MY great-uncle Arthur, on a visit to his home in Detroit, had me CONVINCED that if you could pour salt on a bird’s tail it couldn’t fly and you would be able to catch it. I spent the whole morning by his backyard door with the slat shaker in my hand, and wondered why I was never fast enough to get them. I’m 45 now and the family still brings that up every so often. Also, after hearing my friend’s mothers giving them the same cliched reproofs I got at home, I wondered if they gave lists of those things to parents when their first child was born.
When I was real little, my mom and dad still actively played Dungeons and Dragons with their friends. My mom was a great Dungeon Master and had all sorts of figures of people and monsters, dragons, etc. One figure in particular was this spherical green monster with one big eye and lots of little eyes on the tips of his tentacles. It was called a Beholder.
For the looongest time I thought the phrase; “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” was referring to the monster, Beholder. (it had so many eyes that it almost made sense)
Here’s another one for you. To this day, I still cannot turn on the shower until the toilet has stopped running. When I was little, I managed to convince myself that if I turned the shower on too soon, what I flushed would come out of the showerhead. Ewww.
Divemaster, wasn’t that one of the School House Rock cartoons? I seem to remember food going through a conveyor belt to a tune of “Exercise your choppers…”
HUGS!
Sqrl
“When I was real little, my mom and dad still actively played Dungeons and Dragons with their friends.”
Omigod, I feel old. When I was a kid, my parents actually HAD dungeons and dragons . . .
Actually, in my house, I have to wait until the toilet stops running to use the shower, because then there’s nothing but hot water. (No cold).
I remember my mom telling me about someone who was fired, and I thought that meant you were shoved into a fireplace!
Now you have to get that one Sony video camera. (Handicam, wasn’t it?)
This reminds me of those dorky Sea Monkeys ads. I thought those pictures were like what you would be getting–funny looking bipedal aquatic creatures that wore clothes. Well, what kid wouldn’t? Of course, I thought they were kind of creepy looking, so I never really wanted them.
Ah, yes. Crap to waste your parent’s money on.
I used to believe that if i would put a blanket over my face when i was sleeping,that this skeleton faced guy with a trenchcoat and black gloves would press the blanket on top of my face and i would suffocate.I still cannot put a blanket over my face 'cos these things tend to turn into habits.
I used to belive that AD meant After death too.I only learnt about anno domini(in the year of our lord) in the seventh grade.
I believed in ghosts and witches and i guess i still do 
Bye
Zeeshan
When I was little, I didn’t know that people had to steer their cars. I thought cars were like Hot Wheels, and you just got on the road and the car went wherever the road went.
For a long time, I was convinced that Hawaii was just off the coast of the Southeast U.S. I think I can blame this on my “50 States” jigsaw puzzle - it had an inset in the lower right corner showing Hawaii. Strangely enough, I never believed Alaska was south of California (its inset map was in the lower left of the puzzle) but it was a long time before I figured out where it actually is.
When I was about 5, I watched my mother using the garbage disposal at the kitchen sink. She told me never to stick my fingers in there or it would chop them off. I thought she meant the water coming from the tap. It took many years before I was brave enough to put my hands under running water in the kitchen. It was only the kitchen sink though. I wasn’t a total moron.
Not something I believed, but a neighbour kid…He thought that Russia was on the other side of a nearby mountain ridge. Only later did he find out it was actually Williamsport, PA. I don’t know if it was a disappointment or not!
For a while, when I was in kindergarten or first grade, I actually believed I could fly. Not fly like soaring over the treetops, but more like just skim along just over the ground.
The only rationale I have been able to come up with for this was because of the walk home from school. We lived very close to my elementary school, so I walked to and from every day (this was the much safer 60s also). But I knew there was a busier road I had to walk on between my street and where the school was.
Well, on my way home, after traversing the busy street, I was on my quiet street, almost home, and therefore safe. So I guess my mind wandered, and I wasn’t actually aware of the act of walking. Suddenly I would be in front of my house with no recollection of walking past the three or four houses of our neighbors. Conclusion: I could fly!
I used to think that babies came out the mother’s navel. I am too embarassed to say when I found out the truth…
When I was 7 I asked one of my classmates what ‘fuck’ meant. She told me it was when a man got on top of a woman naked. For the longest time I had the mental image of a woman standing with a naked man crouched on her head. Sounded dangerous as hell.
Oh yeah, I also believed you could make a deal with the Devil just by thinking the words, and every time my mind started to wander that way I would start frantically trying to derail that train of thought before I thought the right words. Somehow I accidentally mentally made the deal that the Devil couldn’t get my soul if I left the bathroom before the toilet made that loud gurgling noise at the end of the flush, and I was in my early teens before I finally forced myself to stand inside the doorway until I heard that sound.
I used to think the telephone worked by the operators at the company would know who was friends with who, and would hook up their phones to ring.
The gas station I lived near had a sign saying “Lowest price! X$” = the price of a litre of gas. I somehow figured this was the price of the cheapest thing you could buy in the store. I was confused because they had gum that was way cheaper than the “lowest price”
I always thought AD meant After Death and BC meant Before Christ. It makes sense to me cuz I was raised Catholic though I find that CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before Common Era) which are being used now to be better. Not as confusing.
I was always convinced there was something under my bed. I never bothered my parents with it though I just knew that as long as I didn’t put my feet too close to the underneath of it whatever it was wouldn’t get me. So I usually hopped into bed from a short distance away.
One time at Guide camp I was very nearly convinced there was a crazed man with goat legs wandering the woods near the privies just waiting for a lone Guide to wander into the bathroom so he could nab her and eat her. I managed to get away by making sure I never went there alone because despite the fact that I knew it was a tale I couldn’t quite shake the feeling it was real. (I mean thats what we did stayed up part of the night after lights out and scaring each other silly with ghost stories… this one got a little too close since it had supposedly taken place near the camp and the man had already killed nearly a whole troup of Guides and their leaders…)
I was convinced that those big rotating lights (they use them to attact attention to grand openings and car dealers) were used to search for giants.
Currently, I find it hilarious that my daughter thinks if she can’t see me, I can’t see her. She puts her face in a pillow when she doesn’t want to do something…weird child.
When I was a little kid, I thought the people singing on the radio were actually at the radio station. I imagined a long line of people waiting outside the studio for their turn to sing. I finally asked my father because I was concerned about the ones who had to stay up late to sing at night. He laughed and a laughed and explained the concept of records to me. I’m sure he later regretted it considering how much of his money I spent on albums in the '70s.
I remember when I was a kid and I would see one of those “This Street is Radar Patrolled” street signs, I thought there was some guy sitting at a console in some building, looking at a radar screen like the ones at airports, watching our street.
When I was little I believed that for every lie I told after I turned twelve, I’d get a wrinkle in my forehead.