The EXACT SAME THING happened to me, except that what I wanted to do was to erect an invisible shield around myself. The traumatic experience did not, however, prevent me from becoming a Wiccan. 
Ok. My dad is a reporter, so I listened to CBC Radio a hell of a lot. We lived in New Brunswick, and I thought Moscow was in that province. (I presumably had conflated it with Moncton.)
Similarly, there’s a science program (still running!) on CBC called Quirks and Quarks. I thought it was Corks and Corks. I never bothered to consider what corks had to do with science.
I didn’t realize that friends were something I was supposed to have. I thought they were just what cool people had, like Gameboys. I didn’t feel the lack very much; I was perfectly content by myself. Frankly I thought everyone else was a little odd. Of course, my parents and the psychiatrist they took me to concluded that I was autistic, and then in their infinite loving wisdom forced me to be social before I was ready, which of course caused me to be even more solitary. (Bitter, does he sound bitter?)
Oh but the’re wierd and the’re wonderful, Oh Bennie she’s a really keen, she’s got ELECTRIC BOOBS, a mohair suit, You know I read it in a magazine, Ohh Ohh. B B B Bennie and the jets. I heard this albub when i was in the third grade. I thought electric boobs were a fashion item. By the way, our stereo would loose volume on every downbeat of the bass when it went boomp,boomp,boomp,boomp.
When I was younger, I used to believe completely that, by squinting my eyes at a bend in the road and using my immense psychic powers, I could stop traffic from coming from that direction, allowing the car I was riding in to pull out.
I also believed that you lost the ability to do these things when you stopped believing in them.
I was actually mad at myself when I stopped thinking that I could do that.
Oh. Also, when I was a kid in Winnipeg, this other kid I knew thought that the Assiniboine Park Pavillion was where the Queen lived. And I kinda believed him.
Until you graduate to the fourth grade, there are two monsters that live in your room. One lives under the bed and will grab your ankles if you try to get out of bed before dawn. The other one lives in the closet and will eat you if he sees you. Of course, he can only see in the dark, which is why it’s a good thing to have a night light. There is also a ghost that haunts right outside your window after dark. Don’t look out the window. It’s scary out there. None of these monsters can see you if you pull the blankets over your head.
And my parents thought the reason I used to wet the bed was because I had something to drink too close to bedtime. I was just too scared to get out of bed after dark.
~~Baloo
While growing up in San Jose, CA, I knew that Arkansas, where my parents and most of my other relatives came from, was just on the other side of the hills just to the east of us. I remember that grandma told me that Arkansas was far away, to the east (where the sun rose in the morning). The hills were to the east of us, and as far away as my little mind could grasp. I was also half-convinced that there really wasn’t anything on the other side of those hills, but this somehow didn’t contradict that Arkansas was on the other side of them, anyway.
There was a radar antenna on the top of one of the nearby hills when we lived in San Jose. All I could see was some winged thing that rotated constantly. I never asked what it was, but I knew that it was a guardian angel keeping an eye on things.
~~Baloo
Here’s one about my sister: when she was little she thought that “forward” was the same as “north”, presumably because you usually hold a map with north pointing ahead of you. I, in my vast maturity (a year and a half her elder!) tried to explain that north was not whatever direction you happened to be going but she didn’t get it.
For my part I was puzzled by the traffic lights with the arrows pointing up. I knew that cars could not drive upwards, so why the up arrow? My mother tried to explain that the arrow indicated “ahead” not “up”, but I couldn’t wrap my little mind around that concept. How were drivers meant to know that an up arrow meant ahead? Madness, madness I tell you!
I’m sure I’ll think of a lot more of these later, but for now, only one is worth mentioning:
Ever see those power/telephone lines that have the diagonal support cable to keep the posts from falling over? For a very long time, I thought that they were live wires which would electrocute me if I touched them. After all, why else would they have that yellow non-conductive insulating plastic tube thingies around them?
To this day, I am hesitant to touch those things.
I remeber when the Disney movie “The Black Hole” came out.The ad on TV was terrifying to this little tyke…but far more worrying was the tag line “See Press For Details”.
In Ireland a Press is what I believe is known as a cupboard stateside. So every time I went for a cup or glass I was in a blind sweaty panic waiting to get sucked into oblivion by mysterious forces.
Made washing up duty all the more tortuous.
I thought Star Trek was called Star Chalk.
And that Darth Vader’s name was Dark Vader.
When I was about three, we lived in NYC at the time “Fiddler On the Roof” was on Broadway. Everytime the violin theme from that show came on the radio, I thought it was Martian music. I was sure it was Martians signaling an immminent invasion of the Earth.
I also believed dogs and cats could talk, but only when no humans were around.
When I was really little I understood that television shows that were black and white were from the “olden days”, hence, in the “olden days” the world was in black and white, and that “color” was a fairly recent development.
My SO has a better one. He asked his mother once what the extra little flaps on dog’s ears were for. She told him that they were so the dog could hear in the dark. He says it took him quite a while before that one caught up with his logic sensors.
I thought that the optical illusion of water on the road on a hot day was real water. This wasn’t helped by the fact that my uncle would tease the kids on long car trips by saying “We’ll stop at a bathroom as soon as we come to that water up the road.”
This one is kind of strange. There are these big bush/plant things (I have no idea of the real name for them) that are very tall and have big off white plume things coming out of the top. They have long sharp leaves (as long as the bush is tall). It sorta looks like a giant ponytail palm with densely packed leaves. I thought they were hollow and that trolls or elves lived inside them. Several times I attempted to burrow my way into the center of this bush, slicing open all exposed flesh. I’m glad I finally outgrew this stupid belief.
ILLUMINATION!!! It never occurred to me in my timid youth to ask the good sisters why they referred to the cabinets in the classrooms as “the press” - what a relief to lay that mystery to rest. Bless you!
There was a coupon in my paper for a BOX of twinkies. I went through the garbage for my WHOLE building to get all these coupons, and went to the store to cash them (like 25 of them) in for my box. I still don’t understand why that doesn’t work.
I used to be, I still am infact, convinced that I can see England in the distance when I got o the beach and look out to sea.
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when you dropped a letter in the mail chute at the post office after hours, the letter went into a pneumatic tube or a conveyor belt, on to the next big town, and into a bigger tube, which took it to Montreal for sorting.
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the patterns of the clouds matched the pattern of the continents and islands on the earth, and several times a year, probably around the solstices and equinoxes, they matched up. At other times of the year you might see, say, Iceland’s clouds overhead.
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if you met an Aborigine or someone else who didn’t speak English, they could understand you, but you couldn’t understand them.
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it is entirely conceivable that the entire universe is actually just one big jeezus atom, embedded in a much larger object, like a giant rock, with other atom-universes. (Still waiting for this one to be disproved.)
I used to be COMPLETELY partial to the idea that like, Chinese, and German or whatever (foreign) people could think American, but they could only talk their language…
I also though that I could control the wind, you know, stand in the back yard, look at the trees, and will it to become windy… I was a crack-addict…
I was REALLY dumb… I was SO dumb, that my sister could convince me of ANYTHING… including being a 5th degree blackbelt (4th grade was she in, I was in 1st) and that she and my parents were Aliens…
I thought that at the Radio Station, there was a band that played all the songs… I found it absolutely magnificent that they could sound like so many different bands and singers, even though in the 80’s everyone sounded alike…
I used to believe that Ouija boards open up portals to the Great Beyond… (they do, and never play with Ouija Boards unless you are willing to get a Medium or a priest in your house to exorcise the demons)
and the final one, which proves how big of an idiot I was, is that I thought when I cop told you to pull over, you pushed ont he door panel and the car moved over… I never did figure out how UPS men pulled over to the side of the road, without doors…
so now you know about my messed up childhood…and I want you all to know that I am making $80 an hr as a Networking Technician, and I’m not even outta HS…
Beat that suckahs!!!
Because of the small slope in my front yard, I used to think that my house was at the top of the earth.
I also thought the Big Dipper was a pelican.