I thought that skyscrapers were called skyscrapers because the antennas at the tops of the buildings had special blades that actually touched and scraped the sky.
I also was told that the liquid froth that appears on milkweed plants during the summer was ‘snake spittle’. I could deal with snakes no problem, but ‘snake spittle’? EEWWWWW…
I seem to remember posting this somewhere else, but…
When I was in Kindergarten and First Grade, I was convinced I could fly. Not soaring over the treetops, but just sort of skim 2 or 3 inches above the ground.
I think this belief arose from the fact that the school was a short distance from home, so I walked every day. But there was a fairly busy street I had to walk along between my quiet residential side street and the quiet residential side street the school was on.
When I would walk home, I probably paid close attention while I was walking on the busy street, then turned into my quiet street and let my mind wander. Before I knew it I was home, but had no recollection of actually walking to get there. The obvious conclusion (to a kid of 6)? I can FLY!
I believed that when farmers got angry at thier cows they turned them into haystacks with a magical-farmer wand. Cos, see, in some fields there are cows in random places, and in other fields there are haystacks in random places, so the two must be connected.
I believed that when you turned the TV off the programming stopped, and when you turned it back on it would start up again where it left off. That I never actually observed this in real life didn’t seem to matter.
I believed that if my parents got angry enough at me they would send me to the orphanage. The orphange was, of course, a store where they sold children. The children would stand in a big wondow and try to get the attention of people on the street, to come in and purchase them.
I beleived that everybody I knew had about the same amount of money. Very rich people always lived in mansions and had butlers, etc., and very poor people were all homeless, and both these people only lived in big cities, far, far away from where I was. Because we always had a house and food, I assumed my family never had any kind of money problems, and the only reason my parents wouldn’t buy me everything that other kids’ parents bought them was because my parents didn’t really love me very much.
My family is not religious at all, so I formed all sorts of wacky assumptions. When I was very young I beleived that one’s religion was genetically ingrained in you, like being a girl or being Irish, etc. I was half-Lutheren and half-Catholic and that’s just how it was. As soon I realized one had a choice in the matter I knew that I wasn’t Christian–even as a wee Lunatic I believed in things like evolution and reincarnation, etc.–but I didn’t know that one had a choice of not belonging to any religion at all, and the only non-Chirstian religion I knew of was Judaisim. So I must be Jewish, then. Obvioiusly. I didn’t know anything about Judaism except that it wasn’t Christianity, and that they had Haunakkah, which sounded a lot better than Christmas. So for a several years I was Jewish; I never bothered to tell anybody this, since nobody asked. Still, my parents must have been curious as to why I was just thrilled to pieces that “PeeWee’s Playhouse Holiday Special” mentioned Haunakkah.
hmmm… There’s probably more. Let me think a while.
I used to believe I was magical. No specific magical powers, just “magical”. I was a weird little kid…
~Kittie
My wife, raised in a rural bible belt area, believed that Jesus drank wine only because “the water was bad in those days.” This is what her pastor had told her, she only realized how stupid it was a few years ago.
I thought that the ice cream truck that drove around our neighborhood existed to entertain and delight us with music. I called it the piano truck. My parents were perfectly happy to encourage this, but when I figured it out, I grabbed all the money from my mom’s purse and came home with the biggest ice cream come and a handful of change.
I also believed that if a flame got anywhere near your car, the car would, of course, explode. I saw it on TV. So one day when the tailpipe of our car caught on fire, my dad stopped at a gas station and was putting it out…while I stood on the other side of the parking lot and screamed my head off, because I knew for a fact that the car was going to blow up and kill my daddy, who was apparently clueless. Years later, one of us happened to mention that, and my dad was suddenly enlightened as to my (to him) completely inexplicable behavior.
We were somewhere in Alberta, and my mom got me a postcard with a jackalope on it. Essentially a dead stuffed hare with antlers glued to its head. The back of the card mentioned the jackalope’s eating and living habits and the areas in which it lived. I kept that picture in my scrapbook and continually revered the jackalope as the coolest animal in existence. Of course, I did no more research on the subject. Jackalopes were jackalopes. End of story.
It wasn’t until I was thirteen and I was bemoaning the fact that I still hadn’t seen one IRL to my mother that I found out the truth. “Oh…dear…! You didn’t actually believe that…Did you?”
I still blame her for any mental instability suffered after that one.
When I was little, my mom always had a jar of green olives in the refrigerator. I, being the curious little guy I was, asked what they were because the red centers just intersted me. My mom told me that they were pig’s eyes. I have never touched a green olive in my life and I dont plan to. Thanks a lot mom.
I thought the abbreviation for pounds-lbs.-was pronounced “Libs”.
I believed(thanks to my uncle) that fire hydrants were men from mars.
I thought that when you heard a live song on the radio, it meant the dj was actualy broadcasting live from a concert, or else the band was playing at the radio station. I had no idea there were “live” albums.
Way back before PC (political correctness), the Amos 'n Andy television show opened with a nighttime shot of NYC, with the voice over, “… brought to you by Schlitz, the beer that made Miwaukee famous”. I thought the picture of NYC was a picture of Milwaukee, not NYC-Harlem where the show took place.
(Great program by the way – too bad we’re all so sensitive these days).
I still find myself thinking “labs” sometimes when I read “lbs.”
Even better, though: when I was younger I had a huge collection of dinosaur toys which I had organized into some sort of dinosaur civilization and so on, in typical imaginative little kid fashion. One day, however, I was sleeping on the floor (for a reason that escapes me right now), and I had a dream. It was one of those dreams where your surroundings in real life at the moment are the same as those in the dream–you know, like when you dream that you’re talking on the phone in bed, and then you wake up and the phone is gone and you freak out, that kind of thing. (Or am I the only one that has those? 
)Anyway, in this dream I caught one of these dinosaur toys talking to another one. Then I woke up, and these toys were in the same positions as in the dream. I was absolutely convinced that my dinosaurs would come alive and start talking after everyone in my house went to sleep, and I had just been lucky enough to catch one of them. I would even get into arguments with my younger brother, who inexplicably didn’t believe that talking dinosaur toys were real.
I believed this for a real long time. In fact, I’m just assuming it was all a dream, as that’s the best explanation I can come up for to explain my memory of talking dinosaur toys. :rolleyes:
I thought my fingers were filled with cooked ground beef.
I thought that the word argerol (some kind of antiseptic chemical, I think) described a style of chair, because my father’s favorite chair was a weird shade of brown and he called it “The Argerol Chair”.
I always freaked out whenever I heard the one o’clock whistle; it sounded exactly like an air raid siren. I’d run down to the cellar (where I had stockpiled canned goods) because I thought the Russians were going to bomb us. It took a long time for my parents to convince me that we were living in peacetime.
Yet another one (I probably have a million)
I never realized that the type in books or paper or whatever was from a computer or typewriter. I used to think that that was a type of special handwriting. I used to sit at the table and practice writing like the professionals do in books. I used to think, “Someday my handwriting will be as good as the ones found in books.” while I was practicing. Not until we got our first computer, when I was seven, did I realize that the type on the computer was the same as in books and on manuscripts or whatnot.
I used to believe that our old vacumn cleaner with the headlight was evil and would kill me if I didn’t get out of the way. I’d run from it screaming. For some reason, I called it “Cookie Monster”.
You know those signs at street corners that tell you the names of the streets? Since they are all green (at least around here) I used to think that they were “go signs”, like the opposite of stop signs. I also used to think that the lines down the middle of the road told you what road you were on. Whenever I saw a road with the double yellow lines, I thought we were almost home since my road had double yellow lines.
I was always told not to swear. “The Bible says we shouldn’t”. I took this to mean that it’s sin to say “I swear it’s true”. That this referred to profanity never occurred to me until I saw a TV commercail with some football player saying “I swear by it” or something to that effect. His mother then says “I’ve told him so many times not to swear”. OHHHHH! DUH! What’s really bad is that I was around 15 years old!
I was always fascinated with military aircraft. As a child I lived near an Air Force base where B-52s were stationed. I thought that every time I saw one, it was on its way to drop bombs on Vietnam…this in the late '70s/early '80s.
An uncle who’s around 40 years old still can’t eat Lemon Meringue Pie. As a child, his uncle told him that the Meringue is actually cow slobber. Funny as hell, but gee, now I can’t eat it either. They DO look similar.
I used to think that parents picked their kids out of a catalog… I was always really upset with having those darn brothers and why didnt they order another girl??
I thought that ice cream was something naturally occurring, like snow. (I’d never seen snow, lived in L.A.) So it distressed and confused me when I heard about “making” ice cream.
With all the chemical ingredients listed on a bread label, I figured it was no longer possible for anyone to make bread at home–it had to be made in a factory so they could put all the chemicals in it.
I used to be convinced that there was a sock for the left foot, and one for the right foot, and used to spend a lot of time demanding that my mother tell me which was which. I thought she was just being mean when she tried to tell me they were the same.
I also almost died of shock the first time I saw a teacher outside of school. I thought they were disassembled every Friday (like a robot).
Well…for many many years, the “wind chill” factor was the winshield factor…Never could figure out why it was only an issue in winter. Thank goodness I never asked anyone about it.