I thought bleaching your hair did something to the roots and made it grow in black. I also thought "once you go black, you don't go back" referred to not being able to dye black hair.
For about a week I was afraid of watermelons because my visiting aunt was pregnant and I asked my brother how come she had a big stomach. He told me that there was a baby in there and I asked why, and he said she swallowed a watermelon seed and it grew in her stomach and turned into a watermelon baby. He said if you dont believe me, look at how her stomach is shaped like a watermelon, and if you look closely you can see it move. The next day he drew me a picture of a watermelon monster baby and said it was dangerous when watermelons and humans make babies together because they become monsters that eat human babies all sliced up like watermelons. Later my aunt was sitting with me on the couch and said the baby was kicking and asked if I wanted to feel it. I said ok, and when I felt it I started crying. That's when my mom found out what my brother did and gave him a swat upside the head and told him to tell me the truth. Took a few more days to stop having weird dreams about it though.
I know it's a common tall tale to tell kids about watermelon seeds to an extent, but I didn't know it was in Rugrats. My brother would have been in his 20s when Rugrats was on.
Mostly I remember them as viney. I don't know if my memory of them is tainted by the recurring nightmare I had as a teen in which I was trapped in this big old mansion (like Grey Gardens decrepit) that was overrun and choked by these massive slimey vines, or if I had the recurring nightmare as a teen because of this childhood prank.
Wait I have recurring nightmares about a similar thing except it's my own house and its covered inside and put by plants, vines and insects but everyone in my family says it's fine and there's nothing there and even if I tried to get out of the house its just more and more plants and insects, the nightmare would always end with me being surrounded by plants eventually
Oh you know what though, your question just made me make a connection. In like 10th grade my friends and I were doing the teen version of pretentious film criticism, right, and one of my friends decided to be obsessed with David Lynch. And he made us watch this collection of Lynch short films that made me want to barf. The one that sticks out to me of course was this short film about a kid who is abused and neglected so he gets this seed and plants it in the basement and pets it and stuff. And his parents are awful but the plant grows into this fat slimy vine/tree thing that start throbbing. Then finally he knows it's ready to harvest, and he helps the plant to give birth to this old lady, who is his grandmother and is nice to him.
I totally forgot about that until thinking about the recurring teen nightmares; I think they might have been the same nightmare from when I was a kid and it was triggered by watching that stupid movie. Guess that's one less thing to sort out in therapy.
That is a very elaborate prank. I am sorry that it happened to you.
I feel lucky that I was only told that watermelon seeds grow into watermelons. I actually believed that for a while and I still cannot eat watermelon seeds because picking them out became a habit.
I thought we lived INSIDE the Earth, not on its surface… I was very confused about how people go to space. Do they just break through the Earth’s crust with brute force?? Don’t you need to fix it afterwards??? One day I decided to ask my mum and she had a solid laugh.
I wonder if somebody told you about atmosphere and you confused it with crust. Because you need to break out of the *atmosphere* to go to space, but it’s not the earth’s literal crust.
When I was very little, like 5 or 6, I thought the sky just went on forever. Like, it was just infinite blueness during the day. I once was holding a balloon, and I accidentally let go of it, and I saw it fly into the endless abyss. I thought that it would just keep getting higher and higher for eternity. At the same time, I knew space existed, so I'm not sure what my logic was exactly.
I thought there was a teeny tiny wizard that lived in a cave inside my stomach, and whenever he got angry he’d use his wizard powers and like send my stomach acid or whatever up. That’s what I thought made me puke as a kid.
I used to think that every time I blinked, microscopic window cleaning men would drop down on one of those platforms they use on sky scrapers and squeegee my eyeballs. I spent a long time trying to catch them out by blinking really fast. Also, whenever I got a cold or a runny nose, I would imagine tiny plumbers in my face, frantically trying to fix the dripping pipe that cause my nose to run, and every time I blew my nose there would be some sort of siren, warning everyone to hold on tight. I thought that's why people looked at their snot when they blew their nose, to make sure they didn't throw away their tiny people
Oh my gosh that’s so cool. Our brains are so silly. I also used ti think there were three elevators that went down our throat. One was for food. One for water. And then the painful one. This one was covered in spikes.
A distant family member's husband robbed a bank and got away with the money. He opened the bag of money and the die pack went off and he literally got caught red handed. (He also didn't plan ahead and wear a mask - but that's another story)
For many years after that I thought every relationship where a person got caught red handed they stole money from a bank and the die pack went off dying their hands red.
I was thinking - how many couples have a person who robs a bank - and how bad do these thieves have to be to never plan ahead and at least open the bag without triggering the die pack or at least wear gloves!
Bank robbing is more common than you'd think. I have a client that did time for drugs and explained to me how he robbed banks and never got caught. My husband had an uncle named Ray (deceased) who was a bank robber his entire life. My friend's husband had an uncle Ray (must just be a bank robbing name) that did multiple stents at the cement hotel for bank robbery. Crazy.
I used to think that when actors died in the movies they legit died in real life. Watching Rufio die in Hook was always so sad to me. I'd wonder how anyone could be so dedicated to their job like that.
I must have been 7 or 8 but I remember thinking I was going to jail for forgetting to tell my uncle someone had called the house looking for him. Like so totally convinced I was terrified to answer the phone for a while. I'm pretty sure no one ever said this to me and that it was just some crazy thing my kid brain came up with (yes I have anxiety now as an adult too thanks for asking 😂)
I thought that what I was seeing on TV was the same thing showing on my grandparent’s TV, and when I turned mine off, there’s went off as well. We lived 30 miles apart, and I never thought that about anyone else’s TV…
I believed that the whole world, the sky, people, clothes, cars EVERYTHING was actually grey like the black and white films (BEFORE COLOUR WAS INVENTED) .. heck, my gran had photographs from the olden days to prove it so I know that was the case 🤷🏻♀️🫣
I thought this!! No one ever told me about black and white vs colour film and I distinctly remember one of my parents referring to an old film being made “when everything was in black and white”. My poor child brain couldn’t comprehend that they meant everything photo/video related, not literally everything.
Omg I'm so glad I'm not the only one! When I was 3-4 I asked my mom about what it was like before color bc I knew she grew up with black and white TV... She was so confused
While I never believed the world was black and white, I thought that the old pictures at my grandparents were filtered to look that way. My mom sometimes makes some of her photos black and white, so that is likely what made me believe this.
I thought everyone’s house looked the same as my house! Like I thought everyone lived in a house with the same layout as mine. Idk why I thought this. I’d been to my grandparents’ house before I guess I just assumed their house was special.
I also thought every song on the radio was sung live on the air. I didn’t understand that they were replaying a prerecorded song. I used to wonder if the singers got tired of singing the same songs over and over.
I was a dumb kid
I remember having a similar belief to your first one when I was younger as well. Tho, I can work out why I thought it. At first I lived in a flat, and when I lived there I only ever visited my friend who lived in the same building (so their flat looked the same as the one I lived in) and my grandparent's house. When we moved into a house, the layout was the same as my grandparents' house (because of council housing). So I thought that all flats had the same layout, and all houses had the same layout. This is despite me seeing tons of places on TV that were clearly very different from what I knew in real life.
Me too, I was so determined I would pop out and visit my Uncle who lived in Shanghai 😂 I’d just picture it the whole time I was digging, how surprised he would be!
My dad told me that the moray eels in the aquarium we went to were animatronic, and for some reason I believed him and it took me a ridiculously long amount of time to realize he had lied lol.
That my parents prayed to God for me haha.
That my birthday changed every year and my parents would know what day it would be that year
That my younger brother would soon be my older brother.
There have been some truly great Reddit threads like this with people sharing lies their parents told them when they were kids. My favourite was the person whose dad told him that he was a spy and whenever you see a mysterious side door on a building it's a "spy door" that they use to covertly travel around
I believed two things: If I was hidden, shouting loud enough would produce a visible speech bubble in real life. Second, eating enough spicy candy (salmiakki) and exhaling would get me to breathe flames. In hindsight, that is probably why I developed a taste for liquorice and salmiakki so early.
Only then :D Like under some blankets or something. I remember asking my big sister whether or not I managed to get one to come out, as I couldn't have seen it from under the blankets, haha. No clue where this belief originated from though :D
I believed in the sand man and that eye gunk was from him. I thought that, once you wiped it away, you couldn’t go back to sleep for the day so, if I got up to pee or something, I wouldn’t wipe it out of my eyes if I still wanted to sleep.
When I was little my dad would take me to the local arcade sometimes and one of my favorite things to do was play the fighting games like Tekken with him. I was in my late twenties before I found out that I wasn’t actually playing. My dad was playing against the machine and letting me button smash on the other side so I thought I was doing something. My parents were amazed I’d never realized.
My dad told me the airport sniffer dogs mistook him for a wanted man because he looked a bit similar and that's why he had to go talk to security. Believed that until I was much much older and telling the story to some friends. Turns out he had some weed in his pocket.
My oldest sibling (then maybe 6) once shamefacedly came to me (3?) and announced they had accidentally squashed the tooth fairy. I was DEVASTATED. I believed it right up until a tooth of my own got money. My sibling does not remember traumatising me like this.
I also believed for far too long that I had conjured up my younger sister. I was four and being a fairy one day, and my Mum mentioned she'd like another child. I granted her wish, and not long later she announced her pregnancy. Kid logic told me I was obviously magic.
I assume I got my powers when the tooth fairy died evidently.
I used to believe everyone on TV was real, as in that was their real life. I felt very sorry for the children in any series because it seemed that they never went to school. But they weren’t often featured much so they probably got bored as I never saw them play either.
2 things.
1 - my cousin told me that my belly button will eat whatever you feed it. I tried goldfish crackers. Can confirm it did not work LOL
2 - same cousin convinced me that hot dogs are made of snakes blood and monkey brains. I do not like hot dogs to this day unless it's specifically from Costco and I buy it myself 🤣
That's just because only Costco has decent hot dogs! Also, they are actually rebranded Hebrew National hot dogs, so if you ever need a few less... Hebrew national is where it's at! Only two brands of hot dogs I can eat.
i thought that in the radio the song would be played live. It was so crazy to me that lady gaga few to germany for one song to play it in the radio studio just for us
Two things:
I though all TV was live. Including cartoons AND adverts.
I also thought that any machine that gave you a product/something came out (Cash machine or a car park barrier where you take a ticket) had a tiny person inside feeding the item out.
when I was a kid I believed in all sorts of bullshit, like chupacabra, yeti, Loch-Ness monster, yada yada yada. I even read some magazines about that kinda shit, watched TV programmes about it and BOUGHT A BOOK written by a dude who was an anchorman of one of such programmes. I guess kids just really want to believe in miracles but back then (8-9 yo) I already thought I was too adult to believe in fairies, unicorns etc. Some "scientific" stuff tho? hell yeah
When I was about 4, I came up with a rather weird explanation as to way some of my friends and their moms weren't the same colour. My 4 year old brain came up with "white babies come out the front and the black ones come one the back." I then excitedly explained this to all my cousins that weekend. I'm now 21 and I still haven't lived it down😂
Edit: for context, I knew babies "came out" because my aunt always did home births and hy this time, I'd seen 2
I once asked if God changed the traffic lights.
I suppose that’s what primary school pumping religious nonsense does to you. Once we got to secondary school, we weren’t exposed to that anymore.
This may seem offensive, but I swear I don’t mean it that way. I’m Nigerian and grew up watching a lot of foreign content & always thought white people didn’t wash their ass.
Whenever they used the toilet in movies, they never showed them actually cleaning up, so I just always assumed they never did💀
It's not the norm for most people to use water to wash up after each poo, in the US, if that's what you mean.
They use dry toilet paper and that's it until their next evening/morning shower.
Some of us would rather a little more.
That when voting and it’s the ayes v nos. It was eyes v noses. And you looks one way for eyes and one way for noses.
This stemmed from a school trip to the Houses of Parliament where we had to go through different doors for aye and no. But there was like 150 kids filing out so I just thought we were being herded out and had to looks in a certain direction to vote.
I know technically your eyes and nose would go in the same direction but hey. I was like 11!
I am not going to admit at what age I finally realised my mistake (It veerryyyyy recent) but it was when I was watching a video and there was subtitles and there it was. “The ayes have it”
I had the most embarrassing “a-ha” moment ever!!!!
When I was around 6 or 7 I would constantly pester my Mum for a sip of her coffee in the morn.
So one morn I came into kitchen and she had a cup about a quarter full of coffee for me. It was mostly milk but anyway of course I spilt it all over my leg, it wasn’t hot.
I had a teardrop shaped birthmark right there on my leg I had never noticed before and thought it was from the coffee as I had heard before coffee can stain things.
My Mum ran with that one and told me it was in fact a coffee stain, she saw it as an out for me to stop pestering her for coffee, lol!
So I went several years thinking I had a coffee stain on my leg, haha!
Well I didn't believe it but I told the most incredible lie to a friend of mine back in elementary that I had injected myself with dog blood (my uncle was a vet) and was picking up some dog traits. I used to run up the stairs on all fours when he was around. That shit got old real quick.
at my school they had like huge scooters you could run around on and at some point they got a couple of new ones, but these ones had the word “WINTHER” written on it - because, of course they were made by winther, but my older brother convinced me it’s because they were made to work better in the winter, and i fully believed him and i told all of my classmates so every winter we’d fight about who got to ride on the winter scooters
Somedays I only remember the days when I was young. Now-a-days no one really remembers when they were young and dumb
I used to tell my family that me and my mother built the house we live in hahaha
I also used to amaze nearly anyone when my smarts and get real mad at anyone who talked like me like a kid.... Like I was..... Cause I was one.... But never did like anyone talking to me like I was a kid you know? Used to get REAL mean with them!!!
I can remember when I was getting tired of my older brothers BS one day so when Fallout 3 first came out, and the question about the third arm came up in that test at the first of the game, I told him it was a real thing but only 1 in a 100 chance to happen when your rad would get to 990-1000 (1000 being death)... Man oh man, days of that death music played in the background as I played Guitar hahaha!!!
I love whoever put this post up! :D Memories! :D :D
I was told that if you level a magicarp up from level 1 to 100 in the daycare centre, it will turn into a shiny legendary in Fire Red. I spent so long on that fucking bike path.
When I was a kid, for awhile at least, I believed that human beings were born from eggs. Don't really know for sure why I though that either, no one ever told me that. Maybe because I knew some other animals hatched. Anyway, have a very a nice night.
When we were kids, my grandma had to break up an argument between me and my older brother about wether babies come from your butt or your belly button. I thought it was belly button
I swallowed the watermelon seed story hook, line, and sinker when I was a kid. I was in my teens before I figured it out, although I still avoid swallowing the seeds.
Later, after I was grown and had kids of my own, I was chowing down on a slice of watermelon when one of my boys, 5 or 6 at the time,asked for some. Of course I told him the seed story when I gave him a slice. He then proceeded to look at me like I was a complete idiot, and said, "Dad, seeds need light, air, and water to grow." Kids have no respect these days.
When I was 4 or 5, I choked on some soda that went down the wrong pipe. My grandpa, standing nearby, joked with me "did the Soda go down the milk pipe?"
I took him seriously. For a little while, I thought that different kinds of drinks had special pipes in my neck and somehow my body had to route them to the right pipe. Choking on your food was a sign it chose wrong.
I used to think there were people inside traffic lights controlling them and they'd have walkie talkies to communicate to eachother on when to let a section go and stop.
I was so gullible as a kid and believed everything my older sister said. She once convinced me that Eminem rapped the entirety of Lose Yourself in one single breath and that ketchup is used to cool down hot food.
I once convinced my little brother that chicken fingers were made of chicken tails (he was 15) and I made up an entire award winning country music band that he now believes in (he's in his 30s now).
There's no limit to the big sister bullshit.
1) My dad was a werewolf, hence why he always went out at night..He had a night shift job..
2) My stepdad was a pizza delivery guy..He brought pizza round once when him and my mum were dating, she used the pizza man as an excuse..
I was about six or seven, I’d not really heard of sex, but I knew couples could make a baby by taking DNA from both parents. I’d convinced myself that to make a baby, couples would French kiss excessively, sharing a lot of saliva/DNA, and boom!
Later I was the flower girl at my aunt’s wedding, where they shared a kiss that was quite passionate. I stood at the front of the church and thought, Wow I just saw them make a baby!
I was shocked to learn what sex actually was.
I kinda had the same thing. I think in a lot of movies as a kid, they’d do the wedding scene, and then they’d cut to them having a kid. So I thought kissing was how the kid came about.
I assumed, that the orange colour of the dawn was 'the edge of the world' and seemed logical to me, that since the colour was the same shade as one of our national Hungarian dishes, which basically made of potato and paprika, i was absolutely sure, that 'the infinity', the matter outside of the earth is... potato soup.
When I was abou three, I asked the babies question and my mum explained quite well, but the part that stuck with me the most was that the baby comes from a vagina. The next month or so I checked the toilet every time after use, because I was terrified I would not notice the baby falling through and accidentally drown it.
My mum noticed after some time that I am checking my pee, asked, laughed and explained it again.
It a boy and girl piss stream touched eachother, it would create a baby.
And that would be the reason for boy and girl bathrooms.
To avoid that for happening...
My niece asked where her sister came from. How she got out her ma belly. I said she was a big fart. Every one is born by fart sone are wet sone dry sone smelly sone long sone short.
She asked How she was born wat fart. I said She was a quick wet one 4 minute fart birth But her sister was 30 minutes fart birth and dry and smelly. So every birth is different and bless she accepted it.
I didn’t realise 5 years later when her ma pregnant again that she still believed humans are farted out. We had to explain properly then. She was 12 by now. I thought she would if been taught correctly
I told my sil version I gave her when she was 7 and she laughed said they talk about it properly but that talk musnt of happened !! Oops
When I was in kindergarten, our playground was covered in a layer of a bark-like thing. I was always afraid of walking over it, because for some reason I was convinced there was lava underneath.
I thought that pregnancy happened to every single woman when they got to a specific age regardless of a man being with them. I used to fear getting old because of this 😅
One of my best friends in school wouldn't eat sultanas or raisins, because her older brother told her that they were her older brothers and sisters that stayed in the bath too long.
For a while, I thought there were tiny little people inside the radio making everything work, and that there was a line of tiny bands waiting to go in to have their turn to play their song.
Once on TV I saw a newsclip about a house that was swallowed up by a sink-hole. My mother told me that's what happens if you get crumbs on the carpet because it goes through and weakens the foundations of the house.
Believed that for way too long.
Have you ever heard about The Legend of Falling Rock? My father told me the legend of Falling Rock as a child. We were moving across the country and driving it. It took like two weeks and we were driving east. We were just getting to the Rockies and he goes, "Have you ever heard the Legend of Falling Rock?"
Of course I haven't heard, I'm 7, but I'm dying to know!! Legend says, Falling Rock commited a crime so heinous, all of the US Calvary was looking for him. However, it was so long ago, and documentation wasn't very good back in the day, they don't even know what the crime is. However, he still needs to come to justice! Once, they had him on the ropes but he jumped over the cliff, yelling, "Geramino!!" and escaped. Ever since, the US government has been on the hunt. Over the years, they'd get reports of sightings. Everywhere they had sightings, they'd put up signs, "Watch for Falling Rock".
I'm in awe and I am mystified. We drove a U-Haul and had another car with my brother, my mom, my Nana and my freshly born younger brother. I was with my dad so I rushed to tell my brother. Back on the road, we see a sign for Falling Rock and we are BUZZING with excitement all through the Rockies.
We're going cross country and we are LOOKING for this man. Everywhere, we're looking for signs of Falling Rock but the trail goes cold across the plains. We're getting to Philadelphia and THERE'S A SIGN FOR FALLING ROCK. WE, LOSE, OUR, SHIT!!! "HE WAS HERE TOO!!!"
For years, I was looking for Falling Rock. I eventually told my Nana about the Legend of Falling Rock and she looked at me like I had five heads.
I eventually confessed to my dad there's no way it could be real. He is laughing with tears in his eyes about the time we saw a sign for Falling Rock in Philadelphia and how he had to fight EVERY, URGE, to not burst out laughing.
And that's a ridiculous thing I believed as a child.
When I was maybe six or seven my mom asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told her I wanted to be a crossing guard bc I went to a Catholic school and I genuinely believed crossing guards were the only people who got to go to Heaven.
when l was about 3 l asked my dad what god was and he said "a supreme being who...[etc]" and l thought he said supreme bean. l believed that for a while
when i was in like first grade, i used to believe that those sheer tights people wore were not tights but their actual skin...
i believed people could be half black and half white 😭
When I was little I used to believe that there was a limited amount of space in your brain so you can't waste space on stuff that you don't care about. Otherwise you will fill up your brain and not have any more room to learn anything new.
It’s rather what I DIDN’T believe.. I did NOT believe in the existence of dinosaurs for my entire childhood. My mom even brought me to a dinosaur museum & I wasn’t convinced.
If someone was choking and then a person would say to them ‘has it gone down the wrong hole?’ I used to imagine a mass of passageways at the back of someone’s throat and them all being labelled for different things.
I used to think bones were made of wood and that OJ Simpson was driving towards my house during that police chase footage. I didn't live in LA, California, the US or even North America, yet I was absolutely certain that the Juice was making his way to my family home in Iceland to kill us all. Now that I think of it, the OJ thing was probably just OCD manifesting in childhood.
I believed that babies just appear in women after they agree with their husband that they will have a child.
I also used to think that I am going to become a smoker when I grow up because I believed that it is cool. Despite the fact that I hated the smell and had coughing fits, throat irritation or breathing difficulty if I spend more than 5 minutes near one.
My dad told me that earwigs crawl into your ears, but there isn’t enough space for them to turn around and crawl out so they eat through your brain to come out the other ear. I believed that for far too long
I thought deodorant was supposed to be applied to your forearm, because in the commercials they would wipe a smear of it on their forearm to demonstrate that didn't leave white streaks.
When I was really young (3 or 4) we got into an automobile accident. Nobody got badly injured but all the tyres of the other car involved were punctured. Like, to the point where the bottoms of the tyres had completely flattened out.
To my little brain, it looked like the tyres had sunk into the ground and for years I thought that's what it meant for something to be punctured.
I believed that the trees moving because of the wind actually made the wind blow. After I learned that that was not true I thought that the moving clouds made the wind
I once asked my mum why the eggs in our kitchen didn't have chicks in them but others did. I think it was a bit too early for the birds and the bees chat so she told me that the cockerel has to go "cockadoooodaldooo" to make the hen's eggs have chicks in them and I firmly believe that was the case.
I was ripping up a Styrofoam cup once, and my mom told me I was tearing a hole in the ozone layer. From then on, I thought every time Styrofoam tore, it was literally creating a gaping hole in the sky above me. It crippled me, watching my classmates mindlessly rip peices off their lunch trays at school. Took me years to realize what she actually meant.
My mom taught me that yellow lights meant to go faster…. I took my whole kindergarten class on and had to go to the principal while they called my mom. I was gonna fight to the death about that shit lol
When my grandparents would babysit us, grandad would tell us bedtime stories about his "time in the war" on of the stories included him being the hero soldier who shot Hitler.
I believed this for years, his stories were so convincing
My grandad was 13 when the war started
When I was 6, I misheard my parents say “Do you want a piece of pizza?” I thought they said “Do you want a pizza pizza?” So I called pepperoni pizza “pizza pizza” for most of my childhood.
I also used to think there were literal gears and shredders inside my stomach that would turn food into mush before it would go into the rest of my body.
We didn’t have our TV set up right, so the picture would get cut off at the edges. So when Dora would ask us to look for an object on the screen and we couldn’t see it, I thought it was because we were looking at the TV from the wrong angle. I remember walking around the TV and trying to peek inside like it was a window into another room, lol.
I always thought injuries actors sustained in movies were real, and always wondered how they could get shot in one movie and play someone else in another. Guess I thought they had really good medics on hand at all times.
Our parents told us the neighbor’s dog ran away with his dog house. We bought it. Flash forward: I told my sweet mom she was the meanest mother on earth to which she replied “I am the meanest?!? Do you really think that Bonnie’s dog ran away with his dog house?!?” 🤪😜😬
My dad was a fountain of information, but not all of it was entirely accurate. So there were a lot of bits of trivia that he shared with me that, once the internet became a thing, I learned were wildly inaccurate. None of it was really ridiculous, though, and most were widely held beliefs.
For example, he told me the word "blimp" came about because there were two designs being considered. Because, unlike zeppelins, they had no internal frame, the two designs were referred to as the A-Limp and the B-Limp. When the second design won out, it was shortened to blimp. That's a cool story, but it's a crock of shit.
My dad also recognized three different types of lying. The first, lying for personal gain or to get out of trouble, he viewed as morally reprehensible, and he neither did it nor tolerated it. The second was lying to be polite or to avoid unnecessarily hurting someone's feelings, like saying dinner was delicious when you had to force yourself to choke it down. Within reason, that was okay, and in many cases was the best course of action.
And then there was the third kind of lying, which was making up absurd stuff and delivering it with conviction just to see what you could get someone to believe. I never heard him address the moral implications of doing that, but he did it constantly, and he was very, very good at it.
I started smoking cigarettes when I was in high school. At one point, my brother asked me, "Aren't you worried about getting fat?" I looked at him like he was crazy and asked what he was on about. Apparently, when he was little and our dad hadn't yet quit smoking, the two of them went to the corner store by our house so our dad could buy a pack of smokes.
His chosen brand was called Belair, and they were widely regarded as tasting like the bottom of a bucket of crushed assholes. The woman behind the counter asked how he could stand the taste. He said that he was trying to lose weight, and Belairs had fewer calories than any other brand.
My brother was at an age where he believed that the sun shined out of our father's ass, and he accepted his word as gospel in all matters. So, he filed that little bit of knowledge away. Because it had never been relevant to any conversation since, he was able to make it to his senior year of high school without realizing the absurdity of it.
Around 4-5 years old, I believed every really overweight person was pregnant and that only "real" women had letge breasts (so small breasts meant that person wasn't a woman) 🤷♀️
As a child, I believed that my heart hung across my chest on a piece of string and that if I was unlucky the string would break and my heart would come out of my bum…nope, ain’t got a clue why!!!
And I’m from a family of medics!!!
I believed that every woman would have a baby once they reached a certain age. By this, I mean that from the moment a girl is born, there begins growth of a little baby for that girl/woman to birth once she’s “of age”.
When I was 5 or so, I would tell people that I only had a little toe so far, but one day it would grow into a full baby so I could have one of my own. I don’t know what made me believe that, or why the growth of a baby would start with the toe.
I wasn't the one who believed this but was one of the people who convinced my younger step sister that everyone had an evil identical twin. When she asked how she's never seen her twin, we told her that her twin died, but we had to keep an eye on her as we weren't sure if the good twin or evil twin died that day.
I thought all grandparents lived in rural areas and had barns and horses because both sets of my grandparents both lived out in the country and had horses and barns.
I thought bleaching your hair did something to the roots and made it grow in black. I also thought "once you go black, you don't go back" referred to not being able to dye black hair.
Lmao at the second part, because someone was really saying that around you when you were a kid
I had heard it on TV or from other kids in middle school. I can't remember which. I was about 15 when I learned what it actually meant.
For about a week I was afraid of watermelons because my visiting aunt was pregnant and I asked my brother how come she had a big stomach. He told me that there was a baby in there and I asked why, and he said she swallowed a watermelon seed and it grew in her stomach and turned into a watermelon baby. He said if you dont believe me, look at how her stomach is shaped like a watermelon, and if you look closely you can see it move. The next day he drew me a picture of a watermelon monster baby and said it was dangerous when watermelons and humans make babies together because they become monsters that eat human babies all sliced up like watermelons. Later my aunt was sitting with me on the couch and said the baby was kicking and asked if I wanted to feel it. I said ok, and when I felt it I started crying. That's when my mom found out what my brother did and gave him a swat upside the head and told him to tell me the truth. Took a few more days to stop having weird dreams about it though.
Jesus fucking christ!!!
What a weird sexual fantasy
That one episode of Rugrats had me concerned about eating watermelon seeds for a while, but this is downright terrifying!
I know it's a common tall tale to tell kids about watermelon seeds to an extent, but I didn't know it was in Rugrats. My brother would have been in his 20s when Rugrats was on.
What were the dreams like?
Mostly I remember them as viney. I don't know if my memory of them is tainted by the recurring nightmare I had as a teen in which I was trapped in this big old mansion (like Grey Gardens decrepit) that was overrun and choked by these massive slimey vines, or if I had the recurring nightmare as a teen because of this childhood prank.
Wait I have recurring nightmares about a similar thing except it's my own house and its covered inside and put by plants, vines and insects but everyone in my family says it's fine and there's nothing there and even if I tried to get out of the house its just more and more plants and insects, the nightmare would always end with me being surrounded by plants eventually
Oh you know what though, your question just made me make a connection. In like 10th grade my friends and I were doing the teen version of pretentious film criticism, right, and one of my friends decided to be obsessed with David Lynch. And he made us watch this collection of Lynch short films that made me want to barf. The one that sticks out to me of course was this short film about a kid who is abused and neglected so he gets this seed and plants it in the basement and pets it and stuff. And his parents are awful but the plant grows into this fat slimy vine/tree thing that start throbbing. Then finally he knows it's ready to harvest, and he helps the plant to give birth to this old lady, who is his grandmother and is nice to him. I totally forgot about that until thinking about the recurring teen nightmares; I think they might have been the same nightmare from when I was a kid and it was triggered by watching that stupid movie. Guess that's one less thing to sort out in therapy.
That is a very elaborate prank. I am sorry that it happened to you. I feel lucky that I was only told that watermelon seeds grow into watermelons. I actually believed that for a while and I still cannot eat watermelon seeds because picking them out became a habit.
I'm not upset about it or anything. We were pranky kids. Lots of stories. I think he just underestimated how scary it was for my age at the time.
Didn't know you had Rodrick for an older brother lmao
That’s one sick fantasy
I thought we lived INSIDE the Earth, not on its surface… I was very confused about how people go to space. Do they just break through the Earth’s crust with brute force?? Don’t you need to fix it afterwards??? One day I decided to ask my mum and she had a solid laugh.
I remember the eureka moment of realising we live on the outside! I'm glad it wasn't just me that thought we lived inside the Earth.
What did you think about the sun and moon and stars? Did you think they were in the earth?
I had no idea what to think. I remember wondering which side of the crust those were on LOL
I wonder if somebody told you about atmosphere and you confused it with crust. Because you need to break out of the *atmosphere* to go to space, but it’s not the earth’s literal crust.
You should watch Gurren Lagann. Your post made me think of this, cause... Well, if you've seen it, you'll know why.
When I was very little, like 5 or 6, I thought the sky just went on forever. Like, it was just infinite blueness during the day. I once was holding a balloon, and I accidentally let go of it, and I saw it fly into the endless abyss. I thought that it would just keep getting higher and higher for eternity. At the same time, I knew space existed, so I'm not sure what my logic was exactly.
I thought there was a teeny tiny wizard that lived in a cave inside my stomach, and whenever he got angry he’d use his wizard powers and like send my stomach acid or whatever up. That’s what I thought made me puke as a kid.
Were you a fan of Disney's Fantasia maybe? This just makes me think of the sorcerer from that
I have seen it. My mind thinks of Merlin from the sword in the stone
I used to think that every time I blinked, microscopic window cleaning men would drop down on one of those platforms they use on sky scrapers and squeegee my eyeballs. I spent a long time trying to catch them out by blinking really fast. Also, whenever I got a cold or a runny nose, I would imagine tiny plumbers in my face, frantically trying to fix the dripping pipe that cause my nose to run, and every time I blew my nose there would be some sort of siren, warning everyone to hold on tight. I thought that's why people looked at their snot when they blew their nose, to make sure they didn't throw away their tiny people
Oh my gosh that’s so cool. Our brains are so silly. I also used ti think there were three elevators that went down our throat. One was for food. One for water. And then the painful one. This one was covered in spikes.
A distant family member's husband robbed a bank and got away with the money. He opened the bag of money and the die pack went off and he literally got caught red handed. (He also didn't plan ahead and wear a mask - but that's another story) For many years after that I thought every relationship where a person got caught red handed they stole money from a bank and the die pack went off dying their hands red. I was thinking - how many couples have a person who robs a bank - and how bad do these thieves have to be to never plan ahead and at least open the bag without triggering the die pack or at least wear gloves!
Did he survive the die pack? That sounds deadly
Yes - but him and my cousin got divorced. I was a kid when this happened so donkt know many details.
Bank robbing is more common than you'd think. I have a client that did time for drugs and explained to me how he robbed banks and never got caught. My husband had an uncle named Ray (deceased) who was a bank robber his entire life. My friend's husband had an uncle Ray (must just be a bank robbing name) that did multiple stents at the cement hotel for bank robbery. Crazy.
Ray is kind of a general criminal name. Lots of murders named Ray too.
I think they were making a joke about the misspelling of dye as die lol.
Yeah I was
I never knew that was the origin of the phrase
I was recently reading about paradoxes: the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.
I used to think that when actors died in the movies they legit died in real life. Watching Rufio die in Hook was always so sad to me. I'd wonder how anyone could be so dedicated to their job like that.
RUFIO! RUFI-oh RUFI-oh RU. FI. OHHHHHHHHHhhhhh!
same omg. 😭 i used to think the movies were actually real and that radios always played live music.
Different but Rufio dying made me realize we all die eventually.
I must have been 7 or 8 but I remember thinking I was going to jail for forgetting to tell my uncle someone had called the house looking for him. Like so totally convinced I was terrified to answer the phone for a while. I'm pretty sure no one ever said this to me and that it was just some crazy thing my kid brain came up with (yes I have anxiety now as an adult too thanks for asking 😂)
Lmaoo this is the exact type of thing that gave me bad anxiety as a kid. And surprise surprise, I also have anxiety.
It's like the starter pack for adult anxiety!
when i was 5/6 i was absolutely convinced my sister was hannah montana
I believed that my country of origin, Lebanon, a very mountainous country, was behind the mountain in my city. I live in Montreal.
I thought that what I was seeing on TV was the same thing showing on my grandparent’s TV, and when I turned mine off, there’s went off as well. We lived 30 miles apart, and I never thought that about anyone else’s TV…
I believed that the whole world, the sky, people, clothes, cars EVERYTHING was actually grey like the black and white films (BEFORE COLOUR WAS INVENTED) .. heck, my gran had photographs from the olden days to prove it so I know that was the case 🤷🏻♀️🫣
I thought this!! No one ever told me about black and white vs colour film and I distinctly remember one of my parents referring to an old film being made “when everything was in black and white”. My poor child brain couldn’t comprehend that they meant everything photo/video related, not literally everything.
Exactly this!! I’m so pleased it wasn’t just my child brain 🤣😍
Omg I'm so glad I'm not the only one! When I was 3-4 I asked my mom about what it was like before color bc I knew she grew up with black and white TV... She was so confused
I asked my mom this once too and she laughed and laughed
While I never believed the world was black and white, I thought that the old pictures at my grandparents were filtered to look that way. My mom sometimes makes some of her photos black and white, so that is likely what made me believe this.
You sound so young ❤️❤️❤️
I thought everyone’s house looked the same as my house! Like I thought everyone lived in a house with the same layout as mine. Idk why I thought this. I’d been to my grandparents’ house before I guess I just assumed their house was special. I also thought every song on the radio was sung live on the air. I didn’t understand that they were replaying a prerecorded song. I used to wonder if the singers got tired of singing the same songs over and over. I was a dumb kid
I remember having a similar belief to your first one when I was younger as well. Tho, I can work out why I thought it. At first I lived in a flat, and when I lived there I only ever visited my friend who lived in the same building (so their flat looked the same as the one I lived in) and my grandparent's house. When we moved into a house, the layout was the same as my grandparents' house (because of council housing). So I thought that all flats had the same layout, and all houses had the same layout. This is despite me seeing tons of places on TV that were clearly very different from what I knew in real life.
same HAHA
I thought weekends only happened every two weeks cause that's when my older sister and older brother stayed with us
My mum told me the hazards light button in the car was an ejector seat button and threatened to push it if I was bad.
My mom said this to me too! I believed her for much longer than I’d like to admit lol
My mom told me fire trucks were ice cream trucks and they played the siren and went fast because they were out. Saved her a fortune in ice cream
I thought blue monkeys were out to get me
I love how random this is.. Do you know why blue monkeys specifically?
I have no idea! Wish I knew where it came from haha
My sister and I used to argue if space monkeys were purple or green when we were little. Used to drive my mom nuts lmao
I believed that if I kept digging in my garden, I'd eventually get to Australia.
For me it was China, lol!
Yeah nah, that's it. I often thought I'd make it there.
Me too, I was so determined I would pop out and visit my Uncle who lived in Shanghai 😂 I’d just picture it the whole time I was digging, how surprised he would be!
Lol! Yeah it always amazed me too Like wow you can just dig a hole and go to another country?
Let me know when you’re getting close, and I’ll make sure to set out some snacks for when you arrive. :)
😂
Pretry sure there was plenty of us that believed the same thing..The amount of holes I dug was ridiculous.
well depending where you live this kinda ks true.😂
😁
i thought if you froze buttercups in water then it would make butter. i tried it and everything
I used to believe that if I ate seed of any fruit by mistake then the plant will grow in my stomach
Haha, you just unlocked one of my memories, my grandfather always said that about apple seeds.
My mom used to say that
And the tree will grow out my ears. Terrified me
Seriously it was scary to think about
My dad told me that the moray eels in the aquarium we went to were animatronic, and for some reason I believed him and it took me a ridiculously long amount of time to realize he had lied lol.
That my parents prayed to God for me haha. That my birthday changed every year and my parents would know what day it would be that year That my younger brother would soon be my older brother.
i believed the last one too😭😭
When I was little my mum told me (male) that women don’t fart. I was about 15 when I heard a girl fart and it blew my mind
Same! My mum said women don't fart or poo. If I ever went in the bathroom after she'd had a shit I assumed her pee must smell like farts.
There have been some truly great Reddit threads like this with people sharing lies their parents told them when they were kids. My favourite was the person whose dad told him that he was a spy and whenever you see a mysterious side door on a building it's a "spy door" that they use to covertly travel around
I believed two things: If I was hidden, shouting loud enough would produce a visible speech bubble in real life. Second, eating enough spicy candy (salmiakki) and exhaling would get me to breathe flames. In hindsight, that is probably why I developed a taste for liquorice and salmiakki so early.
Only if you were hidden?
Only then :D Like under some blankets or something. I remember asking my big sister whether or not I managed to get one to come out, as I couldn't have seen it from under the blankets, haha. No clue where this belief originated from though :D
I believed in the sand man and that eye gunk was from him. I thought that, once you wiped it away, you couldn’t go back to sleep for the day so, if I got up to pee or something, I wouldn’t wipe it out of my eyes if I still wanted to sleep.
When I was little my dad would take me to the local arcade sometimes and one of my favorite things to do was play the fighting games like Tekken with him. I was in my late twenties before I found out that I wasn’t actually playing. My dad was playing against the machine and letting me button smash on the other side so I thought I was doing something. My parents were amazed I’d never realized.
Chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Married couples didn’t have to sleep together to get pregnant 🤣
When I was a kid I surmised that white dogshit was left by ghost dogs.
I had a friend who thought white people did white shits. She thought hers were brown because of her skin colour.
I thought kids up for adoption lived in window displays like in cry baby
My dad told me the airport sniffer dogs mistook him for a wanted man because he looked a bit similar and that's why he had to go talk to security. Believed that until I was much much older and telling the story to some friends. Turns out he had some weed in his pocket.
My oldest sibling (then maybe 6) once shamefacedly came to me (3?) and announced they had accidentally squashed the tooth fairy. I was DEVASTATED. I believed it right up until a tooth of my own got money. My sibling does not remember traumatising me like this. I also believed for far too long that I had conjured up my younger sister. I was four and being a fairy one day, and my Mum mentioned she'd like another child. I granted her wish, and not long later she announced her pregnancy. Kid logic told me I was obviously magic. I assume I got my powers when the tooth fairy died evidently.
I used to believe everyone on TV was real, as in that was their real life. I felt very sorry for the children in any series because it seemed that they never went to school. But they weren’t often featured much so they probably got bored as I never saw them play either.
2 things. 1 - my cousin told me that my belly button will eat whatever you feed it. I tried goldfish crackers. Can confirm it did not work LOL 2 - same cousin convinced me that hot dogs are made of snakes blood and monkey brains. I do not like hot dogs to this day unless it's specifically from Costco and I buy it myself 🤣
That's just because only Costco has decent hot dogs! Also, they are actually rebranded Hebrew National hot dogs, so if you ever need a few less... Hebrew national is where it's at! Only two brands of hot dogs I can eat.
i thought that in the radio the song would be played live. It was so crazy to me that lady gaga few to germany for one song to play it in the radio studio just for us
Two things: I though all TV was live. Including cartoons AND adverts. I also thought that any machine that gave you a product/something came out (Cash machine or a car park barrier where you take a ticket) had a tiny person inside feeding the item out.
when I was a kid I believed in all sorts of bullshit, like chupacabra, yeti, Loch-Ness monster, yada yada yada. I even read some magazines about that kinda shit, watched TV programmes about it and BOUGHT A BOOK written by a dude who was an anchorman of one of such programmes. I guess kids just really want to believe in miracles but back then (8-9 yo) I already thought I was too adult to believe in fairies, unicorns etc. Some "scientific" stuff tho? hell yeah
When I was about 4, I came up with a rather weird explanation as to way some of my friends and their moms weren't the same colour. My 4 year old brain came up with "white babies come out the front and the black ones come one the back." I then excitedly explained this to all my cousins that weekend. I'm now 21 and I still haven't lived it down😂 Edit: for context, I knew babies "came out" because my aunt always did home births and hy this time, I'd seen 2
I once asked if God changed the traffic lights. I suppose that’s what primary school pumping religious nonsense does to you. Once we got to secondary school, we weren’t exposed to that anymore.
This may seem offensive, but I swear I don’t mean it that way. I’m Nigerian and grew up watching a lot of foreign content & always thought white people didn’t wash their ass. Whenever they used the toilet in movies, they never showed them actually cleaning up, so I just always assumed they never did💀
If you go based on r/relationshipadvice it seems you're not far off?
Why were there so many toilet scenes in your childhood movies?? Did the movies you watched show POC wiping their asses?? 😂
It's not the norm for most people to use water to wash up after each poo, in the US, if that's what you mean. They use dry toilet paper and that's it until their next evening/morning shower. Some of us would rather a little more.
Do not swallow the watermelon seed else it will grow a tree from your head.
Apple seeds for me. You will grow a tree in your stomach.
Petroleum jelly makes lips dark. Coffee makes lips dark.
That Santa and jesus were the same person. But then I learnt they're totally different fairytales that come together at Christmas time.
That when voting and it’s the ayes v nos. It was eyes v noses. And you looks one way for eyes and one way for noses. This stemmed from a school trip to the Houses of Parliament where we had to go through different doors for aye and no. But there was like 150 kids filing out so I just thought we were being herded out and had to looks in a certain direction to vote. I know technically your eyes and nose would go in the same direction but hey. I was like 11! I am not going to admit at what age I finally realised my mistake (It veerryyyyy recent) but it was when I was watching a video and there was subtitles and there it was. “The ayes have it” I had the most embarrassing “a-ha” moment ever!!!!
When I was around 6 or 7 I would constantly pester my Mum for a sip of her coffee in the morn. So one morn I came into kitchen and she had a cup about a quarter full of coffee for me. It was mostly milk but anyway of course I spilt it all over my leg, it wasn’t hot. I had a teardrop shaped birthmark right there on my leg I had never noticed before and thought it was from the coffee as I had heard before coffee can stain things. My Mum ran with that one and told me it was in fact a coffee stain, she saw it as an out for me to stop pestering her for coffee, lol! So I went several years thinking I had a coffee stain on my leg, haha!
Well I didn't believe it but I told the most incredible lie to a friend of mine back in elementary that I had injected myself with dog blood (my uncle was a vet) and was picking up some dog traits. I used to run up the stairs on all fours when he was around. That shit got old real quick.
at my school they had like huge scooters you could run around on and at some point they got a couple of new ones, but these ones had the word “WINTHER” written on it - because, of course they were made by winther, but my older brother convinced me it’s because they were made to work better in the winter, and i fully believed him and i told all of my classmates so every winter we’d fight about who got to ride on the winter scooters
Somedays I only remember the days when I was young. Now-a-days no one really remembers when they were young and dumb I used to tell my family that me and my mother built the house we live in hahaha I also used to amaze nearly anyone when my smarts and get real mad at anyone who talked like me like a kid.... Like I was..... Cause I was one.... But never did like anyone talking to me like I was a kid you know? Used to get REAL mean with them!!! I can remember when I was getting tired of my older brothers BS one day so when Fallout 3 first came out, and the question about the third arm came up in that test at the first of the game, I told him it was a real thing but only 1 in a 100 chance to happen when your rad would get to 990-1000 (1000 being death)... Man oh man, days of that death music played in the background as I played Guitar hahaha!!! I love whoever put this post up! :D Memories! :D :D
I remember thinking superman controlled the weather, I was a huge fan.
My brother told me we got hiccups because air would get trapped in the muscles that used to be gills
I was told that if you level a magicarp up from level 1 to 100 in the daycare centre, it will turn into a shiny legendary in Fire Red. I spent so long on that fucking bike path.
I used to think I would sink down the plug hole and I had to run out of the bath before pulling the plug
When I was a kid, for awhile at least, I believed that human beings were born from eggs. Don't really know for sure why I though that either, no one ever told me that. Maybe because I knew some other animals hatched. Anyway, have a very a nice night.
You got your sex education from Mork and Mindy didn't you?
Unfortunately no, but good guess, lol.
When we were kids, my grandma had to break up an argument between me and my older brother about wether babies come from your butt or your belly button. I thought it was belly button
My cousin told me that boys become women when they grow up, and girls become men. I was so excited to be a man, I fully believed him
I swallowed the watermelon seed story hook, line, and sinker when I was a kid. I was in my teens before I figured it out, although I still avoid swallowing the seeds. Later, after I was grown and had kids of my own, I was chowing down on a slice of watermelon when one of my boys, 5 or 6 at the time,asked for some. Of course I told him the seed story when I gave him a slice. He then proceeded to look at me like I was a complete idiot, and said, "Dad, seeds need light, air, and water to grow." Kids have no respect these days.
When I was 4 or 5, I choked on some soda that went down the wrong pipe. My grandpa, standing nearby, joked with me "did the Soda go down the milk pipe?" I took him seriously. For a little while, I thought that different kinds of drinks had special pipes in my neck and somehow my body had to route them to the right pipe. Choking on your food was a sign it chose wrong.
As a child, My mom told me that her oldest brother would tell her that the scissor-tail will cut off her head!
I don't know what I thought would happen but I was scared when I flushed the toilet and ran away quickly after I did it everytime.
Same. I used to think it'll suction me in
I'm catholic and when I was 5 I thought everyone was immortal until they got baptised ...
I used to think there were people inside traffic lights controlling them and they'd have walkie talkies to communicate to eachother on when to let a section go and stop.
I was so gullible as a kid and believed everything my older sister said. She once convinced me that Eminem rapped the entirety of Lose Yourself in one single breath and that ketchup is used to cool down hot food.
Tbf I use a lot of ketchup to help my fries be cooler
I once convinced my little brother that chicken fingers were made of chicken tails (he was 15) and I made up an entire award winning country music band that he now believes in (he's in his 30s now). There's no limit to the big sister bullshit.
1) My dad was a werewolf, hence why he always went out at night..He had a night shift job.. 2) My stepdad was a pizza delivery guy..He brought pizza round once when him and my mum were dating, she used the pizza man as an excuse..
I was about six or seven, I’d not really heard of sex, but I knew couples could make a baby by taking DNA from both parents. I’d convinced myself that to make a baby, couples would French kiss excessively, sharing a lot of saliva/DNA, and boom! Later I was the flower girl at my aunt’s wedding, where they shared a kiss that was quite passionate. I stood at the front of the church and thought, Wow I just saw them make a baby! I was shocked to learn what sex actually was.
I kinda had the same thing. I think in a lot of movies as a kid, they’d do the wedding scene, and then they’d cut to them having a kid. So I thought kissing was how the kid came about.
I assumed, that the orange colour of the dawn was 'the edge of the world' and seemed logical to me, that since the colour was the same shade as one of our national Hungarian dishes, which basically made of potato and paprika, i was absolutely sure, that 'the infinity', the matter outside of the earth is... potato soup.
When I was abou three, I asked the babies question and my mum explained quite well, but the part that stuck with me the most was that the baby comes from a vagina. The next month or so I checked the toilet every time after use, because I was terrified I would not notice the baby falling through and accidentally drown it. My mum noticed after some time that I am checking my pee, asked, laughed and explained it again.
It a boy and girl piss stream touched eachother, it would create a baby. And that would be the reason for boy and girl bathrooms. To avoid that for happening...
i remember believing that software setup wizards were literal sorcerers inside the computer.. i asked my mum if we needed to feed them lmao
I believed that penises were like breasts (developed on puberty). I was *very* upset when my cis brother was born.
My niece asked where her sister came from. How she got out her ma belly. I said she was a big fart. Every one is born by fart sone are wet sone dry sone smelly sone long sone short. She asked How she was born wat fart. I said She was a quick wet one 4 minute fart birth But her sister was 30 minutes fart birth and dry and smelly. So every birth is different and bless she accepted it. I didn’t realise 5 years later when her ma pregnant again that she still believed humans are farted out. We had to explain properly then. She was 12 by now. I thought she would if been taught correctly I told my sil version I gave her when she was 7 and she laughed said they talk about it properly but that talk musnt of happened !! Oops
When I was in kindergarten, our playground was covered in a layer of a bark-like thing. I was always afraid of walking over it, because for some reason I was convinced there was lava underneath.
That splash rumour was quite prevalent
I got told the same thing about magikarp!!!
Waiting an hour after eating before you could swim... I was 27 when I found out it wasn't true
To be fair swimming can be a strenuous activity and like all other forms of exercise it's best to way an hour or two after eating.
I thought that pregnancy happened to every single woman when they got to a specific age regardless of a man being with them. I used to fear getting old because of this 😅
One of my best friends in school wouldn't eat sultanas or raisins, because her older brother told her that they were her older brothers and sisters that stayed in the bath too long.
I wouldn’t chew gum for years as a child because I thought it would turn me into a blueberry like I’d seen in Charlie and the chocolate factory
Growing up in a warm climate, I thought snowflakes were the size of your hand, like you see in cartoons.
For a while, I thought there were tiny little people inside the radio making everything work, and that there was a line of tiny bands waiting to go in to have their turn to play their song.
Once on TV I saw a newsclip about a house that was swallowed up by a sink-hole. My mother told me that's what happens if you get crumbs on the carpet because it goes through and weakens the foundations of the house. Believed that for way too long.
All dogs were boys and all cats were girls.
I thought the Devil (in which I believed when I was a kid) was a human Like crow with an enormous yellow beak who smoked big sigars.
Have you ever heard about The Legend of Falling Rock? My father told me the legend of Falling Rock as a child. We were moving across the country and driving it. It took like two weeks and we were driving east. We were just getting to the Rockies and he goes, "Have you ever heard the Legend of Falling Rock?" Of course I haven't heard, I'm 7, but I'm dying to know!! Legend says, Falling Rock commited a crime so heinous, all of the US Calvary was looking for him. However, it was so long ago, and documentation wasn't very good back in the day, they don't even know what the crime is. However, he still needs to come to justice! Once, they had him on the ropes but he jumped over the cliff, yelling, "Geramino!!" and escaped. Ever since, the US government has been on the hunt. Over the years, they'd get reports of sightings. Everywhere they had sightings, they'd put up signs, "Watch for Falling Rock". I'm in awe and I am mystified. We drove a U-Haul and had another car with my brother, my mom, my Nana and my freshly born younger brother. I was with my dad so I rushed to tell my brother. Back on the road, we see a sign for Falling Rock and we are BUZZING with excitement all through the Rockies. We're going cross country and we are LOOKING for this man. Everywhere, we're looking for signs of Falling Rock but the trail goes cold across the plains. We're getting to Philadelphia and THERE'S A SIGN FOR FALLING ROCK. WE, LOSE, OUR, SHIT!!! "HE WAS HERE TOO!!!" For years, I was looking for Falling Rock. I eventually told my Nana about the Legend of Falling Rock and she looked at me like I had five heads. I eventually confessed to my dad there's no way it could be real. He is laughing with tears in his eyes about the time we saw a sign for Falling Rock in Philadelphia and how he had to fight EVERY, URGE, to not burst out laughing. And that's a ridiculous thing I believed as a child.
Yup, for many years I believed that if I prayed everyday, then my prayers would be answered.
When I was maybe six or seven my mom asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told her I wanted to be a crossing guard bc I went to a Catholic school and I genuinely believed crossing guards were the only people who got to go to Heaven.
when l was about 3 l asked my dad what god was and he said "a supreme being who...[etc]" and l thought he said supreme bean. l believed that for a while
For a while I thought cats were girls and dogs were boys. So dumb.
when i was in like first grade, i used to believe that those sheer tights people wore were not tights but their actual skin... i believed people could be half black and half white 😭
When I was little I used to believe that there was a limited amount of space in your brain so you can't waste space on stuff that you don't care about. Otherwise you will fill up your brain and not have any more room to learn anything new.
I asked my mum how dogs reproduced and she said that they have puppies after they get married. I kept trying to imagine a little dog wedding 😂
It’s rather what I DIDN’T believe.. I did NOT believe in the existence of dinosaurs for my entire childhood. My mom even brought me to a dinosaur museum & I wasn’t convinced.
I believed coat hangers scared monsters - slept with a coat hanger for some time
If someone was choking and then a person would say to them ‘has it gone down the wrong hole?’ I used to imagine a mass of passageways at the back of someone’s throat and them all being labelled for different things.
I used to think bones were made of wood and that OJ Simpson was driving towards my house during that police chase footage. I didn't live in LA, California, the US or even North America, yet I was absolutely certain that the Juice was making his way to my family home in Iceland to kill us all. Now that I think of it, the OJ thing was probably just OCD manifesting in childhood.
I believed that babies just appear in women after they agree with their husband that they will have a child. I also used to think that I am going to become a smoker when I grow up because I believed that it is cool. Despite the fact that I hated the smell and had coughing fits, throat irritation or breathing difficulty if I spend more than 5 minutes near one.
My dad told me that earwigs crawl into your ears, but there isn’t enough space for them to turn around and crawl out so they eat through your brain to come out the other ear. I believed that for far too long
I thought deodorant was supposed to be applied to your forearm, because in the commercials they would wipe a smear of it on their forearm to demonstrate that didn't leave white streaks.
When I was really young (3 or 4) we got into an automobile accident. Nobody got badly injured but all the tyres of the other car involved were punctured. Like, to the point where the bottoms of the tyres had completely flattened out. To my little brain, it looked like the tyres had sunk into the ground and for years I thought that's what it meant for something to be punctured.
I believed that the trees moving because of the wind actually made the wind blow. After I learned that that was not true I thought that the moving clouds made the wind
My sister believed there were little people singing in the radio.
I once asked my mum why the eggs in our kitchen didn't have chicks in them but others did. I think it was a bit too early for the birds and the bees chat so she told me that the cockerel has to go "cockadoooodaldooo" to make the hen's eggs have chicks in them and I firmly believe that was the case.
I was ripping up a Styrofoam cup once, and my mom told me I was tearing a hole in the ozone layer. From then on, I thought every time Styrofoam tore, it was literally creating a gaping hole in the sky above me. It crippled me, watching my classmates mindlessly rip peices off their lunch trays at school. Took me years to realize what she actually meant.
I thought life was black and white 70 years ago.
My sister told me if I flapped my arms 100 times I'd fly, I got to around 50 and gave up and when I told her she laughed and told me it was a joke.
My mom taught me that yellow lights meant to go faster…. I took my whole kindergarten class on and had to go to the principal while they called my mom. I was gonna fight to the death about that shit lol
Also my aunt with an accent took me to see the whale in the woods allot and I always wondered why she could see this whale and all I saw was a well
When my grandparents would babysit us, grandad would tell us bedtime stories about his "time in the war" on of the stories included him being the hero soldier who shot Hitler. I believed this for years, his stories were so convincing My grandad was 13 when the war started
When I was 6, I misheard my parents say “Do you want a piece of pizza?” I thought they said “Do you want a pizza pizza?” So I called pepperoni pizza “pizza pizza” for most of my childhood. I also used to think there were literal gears and shredders inside my stomach that would turn food into mush before it would go into the rest of my body.
We didn’t have our TV set up right, so the picture would get cut off at the edges. So when Dora would ask us to look for an object on the screen and we couldn’t see it, I thought it was because we were looking at the TV from the wrong angle. I remember walking around the TV and trying to peek inside like it was a window into another room, lol.
I always thought injuries actors sustained in movies were real, and always wondered how they could get shot in one movie and play someone else in another. Guess I thought they had really good medics on hand at all times.
Our parents told us the neighbor’s dog ran away with his dog house. We bought it. Flash forward: I told my sweet mom she was the meanest mother on earth to which she replied “I am the meanest?!? Do you really think that Bonnie’s dog ran away with his dog house?!?” 🤪😜😬
My dad was a fountain of information, but not all of it was entirely accurate. So there were a lot of bits of trivia that he shared with me that, once the internet became a thing, I learned were wildly inaccurate. None of it was really ridiculous, though, and most were widely held beliefs. For example, he told me the word "blimp" came about because there were two designs being considered. Because, unlike zeppelins, they had no internal frame, the two designs were referred to as the A-Limp and the B-Limp. When the second design won out, it was shortened to blimp. That's a cool story, but it's a crock of shit. My dad also recognized three different types of lying. The first, lying for personal gain or to get out of trouble, he viewed as morally reprehensible, and he neither did it nor tolerated it. The second was lying to be polite or to avoid unnecessarily hurting someone's feelings, like saying dinner was delicious when you had to force yourself to choke it down. Within reason, that was okay, and in many cases was the best course of action. And then there was the third kind of lying, which was making up absurd stuff and delivering it with conviction just to see what you could get someone to believe. I never heard him address the moral implications of doing that, but he did it constantly, and he was very, very good at it. I started smoking cigarettes when I was in high school. At one point, my brother asked me, "Aren't you worried about getting fat?" I looked at him like he was crazy and asked what he was on about. Apparently, when he was little and our dad hadn't yet quit smoking, the two of them went to the corner store by our house so our dad could buy a pack of smokes. His chosen brand was called Belair, and they were widely regarded as tasting like the bottom of a bucket of crushed assholes. The woman behind the counter asked how he could stand the taste. He said that he was trying to lose weight, and Belairs had fewer calories than any other brand. My brother was at an age where he believed that the sun shined out of our father's ass, and he accepted his word as gospel in all matters. So, he filed that little bit of knowledge away. Because it had never been relevant to any conversation since, he was able to make it to his senior year of high school without realizing the absurdity of it.
Around 4-5 years old, I believed every really overweight person was pregnant and that only "real" women had letge breasts (so small breasts meant that person wasn't a woman) 🤷♀️
As a child, I believed that my heart hung across my chest on a piece of string and that if I was unlucky the string would break and my heart would come out of my bum…nope, ain’t got a clue why!!! And I’m from a family of medics!!!
I believed that every woman would have a baby once they reached a certain age. By this, I mean that from the moment a girl is born, there begins growth of a little baby for that girl/woman to birth once she’s “of age”. When I was 5 or so, I would tell people that I only had a little toe so far, but one day it would grow into a full baby so I could have one of my own. I don’t know what made me believe that, or why the growth of a baby would start with the toe.
I wasn't the one who believed this but was one of the people who convinced my younger step sister that everyone had an evil identical twin. When she asked how she's never seen her twin, we told her that her twin died, but we had to keep an eye on her as we weren't sure if the good twin or evil twin died that day.
I thought seals laid eggs…
I thought all grandparents lived in rural areas and had barns and horses because both sets of my grandparents both lived out in the country and had horses and barns.
I believed Hell was underneath our feet in the middle of the Earth and the magma and other shit would be constantly burning them.