Name some silly misconceptions you had as a kid.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

I'll start. I thought Wax Museums were museums about wax and how candles were made. I didn't understand why people found that so interesting or why people wanted to go to wax museums.

[Dr. Strange]

1. When networks would show clips to announce an upcoming game...

I thought that meant that the game had already been played.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. On a similar thought....

...when I looked at the TV guide and it listed a time slot as "To Be Announced", I actually thought there was a real TV show called "To Be Announced."

[KamaAina]

57. When they would say 'Please Stand By"

so help me FSM, I would get up and stand next to the set.

[schmuls]

53. Another one, my brother Jon and I really believed that if you dug

a hole deep enough, you would actually wind up in China. At least we found a horse jawbone in our diggings, explain that one!

[Bragi]

3. I was afraid of firemen...

I thought they started fires and burned down people's houses.

Not sure where that came from.

(I'm no longer certain this is the case.)

- B

[Tommy_Carcetti]

5. Me too!

Fire + man.....it actually makes sense to a three or four year old.

[gmoney]

13. Maybe you saw Fahrenheit 451 as a kid?

The firemen in that movie are called in to burn books when they're discovered...

[Bragi]

17. I'm older than that

What set me straight was my parents gave me a toy firetruck for xmas one year, when I was maybe 3 or 4. My dad noticed that I was taking it to various parts of the house and pretending to get everyone out before my firemen started the fire. That's when he realized I had a significant conceptual problem about the whole enterprise, and set me straight.

[NJmaverick]

4. Growing up we had a B&W TV. So I thought professional football was played on pavement

[av8rdave]

26. I thought the exact same thing!

[no name no slogan]

59. For most of his life my ex-brother-in-law thought the Smurfs were gray

for the exact same reason (b&w TV)

[Kali]

83. I'm old enough to remember black top playgrounds!

That could be a factor too.

[BeachBaby]

6. That Jonah didn't really get swallowed by a whale, and that Jesus didn't turn water into wine.

[CreekDog]

45. .

:thumbsup: :rofl:

or maybe it was a large fish. :think:

i always confused Pinocchio with Jonah. :wtf:

[Sequoia]

118. You might be onto something.

Maybe the guy who wrote Pinocchio liked the Jonah story.

[Deep13]

7. I really thought fish sticks were called fish dicks.

It was not until I learned to read that I could see I was mistaken.

[Tikki]

11. LOL...

....just about, huh?!!

I thought Milk Duds were called Milk Dudes....


Tikki

[rcrush]

99. I like fishsticks!

[mcctatas]

8. When the Green Bay Packers hired Lyndie Infante....

I thought they hired two coaches, Coach Lyndie and Coach Fante

[NewJeffCT]

29. Reminds me of "Hodding Carter" - I always thought it meant

They were hodding, or insulting, Jimmy Carter, who was president at the time. Little did I know Hodding was his real first name.

[Inchworm]

9. I thought I was invincible and smarter than everyone

Took years and years to realize otherwise :P

:hi:

[Rambis]

10. I thought crimnals who were shot on tv

in old west gun fights were real people who died. I just figured they were criminals who had done something awful therefore this was ok to do. :shrug:

[Left Is Write]

12. I used to get worried every time my dad passed a "Do Not Pass" sign -

and I wondered how anybody ever got anywhere if they couldn't pass those signs.

Also, if I saw a billboard announcing Lots For Sale, I wondered, "Lots of what?"

[MichiganVote]

128. I thought the same things!

[gmoney]

14. I thought music on the radio was all performed live...

I figured that the Beatles and the Stones and such had nothing better to do than hang around a radio station in Ohio and play their hit song twice an hour... that misconception didn't last long.

I also remember my mom going thru a yellow light and thinking that the police would chase us and shoot out our tires.

[GOPisEvil]

68. I used to think songs would stop when the car was shut off...

...and pick right back up when the car was turned on again.

[BlueJazz]

129. LOL!...I thought I was the only Kid who thought that!

:)

[Arugula Latte]

111. I remember thinking that if I so much as looked at a cop he would pull us over, arrest me

and throw my four-year-old ass in jail.

[Aristus]

15. I used to think dust came from the sun.

Because every time I looked through a beam of sunlight shafting through a window, there was all this dust floating around in it. Made sense at the time... :dunce:

[Bertha Venation]

41. I like this.

:)

[CreekDog]

44. I think it comes from skin

:scared:

maybe your original idea was better. :D

[Arugula Latte]

112. I remember thinking that there was only dust in the beam

If you didn't breathe in the sunbeam, you wouldn't breathe dust, because obviously there wasn't dust floating around like that elsewhere in the house, just in the beam.

[surrealAmerican]

16. I thought that people and places just disappeared ...

... when I went somewhere else, only to be recreated when I returned.

[JonLP24]

18. Whenever my mom would express worries about being 'fired' I took it literally

I had a mental image of her showing up to work late being thrown into a fire place.

[Deep13]

24. I thought it meant getting shot. nt

[DarkTirade]

27. Out of a cannon?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

19. When my parents said toys or comics "went up," meaning the price had risen,

I thought they went physically up through an underground vertical tunnel to the back of the store, and therefore meant the newest issue had arrived.

One month the price of the comics hadn't gone up and my father said that comics hadn't gone up this month. I started crying. I was probably 4.

Edit: it were high inflation times, so publications tended to go up in price every three months or so.

[Bertha Venation]

20. I thought cats were girls and dogs were boys. n/t

[nutsnberries]

30. ME TOOO!!!

and i was going to post that! :rofl:

how funny to see someone already had!

[Bertha Venation]

31. Aren't we weird?

:hi:

[nutsnberries]

39. extremely.

:hi:

[nutsnberries]

40. altho - below, i see others held the same thought.

maybe we're not so weird after all!

[Pacifist Patriot]

34. Okay this is weird. I answered the OP before I read through the responses.

Add me to the list. I wonder why it's a common misconception for children. I figured I was the only one.

[nutsnberries]

42. for me, i think it was

a pretty sexist thought.
Cats are usually smaller, softer, and quiet.
Dogs are mostly bigger, louder, and rowdy.

geez - what was wrong with me? :dunce:

[siligut]

21. I thought when someone fainted, they actually melted into the floor.

My older brother told me that a woman down the street had fainted; I started running for the door. He asked me where I was going. I told him I wanted to see the puddle.

The Wizard of Oz made a great impression on me.

[Tektonik]

22. My mom and sister would make me believe lots of stupid shit

Caviar were small blueberries, and I sure did not like the taste of those small blueberries. :puke:
Kiwis were the bodies of kiwi birds with the heads and legs chopped off.
My sister had some opalescent vinyl pants and made me believe she was turning into a mermaid. :crazy:

[Deep13]

23. That I would burn in hell forever for thinking the "wrong" thing. nt

[guitar man]

25. When I was in 3rd grade

I was in a little "club" with some other boys. Part of our initiation was that we had to "rake" a girl. :rofl:

[NewJeffCT]

28. The first time I saw the Publisher's Clearinghouse "You have just won $1 million"

I thought it was real... what a disappointment.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

48. Re: Publishers Clearing House

Somehow my name got on the Publisher's Clearing House list. And on the envelopes, they listed about 5-6 past winners and then listed your name as a winner as well. I remember the commercial with Ed McMahon holding up an envelope and thinking my name was one of the names on there.

[Pacifist Patriot]

32. Cats were female and dogs were male.

I had to have been pretty young when I thought that, but I do remember thinking it.

[southpaw]

33. That Jonah really got swallowed by a whale, and that Jesus turned water into wine.

and that the all-loving creator of the universe would torture me forever for believing the wrong fairy-tale.

[Glorfindel]

35. That when looking at a map in a book, north was whichever direction

the top of the book was pointing toward. If I turned the book around, "north" magically moved.

[LeftinOH]

36. I thought people who screwed and weren't married (to each other) were breaking the law..

[Roon]

37. I thought "Jesus Christ" was a swear word eom

[Deep13]

54. I thought it was my name.

Jesus Christ! will you knock that off!

[Roon]

65. LOL

Too funny....

[HamdenRice]

38. cats & dogs were female & male; cows & horses female & male -- of the same species

I had trouble sorting out what the deal was on my grandparents' farm as a very small child.

On edit: Oh crap! I didn't see others upthread wrote the same thing!

[CreekDog]

43. I thought the Grateful Dead was a hard rock band

:rofl: :eyes:

[Tommy_Carcetti]

46. Me too.

It sounded like one of those 1980s hair metal bands.

[Taverner]

47. That America was a Democracy, that our elected officials give a rats ass...

And of course the old BS line that the Eagle prefers the olive branch but will resort to arrows only as a last resort

[Strong Atheist]

49. That life was fair... nt.

[raccoon]

50. That all Brits were upper class and talked with an upper class accent. nt

[Iggo]

58. I say!

:rofl:

[carlyhippy]

51. 2 things.....

I always thought all the clouds from the sky were born here:


Pop Rocks and Coke could kill a person, never to be ingested together......

[Sequoia]

121. So did I....about the clouds.

I was in the car with my dad when he went to pick up his check at the plant that made Bible/cig paper and saw the smoke coming out of the stack. He set me straight on that one. I thought he was smart because he knew what about lightning and thunder.

[schmuls]

52. My brother and I called those brown things hanging on those

electrical lines going from the ground to the top "volts"

[kwassa]

55. That women got pregnant from kissing with their mouths open.

At least I never fell for that stork story.

[bif]

56. Peeing in a swimming pool turned the water bright red

They scared the crap out of us at a YMCA pool and told us that. That was so they could identify the pisser. I believed it for a loooong time.

[Arugula Latte]

113. I think there actually is something they can put in pools that will identify the pisser.

[JonLP24]

119. Not a misconseption.

My cousin growing up pissed in our aunt's pool growing up and it turned orange or red or some bright color like that. Those pools do exist.

[bikebloke]

60. The wind was caused by trees.

The trees would wave their branches causing a breeze.

[no name no slogan]

61. I thought everybody was heterosexual

I was set straight (so to speak) in my early teens

[A-Schwarzenegger]

62. If you swallowed a watermelon seed a watermelon would grow inside you.

[johnnie]

63. I thought "Snow Street" was one hell of a long street

It was all over Cleveland.

[datasuspect]

64. in the neighborhood where i grew up

there was still significant manufacturing and industry in the early 70s. they had these big tall smokestacks that belched pollutants.

i remember being in the stroller and asking my mom if the "poison" (the smoke from the smokestacks) was falling on us.

oh wait, that wasn't a misconception.

[grasswire]

66. I thought navy beans would be blue.

And I thought there was a football position called the hunchback.

Hunchback of Notre Dame! Of course!

[Lionel Mandrake]

67. One ball makes baby boys, the other makes baby girls.

Otherwise why would we need two?

[sasquatch]

69. That teachers actually had eyes in the back of their heads

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

70. I was shocked to discover that my parents weren't related to each other.

After all, we were a family, and family members are all related, aren't they?

I also thought that if you unwound the rubber bands inside a golf ball and then touched the liquid inside, you would die on the spot.

[RagAss]

71. Sadly.. I was 4 and my first memory in life was the JFK assassination....

So guess how I thought you got a new President? I was 6 before I understood the concept of voting for someone.

[Sabriel]

72. If you have your knees together during a thunderstorm, they'll fuse that way.

I can thank my darling sister for telling that one. To this day, it makes me nervous about lightning and bony parts.

[Mike 03]

73. That if you were totally devoted to practicing some craft, and gave 100& of everything

you had, you could succeed.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

77. If you get a good education, you can get a good job.

And make enough money to support yourself. And get promoted. And not go crazy.

:eyes:

[Orrex]

79. Yeah. Remind me to leave a flaming bag of dog poo outside my faculty advisor's office

On day one she should have sat me down and said "a degree in English? Admirable, but you'll never make a dime with it."

[Manifestor_of_Light]

86. I got degrees in stuff I didn't like a lot, and they never helped me get a job.

So I should have majored in stuff I liked to do (art) and it would have been just as efficacious in getting me a job, I suppose.

:eyes:

[raccoon]

96. Add to that, that most people in the workplace are well-meaning.

Boy, was I clueless.

[Pool Hall Ace]

74. My mother was born at a hospital called Columbia Hospital for Women.

I used to wonder what would have happened if she had been born a boy. Would she and Grandma have been kicked out?

I remember asking her once, but she just laughed!

[Arugula Latte]

114. Is that the one in DC?

[Pool Hall Ace]

120. Yes, that is the one! :)

[FloridaJudy]

75. If you accidentally stabbed yourself with a pencil

You'd get lead poisoning and die. Also, sticking yourself with a brass pin would be lethal. This did not make school fun.

I also thought that kleig lights were searching for enemy bombers.

I must have spent my childhood in a continual state of terror.

[Nikia]

76. That Egyptians still regularly built pyramids and mummified people

Many people in Europe lived in castles and fought with swords while wearing metal armor. Native Americans on reservations often still lived in teeppees.
On a sadder note, I belived that it was possible for a vet to cause a sick or old pet to sleep alive indefinitely. I didn't understand that "put to sleep" was a euphamism for death.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

78. I thought you had to sneak into a sneak preview.

[Texasgal]

80. I thought sanitary napkins were used

to clean your hands when you were out in public.

[Orrex]

81. I was utterly horrified of Close Encounter-style aliens.

Watching E.T. almost sent me into cardiac arrest at the age of 11.

[AwakeAtLast]

82. That Russian planes were going to drop a bomb on us at any moment

Every plane that I heard at night made me terrified. This was in the early to mid '80s.

[JackDragna]

84. People are decent and worth knowing.

eom

[Manifestor_of_Light]

87. Most of them, that is.....

:rofl:

[qnr]

85. For a short while, I thought I'd discovered that eyes only pointed in one direction.

I was staring at my eyes in a bathroom mirror as I twisted my head and body.

[Common Sense Party]

88. I thought vapor trails from jets made clouds.

[trackfan]

89. I didn't think people I saw working, e.g. store clerks, were real.

I thought they were something more akin to robots, and were there all the time.

[WinkyDink]

91. You didn't know any in RL?

[WinkyDink]

90. That I'd amount to something.

[JonLP24]

92. Off topic: Is that your real name or did you get your username

from the fictional mayor from 'The Wire'?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

107. 1,000,000 to 1 coincidence. That's my name.

Nah, I'm just kidding. I'm a huge fan of The Wire.

[PassingFair]

93. Speaking of "wax", I thought the "Lost Wax Method"...

was a way that ancient peoples made candles
that we had lost the secret to over time.

I thought it was like the search for the Grail....

:dunce:

[Droopy]

94. I thought all cats were girls and all dogs were boys.

[Bucky]

95. I thought if you threw away a piece of trash, you'd hurt its feelings

Also, I thought the dogs were talking to everyone, not just to me.

[raccoon]

97. I thought if you played a record over and over, the singers would get tired of singing. nt

[LaurenG]

98. I was horrified to hear that my friends dad was fired

I was about 4 and thought it had to do with being burned alive. :scared:

[old mark]

100. That adults knew what I was thinking, what I wanted, and would

make decisions based on those things. Turned out very differently.

mark

[Rhythm]

101. When riding in the car at night, i thought the moon was actually following us

Made me very paranoid at the age of 6, because i didn't know what it wanted?!

[Arugula Latte]

115. When my daughter was about 2 we were driving and she said:

"Dat moon! It fowwowing us!" (That moon! It's following us!)

[jakefrep]

102. I thought Bill Cosby lived undeground and operated all the traffic lights

Must have been something I saw on Fat Albert.

[Arugula Latte]

116. Actually, that one is true. nt

[Rob H.]

103. I thought most people moved every year

I grew up a Navy brat, so it seemed entirely plausible when I was little.

[One_Life_To_Give]

104. Thought getting Pinched by a Cop was litteral

Didn't get just why he would do this. But thought the cop's pulled you over and "Pinched" your behind.

[Rising Phoenix]

105. I thought everybody was nice to each other

I got over that real quick, though it was a confusing blow.....

[yellowcanine]

106. I thought I would go to first grade the day I turned 6 yrs old (no kindergarden then)

[BuelahWitch]

108. That I was a princess and everybody loved me

That misconception ended the first day of school...

[yellowcanine]

109. I thought I could walk and piss at the same time and no one would notice as long as I didn't

look at someone while I was doing it. I did this at a family reunion and my older brothers corrected my ignorance on the way home in the car.

[yellowcanine]

110. I thought when a car "broke down" the wheels fell off.

[Sequoia]

117. I thought if you stood at the line of light and darkness on Earth

that the dark side would actually be night, not the dusk that it really is.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

122. Banks existed to help people. eom

[scheming daemons]

123. I thought I was older than my sister since I was born in March and she was born in May

..

[scheming daemons]

124. I thought a woman got pregnant from having a man "pee" into her "private spot"

...

[Wapsie B]

133. That's very similar to my misconception.

I had no idea as to the existence of semen, even as a teenager.

[suzy creemcheeze]

125. I remember my dad watching the Watergate hearings when I was about 8

and I wanted to watch "The Electric Company" and I thought Watergate was a gate that held back water!:rofl:

It didn't make sense to me that a gate could do such a thing...

[Auggie]

126. I thought Vietcong guerillas were actually gorillas

I couldn't understand how all these primates could be running around Vietnam with guns or breaking out of prison.

[Arugula Latte]

127. My mom once told me we were going to see a mime show and I thought it was a "mine" show

I pictured some sort of play with guys hacking away at rocks with pickaxes to mine the gems out.

(This was the early 70s before mimes were villified.)

[Nikia]

130. That my hometown was the birthplace of Presbyterianism and Lutherinism

I really believed that First Presbyterian Church must have been the first Presbyterian Church. I was shocked when I saw a church with the same name in another town at which point I asked my dad if he knew which one was the actual first one. I was even more suprised when neither one was.

[Jean Louise Finch]

131. I had a funny one about drunk driving

I guess I had seen a lot of ads that said "Don't drink and drive"!!

I remember being driven somewhere by my neighbor, and she had a cup of coffee that she was sipping out of. I was TERRIFIED and KNEW we were going to have an awful crash, as she was drinking and driving. I still don't know when I figured it out, but it wasn't on that trip. I think my brother and my neighbor's daughter were also in the car, and I still feel badly that I didn't say something when I thought we were in such peril!

Another funny thing was that there were some Turkish words that my dad used to use in regular conversation, and I never knew they were not English words, until I said one of them in class in middle school, and someone was like "Huh?" Goes to show that little kids pick up languages like crazy!

[fujiyama]

132. I remember a few

I thought Washington DC was in Washington State. I remember even arguing with my parents about it. I also thought driving into NY state meant you were somewhere near to NYC. I remember looking at MI maps and thinking Beverly Hills was the same as that in CA. I didn't think it was that far to drive to.

When I was younger I thought Big Bird was in the TV. I think my dad was behind the TV and I started asking him if I could see Sesame Street characters in there.

I also believed in Santa and didn't quite understand how he got into our apartment since we didn't have a chimney.

I believed drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana made you a really bad person.

I didn't think my parents could get hurt or sick.

I was told that if you made faces your face would stay that way. I tried. Didn't quite work.

[texanwitch]

134. I thought one of my Aunt's friend was a actor Patrica Neal, we had been to movies and saw Hud.

My aunt's friend looked just like her and sounded like her.

I was really sad to find out I was wrong.

[LibDemAlways]

135. When I was in second grade my mother told me she'd

arranged a car pool. I could not figure out how she was going to get a pool into the car, but it sounded like a lot of fun.

[Lucian]

136. I always believed as a kid that I could grow up to be anything I wanted to be.

What a bunch of shit.

[applegrove]

137. I thought the song mares-e-dotes and dos-e-dots was gibberish. Didn't

know it was "mares eat oats and Does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, kids eat ivy too wouldn't you".

I didn't know that "ring around the rosy, pocket full of posey, hussha hussha we all fall down" was about the plague.