# 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:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**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:** [February 11, 2018, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/161 "2018-02-11T00:00:53Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > It’s not something that bears dwelling on… Did it take you seven minutes to come up with that? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2018, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/162 "2018-02-11T01:19:51Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Did it take you seven minutes to come up with that? :dubious: Look at his handle, and you tell me… ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2018, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/163 "2018-02-11T01:40:38Z")
My childhood misconception: After seeing an illustration in a book depicting what might happen if gravity failed, I thought it was natural disaster that happened from time to time like an earthquake or tornado. For weeks after that whenever I was outside I would keep an eye out for something to grab onto so I wouldn’t fly off into space. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2018, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/164 "2018-02-11T01:46:23Z")
Oh, I thought of another one. when I was about 5 or 6, we got a full World Book encyclopedia set (remember when encyclopedias were heavy?) Included with it was a set of Childcraft books, with encyclopedic stuff geared more for kids. the “World and Space” volume had a section describing what would eventually happen when the Sun was- for lack of a better term- used up. In it was an illustration of a barren, scorched Earth with a giant red Sun cresting the horizon. I’m told I thought it meant it was going to happen sometime soon, and I was a total wreck for a while after reading it… Hey, I was 5, how was I supposed to know 4 billion years is a long, long time away? ---
**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:** [February 11, 2018, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/165 "2018-02-11T02:10:51Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > Oh, I thought of another one. when I was about 5 or 6, we got a full World Book encyclopedia set (remember when encyclopedias were heavy?) Included with it was a set of Childcraft books, My parents bought those! I used to randomly read them, but I don’t recall anything about the sun burning up. I did get in trouble in grade school for finding an article on sweat bees that live in the ground and running over in class to tell my friend what we had found on the baseball field. The Truth is Out There. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2018, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/166 "2018-02-11T02:30:50Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Moris** : > > I believed women were urinating through their anuses. Of course! They sit down to pee! (bathroom doors in our house was never locked) > > I held that belief for an embarassingly long time. I was around 10 when my (younger!) cousin explained. > > My family was pretty upfront about reproductive organs and how babies are made; they showed me books and educational TV programs. But nobody bothered to clarify that mundane detail. Yeah, I thought that one for a while, too. Imagine my surprise when I eventually learned that women actually have _more_ nether holes than men. And imagine my further surprise when, even later than that, I learned that there are an awful lot of animals who do in fact have a single all-purpose nether hole. ---
**Author:** ![DooWahDiddy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9bcb4/32.png) [@DooWahDiddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DooWahDiddy)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2018, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/167 "2018-02-11T02:39:37Z")
For some reason I thought condoms were pills (maybe I was conflating it with THE PILL that I kept hearing about), and you had to take them. But then I heard you put a condom _on_. Well that didn’t make sense; how could you balance a pill on your thingy for that long?? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2018, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/168 "2018-02-11T02:52:15Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > When I was a kid I thought there were two diseases: Neumonia and pneumonia (Pronounced pen-newmonia). The latter was much more serious than the former. It never dawned on me that I’d only hear about one and only read about the other. \*\* nods \*\* There were two breeds of dog that had similar characteristics: a dash hound and a doxen. A dash hound wasn’t as fast as a greyhound but it must be faster than a doxen, which it looked so much like, since why else would it be named that way? ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/169 "2018-02-14T07:27:52Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I thought foreign languages were just letter-substitution ciphers and all you had to do was learn the French equivalent alphabet in order to be able to speak French. I was maybe 4 or 5 at the time. I think that’s actually an advanced notion of language for a five-year-old child. I’m not sure most even understand what foreign languages really are at that age, despite the fact that they are generally much more able to learn foreign languages by simple immersion. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/170 "2018-02-14T07:40:33Z")
I knew the difference between states and cities, but I wasn’t always sure which was which. There was a time when I though Las Vegas was another state, on its own. I also thought San Diego was Sandy Ego, with the last part pronounced like the frozen waffle. I thought if you turned off the TV in the middle of a program you could come back later and finish watching it, just like today when you record something on TiVo (or used to? Does anyone even use TiVo any more? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/171 "2018-02-14T10:03:14Z")
> [@Celyn](#): > > I had heard of/eaten the confectionery truffles before I knew about the other kind, so, for instance, a sentence in a book that referred to pigs snuffling out truffles had me a bit confused.:dubious: You and my grandma both. I had also been surprised but she was quicker on the question. She was disappointed to find out that no, there is no such thing as forests where fancy chocolate grows in the ground. “That’s a forest I would’a gone to!” The woman wasn’t fond of leaving the house much less of forest trails, but chocolate is chocolate. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/172 "2018-02-14T12:49:15Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I think that’s actually an advanced notion of language for a five-year-old child. I’m not sure most even understand what foreign languages really are at that age, despite the fact that they are generally much more able to learn foreign languages by simple immersion. I recall visualizing it as akin to some of the children’s games we’d play where we’d agree that we’d use (for instance) “turkle” to mean “teacher” and so on and be able to communicate with each other (giggling) while people around us wouldn’t know what we were talking about. It seemed rather silly for them to be doing this, if there really were such people and they really did talk that way all the time. * * * I wonder whether people would find it difficult to wrap their heads around the idea of speaking different languages if we ever get to the point that the planet is monolingual, so that no one encounters anyone in modern life who doesn’t speak The Language. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/173 "2018-02-14T14:59:27Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I wonder whether people would find it difficult to wrap their heads around the idea of speaking different languages if we ever get to the point that the planet is monolingual, so that no one encounters anyone in modern life who doesn’t speak The Language. I’m sure slang and cant will be around forever. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/174 "2018-02-14T15:25:27Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I also thought San Diego was Sandy Ego, with the last part pronounced like the frozen waffle. When I was young my dad sold industrial batteries, for fork lifts, mine locomotives, and such. One of his big customers was the copper mine in [San Manuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Manuel,_Arizona), Arizona. I kept poring over roadmaps looking for Sandman Well. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2018, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/175 "2018-02-15T04:21:32Z")
I started piano lessons when I was around six and before very long was given “Old Black Joe” to learn. This was years before the word black became the generally preferred term for African-Americans, so I just assumed that Old Black Joe was a guy who went around in black clothing or something. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![I\_wasn\_t\_truly\_absent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/4da419/32.png) [@I\_wasn\_t\_truly\_absent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_wasn_t_truly_absent)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2018, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/176 "2018-02-15T04:46:56Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > When I was little, I wondered what a “fernancer” was. Because people would say “He won’t take no fernancer!” and I couldn’t understand why people were so stubborn about not taking any fernancer. I must’ve been 8 or 9 when I finally realized they were saying “He won’t take ‘No’ for an answer.” > > :smack: ah so cute kinda reminds me of lmnop part of the alphabet! ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2018, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/177 "2018-02-15T13:28:36Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I started piano lessons when I was around six and before very long was given “Old Black Joe” to learn. This was years before the word black became the generally preferred term for African-Americans, so I just assumed that Old Black Joe was a guy who went around in black clothing or something. When my brother was little, he told Mom he wanted to be a black fireman when he grew up. She gently broke the news to him that he was a honky, but it turned out he was just referring to the black jackets the firemen were wearing in his picture book. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2018, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/178 "2018-04-27T22:03:10Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > * * * > > I wonder whether people would find it difficult to wrap their heads around the idea of speaking different languages if we ever get to the point that the planet is monolingual, so that no one encounters anyone in modern life who doesn’t speak The Language. This notion comes up in the _Foundation_ series, somewhere along the story arc in which characters speculate about, search for, and ultimately find Earth. Asimov’s Galactic Empire is apparently monolingual and at one point somebody brings up Gaia as another possible name for Earth. To paraphrase the ensuing discussion: > [@](#): > > Why would they have needed two different words? > > Because we think our ancestors on Earth may have used multiple languages. Perhaps each landmass had a different language ---
**Author:** ![TheMightyFro](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/themightyfro/32/20081_2.png) [@TheMightyFro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheMightyFro)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/179 "2018-06-08T15:37:02Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > I got my first pair of glasses when I was 10. > > As we left the optician, I stopped short. My mother almost ran me over “what are you doing! Are you” “THE TREE! It’s got LEAVES!”, pointing at the tall tree across the street. I was 14 when I had this revelation… but it was the bark on the trees that broke my brain! Prior to this, I wondered why school put so many rows of chairs when OBVIOUSLY from my empirical study, it was clearly impossible for anyone to see from such a vast distance from the board. Then I would argue to the death that “Bird spotting” was a pastime filled with bullshiters who would just randomly point to the upper part of trees and claim (falsely) to have witnessed a specific bird. The US Highway system had committed a huge blunder in making the lettering of the signs on highways so small so as to be impossible to see. Hitting a baseball was an exercise in pure luck, and all aircraft were of the “stealth” variety to me. 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. ---
**Author:** ![TheMightyFro](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/themightyfro/32/20081_2.png) [@TheMightyFro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheMightyFro)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201/180 "2018-06-08T15:50:07Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > I used to think recipes were created in the same way stories were created; that is, invented from an author’s imagination. I wrote some recipes of my own. Og knows what would have happened if anyone had tried to cook them. > > Similarly, I thought there must be someone who had the job of listening to music and writing down the lyrics so they could be put inside the album cover. It didn’t occur to me that the _singer_ must know the lyrics…:smack: 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. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-misconception-you-had-when-you-were-a-kid/808201.md?page=10)