# Kids Can Say The Darndest Things -- To Creep You The Hell Out.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [July 31, 2009, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862 "2009-07-31T13:51:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@LilyoftheField](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LilyoftheField)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2009, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/21 "2009-07-31T21:35:20Z")
When my son was around three or four, we were driving somewhere and I took a wrong turn and ended up in an unfamiliar neighborhood. It took me a few minutes and a few more turns to get oriented and headed back toward the main drag.
Son, strapped in his car seat in the back seat, kept looking around with great interest. “Mom!” he told me with a big grin, “I used to live here!” I glanced back at him distractedly. “No, no, son - we’ve never lived around here - I’m not even sure where we are!”
But he was adamant. He insisted, “Yes, I used to live here - a long, long time ago, when I was big…”
That sort of made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up a little bit…
:eek:
---
### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2009, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/22 "2009-07-31T21:40:48Z")
> [@Rascal\_s\_Mom](#):
>
> He would announce it maybe five seconds before the phone rang.
I went through a stage like that in college. I would hear a ring, tell people the phone’s ringing, then it _would_ ring. I remember one very-stoned friend jumping up and saying “How do you DO that??? Stop it!”
I really think it’s a case where the circuit opens, the bell rings _just a little bit_, and then two seconds later would ring in full. I noticed I only heard the pre-ring on those old brick ATT phones that used to be ubiquitous.
---
### Author:  [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2009, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/23 "2009-07-31T22:17:55Z")
> [@JohnT](#):
>
> I went through a stage like that in college. I would hear a ring, tell people the phone’s ringing, then it _would_ ring. I remember one very-stoned friend jumping up and saying “How do you DO that??? Stop it!”
>
> I really think it’s a case where the circuit opens, the bell rings _just a little bit_, and then two seconds later would ring in full. I noticed I only heard the pre-ring on those old brick ATT phones that used to be ubiquitous.
We now have a phone in the kitchen that does this. I should start “predicting” the calls, just to mess with my family’s heads…
---
### Author:  [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2009, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/24 "2009-07-31T22:40:32Z")
> [@Hal\_Briston](#):
>
> As in, he would tell you when the phone was about to ring, or when it was ringing he’d tell you who it was?
Heh. I did that once.
It was back in college, and I was hanging out with a friend who lived at a co-op. The co-op had one shared phone line for everyone, so if it rang, chances were, it wasn’t for you, it was for one of the zillion other people who lived there.
We were sitting around, hanging out, and the phone rang. She ignored it. Without even thinking about what I was saying, I muttered, “Pick that up. It’s {her boyfriend at the time}.”
She rolled her eyes at me and picked up. Guess who it was?
It spooked her a bit, but it creeped me out more. I hadn’t consciously thought the words or anything - they just came out.
Man, I hadn’t thought of that moment in years.
Sorry I don’t have a kid post to add though. Keep 'em coming, though - y’all have some creepy little kids! 😛
---
### Author:  [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2009, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/25 "2009-07-31T22:43:39Z")
> [@ivylass](#):
>
> Ivyboy was about 3 and I was watching some schmaltzy romance mini-series set in WWII. He saw some biplanes on the TV and said, “Mommy, I died in an airplane?”
>
> “Oh?” I said, not wanting to freak him out.
>
> “Yes. The men in blue shot me down.”
>
> Then, he was visiting with my SIL and she was dancing with him and started singing some WWII song. The child, who had previously been giggling at her other songs, promptly burst into tears.
> [@LilyoftheField](#):
>
> When my son was around three or four, we were driving somewhere and I took a wrong turn and ended up in an unfamiliar neighborhood. It took me a few minutes and a few more turns to get oriented and headed back toward the main drag.
>
> Son, strapped in his car seat in the back seat, kept looking around with great interest. “Mom!” he told me with a big grin, “I used to live here!” I glanced back at him distractedly. “No, no, son - we’ve never lived around here - I’m not even sure where we are!”
>
> But he was adamant. He insisted, “Yes, I used to live here - a long, long time ago, when I was big…”
>
> That sort of made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up a little bit…
> :eek:
I’ve heard about kids saying things like, “When I was big, I used to…” and such, but I’ve never actually come across a first person anecdote until now. That is kind creepy, in a cool way.
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### Author:  [@Tikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tikki)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/26 "2009-08-01T00:09:14Z")
**Mr. Bus Guy’s** story made me get tears on my glasses.
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### Author:  [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/27 "2009-08-01T00:30:19Z")
> [@LilyoftheField](#):
>
> When my son was around three or four, we were driving somewhere and I took a wrong turn and ended up in an unfamiliar neighborhood. It took me a few minutes and a few more turns to get oriented and headed back toward the main drag.
>
> Son, strapped in his car seat in the back seat, kept looking around with great interest. “Mom!” he told me with a big grin, “I used to live here!” I glanced back at him distractedly. “No, no, son - we’ve never lived around here - I’m not even sure where we are!”
You should have asked him for directions. 😃
---
### Author:  [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/28 "2009-08-01T00:38:04Z")
> [@HeadNinja](#):
>
> A few weeks ago my two year old gave me and my wife a hug and kiss goodnight. Then he said Goodbye Mommy. Goodbye Daddy."
>
> We corrected him. “It is good night.”
>
> He shook his head no and said, in a tired old man voice that two year olds should not be able to access, “No. Tonight is Goodbye.”
Ha! That kills me!
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### Author:  [@StaudtCJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StaudtCJ)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/29 "2009-08-01T01:21:53Z")
I don’t believe in ghosts. I really don’t. But my youngest son was 3 when he told me about a long conversation he had with a “friend” who was “sort of see through”. He described his friend, and told me that the man had been “buried in a tree”. The creepy part was he was THREE, and described the costume and burial practices of the local Amerind tribe. I didn’t know that until I looked it up, as he was extremely insistent, and insisted that I was “hurting his friend’s feelings” by not believing him about being buried in the top of a tree.
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/30 "2009-08-01T02:04:50Z")
Just today I was chatting with a friendly toddler in the checkout lane. He said
“If **L\*katt** finds this thread, will never hear the end of it.”
**Shakes** I used to sleepwalk as a child. It was routine for me to wake up in a different room than the one I had gone to sleep in. AFAI can tell, I also once hid one of my sneakers in the bathtub whilst sleepwalking.
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### Author:  [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/31 "2009-08-01T03:20:14Z")
I was a creepy sleepwalking (and talking) kid regularly, and I never grew out of it. It still happens to me the majority of nights in any given week – and sometimes during the day if I nap.
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### Author:  [@Zulema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zulema)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/32 "2009-08-01T03:32:12Z")
My son was 3 and we were going to fly to see my sister in a different city. Every day starting a week before the trip I asked him “Where are we going on Thursday?” Every day he would answer “To Aunt Jane’s”.
Three days before the trip I asked him where we were going and he said “Heaven”.
Of course I kind of freaked out about that and thought I should cancel my trip but then what if in canceling my trip we did something else that sent us to heaven?
My sister and I decided that if I asked him the next day and he said we were going to her house we could forget about it. He did and everything turned out fine.
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### Author:  [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/33 "2009-08-01T03:52:49Z")
My friend’s 2.5 year old spent a couple months looking behind the furniture and asking “where’d the devil go?”
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### Author:  [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/34 "2009-08-01T04:00:56Z")
One day in the potter’s studio, with an extremely pacifist hippyish artist friend, her four-year-old son runs up with something he’d squished together out of clay:
‘Look, Mummy, I made a torture instrument!’
How … _creative_.
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/35 "2009-08-01T06:08:01Z")
I was walking my 3-year-old home from pre-school, when suddenly he grinned at me, pointed to the sky and said:
_“The snake! The snake behind the sun!”_
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### Author:  [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/36 "2009-08-01T07:58:10Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#):
>
> IIRC, this method of deterrence is what inspired younger people to develop the high-pitched cell phone rings. (Someone even linked a page full of the latter here, a while back, and people were rating which ones they could hear.) Useful for classroom use when you’re not supposed to have your cell on, and a vibrate might be heard due to the sound effect/it rattling against something.
Except for one problem. A boy in flodjunior’s class tried this, and when his phone rang, 27 _other_ teenagers clapped their hands over their ears and told him to make it stop.
The teacher got a little suspicious.
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### Author:  [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/37 "2009-08-01T08:02:30Z")
I remember when we would go to the TV and stereo section of the department store when I was a kid, there was a really obvious aural sensation. I didn’t even think of it so much as a noise, as a sort of high-pitched pressure on my eardrums, if that makes sense. I tried pointing it out to my mother but she had no idea what I was talking about.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/38 "2009-08-01T09:35:12Z")
> [@Rascal\_s\_Mom](#):
>
> My now 22-year-old son, when he was 3-4’ish, would announce incoming phone calls. Several times.
I used to do that. Also, there were four years when I was a teenager during which Dad had this horrible Boss who’d call him home at times when Dad was at work (and the Boss knew it, they were regular work hours) and I always knew whether a mid-day call was him or someone else. Freaked Mom right out. I’d get up from the table, Mom would ask “where are you going?” “Boss is calling.” Ring, ring…
I also was extremely good at spying on the parental units. As a little kid, I was expected to be unseen and unheard, thus learning to move, play and open and close doors in complete silence. For some reason, my mother never figured out how I always knew so much about their going-ons (I do wish I’d known more about our financial state, that they did manage to keep hidden).
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### Author:  [@El\_DeLuxo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_DeLuxo)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/39 "2009-08-01T17:47:56Z")
My partner and I play a lot of silly word games – like really long and involved strings of puns on a particular theme, back-and-forth rhymes, and like that; also, we’ll sometimes take up a nonsense phrase and wail with it at more or less random. That’s how come we took to saying _“Harba-rarba-rooba-dooba-rarba-darba-DOO!”_ to each other at a moment’s notice, apropos of anything or nothing, about a year ago .
Of course, that isn’t the kind of thing grown men go around saying in public; like most of our word and sound japeries, the particular sequence of silly syllables I just typed out was used strictly _entre nous_ for private giggles.
Then one afternoon while we were out on some kind of errand, we got in an elevator with several strangers including a guy and his little boy, who looked to be four or five. Dad and lad were having their own conversation, one that we weren’t paying any mind to, when all of a suden the kid said \*“Harba-rarba-rooba-dooba-rarba-darba- **DOO**!” \*, with exactly the same “metric foot” and speed of delivery _we’d_ been saying it with, for the last week or so, in the privacy of our own crib!
We both suddenly got the same pole-axed expression on our faces; our stop came up right then and we got out of that elevator faster than was entirely decorous.
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [August 1, 2009, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kids-can-say-the-darndest-things-to-creep-you-the-hell-out/504862/40 "2009-08-01T18:16:02Z")
> [@SHAKES](#):
>
> I remember I used to be able to hear the TV before it would actually turn on or if the sound was all the way down. It was like a really high pitched tone.
>
> I wonder if TVs still make that noise.
CRT monitors and tube TVs make a high pitch sound even when they’re muted, that only a small portion of people seem to be able to hear (I’m one of them, obviously). The LCD versions don’t seem to. So few games of “which monitor is squealing?” these days played by me and one or two other annoyed people while everyone else stares at us and claim that they can’t hear anything. I don’t miss it.
My dad still talks about how I used to make him uneasy when I was little: he said better than 75% of the time that he’d call me in from playing when I was a preschooler, I’d be waiting on the other side of the door, saying I knew it was time to come in. He claims it was at no fixed time of day and I’d even do it when he decided to take me shopping, so that’s what made it odder to him. I don’t remember what made me decide to come in, but I’m sure there were cues he overlooked, like seeing him though the window, or hearing him walk towards the back door. I seriously doubt I was psychic.
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