I was a weird kid, but all kids are weird. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. I had a lot of misconceptions, but the only thing I can remember clearly is wondering how they turned the train round when it reached the end of the line. I had these little mental pictures of trains being taken off somewhere and rotated so they could go the other way. The obvious solution to the problem never occurred to me.
I’ve got a friend who claims she used to to think that in the fifties and sixties, it was the world that was black and white, not just the television. I refuse to believe this.
I used to think that speaking English was common to everyone, even if they lived in other countries. So, if someone lived in France, of course they spoke French, but they had to translate “in their head” from English everything they spoke and heard.
I had that same train thought, too.
I’m sure I’ll remember others. I was a weird kid, too.
I thought the reason my Saturday morning cartoons had commercial breaks was to give Scooby and Johnny Quest and Bugs Bunny and the Smurfs a chance to go to the bathroom.
My parents always told me to never pour milk down the sink. I, in typical over-thinking fashion (even when I was 5 or so), figured it was because the milk would do something to the pipes.
It wasn’t until MUCH later (like my early 20’s), that I realized they just didn’t want me wasting milk!
I used to think the double lines in the middle of the road which indicate whether or not you can pass were a bicycle lane. Because hey, there was just enough room between them for a bicycle tire. Never saw anyone actually using it, though…
My mum and dad both had their teeth out in the army, so in the morning, there was always two sets of falsies soaking in steredent.
I thought that when you grew up, your milk teeth fell out and you grew a removable set for easier cleaning.
Also, when I got my first ever proper zit, my dad squeezed it and told me that was how you got all the badness out.
So I thought the worse I behaved the more zits I’d get because I had more ‘badness’ to get rid of.
I always thought it was to give them time to rest between scenes. Never had the Boy George problem though.
I used to think that black people were covered with ink, and that if they touched me they would get ink on me. This was when I was really little (4-5 years old maybe)? I also used to think that when you put toast in the toaster it didn’t cook it, it just replaced the bread with toast.
A(nother) friend - never guessed I had two, now, did you? - told me the story of how her little sister met her first black person the other day. She went up to him and announced that she’d just decided that white people were made of white chocolate and black people were made of ordinary chocolate. She then asked if she could give him a kiss. Apparently, he found this absolutely hilarious and allowed himself to be kissed, and she told him he tasted of chocolate. I started getting fuzzy round the edges by the end of this story…
I also thought the world was in “black and white” when my dad was a kid in the '30s. I was a child of the 50s and 60s, so I was quite aware that color had kicked in by then.
Oh, yes - old movies.
I don’t think I thought the world was black and white in the past (we had a black and white TV anyway), but I /did/ think that in the ‘olden days’ people used to break into song and dance routines on the streets.
I remember wondering why people didn’t do that anymore.
Whenever I’d spend the night at Gramma’s, she’d tuck me in to bed and then close the window and draw the drapes. I asked her why, and she said, “There’s always a draft coming through this window.” I misheard the word “draft” and wondered for years how a giraffe would fit through that window.
I’d gone to a very fundamentalist Southern Baptist church with a friend, and the evangelical preacher, intoning the Lord’s Prayer, thundered, “Our Fathah, who art in hayvun, hallow-ed be thy nayum.” My 5-year old ears heard, “Hello, Ed be thy name.”
It wasn’t until I asked my mother if the town we lived in (Edmond, OK) was named after God that I found out my mistake.
20 years later, I’m still glad that Reader’s Digest didn’t print that. $25 wouldn’t have been worth the humiliation.
Some TV things:
I thought when people got “married” on TV they were really married and had to go get divorced when the filming was over.
I thought shows like “The Brady Bunch” and “The Partridge Family” (and all sitcoms) were filmed in real houses in real neighborhoods. I was sure “Gilligan’s Island” was filmed on a real island somewhere. I thought “Little House on the Prairie” was really filmed in Minnesota.
The concept of soundstages and studio sets didn’t occur to me.
When I was in first grade I can clearly remember my teacher telling us that if we fake a cough we get a hole in our soul, so whenever i coughed i had to convince myself it was real so my soul would remain intact.
Also, my aunt used to tell me that if I whistled in the house the Devil would come, something else for me to be woried about.groan
I also shared the whole the past was in black and white.
Not quite in the same league, but I was convinced that the downstairs bathroom was haunted. I didn’t dare flush, because then the ghosts would hear it and come get me.
I used to get this dizzy spells and they would make me wonder if I was actually real. I asked some friends of my mother who were senior year philosophy majors. They were kind of stunned that a 7 year old kid was asking them “How do we know we’re really here?”
I use to believe that time actually began in the year 1901. Everything that happened beforehand (history, fossils, etc…) was to literally created to give reality a more stable foundation. It’s hard to explain… Perhaps this comes from a childhood spent in New Jersey…(pollution effect.)
