What funny/incorrect ideas did you have about the world when you were a kid?

Astrolabe

I hope this thread is in the right section!

I was just wondering if anybody else used to have funny ideas/fears about the world when they were kids...ideas which seemed to make perfect sense as a child, but which make us laugh now?

For instance, I used to think the following, as a small child:

* Life was actually in black & white, a hundred years ago
* My dad, who has a beard, was born with the beard, and had it all through childhood
* If I went to the toilet unaccompanied, wolves would come up from the toilet bowl and bite me, and drag me down into the toilet pipes, where I'd be trapped for the rest of my life as the wolves took bites out of me

I'm just curious to know if I'm the only one, or did anyone else used to think crazy stuff like this?

mud

It took me waaaaay too long to work out how gravity works. I couldn't understand why I couldn't hook my hands under my knees and carry myself around the place Many, many bruises.

semionova

Once when my brother was young and he woke up early while it was still dark he opened the curtains and went ' Ugh they forgot to switch the lights on!' :P

jobbridge4life

I thought 'gayness' only came into existence in like the 70s.

I assumed they had statues to Hitler in Germany.

Astrolabe

Haha cool!

I also thought that, you know when you're driving and you see little memorial plaques on the roadside, comemorating people who have died in accidents? I thought that they actually just buried the person there and then, and that those were their actual gravestones :O

jobbridge4life

I have also just remembered that I used to thing RIP stood for ripped into pieces. I remember visiting a graveyard and being terrified because so many people had been murdered. Thankfully someone explained it to me.

Fir3Fly1995

When I was first getting on a plane I thought it instantly got bright. Either the lights had just been turned on or I fell a sleep. Either that or it was a dream. And another time I thought planes flapped their wings like a bird. Lol. I was a very uneducated child back then. Lol

Pumpkin PJs Fan No.9

I believed my family were the only people on the planet that had ever heard of the concept of "scrambled eggs"...

______________

"I'm an Awesome Pumpkin!"

Oryx

I.thought you grew up and then got small again as you got older (my granny was tiny).

I thought your teeth fell out as an adult. Every adult I knew had false teeth or no teeth!

Junior D

If I held any part of my body outside the blanket when going to sleep, the bogeyman would grab that body-part and take me away....

This theory has unfortunately stayed with me slightly

SQ2

I thought it may actually be possible that our car didn't move, but the world moved instead!

colossus-x

When I first became aware of the birds and the bees I imagined mummy and daddy being taken into hospital to 'do it' whilst surrounded by nurses and doctors assisting in some way. In full uniform of course - I wasn't that imaginative.

thegreatgonzo

I thought Bangladesh was somewhere in Roscommon.

Into The Blue

I thought gay men automatically got aids during sex, and did it anyway because they were uneducated about the consequences.

Similar for heroin addicts. How could anyone take the first hit knowing they were going to get hooked, all addicts had just not met an addict before their first time.

Thought my dad owned the multinational he worked for.

Thought the Americans were the good guys of the world, who selflessly looked after weak countries. Still a bit upset over that disappointment..

Dtp1979

I thought that if I could get my hands on £20, that'd do me forever money wise

Day Lewin

When I was very small, and couldn't see high, I didn't realise that all moving cars had a driver in them: I thought that maybe they went around on their own, like noisy black animals. It took several years before I completely believed that every moving car had a person in it!
And I used to think that the moon moved along with me: when I looked at the moon, and ran along the street, the moon moved with me.
I still think this - try it yourself!

Tell me how

I used to believe that there was a band of really small people in radios who played like as in a concert and that was what the listeners heard.

I remember trying to dissect the practicalities of it and getting stuck on how do they get food?

I went to an adult for clarity on that part of the story and they set me straight.

Mcbumhole

One of my friends, who had an older brother and was the source of much of my information growing up told me that a gay was a man who loved a man, a lesbian was a woman who loved a woman and a condom was an animal that loved an animal

Senna

I though everyone in our estate had the address 54 Castle Park, and we were just very lucky that we ACTUALLY lived at number 54.

AvyStreet

I thought that houses cost probably a few hundred, maybe a thousand.

If only.


That was a disappointing day when the oldies simultaneously skuppered my plans for a life of adventure and laughed me out of the room.

Olishi4

I thought the tooth fairy was The Statue of Liberty and the Easter Bunny was an actual giant rabbit that looked like the pretty one from the cadburys caramel advert.

Gamer Bhoy 89

Tell me how wrote: »

I used to believe that there was a band of really small people in radios who played like as in a concert and that was what the listeners heard.

............Sorry, this is just too weird. I used to think the exact same thing when I was a wee lad.

That's me for the day, so. Nothing will get weirder than this for me.

dvae

For many years I thought my belly button was really a screw.
My dad told me"if I turned it to the left my arse would fall off".

Xenophile

That I was never going to die. Even when everyone else in the world was dead, I would still be alive, all on my own sitting on the upper floor of a double decker bus.

holy guacamole

I thought women didn't poo. Girls did, but not women.

duchalla

I used to think that we all had a certain amount of breaths and when they were used we'd die. So I used to hold my breath for as long as I could, thinking I was saving that breath, so i'd live longer!
I spose I was kinda right....

Gamer Bhoy 89

Astrolabe wrote: »

Haha cool!

I also thought that, you know when you're driving and you see little memorial plaques on the roadside, comemorating people who have died in accidents? I thought that they actually just buried the person there and then, and that those were their actual gravestones :O

I thought the same thing for a couple of years when I first came here in 2004. Since I never saw that kind of thing back in Scotland.

BattleCorp

AvyStreet wrote: »

I thought that houses cost probably a few hundred, maybe a thousand.

If only.

Might not have been a funny/incorrect idea if you were a kid in the 40's or 50's.

Greys0n

why i can't smell the food on tv?

Mindset

Interflora blew my mind, how did they get the flowers to travel so well?

Mindset

dvae wrote: »

For many years I thought my belly button was really a screw.
My dad told me"if I turned it to the left my arse would fall off".

Your dads awesome, i'm going to use that on my little one. lol

Dufflecoat Fanny

I used to think the world was in black and white before i was born

tringle

We were told there was a puddle near the bus stop at my Grans that was bottomless...we were terrified of it.

I lived with my great grandfather and two miles from my Grandad. I called both Grandad and they looked alike. I was convinced they were the same person, he lived with us and then he ran to my Nans to be there when we arrived.

Banshees lived on top of the local industrial building, if you seen them you would die. So I would grab my Dads hand when walking by and keep my eyes closed.

We lived in Dublin, Dublin is the capital of Ireland therefore it was in the centre of Ireland.

sbsquarepants

When I was a young kid I used to think that cats were female dogs:D

PremiumCola

I used to think teachers lived in the school. Like they just hid all their clothes and stuff before we showed up. I used to snoop around the classroom looking for their stuff.

Realt Dearg Sec

I believed that Kilkenny people didn't have any accent. We spoke normally, and everyone else had weird accents

greeneyes29

I used to think that London was in Ireland. I also was led to believe Elbow Grease was an actual 'thing' , not just a saying

minikin

Used to think the moon changed shape.

GerB40

I thought the government was one person. I pictured a scary judge like man that, kind of like the judge in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit'.

Parachutes

I used to think the world was procedurally generated. When I was in my house, that was the entirety of the universe and when I'd go into town or whatever, it'd just 'pop' into existence for me.

mansize

I remember being surprised that flights had timetables - like trains and that the day's flightplan wasn't just set up individually each day seperately

mansize

Parachutes wrote: »

I used to think the world was procedurally generated. When I was in my house, that was the entirety of the universe and when I'd go into town or whatever, it'd just 'pop' into existence for me.

That's a belief system I think

Yester

mansize wrote: »

That's a belief system I think

Parachutes wrote: »

I used to think the world was procedurally generated. When I was in my house, that was the entirety of the universe and when I'd go into town or whatever, it'd just 'pop' into existence for me.

You could be on to something there.

mansize

Parachutes wrote: »

I used to think the world was procedurally generated. When I was in my house, that was the entirety of the universe and when I'd go into town or whatever, it'd just 'pop' into existence for me.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

Aoife Nic L

If you twisted your belly button too far round when you were washing in the bath, your arse would fall off.
That live herring fish swimming around looked like kippers,
First time I saw a black person I thought their head was rotten. I'd heard a story of a man who'd had to have their foot cut off cos it had gangrene and went black.

Clampdown

My family moved to the states when I was a child. I had never seen a black person before and when I did, I was convinced they were made of chocolate.

We were on a bus when a black guy got on and I kept saying to my mother 'Look, a chocolate man!' She tried frantically to get me to shut up, but the black fella just looked over and said 'I've been called worse.'

fizzypish

I used to think that cats and dogs were the one species. Dogs were male, cats were female.

genericspin

That you go to one or two classes and then you're good at something.

Very disappointed after my gymnastics class.

I remember the ma saying 'we go back again' or something, to my question of why I wasn't doing somersaults yet - felt completely ripped off.

AGAIN ? ...what ... how many times. But I just did it.

BorneTobyWilde

That the weather man decided the weather and he was a bastaard if it rained.

Stealthfins

I thought teachers knew everything about anything until I went into secondary school and seen the maths teacher copy the sums from the book and write them on the board.
I knew something wasn't right.

I thought crab apples were baby apples and I was frustrated for a few years of my life because the ones across the road weren't getting bigger.

I thought skeletons were a different species altogether,until Yvonne told me when I die I'll rot into a skeleton.
It scared the hell out of me.
Lol I think she's in the NYPD now lol

I also thought my grandmother was there forever,and always existed.

Thought getting healed was someone stomping on my face.

triple nipple

That Northern Ireland was an identical Ireland only upside down and of course north of Ireland