Good afternoon!
I got the inspiration for this thread the other day. My husband and I went out shopping, and we got to talking about the Christmas song "Walking in a Winter Wonderland", and how I always thought the lyric referred to "Carson Brown" who I assumed was some dated reference to a celebrity from the 1920s or something. Of course the actual lyric is "Parson Brown", but I didn't know what a parson was until I was in my 20s due to being largely raised Jewish.
So that got me thinking about what other misconceptions we came up with as kids, either to fill in the blanks in our knowledge or misinterpreting things, stuff like that.
Another example: When I was just starting elementary school, I saw how the year changed from 1994 to 1995 and for a short period of time I assumed that after 1999 it would be nineteen ninety ten, and then nineteen ninety eleven and so forth. Of course that idea quickly changed once the millennium got closer and more people started talking about the futuristic year of 2000.
What silly things did you believe as a kid?
Before I learned how to properly tell time with a clock, I thought that a minute was 150 seconds instead of 60 seconds. I have no idea why I thought that at that time.
I wasn't raised Christian, but I think there was a period in my childhood when me and my best bud would like try prayer, let's say to get our parents to come home quicker when we were locked out of the house (happened occasionally) or to successfully load a Commodore 64 game that would frequently fail (Skool Daze).
It didn't really help 😄
Used to think if you held a model globe and span it round fast or slapped it very hard, tiny little people flew off or got squashed.
My dad told me that if you swallow apple or orange seeds, a tree will grow out your bum. In school I did just that and I panicked badly and started crying. The teacher asked me what was wrong and I told her.
Used to think I had a deformed penis because the first porn I saw was American and the guys were circumcised. I thought my frenulum was like cleft lip on the penis sort of thing and remember wanting it gone.
Yeah I was definitely told the seed thing too about watermelon.
I was also told by some family member that I shouldn't go swimming right after eating because the undigested food would weigh me down and make me sink. You would not believe how long I went without questioning that, haha.
So I thought that blowing into a NES cartridge would get it to work. I was super convinced that it helped.
I heard a similar thing about the seeds but it was attributed to watermelons more so than anything else.
I thought that if you flick the light switch while saying blood mary three times that she would appear and kill you.
I was also very afraid to use the bathroom after watching the movie IT when I was way too young for it. I thought that the clown was going to reach through the toilet and grab me.
Also to back up the Bloody Mary thing, some idiots kids did it while we were having a Halloween party and all the lights in the entire school went out. So I super thought it was a real thing. The reason that the lights went out is because we were having a terrible rain storm and power to the entire elementary school went out. Oh also to add more like credence to that, we were actually reading about the Queen's origin story during the party and some idiot also brought a Ouija board to the Halloween party so I was super convinced those idiots summoned Bloody Mary and she fucked with the lights.
I thought I could dig my way to China. I loved digging holes.
Quote from: Hope on Jan 23, 2024, 02:45 PMI thought I could dig my way to China. I loved digging holes.
Me too. Used to think if you dug for long enough you would get to Australia.
I fell onto a one inch piece of metal which went straight into my hand when a friend was giving me a piggy back and I thought I was going to die of lead poisoning and had a meltdown.
I also got into my uncle's Hustler magazines when I was little. I thought all sex took place in the ass.
Someday I'll tell you all about the time I took them to school.
I thought you only got pregnant through kissing...
until I was like 17.
No joke, the joke is the southern/American overall abstinence only education and my parents own reluctance/refusal to ever have the sex talk
I can't remember what disease it was but I believed if you coughed or sneezed in someone's face you could make them very ill. Was about 9.
On a school trip to Devon I did that and spent most of the night watching over my friend and checking on him thinking I had made him very ill.
That was a good school trip BTW. One week in Devon. Later that week we had a fight and he did the crippler crossface on me 😭
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c3/b2/03/c3b203e342ae4f589fefa7928ccf9d54.jpg)
naughty
When I was a kid I thought women got pregnant by having guys pee in their vag.
Quote from: Mrs. Waffles on Jan 23, 2024, 08:16 PMnaughty
When I was a kid I thought women got pregnant by having guys pee in their vag.
South Park took charge in a generation of failed sex education
My parents told me all about the birds and the bees from early on, so on a few occasions, they entertained guests by calling for me and then have me explain how babies were made. It was like a party trick or routine.
I can't remember their laughs today, but I'm sure I killed it.
Between already knowing that babies are born by women but before knowing about sex and vaginas, I assumed that children have to be cut out of the stomach by a doctor, which I guess would be the logical conclusion.
Quote from: Mrs. Waffles on Jan 23, 2024, 08:16 PMnaughty
When I was a kid I thought women got pregnant by having guys pee in their vag.
When we had sex ed in second grade and we were told that a fluid coming from the penis is involved, I did also assume pee. I probably was corrected at some point quite soon, but there was a blissful time period when I was genuinely concerned that I flush away so much precious baby making fluid.
Quote from: Hope on Jan 23, 2024, 02:45 PMI thought I could dig my way to China. I loved digging holes.
Cartoons helped perpetuate this by having bugs bunny dig his way to China.
Quote from: DJChameleon on Jan 28, 2024, 07:10 AMCartoons helped perpetuate this by having bugs bunny dig his way to China.
I like the one where he saws Florida off the U.S. and it floats away from the rest of the country.
From afar, Florida does seem like a particularly strange part of the US. Some interesting chemically fuelled crime takes place there for sure.
I lived in Lakeland (next to Tampa) for 3 years following my grandmother's death. We didn't live in any shady places, so it always seemed fine to me. I left there when I was 17, so not quite the age yet to be into drugs and chaos if I was going to.
Quote from: Psy-Fi on Jan 28, 2024, 01:51 PMI like the one where he saws Florida off the U.S. and it floats away from the rest of the country.
Yes I love that one too. Funny that opinion was popular back then. It seems like Florida Man coined term is new but not if that's how the animators thought of Florida so many decades ago.