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I believed I was destined to become a bully. There were two older boys in the neighborhood who were jerks, and they were my “evidence”. I expected to turn out like them, because I thought being mean to little kids was just part of growing up.
Fortunately, I got really upset about it one day and talked to mom. I told her I didn’t want to grow up and be a teenager. I didn’t want to bully little kids. She reassured me that it didn’t work the way I thought it did.
When I was about four years old, a tornado passed through our town. I remember huddling in the hallway with my family and hearing, "This is a tornado warning" on the radio. I thought a tornado warning was a warning to the tornado not to come through town.
When I was 10 I thought Elton John was singing goodbye aubergine instead of goodbye Norma Jeane. To this very day I have great difficulty in understanding song lyrics :/
Oh, draw me closer Tony Danza.
When I was in my first year of elementary I believed, for whatever reason, the teachers lived at the school. I found out they didn't when we had to answer questions about our hobbies and my teacher mentioned her house in the conversation. In that moment it clicked and I will never forget that day.
I thought eggs were a dairy product because they were sold in the milk aisle and were also white.
Not an unreasonable belief, since eggs are often displayed under a huge sign that says "dairy".
When I was little I thought girls had penises (I am male). In High School, I was very confused about reproduction and how it could work. The great part of living in a red state that does not believe in sex education. I was in college before I learned that women do not have a penis.
As a kid, I thought women had a penis. As a teen, I thought none did.
As an adult, now I know some women have one.
i thought girls just peed out of their butts.. and i dont think ANY girls do that, haha
As a kid, I tried very hard to figure out which part of my clitorus the pee came out of. Took a good while to figure out that it didn't.
Look, male, female, or otherwise, we've all peed out our butts at one point or another. And it's never fun.
Not me, but this is something cute my mom told me that I've never forgotten--
When my mom was a little girl, she thought once you got into the car to go somewhere, the car itself didn't move, but the landscape (trees, etc) moved instead, lol.
At the end of the day, what is the difference really? Like, from a certain point of view she's correct.
I thought that when a plane broke the sound barrier it was a part that broke on the plane that they had to fix everytime they landed.
The sad part is that the phrase "broke the sound barrier", while common, is wrong. There is no sound barrier. There is an increase in drag around Mach 1. There is flutter, which can be destructive, but flutter can occur at any speed.
Unfortunately some early airplane designs failed near Mach 1, someone hypothesized a barrier, and the concept stuck around long after it was disproven.
There were a few (I was just a kid, after all)! And I'm embarrassed to admit this lasted until I was 11 or 12. I thought dying only happened painlessly in your sleep overnight, and only an unlucky few died in a hospital or accident or while suffering.
I thought everybody just went to whatever church was nearest to their house.
I thought only guys could fart.
When I was a small child, I thought I had bionic parts, because I overheard my mum telling someone that during my birth they used 'false hips'. It was years later I discovered what 'forceps' were.
I'm glad you didn't try to prove you were bionic.
I knew the earth rotated, and I knew clouds moved, so I thought clouds were static and only appeared to be moving because the earth was rotating. I remember telling my sister that and my grandmother told it's not true and I was soooo embarrassed
To my perfectly logical child brain, regular milk came from white cows with black spots, and chocolate milk came from white cows with brown spots!
Mine is like that too :)
The milkman brought kids' milk (whole fat) in black and white containers and grown-ups' milk (low fat) in red and white containers and that matched up with the black and white and red and white cows I'd seen. For a special treat we occasionally got chocolate milk, which of course came in a brown container. So when I finally saw a field of brown cows I supposed they were the rare and precious source of chocolate milk :)
My mother confirmed that this was indeed the case.
Then one day I was in the dairy store with my grandmother and there were containers of things like sour cream in pink and white and neon green and white containers and I KNEW cows didn't come in those colors....
When I was really young, I naively believed that nobody ever die and that if they go to the hospital, they'll come out all fine, just a bit older. It only took me to watch James Bond movie with my father to shatter that nativity when I realize that people can actually die.
I thought movies were real and they just literally followed people around with a camera for the events in movies. Of course, animated movies were a little difficult to resolve with this logic. So, I just figured there was an alternate universe where everything was animated and that's where they came from.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit must have been a tricky watch for you :)
Not going to lie. As I was writing my response, I was thinking Who Framed Roger Rabbit might have been involved in my forming of this belief.
I never moved house as a young child, so I believed that when you wanted to move, you had to go find someone else who wanted to trade houses with you. It seemed like a very difficult process to find a person whose house you wanted but they also wanted yours.
I thought circumsicion was a cut in the men's heads, which is why the Catholic clergy would wear zuchettis and Jewish people kippahs.
I believed that babies came from the kiss that people did when they got married. Mentioning that was when my parents had "the talk" with me.
I just thought they would lie down next to each other in bed, kiss, and then the woman became pregnant.
I thought the old days were actually black and white!
I believed that all cats were girls, and all dogs were boys. If they had babies, then any boys would end up as puppies, and any girls would be kittens.
I remember thinking that, when I first learned about tectonic plates (we had a mild earthquake where I lived when I was 5), that they were literally just giant dinner plates that were deep underground if you dug far enough.
i thought taking tags off clothes was illegal
I believed chinese/japanese ink was made from cuttlefish "ink".
My brother told me and I belived for years...
Cuttlefish ink used to be used as ink. Primarily in ancient times, but... that is real.
My brother told me that if you weren't careful cleaning out your belly button, that you could pop it out and they didn't have a way to stop the bleeding so you would bleed to death. Needless to say, that freaked the hell out of me, so for like 5 years I only cleaned my belly button by splashing soapy water into it.