# Adorable misconceptions I had as a kid. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 13, 2009, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491 "2009-11-13T21:50:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Baine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Baine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baine)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2009, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/141 "2009-11-22T17:34:17Z")
I remember as a child when I was told that a house costs more than 100 dollars, I though surely you could buy a house for _200_ dollars. ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2009, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/142 "2009-11-22T18:42:21Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > I used to watch _Guiding Light_ with my mom, and one day when an actress was replaced, I asked her what happened to the old one. And when she told me she had been fired, I took it literally: like they had shoved her into a fireplace. Count your blessings. At a fairly young age my mother started working days in retail. This was very hard on me, as I adored her and her two days off per week were a godsend. One workday I asked her if she could skip going in to work that day. Too bad she couldn’t think to say that she would be “let go” or “terminated” (which would have confused me rather than scaring me.) She had to say the\*\*\* F \*\*\*word. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![dhkendall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a9adbd/32.png) [@dhkendall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dhkendall)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2009, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/143 "2009-11-22T19:05:45Z")
> [@YWalker](#): > > I grew up in a family where there was no cursing at all — at most, the occasional “Hell” or “Damn” from my Dad, followed by an angry glare from my Mom. > > I assumed that “Fuck” was a surname — after all, the only place I’d seen it was written in sidewalks (vandalism done while the concrete was still wet) or in graffiti on the side of a building, and when people did that, they usually wrote their names. I’d never met any of those Fuck kids at school, but I assumed that it must have been a pretty large family or that they got around a lot, because I saw their name all over the place. “Boy mom, you know, there’s no little Fucks in my class! I mean, Fuck, that’s pretty common, right? But I’ve never met one of these Fucks at all!” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/144 "2009-11-23T01:18:01Z")
> [@moonstarssun](#): > > Numbers, letters and colors had gender. Odd numbers were boys, even numbers were girls (single digits), and multiple digits were friends. The letters and colors were less evenly distributed. I still sort of identify these things as gendered, but not as strongly as I did when I was a kid … > [@The\_Why\_Bird](#): > > Me too! I’m so glad I’m not the only one! Exactly the same as you - even numbers girls, odd numbers boys! Me three! Not only did I think of odd/even as male/female, but I tried to apply it to many things. Months and letters of the alphabet, for example. I was thrown by the “obvious” femaleness of May, an odd numbered month. And some of the letters had shapes which clashed with the associated ordinal numbers. I can’t recall for sure whether this was before or after I read that the Greeks considered odd numbers male—and lucky! > [@moonstarssun](#): > > … Also, before I understood the concept of “places” in numbers (ones, tens, hundreds), I thought that writing 137, for example, numerically was 100307 (one hundred, thirty, seven). Well, at least you were a kid. Once I spoke with into a radio talk show host who just did not get it when I tried to explain that the number in Revelation was not 6606. I think the subject that led to the conversation was some flap about Reagan being “the Antichrist.” Naturally all the intelligent people involved were very skeptical about the whole pin-the-tail-on-the-Antichrist bit. The host and I were agreed on this and our call ended amicably. But he had asked a previous caller what the Bible said the number was. What the host got was “Six, three score and six.” That was either because the citation was careless or the host didn’t listen very well. It should have been “Six hundred.” Once the host had it explained to him that three score was sixty, he wrote everything down sequentially and got 6606. I tried to explain to him that it went the same as “four score and seven years” – meaning 87, not 807. And how it was 600, not 6. And how a description from a time before place-value numbers just could not apply to our base-ten place-value digit system. It did no good. He kept dismissing my attempt to clarify it with “Well then, now we get into your interpretation versus mine.” I found his stubborn insistence irritating, but I kept my cool. I brought up the second thing on my mind, a bit of history about throwing the accusation of “666” across doctrinal lines. As I said, it ended amicably. But SHEEEESH! :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/145 "2009-11-23T01:52:05Z")
> [@badbadrubberpiggy](#): > > 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 had similar concerns seeing signs warning, “No trucks” while riding in my parents’ pickup. I also wondered why, if drugs were so evil, there were stores everywhere selling them. Come to think of it, I’m still wondering about that last one. ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/146 "2009-11-23T02:29:28Z")
The house I grew up in had a large breezeway between the house proper and the garage. This room was partially finished with knotted pine panelling, and was referred to by my family as the ‘knotty pine room’. It was also where the dog was banished when he misbehaved; as a result, for many years I thought we were calling it the ‘naughty pine room’. ---
**Author:** ![YWalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/6f9a4e/32.png) [@YWalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWalker)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/147 "2009-11-23T03:02:51Z")
> [@dhkendall](#): > > “Boy mom, you know, there’s no little Fucks in my class! I mean, Fuck, that’s pretty common, right? But I’ve never met one of these Fucks at all!” > > 😃 Heh. Once when I was out with my big brother (four years older than me), I asked him if any of those Fuck kids that did all the sidewalk writing and graffiti were in his class at school. With a gleam in his eye, he told me that he didn’t know any of them, but he thought that Mom might know the family and I should ask her. Fortunately, I was just naive rather than stupid. I let the mystery stay alive rather than asking. ---
**Author:** ![SunSandSuffering](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@SunSandSuffering](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunSandSuffering)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/148 "2009-11-23T12:26:16Z")
> [@Heckity](#): > > My father told me that if you hold a Guinea Pig up by it’s tail it’s eyes will fall out . . . sadly it was some time before I learned Guinea Pigs have no tails . . . Wicked, I laughed out loud! ---
**Author:** ![Jolly\_Roger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/91b2a8/32.png) [@Jolly\_Roger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jolly_Roger)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/149 "2009-11-23T13:09:22Z")
nvm…wrong thread. sorry. ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/150 "2009-11-23T17:36:06Z")
I used to think cars had “rackompinon” steering and you could buy things with famous cash, (as in 90 days famous cash.) I didn’t know how it differed from regular cash, but it was obviously better because you could buy things on TV with it. I used to think if I left the widow open in my bedroom at night a robber would come in like in cartoons. The robber would obviously be wearing a black and white striped shirt and a mask. My mom used to have to come in my room after I fell asleep and open my window so I wouldn’t sweat to death in the night. Here’s a lulu - When I was about 5 I decided my dad was a pretty nice guy so when I grew up I was going to marry him. When I told him that he said “There’s just one problem, I’m already married to your mom.” I said “What a coincidence!” I thought marriage was a job and kids didn’t have anything to do with it, lol, like maybe they were assigned to you. (So I guess the opposite of what everyone else thought!) ---
**Author:** ![pudytat72](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@pudytat72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pudytat72)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/151 "2009-11-23T18:16:26Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Well, since one in four children born today will be Chinese, eventually the odds catch up with you. That is what my 2 sisters and my brother told me. That I was the 4th child so I had to be Chinese. They would speak to me in “Chinese” and I would cry because I did not understand them. I thought the school teachers stayed at school all the time. My son got really upset one day when my husband got in the car with a Pepsi. “NO, Daddy! Don’t drink and drive! Drink and drive means Kill!” We lived on a military base in a country that would not allow American commercials to be shown on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Network. So all he saw were public service announcements and military recruiting commercials. His favorite song was the “Star Spangled Banner” and he asked me to sing it one day when we were in the grocery store! ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/152 "2009-11-23T19:32:39Z")
> [@rekkah](#): > > 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. Actually, this is partially true for many bands. For example, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons have incorporated the band KISS. The other musicians, such as Ace Frehley, Peter Criss, Vinnie Vincent, Mark St. John, and Eric Singer are hired musicians who sign contracts and get paid salaries. Their contracts can expire and they can be dismissed for not fulfilling clauses in their contracts. In the 90s, KISS famously reunited with Criss and Frehley returning. Bruce Kulick and Eric Singer, in the band at that time, were told to take vacations and were free to work on side projects. Singer has since returned to the group, along with guitarist Tommy Thayer replacing Frehley. KISS also owns the makeup designs, so current members Kulick and Singer wear Frehley’s spaceman makeup and Criss’ cat makeup, respectively. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Crap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.crap/32/3131_2.png) [@Dr.Crap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Crap)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/153 "2009-11-23T20:15:42Z")
I thought one of the perks of being a doctor was never getting sick. I also thought my faulty television was the work of an overprotective ghost. Whenever it turned off, I would say I wasn’t sleepy yet and turned it back on. I used to mix up the Russian word for blood, krof (pronounced to me as kroefee because it’s cuter), and the word for candy, confetti. One time, when my sister scraped her knee outside, I ran home yelling, “[Sister] has candy!” ---
**Author:** ![Dickerman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8baadc/32.png) [@Dickerman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dickerman)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/154 "2009-11-23T21:45:00Z")
When I was a kid I thought that when people moved, the two families exchanged houses. So in order to move, you had to somehow find a house with a family that wanted to move into your house. Yes, I thought that it would be a very difficult to thing to accomplish (our family never moved). It took a while for me to catch on. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/155 "2009-11-23T23:24:41Z")
That “HV” sign (on food packages-signifying that the food is kosher: I thought it meant “High Voltage”. ---
**Author:** ![zseckley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a8b319/32.png) [@zseckley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zseckley)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/156 "2009-11-25T03:09:56Z")
My dad told my brother and I, upon first being introduced to the marvels of Silly Putty, that if we left it outside of its egg, it would disappear. I thought that meant something akin to evaporation; he meant that he would throw it away if he found exposed Silly Putty lying around. It was something I never questioned until high school (mostly because I didn’t think about it, having gotten over the Silly Putty thing a few years earlier). A friend of mine was told by his mother that you should never have the rear window of a car rolled down while driving, or you’ll get Bell’s Palsy. Another friend thought that we lived on an inside surface rather than the outside surface of the planet. How else could one explain the need for launched objects to “break orbit”, unless they’re breaking through the Earth’s crust? ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/157 "2009-11-25T20:08:37Z")
> [@Dickerman](#): > > When I was a kid I thought that when people moved, the two families exchanged houses. So in order to move, you had to somehow find a house with a family that wanted to move into your house. Yes, I thought that it would be a very difficult to thing to accomplish (our family never moved). It took a while for me to catch on. I thought so too. After all, everybody has to live somewhere. If you assume that there are no unoccupied dwellings (and that no one is homeless, plus a few other assumptions) then trading houses would seem the most efficient way to effect change. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/158 "2009-11-25T20:26:57Z")
I used to think Susan B. Anthony had won the right for women to wear pants. ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/159 "2009-11-25T20:49:12Z")
I thought a Rhodes Scholar was a road scholar…someone who went on the road to learn things in far places. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491/160 "2009-11-25T21:38:28Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Even as quite a late teenager, when I looked at my sister’s “Now That’s What I Call Music” albums, they said things like “Bronski Beat feat. Marc Almond” or “Pet Shop Boys feat. Dusty Springfield”. I thought “feat.” was a singer who did a lot of collaborations. Embarassingly, I thought something similar until a few years ago. I downloaded an MP3 by “Lange ft Morrighan”. I thought, “foot”, not “featuring”, and that “Lange foot Morrighan” was the name of the band. No wonder I couldn’t find it when I went to buy the CD. I’m 46. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/adorable-misconceptions-i-had-as-a-kid/517491.md?page=9)