I thought the Pulitzer Prize was the Pulit Surprise. I thought they surprised the author with the prestigious award!
Not only did I believe in God and Heaven, but I believed in Heaven for all the animals.
When I was really, really little (maybe seven years or earlier) I thought sex was a surgical procedure involving the two parents. It didn’t make sense to me that something like a baby could just be made at home with no special equipment.
I thought astronomers really spent most of their working days sitting in telescopes all night and wanted to be an astronomer very badly.
Maybe I’ll remember others later on. But what adorable misconceptions did you have as a child?
I believed that my parents and lots of other family members could do magic like witches if they wanted to and I would be able to someday as well as soon as they saw I was grown enough to trust me with the secrets and power. There was no reason whatsoever why I thought this except there were a few strange things that happened in the house that I couldn’t explain so that had to be the answer.
same with me, all dogs were boys to me. Funny thing is my niece thinks all dogs are girls, she’s almost 3 now. Is it common for a child to think a dog is of their sex exclusively? I never thought of cats in the way i did dogs, since there was no visible dangly bit.
I thought when people on game shows didn’t win they were given some lovely “party” gifts, like gifts for parties.
I thought only boys had curly hair, too, and didn’t get why my mom kept bugging me to eat my crusts, holding “they give you curly hair!” as an incentive.
I thought filmed deaths were real. (No, I’m not talking about snuff films.)
Not knowing about stuntmen/women, and editing techniques, I thought that film directors who wanted to film, say, some poor shlub being tossed off a cliff actually killed someone.
I reasoned that the directors would be able to find desperate people, give them a million dollars or so (a LOT of money when I was growing up), and tell them to live it up for, say, a year.
Then, when the time to film came, the guy would show up on set and be filmed being tossed off a cliff (and being asked by the director to scream and wave his arms like crazy).
I thought that losing gravity was a natural disaster like an earthquake or something. I was always asking my dad what things would be good to hold on to to keep from flying away.
When I first learned the alphabet, before I really learned what all the letters actually meant, I thought there were 2 kinds of Ps - regular P, and elemeno (LMNO) P.
Forgive me, I was 3!
Also, when I was a kid I saw a lot of commercials saying “Don’t Drink and Drive!”. I thought it meant don’t drink anything at all and drive. I would worry when my mom had coffee cups in the car.
I thought that when the teacher called roll at school, you could only answer “Present!” around Christmastime. The rest of the year you had to say “Here!”
I thought this too and now that I’m all growed up, (30), I still sort of view them as such. Even if I know their real sex dogs still feel like boys and cats still feel like girls.
When I was 4 or so, I just assumed the lady running the checkout at the grocery store got to keep all the money in the till at the end of the day… that it was her income.
Man. Cashiering would be the best job evar if that were true.
I used to think that if surrounded myself with all of my stuffed animals on the bed, they would protect me from monsters. Until I was 10.
When I was 4 or 5, I tried to draw a naked lady. Apparently I thought the hoo-ha was triangular. Point up.
When I was maybe 5 or 6 or so, friends and I were climbing a tree in the schoolyard. I was about halfway up when I looked down and saw drops of blood hitting branches below. I thought this was incredible and called enthusiastically to my friends below, “The tree is bleeding! Hey, guys, the tree is bleeding!” But the tree wasn’t. I was. A sharp branch or thorn or something must have jabbed me in the head. But for a brief moment, I actually believed trees could bleed.
When I was maybe five or six, I thought that pop stars and bands were effectively employed to a particular job like any other job. In other words, if a particular star or band “resigned”, interviews would be held and someone would be picked to directly replace them.
I remember being both impressed by and feeling sorry for the Nickelodeon commercial announcer guy who had to sit there and do the same ads over and over again live…and yet he always managed to do it exactly the same way each time. I was quite impressed.
I’m not sure why I didn’t have the idea of it all being prerecorded.
You seem to be implying that Bifrost does not exist. That would imply that Heimdall does not exist, which would imply that Loki does not exist, which would imply that Odin does not exist, which would imply that THOR does not exist, which is just silly.
When I was very young–maybe four–my older sister told me that rabbits were baby kangaroos, that spiders were baby octopodes, and that the people on Sesame Street lived inside the TV. I believed her. One day I will have my revenge.
I wasn’t raised in a religious household, so when I was in 1st grade or so and we were learning about the various holidays at school, I went home and told my parents all about Street Patrick’s Day. (I mean, come on, isn’t “street” the first thing you think of when you see the abbreviation “St.”?)