When I was around six, we had a mailman named Chuck. Good old Chuck The Mailman. He always said “Hi!” when I was outside playing as he delivered the mail. I liked Chuck. He was nice.
One day, Chuck didn’t come by anymore. There was another mailman.
Shortly afterwards, I was in the supermarket with my mother. We were in the meat aisle, and I was reading the different labels.
“Ma, they killed Chuck and chopped him up into pieces!”, I cried.
My mother, after having a good laugh, explained that Chuck just got another route. I still think about that when I see chuck steak in the store. And I still won’t eat it.
I spent much time as a youngun riding trucks around the country with my daddy. All his truckerbuddies were NASCAR fans. THey would talk on the CB about Richard Petty. They called him The King. Of course he must really be a king! I thought he lived in a castle and that he was OUR king, just like in storybooks, and when I heard about the President I got confused… we had a king!
My hometown is about a thirty minute drive from a podunk town called Lebanon. I thought the news footage of fighting and explosions in the COUNTRY Lebanon were thirty minutes away. I figured the only reason the tanks hadn’t shown up at my house yet was that our street was too narrow.
I grew up around Chinese and Southeast Asian refugees/immigrants who worked on my dad’s farm. I thought my hair would turn from near-white blonde to black when I grew up. And actually, it did.
Welcome, Zymurgy - lost your (Doper) cherry, huh? That’s one of my childhood misconceptions – that there really was a cherry to lose.
Amazing how many of these I believed too. Is that weird, or something we should expect, like common cultural myths?
I was shocked the first time I jumped into the city swimming pool, on the three-foot end. I didn’t realize the water went all the way to the bottom. Thought there was just a layer of it, with air underneath. How else could someone stay under?
I believed that cats were girls and dogs were boys, and that they got married and had litters of either puppies or kittens, but not both at the same time.
Whenever I saw pictures of my parents as kids, or of my grandparents, they were always in black and white.
I used to think that they didn’t live in color back then, and that it was just a black and white world.
My biggest misconception as a child was thinking that my dog would actually eat the unwanted vegetables I threw to him under the table. Stupid dog.
All languages are just made up based on the english language. For instance, Spanish happened because the Spanish people wanted their own language, so they changed the English version into what is now known as Spanish. i.e. “hola” means “hello”, but “hello” doesn’t mean “hola”
In my elementary school, most teachers had assistant teachers. So, naturally, the teachers live with their assistants. Well, they are together at school aren’t they?
Texas isn’t part of the United States. Everyone who lives there talks American, but they’re Texans. It’s kind of like a different planet. Everyone who lives there is a cowboy or a cactus. Cactus are people in funny green jumpsuits.
Canada is a part of the United States. My Quebecoise great-grandmother, who used to yell at us kids in what I now assume was French, was speaking to us in English with a really bad accent.
All squirrels can fly.
If I love him enough, the youngest guy in NKOTB will marry me. (I believe this was Joey McIntyre.)
When I marry Joey McIntyre, we will have sex by licking each other’s belly buttons. That’s how I’ll get pregnant. Then the baby will just appear one day.
Babies come with helium balloons announcing whether it’s a boy or girl. If you get a girl but want a boy, all you have to do is switch the balloons.
The supermarket produces its own food. If you got locked into a grocery store, you could eat forever, because the food magically appears there.
A seasonal misconception, or at least a misunderstanding… In the song “Frosty the Snowman” I used to think he was “Parse and Brown.” Altho’ a brown snowman was strange, maybe the snow was dirty, but what is “parse”?
I truly believed that I could grow up to a cat. That’s what I wanted to be when I grew up.
My friend thought that tiny horses lived in the tires of cars and thats why you had horsepower. And when the horses died thats how you got a flat tire.
When I was little, I heard my parents talking about what they could do when their “ship came in”. I thought this was a real ship with big boxes on it marked with our name and full of toys and stuff and that somebody was awfully late in delivering them to us.
I also thought that when the New Year came in there was a big noise or something so you could tell it was here. One night I was allowed to stay up to see it come in…boy, was I disappointed.
whe I was three years old, my mother gave me the straight dope on where babies come from. But I didn’t believe her – I though babies were made in factories.
I thought teachers lived in school.
I thought all foreign languages were Spanish.
My brother thought they turned waterfalls off at night.
I thought history was over. Then one day it dawned on me that things that were happening now would one day be looked back upon as historical events.
I could not figure out how people got their last names. You see, my paternal grandmother’s last name was different from mine, my maternal grandparents’ names were different (well, duh) and of course, the same applied to all of my cousins.
I stupidly assumed that when adults married they picked a name out of the clear blue to use as their surnames. What an idiot.
(BTW, only when I saw an old picture of my paternal grandmother with a man did I realize she had remarried after the death of my paternal grandfather. This remarriage was–ahem-- shortlived because Hubby #2 also expired quite quickly. It did teach me something about the expectation of a long life when living with granny.)
I thought that when you got really old, you automaticaly turned Italian. It seemed the neighborhood was overun with elderly people when I was a child and they were all Italian.
I also thought Jesus was Italian. I’m betting my Dad told me that one day when my Mom wasn’t around
Inside your body somewhere, probably by your stomach, there’s a big number; that’s your age. For instance, if you’re five years old, the number inside of you reads “5.” On your birthday, the number changes to your new age.
I asked my dad where rain comes from. He answered “clouds,” but I misheard him and thought he said “clowns.” So I pictured giant clowns on top of the clouds pouring buckets of water down on us.
I’m sure I’m not the only one. It’s so obvious. When you’re in the car at night, you look out the window, and if the moon is near the horizon, it clearly appears to be zipping along through the sky (relative to the trees and things). I thought the moon loved me and watched over me. My parents told me that this wasn’t true, and tried to explain to me that the moon is just very far away, etc. I concluded that my special relationship with the moon was a secret - just between the moon and I.
