We’ve done these kinds of threads before and I think they’re fun.
When I was little I thought that everyone either had cats or dogs at their house. Some people had both, and some people also had other animals… but it didn’t really occur to me that people might have neither a cat nor a dog.
When I was little, I saw a black person at McDonald’s.
Mom told me - people come in all colors, but they’re all people.
So I immediately assumed that there were green, purple and blue people out there. Somewhere.
well, there are blue people out there =)
In the order in which I got rid of them:
That grown-ups were always right. This made disagrements between grown-ups quite confusing for the short duration of this belief.
That grown-ups must always be obeyed and can do anything they want to you. This led to things like not telling my parents about the kindergarten teacher hitting my left hand whenever I used it until several years later, when I found out from my paternal grandmother that teachers are not supposed and should not be allowed to hit children.
That my parents were some sort of inverted hydra: two bodies, one mind. They never expressed any disagreements in front of us, so I thought that they were in absolute agreement over everything. I finally found out at age 23 that this was not so and asked Mom to please, please, please start disagreeing with Dad in front of us (Dad didn’t need prompting, it was Mom who folded instantly), because while I see the importance of not raising the kids in a household of slammed doors like the one she grew up in, I also think it is important for them to know that “grown-ups need to reach agreements” and a lot of my childhood would have been less miserable if I’d known that the word of whichaver adult spake first was not necessarily the last and only Word.
Up until the age of around 12, I thought the world “original” meant the exact opposite of what it does, because I’d only ever heard people use it sarcastically.
“Oh, that’s original”
Not to derail things into a debate, just please take this at face value:
I thought the turn signals in the car somehow knew which way Dad was going to turn and came on automatically.
I thought married couples would spontaneously become pregnant, or they could choose to have sex if they wanted to hurry the process along.
I thought if we won the cold war, they would become our slaves. Or vise versa! :eek:
I thought all adults were intelligent and knowledgeable. It disappointed me when I eventually realised some adults are not very bright at all.
I thought the reason we knew all about the planets in the solar system was because astronauts had been to all of them! Including the sun (they had special astronaut protective gear for the heat of course).
I thought human reproduction involved a man and a woman being naked in the bathroom and the woman drinking the man’s urine. (See, I knew that nudity and a penis were involved . . .)
Thank God I was wrong.
And now you realize that that’s just foreplay.
I was certain that when you become a grown-up you would automatically start enjoying doing houshold chores and become tidy. Why else would mom insist on me doing something as boring as putting my toys away? Right?
I thought we were breaking the law every time we passed a sign that said “Do Not Pass”.
You trying to get me fired! (Still chuckling away…)
Growing up a Catholic child, whose extended family was all Catholic, who went to Catholic schools, etc - I thought the Pope was like King of the World. All the world leaders, presidents, kings, etc, had to do what the Pope told them. I didn’t have a concept of a non-Catholic person at all.
StG
I thought that as people grew older, they grew taller. I figured that since I didn’t see many people taller than my parents, that at a certain age people had to go live in a special Land of the Giants.
I believed that people are flesh and blood – and nothing else. No bones, muscles, or organs. Just fleshy bags of blood.
When I was little I thought all people with the same name would grow up to look the same (or close to it).
When I was little, the Catholic schools taught us that you can’t get pregnant until you are married…unfortunately, they didn’t distinguish between “you shouldn’t” and “physically not possible”. Until I was embarrassingly old I thought it physically wasn’t possible to get pregnant until you were married. Around the time I started ‘losing my faith’ (somewhere in middle school) I started thinking “That doesn’t make sense, what possible biological change could you go though on your wedding day that suddenly allows you to get pregnant?”
Also, I used to think hippopotamuses would eat my feet if I slept with my legs straight, so I always slept curled up in a ball (on my side) with my knees up by my chest.
Sounds like you’ve never been married.
If you ever do get married, get the anesthesia. I’m not making that mistake again!