# What's a misconception you had when you were a kid? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 5, 2018, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201 "2018-02-05T05:36:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/181 "2018-06-08T15:53:34Z")
I had a second cousin whose job at Disneyland was portraying Mary Poppins. Her youngest daughter created the impression (I must have been in preschool at the time) when she explained to me her mother was something of a celebrity because ‘she played Mary Poppins’. It was a number of years (maybe junior high) before I revisited the belief/conviction that I was related to …_Julie Andrews_. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/182 "2018-06-08T15:57:26Z")
> [@TheMightyFro](#): > > Having been the engineer on a few recordings, I can attest that often, the _singer_ doesn’t know the words, and sings from a sheet of lyrics. I recall a recording by a famous jazz lady where someone stops her for an error, and she says, “That’s what is says, right there!” ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/183 "2018-06-08T15:57:52Z")
For a 15yo way back when, I was pretty knowledgeable about the birds & bees, but the source of my knowledge was 100% books. I thought it was pronounced vag (as in bag or nag) - in - uh until a contemporary of the opposite sex corrected me. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/184 "2018-06-08T16:02:21Z")
> [@TheMightyFro](#): > > Flash forward to 7th grade, and as a joke, I steal the glasses off the cute girl in class, plunk them on my face, and HOLY GUACAMOLE I CAN SEE! for 14 years, the joke was on me. I don’t recall why I had my vision tested in the third grade. Did they test our vision in school? Perhaps a teacher noticed it. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/185 "2018-06-08T19:37:20Z")
I thought the headquarters of the Walt Disney Company were in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, right near Walt Disney World. My juvenile brain concluded that the theme parks were the company’s back yard, so to speak, and that headquarters were nearby, just out of sight of tourists. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/186 "2018-06-08T19:41:45Z")
When I was probably about 6 or 7, a more “experienced” friend my age was telling me a number of words related to sex and explaining what each one meant. One he mentioned was “reefer”. He said “that’s when you suck it, and then put it back”, making a pinching motion with his thumb and forefinger, bringing them to his mouth and then removing them. Obviously he had misunderstood someone’s reference to smoking a joint. I didn’t really understand what “it” was that you were sucking, but I believed that “reefer” was a sexual reference for an embarrassingly long time, even after I later learned that it referred to a marijuana cigarette. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/187 "2018-06-08T20:19:04Z")
When I was a kid, for some reason I got the idea that the front of our house faced north. It didn’t; it faced south. As a result of this I constantly kept getting the directions confused and to this day I have a hard time remembering which of east and west is which, and can’t navigate anywhere for the life of me. My brain simply gave up on the entire subject. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201.md?page=9)