Asklemmy

I thought that when the clerk at the checkout asked, "would you like cash back?" That you could say yes and they would just give you cash straight out of the register for nothing lol.

I figured that most people were very honest and didn't need the money, so they would just say no thanks and leave it in the register for somebody who really did need it.

So many things...

I didn't understand how lie detectors were supposed to work so I thought you could hook someone up and ask something like "does god exist" and you'd be able to get answers to all of life's big mysteries.

I thought there was a left and right sock

I thought wolverines were mythical creatures

I thought if I tried hard enough I could somehow become older than my older brother like it was just a title or something

Thanks to DARE any time I saw a skittle with the S missing I thought it was drugs even in a newly opened package

I could go on..

I thought CEOs worked super hard

I remember thinking that women gave birth to girls and men gave birth to boys, and being really worried because I (as a guy) didn't want to give birth.

My dad told me that walnuts were owl eggs.

He got in trouble when I stole all the walnuts in the house and wrapped them in nose tissues to keep them warm so they would hatch and I would have baby owls.

That adult humans knew what they were doing and had things in hand.

I believed until I was 8 or so that beans were a type of meat. When I learned the truth, I had an argument with my older brother with me saying something along the line, "You're gonna feel real dumb when Mom says I'm right."

The USA was the good guys.

I thought cats were female and dogs were male. Can you tell I didn't have pets growing up?

Being a hard worker gets you places.

NSFW warning. I thought sex had to be anal. Just by the looks, it was impossible that a penis could pass through a vulva, and poop made it evident that it could pass through the rectum.

OP, that thing you used to believe is disturbing as fuck.

That your tongue is divided into segments which each can only taste certain flavors

If you were cold then you would catch a cold.

You had to wait an hour after eating because if you swam after eating then you would sink.

Carrots will allow me to see in the dark if I eat enough of them.

If you did a bad thing then the universe would make a bad thing happen to you.

If you dropped food on the ground and picked it up quick enough it didn't have germs.

Because radio stations' DJs would say "and here's artist with song name", I firmly believed that one of two things must be true:

Radio stations had the bands always playing live for them

And/or

Radio stations would present a local DJ, but they would then tune in to the artist playing the track live for a larger station

What's even funnier about this is that my dad has at the time taught me how to use a tape deck to record radio and CDs to tape. So I clearly understood recording mediums. Just, the idea still lingered in my mind for a while.

That me parents didn't have parents growing up. It somehow never dawned on me until I was like 7 that my grandparents were their parents, despite knowing my grandparents all my life.

Adults act mature and rationally

That an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being created all of existence, knew everything that would ever happen and everything its creations would ever do, but still either doomed to damnation or lifted up to paradise each one of them as a result of them doing exactly what they'd been programmed to do

I thought peas were little unborn animals. Because they had a "cocoon". Refused to eat peas for years.

That God was real and had existed for all eternity.

I thought when my mom said she would drop things off at Goodwill, she meant a giant, hollow wooden wheel full of tumbling clothing called Good Wheel. I imagined it looked a lot like a water wheel at a mill.

There was a coca cola plant in my hometown. When we were kids, my dad used to tell us that the huge water tanks that were painted as coke and sprite cans actually contained soda and I always imagined diving in them. Obviously he was just fucking with us, but I actually believed it for a while.

That you could catch pneumonia from breathing in steam from the shower as I heard that a symptom is water in the lungs. A friend's dad died of pneumonia and I had to shower with my head stuck out of the curtain.

That other people would do what is right and protect me from abuse, as a child and as an adult.

That the legal system will protect innocent people, punish the guilty and ensure justice is done.

That other people are higher-thinking and moral.

Learned about cremation before I learned about death. Thought we all were burned alive at the end.

Homer Simpson wrote The Odyssey. I didn't know about any other Homer 🤷‍♂️

I thought vaginas were just hiding 20-30 tiny miniature penises inside, and that's why they couldn't use urinals because it would spray everywhere

I thought that when you peed, your pee would go to a place where it was manually boiled on a stove, making it 100% clean drinking water, and then when you turned on the tap, they would get a garden hose and pour water into the pipe that gave you water. Somehow I assumed this all would be done manually with normal sized stoves and kettles, and that each tap had it's very own pipe.

I also thought that black people were just tanned, because colder countries had white people and warmer ones had black or brown people. Then I asked myself: why are there black people in cold places? I came to the conclusion that all the black kids in my kindergarten would eventually lose their tan and become white.

Everyone in the whole world is the world champion of something. Could be something normal like running, or jumping, but it could also be something really niche like solving the Rubik’s cube with your tongue while being under water with your hands tied behind your back. You just need to find what you’re really good at and that might be your thing.

Believed this until I was like 16 and so did everyone else in our school.

A girl did anal and got pregnant and since it was anal that got her pregnant she was gonna poop out the baby. Funny thing is I was part of the group conversation that started this rumor and STILL we all believed it. 😭

That sun and moon switch places during day and night. Like in a cartoon.

When I learned balls have a significant role in child-making my first though was women got pregnant by surgically transfering a man's testicle to their belly. Then I realized balls come in two's and I do in fact have more than one sibling

Girls pee out of their butts.

I thought answering machines were something just made up by TV shows because we never had an answering machine.

If you stir chocolate milk counter-clockwise you can separate the milk and chocolate syrup.

In order to learn how to whistle you had to eat enough pickles first.

Found a rock that kind of looked like a coin and thought I could carve it into a passable counterfeit and repeat enough times to become rich.

I used to think "euthanasia" was a country.

When I was a kid and McDonald's started to became a thing here I was scared that Ronald McDonald would be at the restaurant. When I was invited to a birthday party and the parents wanted to take us to McDonald's I refused to go inside and the dad had to wait with me on the parking lot until my parents picked me up. I also figured that he could potentially be at Burger King, so I never went there either.

That women are attracted to nice guys.

It’s 97% untrue.

Not saying they are attracted to jerks either - in fact my overwhelming impression is that women despise those too (some exceptions exist of course).

Just saying that however equality has come, and should still come, attraction exists at a lower level. And at that level, someone who can hold their own, push their way through and be kind about it, will always attract more women than the “nice guy”.

Before you react - I’ve been together with my wife 17 years, we have four kids and I’m not some kind of player.

Just stating that I was brought up to believe women always prefer nice guys. And in retrospect I can see that I was brought up by a well meaning parents (mother, my dad was in the navy so away a lot) who tried their best to make me “not an asshole”. They succeeded. But I wish my dad at some point had sat me down to tell me a few home truths about how the biology of attraction works.

I thought the abbreviation for pounds (lbs) stood for "lullables."

I have no idea why.

That night was caused by really thick clouds. I think I saw light through dark black clouds during twilight and assumed night was caused by black clouds covering the sky. I went to test this theory by flying out of London at night but I fell asleep before we took off.