# Amusing/Crazy Beliefs You Had as a Child! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 13, 2011, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595 "2011-08-13T18:27:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Quasimodem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Quasimodem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quasimodem)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/81 "2011-08-16T14:59:11Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Holy Infant, so tender and mild. I’ve always had a problem with that line of those lyrics. It sounds like a server telling you today’s special. Quasi ---
**Author:** ![Yorikke](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yorikke/32/4335_2.png) [@Yorikke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorikke)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/82 "2011-08-16T17:52:19Z")
> [@Quasimodem](#): > > I’ve always had a problem with that line of those lyrics. It sounds like a server telling you today’s special. > > Quasi Ha! I always thought that was the strangest turn of phrase, too. I always picture a pork chop in a manger when I hear it… Joe ---
**Author:** ![Yaxche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8dc957/32.png) [@Yaxche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yaxche)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/83 "2011-08-16T18:01:13Z")
> [@lisacurl](#): > > I was probably in junior high before I realized guerilla warfare did not involve non-human primates. I had a similar misunderstanding… I thought it was fighting a war, but without weapons, because obviously ‘gorillas’ can’t use weapons. ---
**Author:** ![Marconi\_N.Cheese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Marconi\_N.Cheese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marconi_N.Cheese)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/84 "2011-08-16T18:15:00Z")
I used to think you could walk on clouds. To a young kid looking at them from an airplane they seemed solid enough. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/85 "2011-08-16T18:34:19Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > At one point in elementary school, I thought that an “essay question” was an “SA question”. I don’t remember being too concerned about what SA stood for, though. That makes two of us then. “Scribbled Aspersions”? ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/86 "2011-08-16T18:36:02Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > There is a town in Ohio called Lebanon. It is not particularly close to my hometown, but I have some distant relatives there. Cousins of cousins, that sort of thing. > > My grandparents used to talk about going to visit the family in Lebanon. So for a really, _really_ long time, I had the vague idea that every so often my grandparents would get on a plane and fly to the war-torn country I heard about on the news all the time, to visit some distant family. I always sort of wanted to ask about what it was like there, but they always talked about Lebanon so matter-of-factly and I didn’t want to seem stupid. This reminded me of one of mine. I went to a hippy dippy preschool in Manhattan, KS when I was small. We used to sing folk songs during our singing hour. Including “Marching to Pretoria.” Which I thought was “Marching to Peoria.” It was years later I learned about Apartheid and townships and how this was actually a protest song, and not just a ditty about a hiking trip to Peoria, IL. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/87 "2011-08-16T19:08:02Z")
I thought that church was a really weird book club. Like, nobody really, truly believed it, they were just like Trekkies or super hardcore LOTR fans. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/88 "2011-08-16T19:15:05Z")
> [@Soul](#): > > in the bathroom, naked from the waist down, screaming “_WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?_” at my schlong. This is the funniest thing I’ve read here in quite a while. I’ve posted this a few times here already: When I was still young enough to go to preschool, my family lived in a house with an old ornately-framed mirror up on a high (well, to me) mantle. I was convinced that if I could just climb up to and go through the mirror, I could get to my preschool class. ---
**Author:** ![geneb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a88e4f/32.png) [@geneb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/geneb)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/89 "2011-08-16T20:55:44Z")
> [@movingfinger](#): > > If you are travelling in a car or bus and you pass a cemetery you must hold your breath until you are past it, or vague bad things will happen to you. I came here to post this very thing. I never thought someone else may have thought up such an odd idea as well. My only difference is that you had to hold your breath if you could see the cemetery at all (or knew it was there, so no looking away). I held my breath so much as a kid that I used to be able to easily hold my breath for a couple of minutes without any issues. ---
**Author:** ![KRC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/45deac/32.png) [@KRC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRC)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/90 "2011-08-16T21:15:00Z")
Fairies were real and I wanted one as a pet. Devils were real and I wanted one of those too. As a teenager, I thought that a man monitored the security cameras in the stores every second of the day. We tested this by making the finger at the camera and waiting to see if he came to kick us out. (When he didn’t, we’d use up the display make up, grab some spare candy, and then steal a shopping cart for a ride down the hill.) ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/91 "2011-08-17T03:10:14Z")
I’ve said this before, but until a couple of months ago or so, I believed that Scotland Yard was actually in Scotland. I mean, why else would they call it that? :o ---
**Author:** ![Hakuna\_Matata](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@Hakuna\_Matata](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hakuna_Matata)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/92 "2011-08-17T04:19:24Z")
> [@Scarlett67](#): > > I remember watching TV and seeing the thing about “We are experiencing technical difficulties . . . PLEASE STAND BY.” So I did – about a foot to the right front of the TV, at full attention. Luckily my mom caught me and set me straight on that particular figure of speech. This made me laugh as I can imagine you standing at full attention next to the TV 🙂 Mine involved my father playing a trick on me. I used to go fishing with him and since it was early in the morning we had the head lights on, and as we came upon another car the lights would go from bright to dim. Everytime a car came near us the lights would dim and I was always amazed and he told me that the car just ‘knew’ another car was coming! I never saw him do anything and the lights just dimmed. I just figured cars has some sort of sensor on them that made them dim the lights. A few years later I finally realized that he had his foot on the dimmer switch under the dash, I never knew that in old cars they used to be on the floor. ---
**Author:** ![iftheresaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecae2f/32.png) [@iftheresaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iftheresaway)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/93 "2011-08-17T05:25:52Z")
I was extremely, extremely gullible as a kid. My dad exploited this mercilessly to see what kinds of crazy stuff he could make me believe (a tendency I have discovered in myself as I’ve gotten older and spent more time around kids), but since he fooled me so often I learned to be skeptical of most of what he said. Not so with my mom. I knew that she grew up very poor - her father died when she was very young, leaving my grandmother with several kids & no money - and occasionally she would tell me stories about her childhood. In particular, I recall hearing several times that they were so poor that when a butter commercial came on, the kids would rub their bread on the screen and that’s what they thought butter tasted like. I don’t want to admit how long I believed this, but suffice it to say that I was able to vote by then. Even worse - I didn’t actually figure it out for myself; my mom heard me repeating the story to someone and had to point out that it was just a humorously exaggerated way to illustrate how poor they were. I still have no idea how I never questioned any part of that story for so long. ---
**Author:** ![Bibliothecarius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b2d939/32.png) [@Bibliothecarius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bibliothecarius)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/94 "2011-08-17T09:53:45Z")
> [@Nobody](#): > > I’ve said this before, but until a couple of months ago or so, I believed that Scotland Yard was actually in Scotland. I mean, why else would they call it that? :o I just had to google that. I had always assumed it was in Scotland and never bothered to look it up…:o In my defense, my sense of geography as a child was quite appalling…I used to get confused as to the difference between the USA and the USSR. Yes, I am American and yes, this was during the cold war. :eek: But on the map they were both huge countries towards the top that had U’s and S’s in them. I distinctly remember being four years old and sitting in the back of the car one dark night as we drove along a highway somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I heard my mom say to my dad, “Watch out for the radar,” or something to that effect, meaning highway patrol were probably out hiding somewhere with the radar detector gun to catch speeding drivers during the holiday season. But I thought this “radar” was some kind of monster lurking in the dark trees off the side of the highway and spent the rest of the trip staring out the back window trying to see the monster. I also believed that in the olden days the world actually looked sepia-tinged because it looked that way in old photos. And I would hear people on the news talk about euthanasia and wondered why everybody seemed to care so much about Asian teenagers. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Wotdazog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@Wotdazog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wotdazog)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/95 "2011-08-17T12:55:24Z")
As a child I recall being fascinated by traffic lights. Naturally, I figured it was somebodies job to turn them to the correct colour when cars pulled up to them, but I’ll be damned if I could ever see where they were in order to do all this so quickly every time. I came to the conclusion that each light was operated by a person underneath the road, with a kind of switch to press for the required colour above and some kind of tv or camera to let them know when cars pulled up to their light. I assumed one light equaled one person to work it, so golly, there must be lots of these underground button pressers! It must be _awful_ cramped down there too, how terrible for them all! Thought this until I was seven or eight. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/96 "2011-08-17T14:01:54Z")
Another “gorilla fighter” here. I also thought the TV newsmen knew the truth about everything. I remember thinking at age 7, after I lied to my mother about how I ripped open my arm that the truth would be on the TV news and my mother would hit me worse for lying. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/97 "2011-08-17T14:30:27Z")
> [@Wotdazog](#): > > As a child I recall being fascinated by traffic lights. Naturally, I figured it was somebodies job to turn them to the correct colour when cars pulled up to them, but I’ll be damned if I could ever see where they were in order to do all this so quickly every time. I came to the conclusion that each light was operated by a person underneath the road, with a kind of switch to press for the required colour above and some kind of tv or camera to let them know when cars pulled up to their light. I assumed one light equaled one person to work it, so golly, there must be lots of these underground button pressers! It must be _awful_ cramped down there too, how terrible for them all! > > Thought this until I was seven or eight. Ditto, except my theory was that he was an evil leprechaun whose sole job was to switch the lights at the most suboptimal moments so as to cause maximum gridlock, rubbing his grubby little hands with glee when he flipped the light to red the instant before a huge group of vehicles charged into the intersection (how else to explain the crap flow of traffic in 1960’s Cleveland to a gifted preschooler with a wild imagination?). Little bastard would also keep the light green for minutes on end for lanes with no cars coming, as well. Judging by the crap timing of the lights here in Jacksonville, FL, 2011\*, their union must still be pretty powerful and widespread. [\*i.e. the long-rumored implementation of synchronized lights along most major thoroughfares has been held up by red tape in the municipal govt. for years here.] ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/98 "2011-08-17T14:35:10Z")
That the custodial staff with gray canvas push-carts in department stores Really Did grab misbehaving children, drag them in the back & make mannequins out of them. That cars with rust were looking to run people down so they could regenerate like vampires. That you could get a huge discount on the price of your car, but you had to drive it around with big white-wall tires. That a lot of the places around the world really didn’t exist; the news people just wanted to see if you were paying attention. That Dentists all hid cash in stacks of 50s & 100s in shoe boxes on their closets. To pay for the gold. That pilots owned their own planes & got tips at the end of each flight. That Dads had to visit hardware stores once a month. Or die. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/99 "2011-08-17T14:47:33Z")
Well, I did buy the whole religion thing until my early teens. But when I was about 6 or 7, I went through the “covers” phase. Ever hear Bill Cosby’s monologue about covers? Very much like that, except that dinosaurs were roaming in my room. If I laid really still, totally under the covers, they couldn’t find me. I had to have air, so I would get under the covers and pull my pillow over my head. My bed was in the corner of my room, so I could prop the pillow against the wall and be able to breathe through the gap between my bed and the wall. And I don’t remember this at all, but apparently when I was about 3 or so, I had a pet mouse for a while. No one could see him except for me. My sister still teases me about it to this day. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595/100 "2011-08-17T14:52:10Z")
> [@Bibliothecarius](#): > > And I would hear people on the news talk about euthanasia and wondered why everybody seemed to care so much about Asian teenagers. :rolleyes: Oh yeah, youth in Asia. That’s what I thought for a long time too. Also, add me to the gorilla/guerilla confusion. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amusing-crazy-beliefs-you-had-as-a-child/592595.md?page=6)