Weird things you believed as a kid.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
101

When I was very young, I heard someone talk about Scandanavia and though it was another name for Scotland, hence I briefly thought that Norway and Sweden were Scotland and that the whole of Britain was England.

I heard on the news about criminals being arrested, then charged, so I thought being ‘charged’ was a kind of corporal punishment where you got charged into.

Until I as about 8 I thought that astronauts had landed on Mars and Venus during the 1970s, just before I as born.

I thought that America was a sparesly populated sandy desert where everyone was a coyboy.

102

I though this too. I also felt bad for objects that had feelings, such as juice. I thought everything, including juice, had feelings, and that it would be upset if I chose apple juice over orange.

I thought that if you moved, you could go back to the house whenever you wanted because it was still yours. This is because when I was around 3 we lived in a city where my dad owned a lot of houses he rented out and we moved from house to house. I could always go back whenever I felt like it. When we finally sold them all off and moved to the subarbs I could not for the life of me figure out why my parents wouldn’t let me go back and see our old houses.

I thought pregnancy was a totally random event that happened to all women sooner or later, and they usually just got married afterward so they had someone to help take care of the baby. I didn’t understand that I was actually related to my dad and his side of the family until I was about 7. I also thought that periods only happened to women who had previously had children.

I thought my dad was an alien when I found his greencard at age five. I brought it to my mom after I read it and asked why she had never told me that he was from another planet!

It took me forever to convince my brother that he would never be older than me, no matter how long he waited. This upset him very much and he stopped speaking to me for about 2 weeks after he found out. He was dying to be older.

103

The only out-there belief that immediately jumps to mind -

I used to believe there was an interdimensional portal in my garage.

No, really.

This was probably in the 4-6 year old range, and nevermind I didn’t know the word ‘interdimensional’ at the time, that word describes the concept perfectly.

I think the fact that I was an imaginative and fanciful child… who read lots of comic books… and watched the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon … combined with the massive piles of junk in the garage… lead me to have a recurring dream in which I uncovered the portal in the garage and stepped through to another world.

So of course, since I dreamed it so often, it had to be true, right?

It didn’t help that there is a mysterious hole in the side of the garage. (Which only leads to a crawlspace under the house, but still…)

104

I thought that when you moved, you traded houses with another family. Honestly, how else could it work? If instead of swapping, Family A bought Family B’s house, and at the same time Family B bought Family C’s house, where would Family C go? I supposed you could keep the chain going a little longer, but eventually there’d be a Family X who wasn’t interested in moving. Ergo, the only way for people to move was to swap houses.

My ignorance was perpetuated by the typical parents’ tendency not to listen to their young children. I suspected there was something fishy about my idea, so I asked my mother, “Mom, when people move, do they trade houses?” Her response: “sometimes.” Logically correct, I suppose, but it didn’t answer my question, which was about THE definitive method for moving, not an exception that might happen .0001% of the time.

I also thought that one second was what I now know to be about 1/20 of a second, such a miniscule amount of time that if you were to try to count seconds by saying “onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten” as fast as you possibly could, you wouldn’t keep up with them. My mom was less than helpful on that one too: “Mom, is a second like this? [snaps fingers]” Mom: “Yes.” Of course, my question was somewhat lacking.

105

I started middle school, or jr. high as it was called then, in 1969, at which time the drug culture was still associated with psychedelic music and other “hippie” lifestyle elements. Given the types of information they passed out to us in our health classes, I thought that all illegal drugs had pretty much the same effect, causing hallucinations of brilliantly colored paisley and other shapes on a dark background.

106

when I was little, my mom told me that the crust was the healthiest part of the bread, (due to the fact she didn’t want to cut the crusts off my sandwiches). I never questioned that until one day as a senior in highschool I threw the crusts of my sandwich away and mentioned to my friend how I felt bad whenever I did that since I was getting rid of the healthiest part. My friend thought I was crazy and when I finally analyzed what I had been believing all those years, I felt completely misled. I talked to my mom about it and she thought it was hillarious that I had been so dumb.

107

When I was about 4 y.o., I didn’t really understand what TV commercials, and their true purpose, were. I thought they were like public service announcements, just helpful messages provided to us by the TV people to keep me up to date on the cool toys that were available.

108

I used to think that all faeces came out of the buttocks. I would seriously believe that when you had diarrhoea, your bottom would get smaller. I also though urine came from the testicles. The one day I asked Mum why people don’t amputate their bums and bollocks so they’d never have to go to the toilet again. She laughed for a good 15 minutes, before explaining it to me.

I used to think the “God Save The Queen” meant that we have to save the Queen from harm. I though she was falling off a bridge or something. Then when I heard the line “Long may she reign over us,” I thought “Yep, she’s definately falling.” I saw her on TV later and though that she’d been saved.

I also used to think it was physically impossible to kill yourself. Something in our bodies just wouldn’t allow it for some reason.

I also used to think that some policemen had pointy heads and some had flat ones.

109

That all gravy was beef gravy, regardless of whether or not we were having chicken, turkey or pork roast. This belief was nurtured by my parents who knew that I wouldn’t eat gravy unless it was beef gravy, so they called everything “beef gravy”.

I didn’t discover the lie until I was…er…ummm…fourteen, when my mother tried to pass off deep fried oysters as beef. My astute teenaged mind quickly surmised that not only were these blobs of mucus not beef, but that I had been lied to all my short life. I still get razzed about this by my siblings.

Beef gravy: it’s not necessarily what’s for dinner.

110

My husband told me that when he was younger, up to about the time he was 12, he thought jackalopes were real ( http://www.sudftw.com/jackcon.htm )

When I was a kid I didnt realize exactly where babies came from and that you didn’t really get a choice in what you got (i.e., a boy or girl) so when my sister was born and my parents brought her home I was mad because I wanted a brother (I was 5 then). I asked my parents if they could exchange her at the hospital for one of the babies in the baby room (aka the nursery).

111

When I was about six, my mom made hamburger by buying cuts of meat and then grinding them in a meat grinder which she would clamp to the edge of the counter.

I walked across the street to play with a friend one day and she told me, over the fence in the back yard, that she was “grounded.”

I vaguely figured that she was in the back yard for the afternoon, and then that evening she would be “grounded” up for dinner. I was unhappy about it, but I remember it feeling more vaguely surreal than horrifying.

(I asked my mom after pondering it for a little while, and she explained “grounding” to me. I was quite relieved, as I recall.)

There’s a Paw Paw, Michigan right near Kalamazoo, where I lived. Same general age as the other, BTW. We drove from Michigan to Virginia every winter and summer to see my grandparents. Somewhere in NW Virginia or West Virginia there’s an exit which says it led to “Paw Paw.” Every time we passed it I kind of hoped it would turn into basically a little space-warp, and take us magically to the Paw Paw near Kalamazoo, so we could knock a good 6 hours off of this boring, boring car ride…

I firmly believed until around the age of 5 that cats were girls and dogs were boys.

A neighbor a couple of houses down had a beautiful garden with a pear tree in the back yard, and I always looked up in it , hoping to see a partridge. (I never did.)

112

Same here on the cats are girls and dogs are boys thing.

This is a fairly long story, and loses something in translation but:

As a child I spoke Farsi. I was convinced that a heart attack (Farsi: sekte ) was merely a huge hiccup (Farsi: sekteke ), only large enough to jolt the body into malfunction. Why else could the two words be so similar?

113

Would you have recognized a partridge if you had seen one?
And the “grounding” thing was creepy.

114

as a kid, i beleived that if you crossed your eyes and someone snuck up behind you and scared you, that the impact would lock your eyes in that position.

also at the age of 10 or so i found a adult movie which involved anal sex… i thought i had sex figured out until i saw that tape lol

115

When my brother, sister and I were young, we found some gold-colored flecks in a puddle in our driveway. We excitedly gathered some up, thinking they were gold and that our family would be rich. We were very disappointed when our Dad told us it was only mica and was not valuable at all.

I also remember being disappointed when I tried to sing a Beatles song, expecting to sound just like the Beatles. I tried again, but no luck. I thought the music you could hear in your head would sound just the same when you sang it.

Our Dad had us believing for a time that spaghetti noodles grew on farms. Back then, you could get the kind that was twice as long as you generally get today and were curved over in the middle so that they fit in the same size package. He told us that the spaghetti grew up for a ways and then curved down. When they were long enough, the farmers harvested them and sent them to the stores.

116

I also believed family members “had the same germs,” so it was alright to share food and drinks with them but not with other people.

I also believed all unmarried people were virgins since you had to be married to have sex.

Since males and females used different public bathrooms and changing rooms, I thought that nobody ever saw the opposite sex naked, including adults. Then I learned that adults had seen the opposite sex naked, so I figured at some point the bathroom/changing room segregation stopped, thus allowing people to see each other naked. I figured age 10 was a long way away from whatever age I was at the age, so I decided that in grade 5 boys and girls would be allowed to change in the same room and see each other naked.

When I was grade 3, I asked my mother when the world was gonna end, “like when I’m in grade 6 or something?” - since grade 6 seemed like a really long time away. She was reading a book and not really paying attention to me and she murmered, “hmm.” So for a while I was convinced the world was gonna end when I was in grade 6.

I was in grade 1 in 1989. I had figured out that “this year is 1989, last year was 1988, the year before that was 1987.” But what came after 1989? If 10 came after 9, then 19810 must come after 1989. I didn’t know to carry the 1. But 19810 had more digits than other years so it didn’t look right. But for a while I thought that 1990 was going to be called 19810.

When I was four, my family was coming home from a trip one night on the highway and my mother told my father to be careful because “the radar will out tonight.” Referring to police speed radar units. Since I was only four, I had no idea what a radar was, but if my dad was supposed to be careful, than it must have been some kind of monster. So I spent the rest of the trip staring out the window at the darkness between the trees on the side of the highway, afraid that the radar was gonna come and get me.

How I learned vampires don’t exist. The hard way. I was over at a friend’s place one day and she told me that if you say you don’t believe in vampires, they will come and kill you and turn you into a vampire. I said I didn’t believe in vampires. It’s easy to not believe in them during the day. But that night I remembered what she said and I was seriously, absolutely convinced that I was going to die that night because the vampires were going to come and kill me for not believing in them. I was absolutely terrified! But since I’m still here after all these years, I now know one thing for sure: Vampires don’t exist. And even if they do, they don’t seem to care if you say you don’t believe in them. So, here goes: I don’t believe in vampires. :wink:

117

Probably not…I was just looking for a “bigger-than-a-robin” bird that I hadn’t seen before.

And? No kidding, creepy…

118

See… I am from Norway, and yes, we eat brown goat cheese. it`s kinda tasty too.

Anyway. Here, in Oslo, we have 2 large buildings (small city), and 1 of them is brown, red and has the shape of this goatchees (the town hall)… My best friend grew up just out side the city and only took the metro inn… All through her childhood she was very convinced that this house actually was made of goatchees.

She also believed that an other weirdlooking house here was extreamly long because there was two very similar and you could see one end on one metrostation and the other end of the other house on the next. That would give us a 5 km long postoffice… cool… I have a very cool best friend… her sister teached her to dive from the kitchen tabel… she got a concoution (spelling?)…

Enough about my friend. I wasn`t any better… Asked my sister when she was 14 I she please would merry and get children soon. I used the biological clock as argumentation. I was 3.

I was a firm believer of that the end of the universe was a brick wall (even though my other astronomical knowleges were perfectly good…).

I believed gran parents applied for the possition.

That nobody actually understood english (was ten when I learned my first sentace… much older when I started to use the language… 21 now).

That english was constructed (like esperanto)

That the sky was constatn grey during ww2 (my father was 2 when it ended… he always said “mojo banke fy i luffen” when it was an attac from airplans… it means something like this:" fjunny beat fjom plajns in da aij"… he wasn`t old…)

(like everybody else… and those who live in denial still believe) that my parents never slept together… and if they had, it was very long ago…

That the mountains (Jotunheimen, Rondane, those around the fjords) vere “dead” vulcanoes… (their not).

That there were a constant tornadodanger… I had see wind bringing dust in small circles…

That no americans lookt normal (either very skinny with big breasts or extremly fat… I still havent any proof of anything else, but still… I hope some has normal BMI and no silicon)…

That the chinese had glue under their feet.

that people with anorexia turned out skinny, not because they ate less, but because … I dont recall my argumentation there, but it was some kind of process that made them skinny no matter how much they ate... I know better now... have the illness in the family and year inn, year out in hospitals isnt pretty…

… I could go on for ever… I was a stupid child… but happy… I think maybe you are happy as a child because you don`t know too much and make everything fit in to something that seem logical…

jepp jepp… and I can use Æ, Ø and Å…
My spelling is NOT good, I know, but I haven`t paid much attention to it…

hugs

119

When I was in my young teens (12 or 13), I thought a “blow job” meant blowing air on someone’s whatnots.

I thought that radio station numbers (I forget what they’re called right now) were the time where that staion came from (101.5=10:15, 93.7=9:37, etc). I don’t know why it never occurred to me that the “times” never changed, nor do I remember what I thought about 106.0 and up.

I thought commercials weren’t allowed to do comparative advertisting. I seriously though that direct comparisons (“Burger King fries taste better than McDonald’s’” or whatever) were illegal. I wondered if I should report them.

I thought my stuffed animals were alive when I wasn’t in the room. I was frustrated when they wouldn’t talk back to me.

Also thought that cats could talk, but just refused to let people know. Again, I got frustrated when they wouldn’t talk back.

Ahem. I lived in the middle of the country with no friends. I really wanted to be able to talk to stuffed animals and cats.

120

If you are awake when the Tooth Fairy comes, and you turn in the bed really quick to get a look at her, she will knock you in the head with her wand.

So don’t do it.