# Wrong things you thought when you were young **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 23, 2022, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952 "2022-05-23T19:08:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2022, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/61 "2022-05-24T21:01:08Z")
The Watergate scandal had something to do with a gate that actually held back water (like a dam). ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2022, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/62 "2022-05-24T21:04:57Z")
Personal story of mine: I was 6 years old when I visited the white kangaroo exhibit at the Indianapolis Zoo. It had a sign on it that said “Vanishing Animal”, warning of its endangered status. I stared at the kangaroo intently, and when Mom and Dad asked me what I found so interesting, I told them that I was waiting for the animal to disappear. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2022, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/63 "2022-05-24T21:05:27Z")
[Mad had you in mind](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/m76u8GK3RUj0YVGFPjAwu_Ynr7r3Y9WqVpQe3U8Xi9Qmr4Q1SqVma6Bn3SIqM3HOpwR-qwZejMdM-g=s0) When I was 4-ish in 1964 I used to draw men wearing headsets like NASA flight engineers and also shoulder holsters like James Bond, the combined ideal male of the age ---
**Author:** ![lost4life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c4cdca/32.png) [@lost4life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lost4life)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2022, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/64 "2022-05-24T21:10:34Z")
You know, I may have seen that comic, which led to me figuring out what Guerilla actually meant. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2022, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/65 "2022-05-24T22:11:17Z")
When I was around the same age we went to the North Carolina Zoo. At least back then (maybe they still do), that zoo had a tram you could ride around on for an additional fee. To show you’d paid the tram fare, you were given a sticker to put on your shirt. I overheard my parents discussing what was stopping someone from just re-using an old tram sticker on a subsequent visit. “They probably change color every day,” one of them said. I thought that meant my sticker would literally change color the next day. I wanted to stay up to watch my sticker change color, assuming it would change the moment the clock struck midnight, but I didn’t make it. But I excitedly got up the next morning and checked my sticker to find out what color it was now, only to find it was still the same color it was the previous day. Because of course what my parents meant was that the zoo probably used different colored stickers each day. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2022, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/66 "2022-05-24T23:54:04Z")
My friends and I used to explore a lot of local fields, creeks, and woods in our town when we were ~5 – 10 years old. _“Keep Out”_ signs did not deter us one bit…except for one. That one was the one we most desired to breach, but _never_ did. Beyond the sign was a large field with a creek and horses! It was every kid’s dream!..except for that damned sign. The sign said _“Keep Out—Violators will be Prosecuted.”_ I was convinced, and I convinced my little friends that “prosecuted” meant “electrocuted.” Although it was quite tempting, we never risked getting caught trespassing on that field and be sentenced to the electric chair. ---
**Author:** ![Limmin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f04885/32.png) [@Limmin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Limmin)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2022, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/67 "2022-05-25T15:02:02Z")
I was often fooled in a similar way. I sometimes misread signs and argued with my mom over the meaning, as in “Wrong Way” sign facing backwards on a highway (I stupidly insisted it was “working way”) and “Unlawful to do…” which I saw as “un-awful.” I was an early reader, but this did not mean I could understand the meaning of the signs. In a different thread I’ve mentioned my confusion over seeing a “No minors” sign in a bar…when we were traveling in a region that had a lot of mine workers (who I assumed would like to drink at a bar). > [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > When I was 4-ish in 1964 I used to draw men wearing headsets like NASA flight engineers and also shoulder holsters like James Bond, the combined ideal male of the age There was a definite style to clothing, haircuts, etc. during the mid 1960s. My uncle started an engineering consulting firm in the mid 60s and the brochure pictures of him and his colleagues? They all look just like NASA flight controllers. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2022, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/68 "2022-05-25T15:49:58Z")
When I was about 7 or 8, my mother would always have me grab the mail and tell her what we’d gotten (Latchkey Kid). I remembered reading one particular return address, and it came from “DBC Systems, Inc.” or something like that. I asked Mom what that place was, and not feeling like explaining debt collection to me, she said it’s “just a place that sends out bills.” For the next several years I believed that any company could send anyone a bill for any reason, and if you got one, you were just screwed and had to pay it. ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2022, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/69 "2022-05-25T17:46:38Z")
I used to believe marijuana and henna were the same substance and that henna (for dying hair) was illegal. This was because “hemp” and “henna” sounded similar, were both green smelly stuff and were - in my experience of the early 80s - often used by a similar category of person. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2022, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/70 "2022-05-25T21:08:31Z")
> [@jnglmassiv](#): > > I used to think that people who moved to a new house traded houses with the previous occupants. That almost happened to me. After I got married, my wife and I were looking for a bigger house. There was a widow a couple of streets over who wanted to downsize and was looking for a smaller house. We looked at her house, and she looked at ours. Neither one of us ended up liking the respective houses, but for a while there it looked like we might just be able to trade places. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2022, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/71 "2022-05-25T22:06:22Z")
I thought foreign languages were just a substitution cipher - if you knew which letters to swap for which, you could read, write and speak French, for example. I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, and I hadn’t thought to test my hypothesis, merely observed that French words were like an unfamilar jumble of familiar letters and made an assumption about how it must be working. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2022, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/72 "2022-05-25T23:48:30Z")
There was an ad that used the phrase “in a few thousand miles of everyday driving.” I took that to mean you drove a thousand miles every day. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2022, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/73 "2022-05-27T12:48:39Z")
I think I’ve told this story before, about learning that gold was “discovered” in California in 1848, leading to the famous Gold Rush. For an embarrassingly long time, I thought that was when gold was literally discovered. That is, that no one had ever seen or heard of gold until 1848. I always wondered how people knew it was so valuable that they would all rush out there to get it, considering it was a brand new thing that nobody knew about before. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2022, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/74 "2022-05-31T14:35:41Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > As a child, I thought people went to work because they wanted to work, and that the Government gave everyone money, The older you were the richer you were. It all made perfect sense to me at the time. Sounds like half the people on this message board! ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2022, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/75 "2022-05-31T18:41:36Z")
> [@Mops](#): > > Before Clinton/Lewinsky I thought oral sex meant talking about it. Really. You remind me of the joke about the person whose concept of oral sex was that it meant two people yelling “Fuck you!” at each other. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2022, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/76 "2022-05-31T18:42:25Z")
> [@jnglmassiv](#): > > Not that I’m the biggest fan of the game but I was well into my 40s before I made the connection that the Washington Football Team is in DC and not the state. My sister and I used to joke, way back when we were learning violin, that Washington DC stood for del capo el fine and that once you got there, you had to return to Washington State. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2022, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/77 "2022-05-31T18:44:48Z")
I thought that when women and girls peed into a sample cup, like for the doctor, they floated the cup on the surface of the water in the bowl and hoped for the best. ---
**Author:** ![ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chockfullofheadygoodness/32/511_2.png) [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2022, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/78 "2022-05-31T18:46:09Z")
I thought the supermarket with the sign the said “Open 24 hours” closed in hour 25, and didn’t understand why the sign wouldn’t tell you which hour that was. I knew my older sister had a stash of lollipops hidden in the upstairs bathroom, which shared a wall with my room. I could hear her crinkling plastic wrap, and when she left I would find a cardboard lollipop stick in the trash can. It was several years before I figured out what was really going on. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2022, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/79 "2022-05-31T18:47:54Z")
> [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](#): > > I thought the supermarket with the sign the said “Open 24 hours” closed in hour 25, and didn’t understand why the sign wouldn’t tell you which hour that was. That reminds me of a Steven Wright joke – paraphrasing: > [@](#): > > I went to a 7-11. The sign on the door said, “Open 24 hours.” The guy who worked there was locking the doors. I pointed to the sign: “That says you’re open 24 hours.” The guy said, “Not in a row.” ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2022, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952/80 "2022-05-31T19:22:16Z")
When I was a kid, the draft for the Vietnam war was still going on. I got it mixed up with the NFL football draft. I thought if you were drafted by a football team, you were required to go. I hated football, and I remember thinking: “What if I’m drafted but I don’t want to play football??” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wrong-things-you-thought-when-you-were-young/964952.md?page=5)