I thought that grown-ups (defined as anyone over the age of 13) had it all figured out. They just knew everything.
On a related note, I thought everyone eventually found a calling. All adults held jobs and lived lives that they were passionate about.
They also knew everything had had a more or less infinite supply of money.
There’s a highway entrance by my house that says “Erie PA”. It’s actually quite a long way from that entrance to Erie, but you would take that highway to another highway that would take you to Erie.
Anyway, for some reason I thought the sign was a special way to say “Air Path” and I thought that for a very long time. Probably well after I could read, because I remember it.
No idea what I thought “Air Path” meant but there you go.
I thought “guerilla fighting” meant we were fighting gorillas in Vietnam. Hey, it’s a jungle…
Me too!!
Also a me-too! It was only in history class when the textbook mentioned how noteworthy it was that JFK was a Catholic that I thought, “Hmm…” (Well, actually, the first thing I thought was, “Well, what else would he be?” Boy, I was sheltered.)
I remember hearing about the Iran-Contra Affair during Boring TV Shows Daddy Watched, and somehow mixing up the word “contra” with “cobra.” No idea how that happened.
I was told that thunder and lighting came from the clouds rolling around in the sky and crashing into each other, and making sparks. Believed it for a while, too.
I learned the word “summersault” as “summer salt.”
I’m more disturbed by the fact that when I Googled summersault to make sure I was spelling it right (it’s early, I’m tired, fuck off) one of the top Google suggestions was, yup, “summer salt.” Apparently I wasn’t the only one … ?
“Business Dist” is a town in northeastern Wisconsin. When we drove up to Grandma’s house, there were signs pointing the way to Business Dist in every other town we went through. But for some reason, we never went through Business Dist itself.
There was a logo on the backs of seats on the school bus. It said “Superior.” It confused me for a while, as it was obviously pronounced “super-y oar.” Then it dawned on me. Oars make boats go. The bus went, as if propelled by invisible oars. And the invisible oars were super-ish.
I was one smart kid, I tell ya.
I’ve been talking to someone who’s been similarly sheltered, and she’s 42. She still can’t quite get her head around the idea that there are non-Catholics. She’s fascinated by my atheism, and is eager to learn more.
On a similar religious note, I guess I must have thought everyone was Jewish. Then when I was three or four years old, I came across a coloring book on Israel, which had a page or two on Arabs. My mom explained to me, and so from then on I knew- people can be Jewish or Muslim.
More religious fun: one of my sister’s caretakers was a Mormon. My mother tried explaining Mormonism and/or Christianity to me, but I was a little confused on the details. I came away with the understanding that Christians worshipped some guy who died a long time ago, maybe even a hundred years ago. They kept his body on display in their church (I had a mental image of a glass display case with a mummified body propped up inside) and would some in and worship it.
And then there was the period I thought the tooth fairy was God… but I have class at twelve and I have to go now.
Wait… What’s wrong with that logic? All empty sets **are ** identical, after all… 
I think I was around twelve before I realized that when you go to a restaurant and order food, they have to make it after you order it, thus the wait. In fairness, when I was a kid, we never went to restaurants much, except for fast-food places where the food was already prepared.
When I was growing up in Caifornia, I thought that it didn’t snow anywhere in the United States. I thought snow was something that only happened on the top of mountains in far-off places like Switzerland.
I also thought that my Brooklyn relatives lived in a place called You Nork.
Nope, you were not the only one…:o
I also thought that “pregnant” meant the opposite of “ignorant”.
I thought that the English language was ground zero for speakers of all languages. So, when 2 people were speking French to one another, I was amazed that they could speak so quickly, given the lengthy process:
I thought the opposite. I thought that English was just another “foreign” language, like Spanish or German. I and everyone I knew spoke what you might call “the common tongue”, and English was a language that few bothered to learn. When I learned the truth about it, I told a friend, and he didn’t believe me.
Maybe Google suggested summer salt because it’s actually spelled Somersault?
When I was little, I thought that all the grades graduated together. So seniors waited on juniors and sophomores, etc.
I also thought umpteen was a dirty word.
I thought they used people that were on death row whenever someone on TV fell out a window or were killed in any way on screen.
I thought all of those 5-30s video clips of a-bomb shock waves blowing “dust” off the trees, houses, etc were crappy special effects shots from some famous old movie. Around 11 or 12, I shifted to a “smarter” view that they were stock footage shots shared by the studios in a bunch of '50s-'60s movies. It really wasn’t until TLC/Discovery/History showed the “Atomic Bomb Movie” when I was ~14 that I learned those were shots of real shock waves from real a-bombs staged by the government and the “dust” was fire. I probably could have made it to 20 thinking those were old special effects shots if it wasn’t for that movie.
And other misconceptions already posted like automatic turn signals, adults know everything and “gorilla” fighting (I didn’t think it involved fighting gorillas but fighting like gorillas).
I thought that bands stayed at the radio station, and played when the DJ told them to. I thought they must get very bored, just hanging around all that time.
There was an episode of E.G. Marshall’s Radio Mystery Theatre where that was the plot. People were sentenced to Show Business. The time traveller who was sentenced got hold of the scripts in advance, though. (The episode is available for download – I have it in my iTunes – but I don’t remember the title.)
There are thousands more of these stories on iusedtobelieve.com
I used to believe that the teachers actually lived at school (or, more precisely, under the school) - at my school there was a hatch in the floor of one of the classrooms. I thought that it led down to a secret underground city where all of the teachers lived.