They are ??
These stories make me chuckle.
The little boy who sat next to me for many years of my life (because we were always seated alphabetically) either had a hearing problem or just wasn’t too sharp as he had a reputation for bloopers. Classmates and I still have a laugh over what Paul said.
One Sunday morning he asked the Sunday School teacher, after reciting the Lord’s Prayer, “Why do we say, ‘Hell would be thy name?’”
And, in the day, we said The Pledge of Allegiance and sang a patriotic song or two every morning before we started school. After a rousing verse of “My Country 'tis of Thee” he asked, “Why do we sing, ‘Land where the pilgrims cried?’”
I thought the Gulf War was a war against Mexico. It made sense. The people looked somewhat similar, they too had a prominent Gulf, and RISK taught me that the only other option was Canada.
I thought people gradually lost their sense of humor as they aged. This was confirmed by my own family’s lack of anything resembling such.
I believed that humans came in flavors, much like ice cream. I referred to as anyone not strictly black(chocolate) or white(vanilla) as strawberry. Pistachio tore my world apart.
Green with spots would be ‘zombie’.
I somehow thought the world lost color or something. All my books about Ye Olden Times were in color, so the Dinosaurs, the Middle Ages, the Pilgrims etc were in Color, but everything in the 1920-1950s was all Black and White. I couldn’t quite figure out why, but I figured that there was no color when there were bad wars going on or something.
I was born too recently to really hear of it on the news, but we went to the Zoo once and my dad told me if I went down the Employees Only areas I’d get shot by Vietnamese Guerrillas. I knew they couldn’t be Gorillas, after all, they’d be on display if they were! But I could not fathom wtf it could mean, I think I ended up deciding they were a hybrid breed of Vietnamese people and Gorillas that were so dangerous and hideous they had to be kept behind scenes and no one was allowed to see them.
I remember reading a story in Reader’s Digest about a man who’d had some horrendous head injury, and thus was walking around with a metal plate in his head.
After he’d recovered, there was a bit about him going to a doctor’s office for a checkup and him removing his fedora from his head. Not having met the word “fedora” before, and not understanding how metal plates in one’s skull work . . . yes, I thought he opened up his head and had his brains exposed for the doctor to look at.
The word “fedora” creeped me out for a long time . . .
When I saw a TV show was supposed to come on at “8:00 EST,” I thought that meant it was estimated to come on at 8:00. You know, in case the football game ran over or something.
I thought that 555-whatever were the actual numbers of the people in my TV and on the movies, and that if I remembered the number or could write it down quickly, I would be able to call them.
Admiróse un portugués
al ver que en su tierna infancia
todos los niños de Francia
supieran hablar francés:
“Arte diabólica es,”
dijo torciendo el mostacho,
“que para hablar en gabacho
un infante en Portugal
llega a viejo y lo habla mal,
y aquí lo parla un muchacho”.
A Portuguese was stunned
to see that in toddlerhood
all little children in France
French could so perfectly speak:
“The Devil’s work this must be,”
making a moue said he,
“for to speak like the frogs do
a baby in Portugal born
and old man becomes and still speaks it wrong,
yet any child here makes do.”
(Lyrics from flamenco song “El portugués”, can’t google for the author due to being at work, rush translation mine; the lyrics are from the mid-20th century if not older)
When I saw road signs reading “Ped Xing,” in my mind, I always expanded “Ped” to “Peddlers,” but mentally pronounced “Xing” as “exing.”
ETA: Yes, I do realize that “Peddlers” was just as wrong as “exing.”
I used to see signs that said “Deer Crossing” and wonder why no deer were going across the road when the sign said they would. (In all my years I’ve only seen deer dashing back and forth across a highway near the sign once.)
I also used to believe that I could keep fairies, angels, witches, and devils as pets. I thought my mother would get me a fairy or a devil for my 6th birthday.
Of course this was not to be–I never got any fairies or devils as presents and by the time I was an adult I gave up on that and just bought some parrots.
Sometimes I wish I had fairies or devils instead.
I thought that medium was the biggest size…it was the biggest word after all!
Not quite fitting the time frame of the OP, but I recently remembered this one:
When I was in the army, in one of our classes after I first signed up teaching us our basic army knowledge they mentioned that one of the roles that we have, as members of the Canadian Armed Forces, is to duly protect and defend the government of Canada (or something like that). I asked if that meant that as long as we were in the army we had to vote Liberal (we had a Liberal government at the time), as I saw voting for another party as a sign that you are displeased with the government, not something that someone who is sworn to defend the government should be doing.
This doesn’t fit the requirements OP because I was 25 at the time. :o
I used to think that rabbits laid eggs…all because of the Easter commercials by Cadbury. This lasted until my teens. 16 years later, my younger siblings still tease me about this.
I once pulled the plug for my reading light out of the socket and some sparks came out. I spent the next few nights fearing for when the house was going to catch fire. I finally confessed my transgression to my dad who kindly assured me that I wasn’t going to bbq the family.
This is why it is good I’m not a dad. I would have ‘freaked out’ and screamed “PLUG IT BACK IN!” over and over until you did so and then give a bit “Phew! Close call.”
Ok, this is super embarrassing, but I WAS only about 5 or 6 when I thought this- I remember seeing Mount Rushmore and assuming those four faces were a natural feature. I thought and thought about it, and I figured in the end that it probably worked like this:
These were all very famous people, and all their names would be uttered many times. Since they’re famous. Then, the vibrations from all the repeated utterances of the names would eventually carve their likeness into the stone, just super super huge.
I vaguely thought that maybe people at some time in the past gathered at the foot of Mount Rushmore and shouted at the top of their lungs “Ayyyyybraham Liiiiiiiincoln!!!” Over and over.
Somehow, the option that it was manmade, as in with chisels (forget dynamite!) just didn’t occur to me.
Ok, this is super embarrassing, but I WAS only about 5 or 6 when I thought this- I remember seeing Mount Rushmore and assuming those four faces were a natural feature. I thought and thought about it, and I figured in the end that it probably worked like this:
These were all very famous people, and all their names would be uttered many times. Since they’re famous. Then, the vibrations from all the repeated utterances of the names would eventually carve their likeness into the stone, just super super huge.
I vaguely thought that maybe people at some time in the past gathered at the foot of Mount Rushmore and shouted at the top of their lungs “Ayyyyybraham Liiiiiiiincoln!!!” Over and over.
Somehow, the option that it was manmade, as in with chisels (forget dynamite!) just didn’t occur to me.
I guess I can forgive that since when I was 4 and in preschool we used to think (and proceed to act upon said thought) that if we stood in the playground and yelled, in unison, “STAAAAAR TRUUUUUCK!” really loud a bunch of times, the guys from Star Trek would come pick us up and take us on an adventure. Bit of misunderstanding on the word ‘trek’ there, but hey, we were four.
I thought that there was only one language spoken in whole world( my mother tongue ). When my Dad told me it was not so, I was shell-shocked, and kept thinking how could people communicate ?
