blah said before yada apologies blah blah and stuff…
So I decided to start a new thread in MPSIMS…
Until I was about 10 (very rough estimate) I thought the ‘olden-days’ were actually black and white! And I thought my parents grew up in the times when all ships had sails and men wore tights.
Thnking about it just now it fascinates me how I could possibly have so badly understood the world. It would probably also fascinate me (and other dopers of course) to know what other people believed that was just plain silly when they were kids…
So, what silly thing did you think/believe when you were a kid?
When I was in grade 4 I used to play street hockey with boys that were in grade 7. When they said they were in grade 7, I could not even fathom the idea of how big grade 7 was. I was thinking they were super old because they went to a middle school and I went to a primary school. I felt that they were really smart and I was in awe.
On the same level as cherrys, I realised only recently that “The Big Girls” who would come down to watch on us little’uns as we are lunch in first class (when we were like 6) were actually only 12. I can still see them in my minds eye, and they look like 19 in my memory. Very weird.
When I was a little kid we had a dog with white whiskers on one side of its nose and black whiskers on the other side. I asked my mother why they were different colors and she told me that the dog used the white whiskers to feel its way around during the day and used the black whiskers to feel around at night…whatever the heck that means…I guess she thought dogs had bad eyesight in the dark.
Fast forward a few years. Old dog dies and we get a new one. White whiskers on both sides. How’s the dog going to feel its way around at night?!? After we had the dog for about five years I asked my mother that question…she looked at me like I was nuts…
This brings back a lot of memories, mostly funny. One that I do remember very vividly is that when I was younger, one of my older cousins told me that bats liked to makes nests in blonde hair. Well needless to say I’m blonde and for years I wore a baseball cap at night.
I remember during the furor of Watergate and constantly hearing about missing tapes thinking" Whats all the trouble over MASKING tape!? Why don’t they just buy some more???"
Hey! I was only 8 or so… the only tape I was familiar with was masking tape…
I remember the big kids looking so old, too! I remember a neighbor of mine when I was about 4 or so, who was seven, and I thought of that as being ancient.
Also, I (read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark volume III when I was eight or nine, and the “real” story about poltergeists really got to me. I was convinced that when I reached adolescence, I’d become a poltergiest and start moving things with my mind. It kind of freaked me out, but for the most part, I was just accepting. It wasn’t really, “Oh cool I’m gonna be like Carrie!” or “Oh no…” more like…stoicism. Yes, that’s it. It was a very stoic kid, perhaps a little scared, but approaching it like a man. Er, woman. Sort of like when I found out about getting my period. But it’s disapointing knowing that nothing like that will ever happen. I’m nearly out of my teens with nary a poltergeist-esque act in sight.
Speaking of my period…when I was ten and I first found out about menstruation, I thought you just bled once for a few days, and that was it. Then I found out about menopause…
…that the phrase “this morning” was really “the smorning.”
…I thought that a woman could get pregnant just by hanging around a guy she liked long enough. I had this strange vague concept that it was somehow biological (i.e., no storks or anything) but that it was caused by some subtle signal passing between the man and woman, like smells or something, and that people would just have to wait and hope for pregnancy to occur as a semi-random event.
…that if I believed in something enough, it could come true. Like if I believed enough that I could fly, I could. Luckily this never resulted in any injuries.
…that there really was some lady named “Mean Lucy” who was so horrible, that when she would babysit you, all she’d let you do is sit in a chair. No T.V., no talking, no nothing. My mom would use this to threaten us into behaving. It was very effective. The thought of sitting in chair doing nothing was absolutely terrifying (at the time, of course. Now it sounds rather appealing).
Also, we could hear the sound of running water coming up from the sewers near our house. My Dad told my brother and I that there were midgets living down there, and what we heard was them taking showers. I believed him.
I was taught by the media and (to a much lesser extent, my parents) that the Communists were out to kill us all. I even asked my mother “why the Russians were so bad?”
“Because they want to take me and Daddy away from you, and make you work in a cold, dark cave shovelling coal.”
If they only realized how this made me turn out. . .
I hated it when my parents thought I was nuts, or worse, got in trouble, because I had the audacity to listen to what they said.
We live in an in-law apartment, and the heater for the flat upstairs is in our garage, in our part of the building. There’s an unmarked light switch a few feet away from it. I had asked my parents what is was for, and they said “nothing.” So I would idly flip it on and off while I did the laundry out there… sure enough, come winter, when the people upstairs call down to us and ask why the heater wouldn’t start up, I get yelled at for flipping the switch that was for “nothing.”
Anyhoo, as a kid, I thought everyone on earth had a different last name, except within a nuclear family (s’what I’m in). This changed when I went to grammar school and was surrounded by Lees, Chans, and Wongs.
I thought that cottage cheese was harvested from the eves troughs of real cottages in damp woods, and avoided it for that reason. My older brother can be blamed for that one.
I thought people got pregnant just by sleeping in the same bed.
I thought if I did something to one of my friends’ brothers, then the same thing would happen to his twin.
I thought that the radio stations really had bands playing there. I’d wonder how they fit all those people in.
I thought that all books recorded true stories. Even fiction books.
I believed everything that my mom, my dad, my friends, my babysitters told me. Even if it was contradictory.
I love this thread!
When I was 5, I could read very well, and could “sound out” words I hadn’t seen before. But I had never seen the word PUKE written before, and could NOT wrap my mind around how to spell it-- pictured it kinda like: biukjveyhsw just a long word of random letters. Weird.
I didn’t know it rained over the ocean until I was 12 AND on a boat in the ocean! (Remember drawings of the rain cycle–water evaporates from the ocean, condenses in the clouds, falls as rain on land, then runs back to the ocean?) I took that little drawing QUITE literally, and was stunned to find out otherwise (chicken-drowning-in-a-rainstorm-flabbergasted). :smack:
My idol when I was 4-5 was The Bionic Woman. My mother (whose maiden name is Steele) made the mistake of telling me I was 1/4 Steel(e). WHOOOHOOO, just like Jamie Summers!! So I ran around for days kicking the crap out of treetrunks, convinced that my right leg was bionic. (Til I screwed up my ankle anyway, then Mom was *much* more careful with how she worded things.):rolleyes:
When I was 3 years old, I thought I was going to turn into a mouse sometime soon. I prepared for my new life as a mouse by putting aside a few rations of muesli and oatmeal. You know how you might open a bag of oatmeal by cutting off the corner? I used the corner as a little mouse-size bag, and secreted oatmeal and cereal in it for later, “for when I’m a mouse.”
Until I was about 4 I thought that I was going to turn into a boy. I actually asked my mum when my penis was going to grow. I thought that was how it worked! God knows why I thought that.
I swear my dad gave me this idea. Pirates pierced their ears by shooting their guns through their lobes. He denies ever telling that to me, but I’m confident that bit of “knowledge” came from him.