When I was wee, my father and I walked past a utility pole that I could hear humming. I asked him why it was humming, and he told me that utility poles have air conditioners inside them to keep them cool in the summer.
When I was about halfway through a physics degree and working nights and weekends in a small engineering company, I walked past a utility pole that was faintly humming, and I thought about the air conditioner inside. Then I thought, “Hey, wait a minute…”
I also believed that high school would be like it was on Room 222. Of course my first day of high school cured that illusion 
Knowing a lot of a**holes as a kid, I thought that when people grew up they automatically became nice. Oops. :smack: 
-I’ve posted this in another thread like this, but I thought the speed limit sign automatically made your car go that speed. So if the sign said 30 mph, your car would automatically speed up (or slow down) to 30. Then I heard about speeding, and speeding tickets, and it occurred to me that if you could go faster than the speed limit, then obviously you must be controlling the car yourself, otherwise there wouldn’t be a need for the police to punish you for it!
-When I heard the term “black and blue” or “a black eye,” I thought your eye actually turned ink-black. This also applied to people’s faces or lips “turning blue” when they were cold. When I actually got a black eye (two, actually, from a sledding accident), I looked at my eyes and thought “that doesn’t even look remotely black. Or blue. It’s more like a grayish purple.”
-Related to my two black eyes, after the incident I overheard my mother moan that “they’ll think I beat her!” referring to my teachers at school. Of course I thought “huh? Obviously she didn’t. Mommies and daddies don’t really hurt kids that badly, although they do spank us if we’re bad. I’ll just tell my teacher what really happened and everything will be okay!” It didn’t occur to me that a) there are parents that really DO hurt kids that badly, and b) said abusive parents can (and often do) tell their kids to lie about what happened to them. I guess that isn’t adorable. 
(Hmm, it just occurred to me that my teachers might have gotten really suspicious after my SECOND sledding accident, where I cut open my right cheek and had to get stitches :eek:. Thankfully, nothing ever came from it.)
-I thought that doctors really liked to give kids shots and stick needles in them just for kicks. That’s also not adorable.
-I thought that Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes was right, and couldn’t understand why his parents didn’t just do what he wanted them to do. Now, of course, I sympathize more with his parents.
“… it doesn’t know the words!”
I believed that if you worked hard and had integrity, you would be rewarded.
I believed that liars would be caught and punished.
I believed that mental illness was about being in a straight jacket in a booby hatch.
Quoth Electric Warrior:
Whenever I heard a song that ended on a fadeout, I thought that if you just kept turning up the volume on the stereo to compensate, you could make the song last forever.
Another musical one: You know the song from Mary Poppins, “Feed the Birds, tuppence a day”? I thought they were saying “tuffins”, and figured that tuffins must be some sort of biscuit. It rhymes with “muffins”, after all, and biscuits seemed to be a sensible thing to feed to birds. I couldn’t understand why you’d put them in a bank, though.
Similarly, I thought that when you grew up you’d have your shit together and know what the fuck you were meant to be doing. I’m 43 now and am still holding out hope that it’s going to happen sometime soon.
I was in the infants’ class, it was a hot summer’s day with all the classroom’s windows (and the door) wide open. A bee buzzed in to mooch about, and eventually came over to where we were sitting and actually landed inside the ear of the kid sitting next to me, and stung him. Obviously much screeching and wailing ensued, and he got taken off to be treated, etc. But it was years later that it suddenly popped into my head that I subsequently associated the fact that he had sticking-out ears with being stung in one of them. “Hand on a minute, he was stung in his right ear but both ears stuck out!”… d’oh! :smack:
Some anti-semites do use “Jew” attributively when they wish to be derogative. Conversely, “Aboriginal” used as a noun can be considered offensive in Australia (in contrast with “Aborigine”).
When she was about 6, my baby sister confided in me her suspicion that our father was Batman. After all, he was always gone at night (he worked second shift and was never home before her bedtime), he had a liking for black clothes, and he was, in her six-year-old opinion, the most awesome man in creation, which clearly meant he was a super-hero. I think she thought I was Robin as well.
We’re suppose to have our shit together?
Did I miss the memo?
Heh, on the topic of things about getting older, the first time I heard the 2012 apocalypse thing, I was about 10 years old. I thought, oh well, by that time I’ll be 21 and I’ll have my life in order and accomplish just about everything I need to, so it doesn’t really matter if the world ends.
I also thought for some reason that it was perfectly normal to have multiple girlfriends or boyfriends. Sometimes you’d take them all out to a party. It would of course keep you very busy, and that’s why teenagers all had busy schedules. Eventually you’d just pick one to marry.
Certainly in the 50s, 60s, and perhaps as late as the 70s, it was a common custom in America for teenagers to date more than one person at a time and take time before going steady (read: declaring exclusivity) with any one. I tend to think that in some ways that was healthier than what kids do today.
One time, in my late teens when I should have known better, I wondered if songs that faded out faded to zero volume, so while listening to a CD on the CD player of a guy my mother was dating, as the song was fading out, I was turning up the volume. You see where this is going :eek:. BOOM!!! The next song came on and I frantically turned down the volume. I was so grateful I didn’t blow out his speakers :o (and that he wasn’t home).
Similar to Filbert, I also believed that some individual was ringing the church bell every hour on the hour.
Also, I may have posted this before, but as a young Catholic child, I believed that Jesus literally lived in the church. My family and I always attended children’s mass, which was held in the Catholic school auditorium. Every Sunday, I would longingly gaze across the parking lot to the big church where I was sure Jesus was, glad-handing all the parishioners. Whenever we were at the school during non-mass hours, I would beg my mother to take me over to the big church. I imagined that I could meet Jesus in person if I could just catch him in his off-hours, lounging around the pews.
I got the jackalope story on a family trip out west (also from MN). The story that really got to me though, was the workup our parents gave us about Wall Drug Store. And coming east from Wyoming, the billboards were advertising the the place just the way my parents were. I ate it up with a big spoon. Man, was I disappointed!
Now, of course, I love that kind of kitsch.
Cute idea, and not so far from the truth: The Master Speaks
I believed we were fight gorillas in the jungles of Vietnam.
I didn’t realize there was another type of guerilla fighting untl I saw it in print.
Cue one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies (Captain Ron):
[Martin Short’s character is in a huff and starts walking towards the jungle on a Caribbean island to blow off some steam.]
CAPTAIN RON: Be careful; there’s guerillas in those woods.
MARTIN SHORT [paraphraased by me]: Gorillas live in central Africa. This is the Caribbean. There are no gorillas here!
MARTIN SHORT [is taken hostage by guerillas a few seconds later].
I used to think 30 was really, really old. Not so much now…
You know how when you glue stuff together, sometimes you’ll get some dried glue residue around the edges?
That’s what I thought the dirt behind my ears was. I was always told to wash behind my ears, but I was afraid if I washed too much, the water would dissolve the glue holding my ears to my head and they’d fall off.