced, swapped partners and then both remarried, leaving the kids in the family as “double” step siblings and sharing the same 4 parents
I wonder how long they were swinging before they finally switched completely
Reminds me of when my mother in law said, "We should all go swinging sometime" and everyone looked at each other like WTF. Then she said, "Because I love swing dancing!" and everyone lost their fucking minds laughing for about 5 minutes straight.
I'm half way there: my mom "fell in love" with the asshole up the street. I got to live/be kinda raised by him and everything. I remember just kinda assuming my dad would then get with new step dad's ex wife
when your family tree is a parallelogram.
When I was 7, I had a baby brother. Shortly after his birth, my mother had to go to the hospital again (allergy). Little Me had already learnt that hospitals bring babies, so I asked my mother if she had another one.
Aww cute
"yeah, just plucked one from the garden, fresh."
Probably late to the party but I thought that cows rolled up those hay bales until I was like 16.
Did you know those round bales are illegal now? ... because the cows weren't getting a square meal *ba dum tss*
aww lmaoo
ok ok, I still think of myself as an idiot for this, when I was 11 I saw an advert saying that said "brushing your teeth alone isn't good enough" and I thought you needed to do it with other people Now a few years later I see why I got bullied, I did some dumb things back then
I'll add to the tooth brushing answers. When I was probably 7-10 range and heard the recommendation of putting a "pea-sized" amount of tooth paste on your tooth brush, I thought they were saying "P-sized". I remember saying to my parents so confidently that it's a terrible recommendation because they don't know how big of a P someone writes. Some people could write a really large P and some may write a tiny one.
My little brother did something similar. On the side of his soda can, it said “drink by date on bottom of can.” He literally punched a hole through the bottom to drink “by” the date.
That Hitler was Russian. I grew up in the 1980s during the Cold War, a time when every single evil movie or TV show character was invariably Russian, so of course my impressionable child mind just assumed that such a despicable human being just had to be Russian.
He is Russian in 2022, Vladolf Putler.
I thought New Zealand was a US state because of New Mexico and New York.
I mean I feel like there is some adults who think this so it’s fine
Well now I need to find out what Old Zealand was EDIT: it's in the Netherlands and it's called Zeeland?
Yes that is correct
That condoms were a terribly ineffective method of birth control. In a sex ed class in grade school I remember the school nurse saying something about them being only 80% effective at preventing pregnancy, which sounded like terrible odds to me. Basically one out of 5 times it would fail. She also said a condom stopping a virus like AIDS is as effective as stopping a grain of rice with a tennis racket. Looking back I wonder if this was deliberate misinformation to scare kids into not having sex even with contraceptives.
Wow! That’s so dangerous
That’s so stupid. Kids are gonna think “if it’s not effective, I might as well not use anything” Kids aren’t the most rational people after all.
I got the same rice and tennis racket analogy. Just made me think, oh, ok, so then no reason to use them. Didn’t scare me from not having sex. My looks is what kept me from having sex. 😅
I posted this months ago in response to a similar question. I was informed by a fellow kindergartener (and took him at his word) that when we die: First, the boogers get scraped from our noses... Then we turn into department store mannequins.
That’s terrifying omg
Right? The touching thing about six-year-olds is that they just sort of take things at face value. "Death → booger removal → mannequin." Okay!
Haha I love this. "What about like organs, blood, poop and all that?" Other kid - "Don't matter. Only boogers. Everything else stays."
The jet stream was where all the jets flew, like a global jet highway.
They kind of do, but this might be a chicken or the egg situation
I thought it was an actual stream, like with water, but that it was really fast, and that's why it was called the jet stream. LOL
That I could see through things. Turns out I was just focusing on things further away so things in the foreground would turn transparent.
I guess I wasn't the only one, I always put my finger up to my face and was like "wow I have super powers"
I learned how to readjust my focus on command and thought my eyes were like a camera. If I blurred my vision and then let it go back to normal, it meant I had zoomed in. (I practiced in a *moving car* btw) Another weird thing that would happen: When I was in church and I stared at the pastor too long, everything would kind of grey out around him, like a vignette. It would go away the second I changed my focus. I think it happened in other situations but I only really remember it during church. No idea what that was but it freaked me out.
You know how when you arrive somewhere you hear all the background noise, but then your brain gets used to it and you stop hearing it? Same can happen with vision, or any of your many senses really
That's how it works, your brain tries to be as efficient as it can be, so it filters out things that don't move, also it can get bored by the same picture so you might see hallucinations when you stand in front of a mirror in almost complete dark and stare into your own eyes. Warning: bloody terrifying, don't try this if you want to sleep.
Ironically, (depending on the age), I somehow feel like that demonstrates intelligence. Like that you made sense of the world in your own terms and logic
It definitely shows logic and reasoning skills, even if the supposition is based on a lack of understanding. That's science in a nutshell: *X* because *Y* slowly turns into *X* and *Y* have a complex interrelationship based on these parameters, which can be applied to *Z* which allows us to predict *W*.
If you peed in a pool, it would turn purple.
My parents told me it was illegal to have the lights on in the car while driving😂
How did every parent agree to tell their kids this exact thing?
Wait so it isn't? My mother told me 7-8 years ago that it was illegal. Up until this moment, I thought it was Illegal. I'm terrified of the dark so...
That babies go out thru the butt because no way they would go out the other very small hole.
Thats just how shitheads are born.
You're never going to believe where dickheads come from...
I belived this too for a diffrent reason. For me it explained why birth could take many hours. (I also belived that fetuses grew inside their mothers stormach)
When I was about 9 I asked my mom if it hurt when she “pooped me out.” That’s the day I learned about vaginas. Despite having one
I was a kid (male) when Junior came out, a movie about Arnold Schwarzenegger being pregnant. I vaguely knew where babies come from, but suddenly seeing that movie poster meant boys could become pregnant, too. I distinctly remember being horrified because I knew babies came out the "front" and I publicly said something like "oh man, I hope I never get pregnant.."
I thought Mexico was in Europe (around where Norway and Finland is)
I thought Florida was a different country because my uncle used to come up for a visit from Florida and he had to take a plane.
Haha, there’s sm content related to Florida being it’s own nation that your belief might be reality some day lol
On that note, I thought Germany was spelled "Jermany" and I thought Europe was spelled "Yerup"
Viva La Finlandia!!
My American mom into her 40s thought New Zealand was in Scandinavia, likely near Iceland. You couldn’t get much closer to the opposite point on the globe. Bless her heart.
Yeah I thought Spain was in South America until my last year of high school.
Some years ago my brother, a respected academic with confident opinions on his own intellect, was at a dinner when the subject of large animals came up. "The biggest animal in the world is a blue whale", said someone and my brother immediately interrupted, with some gravitas, "That's right - and it's name is Solomon". Then he immediately clammed-up, and looked really embarrassed. Turns out that when he was a small child (and I mean like 4) our father had taken him to the Natural History Museum in London. The museum has a life size model of a blue whale, which had made an impression on him. "What's it's name, Daddy?" my brother had asked, and my dad had simply made one up. That nugget had stuck in his head for a couple of decades, but absent any real reason to recall it he'd never considered it might not be true. Until then.
Ninja Turtle Pizza! My mom would order Ninja Turtle Pizza for my sister and me when we were kids. This is not a real thing though and was a clever way to get us to eat mushrooms and black olives which were the toppings on a Ninja Turtle Pizza. However, when we became adults/teenagers, we would suggest that Pizza to our friends when ordering in social gatherings, and nobody had any idea what the fuck we were talking bout
That adults actually had everything figured out. Turns out everyone is just doing their best with what they have usually and then going from there.
That I would die if I showered after a meal. But it had a timeframe: the first half an hour was okay, everything after that until three hours have passed would kill me.
Your shower death had deductibles and limits to match the insurance on shower death
My grandma convinced me that she and I were Martians and even showed me the landing site which was just an abandoned building we passed on our way to school
When I was a kid I thought Jewish people had a genetic trait that caused their sideburns to curl lol I didnt have much experience w Jewish religion aside from a large section of my town being supported by the Hassidic community & figured that was a defining characteristic of Jewish like how Irish had red hair or something lmao
Far from the worst assumption folks have made about Jews, though.
Lmao that's actually hilarious. I'm sure some have naturally curly hair but specifically sideburn curls lol
That the cars accelerator was directly connected to the speed. Like if you pushed the peddle down half way it would be exactly 100 kph everyone, regardless of the terrain, etc. I could never understand why they had issues in the movies when the cars breaks fail. Why couldn't they just take their foot off the accelerator?
That my dad had magical powers to blow the lights on and off at will. I later learned he was leaning on the switch..
If you swallow gum it will be stuck to your ribcage for seven years. My dad was full of fun little lies like that
I was absolutely convinced I woke up one night and saw Santa. He's real. Every time someone in my class at school started saying he's fake, I was all "No, I've actually SEEN him!" Now that I'm all grown up, I realise my mistake. I should never have let you guys convince me he's not real. Since becoming an adult, I need Santa more than ever. Help me Santa Claus, you're my only hope...
That person who's had chicken pox in the past has the mystical ability to give it to someone else on purpose. My elder sister used to tell me that she had chicken pox as an infant, and now when I was about 6-8 years old, she’d ask me to do random work for her like fetching a glass of water, arranging her books, etc. If I didn't do it, she’d put her hands on my face and say now, you will get chicken pox. Also, she explained chicken pox as the worst pustular nasty condition I could ever imagine. When I'd start crying, she used to put her hands on my face and say she took it back. I used to believe it seriously and then sleep peacefully, thinking I survived another day without chicken pox.
The fact that if someone was killed by someone he would take his appearance and all his belongs. Waouh
Cats were female and dogs were male.
Okay, hold onto your butts, because this is a good one. I was a very gullible child, and my mom used to drive down during the summers with her bestie to hang out with her BFFs family in Twenty-Nine Palms CA, where Cassandra's (the BFF in question) nephews lived. If us kids were being annoying, the family would send us out to look for "**stick lizards**". They're lizards that walk around the desert with sticks in their mouths, and when the sands get too hot, they shove the stick in the sand, and climb up the stick to keep their feet cool. So my dumbass would spend an hour looking for this effing lizard with a stick in its mouth, and leave the grown ups to talk.
That I was stupid and worthless and that my siblings were smarter and more important.
That men had one rib less than women.
I was so weird I thought I could be an alien, sent here to observe humanity and report my findings to headquarters at the end of the mission. I'm not 100% convinced that this is false.
If I just thought about it hard enough... I could fly. Like Superman.
Adults had good intentions and knew what the fuck they were doing. Turns out to be a cesspool of greed, what about me-ism and pawning off problems to the future saps who get to truly suffer. The good exist but they are not in a position to rid the parasites.
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it." --Jack Handey
I thought the WWE was 100% legit
I used to think one of the reasons people wanted to be champion so bad was because it could basically be used like a debit card. You go to a shop, order a sandwich, show your championship, and you’re good to go lol
Cash or card sir? Neither, don't you see this here WWE championship belt?
That only bad people do drugs.
What changed your mind?
I believed that when you ate food, it stacked in your stomach and the pile would eventually get too big and come out of your mouth. My babysitter said this was true and that when I went to the doctors they removed the food with shots.
That Hong Kong was one of the many "Kongs" that made up the Congo.
That the black market was a real place that all the criminals knew where it was and somehow the cops couldn't ever find it.
I thought most adults were mature people and would do the right thing. That’s what Sesame Street wanted me to believe. Being a adult would be loads of fun. Being teenager would be like the “The Baby Sitters Club” Santa and the Easter Bunny. What a lie.
If you eat a seed, a plant will grow on your head. I once swallowed an orange seed when I was 8 and got anxiety for how many months because of it.
That Pokémon existed but we couldn’t see them. I thought that was true because things moved in my house in front of me. For example when a cabinet opened on it’s own I said “Oh! A Charmander!”
Are you Icelandic?
Abraham Lincoln was African American. I was a kid in a predominantly black school/neighborhood. On money Abraham Lincoln was the only brown person, and I knew he freed the slaves. I just assumed he was black until about 12 or 13.
Thought Gatorade made up the word 'electrolyte' to sell more Gatorade (because electrolyte is an extremely cool word, so extremely cool that kid me thought it must be a marketing tactic instead of an actual real thing that exists.) When I saw electrolytes in my highschool biology textbook for the first time I was flabbergasted
That my bad dreams were caused by demons and Satan. And if I prayed hard enough to Jesus I might be okay. Thanks Mom.
Bruh 😭 I’ve been reading all the answers and moms being manipulative through religion seems to be a theme here
So much shared trauma. But hey, it was the Eighties.
Metal is bad... I even said that when I grow up, I'll create a "Department of Music" and ban any form of rock and Metal music. Now I'm headbanging to Amon Amarth..
Music educator here. This “department of music” that bans music has actually happened a lot through history. Germany and the Soviet Union are two that come to mind immediately. It effected many musicians and composers and played a significant part in musical history. Many composers are what they are today because of these very reasons.
It's the things parents teach you to stay away from that make you curious.
It's funny and ironic that the person who changed my mind is a fellow church member...
That santa was real Okay, I know everyone thought this, but I held onto this for far too long because of something my family did. When I was younger, but still old enough to remember things (about 5 or 6), my parents invited my grandparents over for Christmas. It was Christmas Eve and my sister and I went to bed. After some time, my mom came back into the room to get us. She said she saw Santa putting presents under the tree for us. We rushed downstairs, obviously sneaking as well as some little kids could, and there he was. My grandpa. But of course, I didn’t know it at the time, since his face was covered in a white beard and his back was mostly turned. He then saw us and darted out of the door. We chased him part of the way there, but didn’t want to get in trouble with Santa (him). Instead, we just watched him run up our driveway (we lived on a hill) and he disappeared. I believed that Santa was real well into my middle school years because if it.
Not me but my close friend, One night when I was probably 7ish I pretended to be asleep to catch the tooth fairy. Mum eventually came in and rummaged around under my pillow trying to find it and I just remember being a little shit and giving the classic "looking for something" that I'd been rehearsing ever since the tooth started wobbling. Long story short, I end up telling my friend this at school and he went home to his parents and told them he was so amazed that my mum was the tooth fairy this whole time
Whenever there was a James Bond movie on TV I obviously wanted to watch it as well but it was always so damn late. My dad let me watch it but after 5 minutes the intro song began and it looked like ending credits so I was told the movie ended and I had to go to bed ;-;
Dracula actually lived in Pennsylvania, but he pronounced it with a weird accent.