I’m making $160/hr as a translator. Nyeh.
Matt, I am very proud of you… I’m not kidding…
Translators are… laughs Very fairly paid
but you see… I was a moron from birth…
I thought I was the only person who ever thought this. I get the weirdest looks when I tell people I used to think this. I think I was around 4 or 5 when I found out otherwise.
I also thought some women had only one boob. I was very young when I thought this. I saw a picture in a magazine of a woman breastfeeding and only one boob was sticking out. Not being very bright, it didn’t occur to me that the other one, not being used, was underneath the shirt.
I wasn’t tricked, per se, but had a wild imagination. In my church, during the Apostles’ Creed, they’d say:
“…Born under Pontius Pilot…”
This sounds a lot like “…Born under unconscious pilot…”
So Jesus was born on a crashing airplane.
This didn’t last long. It wasn’t long before I applied the knowledge that planes were a 20th century invention, solving the issue.
I share many of your former beliefs: little people in the radio, TV is real-life and they can see you, etc.
Some of my own:
Santa Claus was somehow related to God…and you could pray to him. I figured out pretty early on that the shopping center Santas weren’t the real thing…but if I let on to an adult that I knew this, I wouldn’t get presents anymore.
Black people’s skin was made of chocolate. At the age of 5, I actually asked a black lady if that was true. I was baffled by her harsh response, as I hadn’t intended to offend her. I was still ignorant about racism.
Policemen, since they carried guns and wore badges, could shoot anyone anytime they wanted to. This, unfortunately, is often true.
I was disappointed to find out (on a trip) that state borders did not have actual lines on the ground. I figured “why the hell are they on the maps, then?”
I thought that politicians always acted in the best interest of everyone in the country.
Yeah, I had the toilet/shower connection fear. And yes, it still crosses my mind now and then.
As a schoolchild I believed early on that the Revolution was World War I and the Civil War was World War II.
I also thought “Casey Stengel managed the Yankees in 1927, the year Babe Ruth won the World Series by hitting his 60th home run on the last day of the season.”
Boy, was that one mixed up! 
I used to think the lady on the corner was Elizabeth Taylor.
When I was little I would see these sweeping black marks on the road when driving. They looked like really long skid marks that looked like they weaved over the road. Of course all I had to do was ook up at the electrical lines to realize it was their shadow. I didn’t figure that one out for a while.
I recall overhearing my older brother studying for a science test, and visualized the rings of Saturn be being made up of frilly dresses. When he said “ice particles”, I thought he said “party clothes”…
I haven’t laughed so hard in a loooonnnnggg time, thanks for sharing your memories.
When I was four, I walked with my mom to meet my older brother getting out of school (we lived in Columbus, OH then) we passed by some black kids sitting on a stoop and I asked who they were, my mother replied, ‘oh they are teenagers’. I thought this was sooo odd. They were different colors 'cause they were teenagers?? Soooo, I started crying just before my brother turned 13, and everyone laughed when I said he was going to turn colors on us.
Growing up in Arkansas, I’d have said that this view of things accords pretty well with reality.
My grandfather told me that if I bit my nails that they would go in my stomach, whether I swallowed them or not, and they would rip my stomach up. This of course would cause me to bleed out of every pore in my body and I would die a horrible bloody death. Now I wasn’t really sure if I believed this at first but since my grandfather had never lied to me before as far as I knew I decided to believe him I was like five at the time. I never did bite my nails as a nervous habit, but I did later take up smoking. Not that he ever warned me about that since he smoked himself. After watching my grandmother die a horrible death not so much from the painful cancer but from the emphysema which suffocated her I decided to quit she was the second person in my family to die from lung cancer in a year. I have now been smoke free for a one year two months and 21 days.
When I was around five or so I thought satellites were saddle-lites. I even use to stay up and watch for one.Never got to see one,of course, but had vivid dreams about what they looked like.They shone like the moon, looked like a saddle and moved acrossed the sky rather quickly. I remember the hearing the song “Ghost Riders In The Sky” as the horseless saddle moved along.
Until a painfully embarassing age to admit, I was mystified by how cars switched lanes. The tires didn’t turn sideways–they looked like they stayed going straight but the car still moved sideways! I was convinced that there must be a “change lanes” button on the dash or something.
My little brother played soccer with a little boy from Korea. It took us many, many weeks to figure out that this was the kid my brother was referring to when he talked about the “half-black, half-blind” kid on his team.
I remembered another one, just today.
I used to think that the brakes on a car (or maybe it was just the parking brakes) worked by sticking a metal plate from the car to the ground, and scraping along the ground. For some reason, it never occured to me that if you stop the wheels, it will stop the whole car.
Also, my brother once drew what he thought was on the inside of a lighter…I don’t have the picture, and don’t even recall seeing it, but according to him, it involved pulleys, gears, conveyer belts, and a tiny match on the inside. He said he was shocked when he found out that it was just a pressure system.
I also, of course, thought that sex was just kissing naked. Later on I thought it involed a man peeing on/in a woman (because, hey, naked=penis=pee, what else would it involve? Okay, some people actually DO pee on each other during sex, but that’s a whole other matter.)
I could never figure out how my mom’s car knew which way we were going to turn. Everytime we came to an intersection, the little green arrows on the dash pointed the way! I kind of thought that the car ‘knew’ where we were going, and ‘told’ my mom which way to turn. Duh 
Rose
I share many of the aforementioned kid beliefs: tiny people in the radio, TV shows were real-life(this was before they actually were), people on TV could see you, the toilet/shower connection.
A few of my own:
When I first saw a vapor streak in the sky left by a plane (that I didn’t see) I thought the sky was cracked.
I thought of Santa Claus as a sort of Jesus-like entity (in a way, I suppose he is) and that you could pray to him. Also, I was very young when I figured out that shopping center Santas weren’t the real thing, and I didn’t buy the “Oh,they’re his helpers” line. However, I thought that if you didn’t play along and pretend to be fooled, you wouldn’t get any presents.
I believed that when it rained, it was raining all over the world. Hmmm…there’s a song in that…
I was quite disappointed to discover that state borders were not marked by actual lines on the ground. I thought: “Why the hell are they on the maps, then?”
I was five before I realized that the songs on the radio had words. I always thought that the singers were just making noises. Then I said, “Wow! A song is like a story with music!” Duh.