# What's the most obvious lie you've ever believed past childhood? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 8, 2020, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616 "2020-02-08T05:57:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**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 10, 2020, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/61 "2020-02-10T19:38:13Z")
> [@kaiwik](#): > > After she stopped laughing hysterically she told me “Bullshit!” and we did some internet research, and I discovered that for the better part of my life I had completely believed that this was the truth. Disney lies, folks, Disney lies. It did make for some amusing Pearls Before Swine comics. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2020, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/62 "2020-02-10T19:45:48Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > It takes more than one sperm to fertilize an ovum, it takes a team to wear down the ova’s cell wall to let one sperm successfully enter. I did not know that… [/Carson] ---
**Author:** ![The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_wind_of_my_soul)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2020, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/63 "2020-02-10T20:53:31Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > More on this at > [Can I get pregnant if I have sex without penetration? - NHS](https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/pregnancy/can-i-get-pregnant-if-i-have-sex-without-penetration/) > > In part, > "It’s possible for you to get pregnant without having sexual intercourse if, for example: > > sperm get into your vagina – for example, if you or your partner have semen or pre-ejaculate on your fingers and touch your vagina > your partner ejaculates near your vagina > your partner’s erect penis comes into contact with your body near your vagina > The risk of getting pregnant in this way is very low because sperm can only live for a short time outside of the body. However, if you’re not planning a pregnancy, it’s important to know that it’s possible to get pregnant in this way." > > Since this is the UK government National Health Service, I’d be inclined to trust it. Am I naive? > [@nearwildheaven](#): > > If semen gets on the skin of the perineal area, it can indeed lead to pregnancy. Well, I re-learned something today. Serves me right for trusting my friends in college over my mom. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2020, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/64 "2020-02-10T22:45:56Z")
> [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](#): > > Well, I re-learned something today. Serves me right for trusting my friends in college over my mom. Thanks! Did you see that a real doctor had asked for a cite for the latter claim? ---
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2020, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/65 "2020-02-10T22:49:37Z")
I was well into my 20s, maybe even later when I learned that shaving did not make hair grow back faster or thicker. Like many other disproved lies, it comes from really pondering the question of HOW. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2020, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/66 "2020-02-10T22:54:59Z")
I believed glass was a semi-solid fluid [until distressingly late in life](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=417215). ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2020, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/67 "2020-02-10T22:58:39Z")
People who believe in God are too stupid to know any better. If you present proven facts you can change people’s minds. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/68 "2020-02-11T00:26:24Z")
See when you are in the place half-way between sleep and awake? That’s when the things under your bed are most active. Don’t let your feet hang over the side! ---
**Author:** ![DrForrester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8edcca/32.png) [@DrForrester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrForrester)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/69 "2020-02-11T10:56:25Z")
When my grandfather was a boy - this would’ve been in the late 1800s - he attended a family gathering. His father and uncles were tending some grape vines. My grandfather announced that he wanted to help. The men told him that tending grape vines was extremely dangerous, delicate work that simply could not be done until much later in life. My grandfather, in his late 30s, bought his first house… and, being an anxious sort of man to begin with, was made quite additionally anxious by the fact that the house came with Grape Vines in the back yard. Oh, no… He’d never been given the official Now You Are A Man, Here Is How To Tend To Grape Vines information. What if he became injured or ill? So, he went along to the public library and read a book about tending to Grape Vines. And, then, it dawned on him for the first time that the men all those years past had just wanted to gossip among themselves without a small boy listening - and they had told a really bold lie to get him to go away… and he’d believed it for 30 years. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/70 "2020-02-11T11:29:44Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Pretty much this. Theoretically possible but highly unlikely unless a significant amount of semen is introduced into the vagina. It takes more than one sperm to fertilize an ovum, it takes a team to wear down the ova’s cell wall to let one sperm successfully enter. And since most sperm will be desperately trying to penetrate things that are NOT the ovum, success depends on large numbers. So what you’re saying is, it _does_ take a village. (Seriously though, I never knew that. Does that mean that there’s an added chance of pregnancy in situations with multiple partners, because more sperm may team up, so to speak? Will a single sperm eventually succeed in penetrating the ova’s cell wall, or will it exhaust its resources before?) > [@KneadToKnow](#): > > I believed glass was a semi-solid fluid [until distressingly late in life](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=417215). That’s one I’ve also promulgated, and later on, had to disabuse my thesis advisor, a highly skilled and knowledgeable physicist, of. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/71 "2020-02-11T11:34:57Z")
> [@Treppenwitz](#): > > … > > And: I have no idea how I “knew” this - it’s more a misapprehension, or possibly an early urban myth, than a lie - but I was absolutely certain that (1) you can be prosecuted for being drunk in charge of a bike, boat, horse etc (true); and that (2) if you are prosecuted for one of these offenses, your driving licence will be endorsed (absolute bollocks). This is something I was certain of since before my brother had that unfortunate… well, let’s just skip that, but I was certain of it until late last year when, challenged, I bothered to check. That’s a period of about forty years, minimum. > > Is that the record? > > j It’s a little hard to parse, but you think you can’t be prosecuted for being drunk on a bike? Or in driving a boat? Prosecuted may not be the right word but you can indeed be cited, at least in my state (Colorado). I don’t know what you mean by saying your driving license could be endorsed but if it means points off your auto driver’s license for the above infractions, well, I once had a cop tell me they COULD take points off. Of course cops can lie to you, and it hardly seems fair as you don’t need a driver’s license to ride a bike. But even if it wasn’t true then, it’s true now, you can get a DUI or drunk biking. I don’t know if anyone has gotten one though. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/72 "2020-02-11T11:38:11Z")
“I do.” ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/73 "2020-02-11T11:41:28Z")
> [@DrForrester](#): > > When my grandfather was a boy - this would’ve been in the late 1800s - he attended a family gathering. His father and uncles were tending some grape vines. My grandfather announced that he wanted to help. The men told him that tending grape vines was extremely dangerous, delicate work that simply could not be done until much later in life. > > My grandfather, in his late 30s, bought his first house… and, being an anxious sort of man to begin with, was made quite additionally anxious by the fact that the house came with Grape Vines in the back yard. Oh, no… He’d never been given the official Now You Are A Man, Here Is How To Tend To Grape Vines information. What if he became injured or ill? > > So, he went along to the public library and read a book about tending to Grape Vines. > > And, then, it dawned on him for the first time that the men all those years past had just wanted to gossip among themselves without a small boy listening - and they had told a really bold lie to get him to go away… and he’d believed it for 30 years. And that’s when he let his guard down, and the grapevine encircled his neck, squeezing slowly at first. . . ---
**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, 2020, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/74 "2020-02-11T13:53:09Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > And that’s when he let his guard down, and the grapevine encircled his neck, squeezing slowly at first. . . :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/75 "2020-02-11T15:39:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally Posted by kayaker > And that’s when he let his guard down, and the grapevine encircled his neck, squeezing slowly at first. . . > [@carnivorousplant](#): > > :dubious: A round of applause for the winner of the greatest username/post combo of all time ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/76 "2020-02-11T17:55:37Z")
> [@kaiwik](#): > > A year or two ago I was talking with my daughter, the wildlife savant of the family, and when the topic of lemmings came up and I told her that lemmings were such interesting creatures that controlled their population thusly: when there were too many lemmings to be able to survive on the meager foodstuffs available on the tundra, they would gather and leap into the water to drown, leaving enough lemmings to continue the colony. > > After she stopped laughing hysterically she told me “Bullshit!” and we did some internet research, and I discovered that for the better part of my life I had completely believed that this was the truth. Disney lies, folks, Disney lies. Disney not only lied, they completely fabricated the footage. The scenes were filmed near Calgary, where there was a suitable cliff over a river (not the Arctic Ocean). They had to import the lemmings, which don’t occur anywhere near there. They used a turntable to film the “migration” and make it look like there were many more lemmings than they actually had. And then they pushed or flung the lemmings over the cliff into the water, to make it look like they were jumping. ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/77 "2020-02-11T19:18:24Z")
I believed the Caucasian one for years. I believed the one about glass being a fluid for years. I’m pretty sure I read here on the SDMB that the myth of vampires and werewolves was loosely based on an actual disease. Then I read an article here a few years later that this wasn’t true. Now I’m just confused. I don’t know how long I believed George Washington never did anything wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/78 "2020-02-11T19:35:22Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > It’s a little hard to parse, but you think you can’t be prosecuted for being drunk on a bike? Or in driving a boat? Prosecuted may not be the right word but you can indeed be cited, at least in my state (Colorado)… Hi Suze Nope, I don’t think that - it’s a two-parter, and I noted that part (1) was true, thus: > [@](#): > > (1) you can be prosecuted for being drunk in charge of a bike, boat, horse etc (true); Part 2 was false - in the UK, at least - so this is interesting: > [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > …I don’t know what you mean by saying your driving license could be endorsed but if it means points off your auto driver’s license for the above infractions, well, I once had a cop tell me they COULD take points off. Of course cops can lie to you… Where urban myths start, maybe? j ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/79 "2020-02-11T20:20:39Z")
In Melbourne, no demerit points apply to bicycle/horse rider traffic offenses. Unless you use your drivers license for ID, and the officer fills in form incorrectly. Same, I’ve heard, in other places. If it’s just a different number on the same form, an officer may not even correctly remember the numbers for a bicycle offense. If it’s just a note in details section, the officer may neglect to note that it’s a bicycle offense, or the back office may not interpret in correctly. Probably the more often bicycle citations are issued, the less likely that mistakes are made. ---
**Author:** ![TimfromNapa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d26b3c/32.png) [@TimfromNapa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimfromNapa)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2020, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616/80 "2020-02-11T20:21:31Z")
I believed in the Christian God and the divinity of Jesus until I reached my early 20s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-obvious-lie-youve-ever-believed-past-childhood/847616.md?page=5)