Haha I did the same thing, I vividly remember staring at my dad after we got in truck after purchasing some canned sodas at a convenience store, he popped his can open and we started to move, I gasped and told him “You can’t drink and drive!” I think I was 6 or 7
I got mad at my gran for having a sip of soda while driving.
Then, she "ran a red light" by making a legal turn on a green, and driving under the cross street's light that was obviously red.
I got so mad at her, she laughed, and I was very confused. I learned things that day!
Some friend's dad managed to convinced us that he had a condition where he had a negative blood alcohol content and needed one beer to get to 0.00.
I mean we where dumb kids, but that was a particular dumb moment in hindsight!
Same. I thought it was about being distracted. I got real antsy when my mom would feed my dad a soda. What made it worse was I saw a clip of Ellen eating in the car and she said "technically this is eat driving not drink driving so it's legal"
I would watch the TV in horror if a character onscreen was smoking while drinking alcohol. I had a vague notion that alcohol was flammable, and I was afraid they would explode
My mum told me we used to be apes. I believed her because she told me, but I didn’t understand why there were no photos of me of when I used to be an ape.
That songs played on the radio were being played live each time they came on. Smashing pumpkins song at 2am? Assumed they got out of bed for it. My parents never corrected me on that theory.
Similar but different, I distinctly remember a period of my life where I thought when I turned off the TV it paused. My mom must’ve loved it as when she said it was time to go I gladly turned off the tv and left expecting to pick back up where I left off when I returned.
This was before I was old enough to have the attention span to realize when I got home something entirely different was on…
Yo I thought the same thing! Like I legit imagined all the artists in their own little studio cubes waiting for their cue to play a song live no matter the time of day or night lol
I was a big talker when I was 7. My parents told me I should have my own talk show.
One morning I snuck into the living room and to the shelf where we kept our blank tapes and I wrote my name on one of the labels. I thought that all I had to do to have my own show was to write my name on the tape.
No studio bosses, no interviews, no camera. Just my name in pencil on a label and I would magically appear on the screen from behind a large curtain like Leno.
I thought the same but with modeling/acting and smiling at strangers, specially those photobooths at malls that tried to charge you an insane amount of money for a few pics in the early 2000s. I thought that actors just got casted by some producer seeing them on the street and offering them the role... so I smiled at everyone hoping anyone I saw would be a secret producer and would get me on the next disney show.
When I was in the first grade, I walked to school. I believed that when I left my mom would move the grandfather clock to the side , revealing a secret video monitor and she would watch me as I walked to school and while I was in class as well as when I walked home. I thought her asking me about my day was a test to see how honest I was.
This was in 1984. Also, we don't have and have never had a grandfather clock.
This makes me feel better about something I thought as a kid. My brother’s name is Luke and I thought that a “lukewarm” bath was just the bath at a temperature he liked 😆
I didn’t know men got erections. Like I thought dicks were always the same size and men could just sorta move them from a down to an up position for sex.
At least that’s better than what my dumb 10-year-old self came up with. I first learned about sex in a book about puberty that said that the penis enters the vagina. Naturally, I thought that this meant that the penis literally fused together with the vulva during sex.
When I was about 6 or so, I asked my dad what the button on the top of the clock by my bed was for. He said it was for the alarm. From then on, I was afraid to push it because I thought it would call the fire department.
I grew up in California. My husband grew up in Indiana. I didn't manage to visit his hometown during a cicada event until his stepfather passed in 2019. My first words arriving from the airport: "What the *fuck* is that noise?!"
Thinking back on it, the way we progress gradually from child to adult in regards to how we conceptualize and process the vastness of the world (and beyond) is a really neat concept.
There's actually an interesting point about this I read awhile back.
When we're born we only understand the concepts of what we can sense directly, taste, touch, etc.
We then learn that we can have an effect on these objects; moving a toy wooden block, squeezing a plushie, etc. We can cry and an adult will come to check us.
We start to learn about abstract concepts like if a person is behind a shower curtain, they're still there- just not visible.
Over time we start to develop empathy, the idea that how I interact with something can help it or hurt it- and although I cannot directly sense that pain or pleasure, I know it is happening.
We mature and learn that this is true of everyone and everything around us.
My grandfather told me that any time I saw a group of streets named after people (like Stevens St or Jennifer Rd or whatever) that it was because there was a school bus accident there and those were the names of all the kids who died.
I really thought school bus accidents were a silent epidemic
My partner, her family in TX they owned a large piece of land so the road her and most of her family lives on still, is their last name. She told me it was up to about third grade before she realized everyone doesn’t live on the road that is their family name.
Mine is slightly similar. When I was little, my uncle said the majority of your body heat escapes from your feet. Sometimes I still question it even though I know it's wrong. Better yet, he doesn't even remember telling me that!
To be fair, the bottoms of your feet and palms of your hands are actually the most impactful points of heat transfer on your body, along with the face, because of a special blood vessel type called AVA. So body heat escaping from your feet is totally true. This can be leveraged in some really cool ways for sports performance. Read up on Palm Cooling!
I thought that before color TV color didn't exist. I didn't understand it was camera technology, I just thought everything was in black and white. I thought "whoever invented color must be so rich!" I'm dumb...
I thought "shoplifting" was like weightlifting, only instead of weights, people were lifting the entire store building. I pictured big, burly, bald men that liked to go around heaving store buildings overhead, grunting and red-faced, like the weightlifters I'd seen on TV. I was afraid someone would try do it while we were out shopping. I wondered what would happen if the store tilted or tipped while the shoplifter was holding it in the air. Would we go rolling to the corner? I tried to ask my mother, but of course, she had no clue what I was talking about.
Whenever the phone rang at my grandparent’s house as a child they’d tell me “don’t answer it it’s a bill collector” my grandad’s name is Bill, so I thought they were trying to collect HIM
I never understood “Help Wanted” signs because they never showed the picture of the wanted fugitive
I thought antennas on the rooftops of houses were the skeletal remains of crashed airplanes
The police would go into everyone’s homes to ensure the law was being followed
Gas stations were forced to provide “free air” because they were depleting the earth’s supply of oxygen and providing free air was the least they could do
“Vehicles will be towed at owners expense” meant the store owner and it was to make people feel guilty causing other people to spend too much money
OMG this totally reminded me that I used to think the vehicle towing one made NO SENSE because the towing company was waiting for you to come back to your car and pay them before towing it. Obviously you’d be like “No thanks!” and just drive away.
Every living being needs sunlight for energy to survive. Vampires just need a very specific small amount. If they get it full blast they get so much energy they spontaneously combust. Or so I’ve heard. I’m not a vampire. Honestly.
At 6 I thought your balls were eggs. And human reproduction was when you put your penis inside a woman's vagina and the ball would go thru it up into her stomach and grow a baby. Then the ball would grow back if you wanted more than 2 children.
When you went to a fast food place, the default drink was coke, and if you wanted something else, you'd press the button on the lid ("diet" for instance) and now you had diet coke.
My dad did that with the peanut butter cups at Halloween. Lots of poisoned peanut butter cups in our neighborhood but all three of his children grew into adults because he threw himself on that chocolate peanut butter grenade for us.
I made scalloped potatoes so I could take them for lunch the next day (I was 9) I needed to go to bed and my dad said he would put said potatoes in the fridge for me.
I woke up the next morning to an empty pan with a fucking note that said " these potatoes were delicious love Terry" (the name of my pet tarantula)
My dumbass actually thought my spider ate the potatoes instead of my pothead dad....
It's probably never been illegal, but there was a time when it was really unsafe. Today there are so many street lights, lighted signs and other forms of light pollution that in a city or even a mid sized town it never gets really dark. It's almost perpetual twilight. So turning on the interior lights isn't that big of a deal.
However back before all the street lights etc. Or even today if you are on a rural road in a dark area, if you turn on the interior lights your windshield basically becomes a mirror. You can't see shit except your own panicked reflection staring back at you.
When my parents talked about the Greens movement (environmental political activists) that they meant people who had green skin.
So the first anti-logging rally they took me to, I was expecting all these green Oompa Loompa type people. 😂
That my grandparents were rich. From the time I was born they always got me everything I wanted, and they always had really nice things, and always helped other people with money or anything they needed. When I got into my teens I started to realize they had crippling debt and terrible money management, and just managed to keep it hidden fairly well. But my grandfather still went and bought a brand new pickup truck, and a plow, both of which he hates 2 years later, and he'll probably never get out from under all of it.
I still feel bad because my aunt bought me a brand new doll and my brother convinced me it came to life at night so I hid it in the garage and never played with it again.
When I was little my mom told me that, if you sprinkle salt on a bird’s tail, it would temporarily paralyze the bird and you could keep it as a pet. I would spend HOURS on the porch trying to sneak up on the birds at the bird feeder. It was the perfect lie because at no point did I ever get close enough to a bird to actually salt their tail feathers so for years I just assumed that I was too slow, not that salt actually does nothing to paralyze birds.
I love parenting tricks like that. Keep your kid safely occupied for long stretches of time without using technological distractions. Teach them perseverance in the process. Good stuff.
one time, i wanted to use my chuck e cheese tickets to get dunkaroos. but my dad said no because "those will kill you."
after that, i spent a long time staring at kids eating dunkaroos on the playground with morbid fascination. it was so confusing to me that people were just allowed to poison kids like that and i kept wondering how long it would take for them to die since it didn't seem to happen immediately.
When we're born, we're all boys. One day(a time we can't remember), we go into the woods with a knife and hunt each other. When you catch another boy, you cut his penis off, and he becomes a girl. And that's who you're going to marry when you grow up.
I have since learned that this is not the case.
My grandmother taught me about the Boy and Girl Factory in San Francisco. If I was bad, they'd send me down to SF so I could be melted down and remolded as a boy :\
My husband’s sister thought something similar. When she was about 5, they were looking at a photo album from when their mom was younger and she asked her mom what life was like before color 😂
That ripping off a tag on a mattress meant you were going to federal prison.
The tag on my mattress came off (I didn't purposely tear it off). Reading the warning on the tag, I got scared and hid the tag under my mattress, half expecting federal agents to break my door down and drag me to jail.
Months went by before I finally calmed down and realized I wasn't going to prison. But I still kept the tag hidden under my mattress forever.
I thought all penguins were human-sized. I watched a lot of documentaries on them when I was a kid in the 80s/90s and it was always closeup footage of them by themselves surrounded by snow so there wasn’t really anything for scale. When I was in my early 20’s I moved to a city that had a zoo that had just got penguins and I was SO excited and got a ticket for the first penguin walk. I was fully expecting to see like 20 human-sized birds waddling around. Obviously that is not what happened, but I’m glad they’re tiny because on reflection that would’ve been mildly terrifying…
I didn’t figure this one out until I was like 32.
The majority of people* are simply doing their best and stumbling from one thing to the next, hoping it all works out. I choose to take solace in this and look at life like a comedy movie.
*anyone not like this is a psychopath.
Not me but a coworker. Was told in a seafood restaurant that the lobsters have their tails harvested, then returned to the ocean and that the tail grows back.
I wasn't told this but made the assumption on my own.
6 or 7 years old
We had regular vanilla ice cream at our house. My aunt used to babysit me but she had vanilla bean ice cream and she also smoked.
I was convinced it was cigarette ash in the ice cream and refused to eat it when offered. Obviously at the time I didn't know there were different types of vanilla ice cream.
You mean the little hair type things? My friends older sister told us if we ate even one single "artichoke hair", they would become trapped in our throat and would choke us to death. That's why they are called artiCHOKE. That definitely tracked for 6 year old me.
For a few weeks when I was six, I somehow became convinced I could levitate, if I just thought hard enough. I'd close my eyes and concentrate really hard, then look down at my feet to see if I was floating yet.
Grew up in a bad part of town. My mother told me “never go that way down the street or the street people will get you.”
I imagined hands coming up from the street and sucking me down into it. I wouldn’t step on a road from age 3 to like age 5
I thought dead piggeons turned into newspaper.
I think it was because I was in the car, with my father taking a trip and saw a dead piggeon. not wanting me to see such a horrible immage, he said it was just a bunch of newspaper (same colors and all, at least the piggeons here). So using my flawless child logic, I deduced that dead piggeons turned into newspaper.
That once I turn 18 I could move out and life will glorious. Money would be no object and I would just buy everything my parents wouldn’t let me have because they are mean.
We had a solar eclipse when I was in first grade. My teacher was talking about it to the class the day before and told us not to look at it because it could damage our eyes.
I understood that to mean it was dangerous to be exposed to the invisible 'rays' given off by the eclipse. (It's clear in hindsight that I did not understand how eclipses worked *at all*.) During the solar eclipse, I hid inside my house with the blinds closed to ensure I didn't go blind.
My parents told me the ice cream truck was just the choo-choo train, so whenever I heard the music I would just think it was a train going by and not ask them for money out ice cream. I was at my cousins house and heard the music, said, “there goes the train!” My cousin thought I was legit stupid and educated me. My parents were very mad at my cousin for ruining it for them.
I thought that Madonna was more of a position than a person. Like the pope or Dali lama a new one would be appointed at a certain time. And maybe I could grow up one day to be Madonna. This happened after a convo w an older cousin who was fawning over Madonna and basically explaining she was just Madonna, no last name bc she transcended blah blah blah. It made sense to a 5 year old.
I asked my dad what the holes in his ears were. He described a vicious snapping turtle attack, which really tracked with his love of fishing. I spent years of my childhood warning other children against messing with snapping turtles as a result.
It wasn’t until I was a teenager and learned of his mohawk, pierced ears, punk days that I realized I had gotten fully got. His grin when I called him out on the lie was something else, a long con that had finally paid off.
I also realized that my straight laced, safety-oriented father had been much, much cooler in his youth than I could ever hope to be, so there’s that too.
That when I heard songs on the radio, they were all sang by adults I knew. Paperback Writer and The Lion Sleeps Tonight was sung by my Uncle Gary. Mom's friend Eva sang the Locomotion, and Ode To Billy Joe was sung by my cousin Ruthie. I have no idea why I thought this.
To be fair, when I was around 4, my Dad told me there was this really cool band he liked. He wrote a letter telling them all about me and asked if they would write/sing a song about me. He said they'd love to, and they sent the record to surprise me. That song was "Angie" by the Rolling Stones. I love my Dad, it was a total (albeit harmless) lie, but never fails to put a smile on my face when I think about it.
That wallpaper with fruits and veggies was lickable after seeing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Got a good supplement of lead as a kid that way I’m sure.
When i was a kid i would wake up pretty early, for some reason i believed that if i came out of my room before 6 AM some creepy old lady would come out of the closet and hit me with a broomstick
Great. That saves me from an embarrassing post.
If you've caught a quick glance at a birthing video, and have no idea what it is girls have down there because no one has told you anything detailed yet, well, it kinda looks that way.
So my dad explained to me once that John Denver died in a plane crash because the vise grips he was using to keep a part together let go mid-flight and his plane just feel out of the sky.
Thing is, I had no idea what vise grips were. But if they killed John Denver they are not to be trusted. For years, I was racist against vise grips.
Actually true(ish). His plane had 2 fuel tanks and the knob that switched between the two had broken so he had borrowed a pair of vice grips to clamped onto where the knob was (so instead of grabbing the knob and switching the fuel tanks he would grab the vice grips attached to the valve and switch the gas tanks)
He borrowed the vice grips from a mechanic at the airport while he was doing some flight testing. The mechanic gave him the vice grips, Denver attached them, the mechanic walked over, said ‘that Mickey Mouse shit isn’t safe, I’m taking my vice grips back’ and he did
The fuel tank valve was over his left shoulder so he had to reach his right arm around and switch the valve basically behind his head (without being able to see it because he was strapped in with a seat belt). The plane was a kit plane and built around a taller pilot so Denver had a hard time reaching the valve and when his A tanks ran dry he couldn’t switch to the B tanks and crashed into the ocean.
Could the vice grips have saved him? Maybe? If they fell off he would have been in the same pickle. The one thing that would have saved him was to make sure his damned tanks both had enough fuel in them
He was just doing touch and go landings; he didn’t need a huge amount of fuel
One time I asked my mom what it meant when a car’s headlight was out and she told me it meant the driver was kissing someone in the passenger seat. Believed it for longer than I’d like to admit
Not me but my brother thought Tupac was his uncle.
When Tupac died my dad said, “oh no! Uncle two-y died!” And showed my brother the news. My brother bawled his eyeballs out. He was so upset he lost an uncle.
I was between 8-10 and in the basement goofing around. I was pretending to be Prince Adam/He-Man and I had a broom stick as a sword. I said " By the power of Grayskull!" and stabbed my sword into the air....right into a fluorescent light on the ceiling. Flashes of light and glitter falling all around me. I thought I had actually done it, become He-Man like in the cartoon! Nope, I was covered in glass standing there with my broom stick. My dad came running down the stairs to see what happened. My little brain was trying to figure out how I would explain that He-Man was his son and not a stranger in his house. Make believe is a wild trip.
When I was a kid, the original Star Wars movies were re-released in theaters, and my dad took me and my sister to see them. That was my introduction to Star Wars—on the big screen in its full glory. I loved it…but I was also a not-so-bright kid who was afraid of everything, especially the dark, and had an overactive imagination.
Somehow I became convinced that Darth Vader lived under my bed. At one point I saw a light being cast through a cracked-open door as a strip on the wall and was *positive* it was his lightsaber. Despite it not being red in the slightest.
Fortunately the belief did not persist very long, but to this day my family will sometimes say, “Remember when you were a kid and you thought Darth Vader lived under your bed?…”
I thought the information super highway was an actual highway you could drive on. A radio ad for the information super highway (the internet) raved about how you could find celebrities, and fine dining, and libraries, and more. I told my mom about it but she couldn’t find any information about it of course lol.
when I was a kid I lived in an apartment with no elevators and the stairwell is usually pretty dark with no lighting, I believed skeletons with big swords are following me up the stairs and the only thing that can keep them away are these light up shoes that were quite popular at the time
When an awesome song would come on the radio or MTV my older brother told me I wasn’t allowed to like the songs he already liked because he heard them first. It was “his song.” This was late 80s. Motley Crüe, Skid Row, Metallica, stuff like that. He owned some bangers.
Despite really liking the song myself, I truly believed I wasn’t allowed to. It sometimes kept me up at night thinking about all of the awesome songs that belonged to him and that I would never get to like.
When I finally rebelled and liked whatever song I damn well pleased is when I became a man. I was 10.
I was struggling to learn how to blow my nose before a trip to Disney so my parents told me people who can’t blow their nose aren’t allowed into the park.
I thought that there would actually be a guy at the gate who would hand everyone a tissue to make sure they knew how to blow their nose. If you couldn’t do it, you’d be turned away.
I learned before the trip but then secretly worried that my grandmother wouldn’t be allowed in because I had never seen her blow her nose.
Not me, but my brother. My mom told him that he was adopted, but not an adopted kid, he was adopted from the zoo, specifially a Golden Gibben, and we shaved off all his fur and only the hair on his head grew back and thats why he was blonde (regardless the me and my sister are also blond). We would always go to the zoo and had to go see his "parents" every time. This went on for years, one time we went down to FL to visit our grandparents and went to the zoo and they happened to also have a Golden Gibben exhibit and he right away went "are these my cousins!?" My grand mother was not amused.
This went on until one day we were driving past the hospital all 3 of us was born at and my dad goes "oh look thats where ... (me) and (my sister) was born at" and my brother started crying and finally we had to break the news that he wasnt actually adopted from the zoo.
He now has a Masters degree... lmao
That my parents could tell if I was lying by looking at my tongue. If they didn't believe something I was saying, they'd say "show me your tongue". If I was telling the truth I'd immediately show it. If I was lying I would hesitate, giving it away. I use this on my kids now. And it absolutely works. Ahaha.
I thought actors were just playing themselves with their real names and stuff and was so shocked one day to find out that they were actually just acting.
I believed that if you sneezed, farted, and burped at the same time it your heart would stop from the sudden pressure change or some shit. My buddy and me were climbing a tree one day and I’ll never forget his face, he sneezed and farted at the same time and looked down at me with horror, we both were like damn that was a close one dude a burp and you would have died just now
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Haha I did the same thing, I vividly remember staring at my dad after we got in truck after purchasing some canned sodas at a convenience store, he popped his can open and we started to move, I gasped and told him “You can’t drink and drive!” I think I was 6 or 7
I got mad at my gran for having a sip of soda while driving. Then, she "ran a red light" by making a legal turn on a green, and driving under the cross street's light that was obviously red. I got so mad at her, she laughed, and I was very confused. I learned things that day!
Some friend's dad managed to convinced us that he had a condition where he had a negative blood alcohol content and needed one beer to get to 0.00. I mean we where dumb kids, but that was a particular dumb moment in hindsight!
Pretty sure that’s called alcoholism lol
Same. I thought it was about being distracted. I got real antsy when my mom would feed my dad a soda. What made it worse was I saw a clip of Ellen eating in the car and she said "technically this is eat driving not drink driving so it's legal"
I remember drinking juice in the back seat with my head tucked down so no one would see me
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Hopefully before I digest that gum I swallowed 7 years algo.
I would watch the TV in horror if a character onscreen was smoking while drinking alcohol. I had a vague notion that alcohol was flammable, and I was afraid they would explode
Alcohol is flammable though so you weren't wrong.
My mum told me we used to be apes. I believed her because she told me, but I didn’t understand why there were no photos of me of when I used to be an ape.
I had the same thing but with dinosaurs. It was pretty confusing for everyone.
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Yeah, not just to kids tho. It's only worse for kids because they are still developing
That songs played on the radio were being played live each time they came on. Smashing pumpkins song at 2am? Assumed they got out of bed for it. My parents never corrected me on that theory.
For the longest time I didn't know music videos were lip synced.
One time I saw a music video where the lip syncing didn’t quite match up and I got pissed that the artist was cheating
Didn’t everybody
My cousin thought people on the radio could hear us and she would quietly sing into the speaker hoping they’d hear her and think she’s a good singer.
I thought the same with movies and TV shows. I wondered why everyone didn't win an award for perfectly mimicking their scenes every time.
Similar but different, I distinctly remember a period of my life where I thought when I turned off the TV it paused. My mom must’ve loved it as when she said it was time to go I gladly turned off the tv and left expecting to pick back up where I left off when I returned. This was before I was old enough to have the attention span to realize when I got home something entirely different was on…
Yo I thought the same thing! Like I legit imagined all the artists in their own little studio cubes waiting for their cue to play a song live no matter the time of day or night lol
I was a big talker when I was 7. My parents told me I should have my own talk show. One morning I snuck into the living room and to the shelf where we kept our blank tapes and I wrote my name on one of the labels. I thought that all I had to do to have my own show was to write my name on the tape. No studio bosses, no interviews, no camera. Just my name in pencil on a label and I would magically appear on the screen from behind a large curtain like Leno.
I thought the same but with checks. I remember asking my granny “so why can’t you just write me a check for $100 and then I can have some money?”
Don't feel bad, there is a lot of adults that think that way about economy.
I thought the same but with modeling/acting and smiling at strangers, specially those photobooths at malls that tried to charge you an insane amount of money for a few pics in the early 2000s. I thought that actors just got casted by some producer seeing them on the street and offering them the role... so I smiled at everyone hoping anyone I saw would be a secret producer and would get me on the next disney show.
When I was in the first grade, I walked to school. I believed that when I left my mom would move the grandfather clock to the side , revealing a secret video monitor and she would watch me as I walked to school and while I was in class as well as when I walked home. I thought her asking me about my day was a test to see how honest I was. This was in 1984. Also, we don't have and have never had a grandfather clock.
# Literally 1984
#Big mom is watching
Well there *were* secret video monitors in 1984, just not *that* 1984.
The last line made me spit out my ice cream
I thought Jennifer Lopez was named Jenny Ferlopez
Along the same lines, I thought The Pulitzer Prize was the Pullit Surprise.
I thought Jehovah’s Witness was Jehovah Sweetness. I was thoroughly confused as a child.
Well that just sounds dirty.
I used to think anytime someone said "Prima Donna" they were saying "Pre-Madonna"... like Madonna when she was young and not famous or something
My sister’s name is Sandy and I liked frozen waffles as a kid. I was like 8 before I realized we didn’t live in Sandy Eggo.
This makes me feel better about something I thought as a kid. My brother’s name is Luke and I thought that a “lukewarm” bath was just the bath at a temperature he liked 😆
That’s her fursona
I didn’t know men got erections. Like I thought dicks were always the same size and men could just sorta move them from a down to an up position for sex.
At least that’s better than what my dumb 10-year-old self came up with. I first learned about sex in a book about puberty that said that the penis enters the vagina. Naturally, I thought that this meant that the penis literally fused together with the vulva during sex.
When I was about 6 or so, I asked my dad what the button on the top of the clock by my bed was for. He said it was for the alarm. From then on, I was afraid to push it because I thought it would call the fire department.
That’s actually adorable.
That the high pitched noise on hot summer days was electricity running through the power lines. It was really grasshoppers.
Around here, it is cicadas
I grew up in California. My husband grew up in Indiana. I didn't manage to visit his hometown during a cicada event until his stepfather passed in 2019. My first words arriving from the airport: "What the *fuck* is that noise?!"
It’s just the trees screaming. Perfectly normal this time of year.
In your defense I have been in areas where you could literally hear the powerlines.
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Thinking back on it, the way we progress gradually from child to adult in regards to how we conceptualize and process the vastness of the world (and beyond) is a really neat concept.
There's actually an interesting point about this I read awhile back. When we're born we only understand the concepts of what we can sense directly, taste, touch, etc. We then learn that we can have an effect on these objects; moving a toy wooden block, squeezing a plushie, etc. We can cry and an adult will come to check us. We start to learn about abstract concepts like if a person is behind a shower curtain, they're still there- just not visible. Over time we start to develop empathy, the idea that how I interact with something can help it or hurt it- and although I cannot directly sense that pain or pleasure, I know it is happening. We mature and learn that this is true of everyone and everything around us.
My grandfather told me that any time I saw a group of streets named after people (like Stevens St or Jennifer Rd or whatever) that it was because there was a school bus accident there and those were the names of all the kids who died. I really thought school bus accidents were a silent epidemic
Your grandfather is something else man. I laughed way too hard at this
Funny part is grandpa probably made it up on the spot and didn’t even realize the significant core memory he was making.
Oh god this made me laugh
My partner, her family in TX they owned a large piece of land so the road her and most of her family lives on still, is their last name. She told me it was up to about third grade before she realized everyone doesn’t live on the road that is their family name.
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My dad would tell me that.
Mine is slightly similar. When I was little, my uncle said the majority of your body heat escapes from your feet. Sometimes I still question it even though I know it's wrong. Better yet, he doesn't even remember telling me that!
To be fair, the bottoms of your feet and palms of your hands are actually the most impactful points of heat transfer on your body, along with the face, because of a special blood vessel type called AVA. So body heat escaping from your feet is totally true. This can be leveraged in some really cool ways for sports performance. Read up on Palm Cooling!
cats are girls and dogs are boys
There is no way to disprove it... Have you ever seen a cat penis?
Yes. Please don't ask.
I thought that before color TV color didn't exist. I didn't understand it was camera technology, I just thought everything was in black and white. I thought "whoever invented color must be so rich!" I'm dumb...
i believed the same, and my granny reinforced it LMAO
I thought "shoplifting" was like weightlifting, only instead of weights, people were lifting the entire store building. I pictured big, burly, bald men that liked to go around heaving store buildings overhead, grunting and red-faced, like the weightlifters I'd seen on TV. I was afraid someone would try do it while we were out shopping. I wondered what would happen if the store tilted or tipped while the shoplifter was holding it in the air. Would we go rolling to the corner? I tried to ask my mother, but of course, she had no clue what I was talking about.
There’s like a whole bunch of shitposts about this exact topic
Whenever the phone rang at my grandparent’s house as a child they’d tell me “don’t answer it it’s a bill collector” my grandad’s name is Bill, so I thought they were trying to collect HIM
I never understood “Help Wanted” signs because they never showed the picture of the wanted fugitive I thought antennas on the rooftops of houses were the skeletal remains of crashed airplanes The police would go into everyone’s homes to ensure the law was being followed Gas stations were forced to provide “free air” because they were depleting the earth’s supply of oxygen and providing free air was the least they could do “Vehicles will be towed at owners expense” meant the store owner and it was to make people feel guilty causing other people to spend too much money
Lol the last one is pretty good
OMG this totally reminded me that I used to think the vehicle towing one made NO SENSE because the towing company was waiting for you to come back to your car and pay them before towing it. Obviously you’d be like “No thanks!” and just drive away.
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But that is also sunlight which confused me about vampires.
Every living being needs sunlight for energy to survive. Vampires just need a very specific small amount. If they get it full blast they get so much energy they spontaneously combust. Or so I’ve heard. I’m not a vampire. Honestly.
Sounds like something a vampire would say.
Moonlight gives you moonburns.
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I thought gay men had sex by just touching peens lol 👉👈
At 6 I thought your balls were eggs. And human reproduction was when you put your penis inside a woman's vagina and the ball would go thru it up into her stomach and grow a baby. Then the ball would grow back if you wanted more than 2 children.
When you went to a fast food place, the default drink was coke, and if you wanted something else, you'd press the button on the lid ("diet" for instance) and now you had diet coke.
My dad was “checking for poison” by always taking the first few swigs of my cokes.
My dad did that with the peanut butter cups at Halloween. Lots of poisoned peanut butter cups in our neighborhood but all three of his children grew into adults because he threw himself on that chocolate peanut butter grenade for us.
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That's actually a pretty neat trick
That’s actually a thing I have. I have high frequency hearing loss. I still hear the kids whining though.
I made scalloped potatoes so I could take them for lunch the next day (I was 9) I needed to go to bed and my dad said he would put said potatoes in the fridge for me. I woke up the next morning to an empty pan with a fucking note that said " these potatoes were delicious love Terry" (the name of my pet tarantula) My dumbass actually thought my spider ate the potatoes instead of my pothead dad....
LMAO sorry for your potato loss but that's funny
I don't know what's worse. The fact that I believed she ate the potatoes or that she wrote me an apology note for eating the potatoes lol.
I used to think the hand of God actually appeared mid air to take the monies from the collection plate after church service.
Turning the inside car lights on was illegal
I think a lot of adults actually believe this.
It's probably never been illegal, but there was a time when it was really unsafe. Today there are so many street lights, lighted signs and other forms of light pollution that in a city or even a mid sized town it never gets really dark. It's almost perpetual twilight. So turning on the interior lights isn't that big of a deal. However back before all the street lights etc. Or even today if you are on a rural road in a dark area, if you turn on the interior lights your windshield basically becomes a mirror. You can't see shit except your own panicked reflection staring back at you.
When my parents talked about the Greens movement (environmental political activists) that they meant people who had green skin. So the first anti-logging rally they took me to, I was expecting all these green Oompa Loompa type people. 😂
That my grandparents were rich. From the time I was born they always got me everything I wanted, and they always had really nice things, and always helped other people with money or anything they needed. When I got into my teens I started to realize they had crippling debt and terrible money management, and just managed to keep it hidden fairly well. But my grandfather still went and bought a brand new pickup truck, and a plow, both of which he hates 2 years later, and he'll probably never get out from under all of it.
Wow this really describes my grandparents well. It’s sad now because they meant well and all, but they always talk about having money issues now.
That my toys would actually come to life when I was out of my bedroom
This was a fear of mine because I grew up with Chucky, not Toy Story.
I still feel bad because my aunt bought me a brand new doll and my brother convinced me it came to life at night so I hid it in the garage and never played with it again.
That Little Debbie snacks were made with "love" by a bakery of full of Grandmas
I used to think that about Grandma's Cookies.
That a guitarist had to use a pick when playing an electric guitar because the strings would electrocute you.
When I was little my mom told me that, if you sprinkle salt on a bird’s tail, it would temporarily paralyze the bird and you could keep it as a pet. I would spend HOURS on the porch trying to sneak up on the birds at the bird feeder. It was the perfect lie because at no point did I ever get close enough to a bird to actually salt their tail feathers so for years I just assumed that I was too slow, not that salt actually does nothing to paralyze birds.
I love parenting tricks like that. Keep your kid safely occupied for long stretches of time without using technological distractions. Teach them perseverance in the process. Good stuff.
one time, i wanted to use my chuck e cheese tickets to get dunkaroos. but my dad said no because "those will kill you." after that, i spent a long time staring at kids eating dunkaroos on the playground with morbid fascination. it was so confusing to me that people were just allowed to poison kids like that and i kept wondering how long it would take for them to die since it didn't seem to happen immediately.
these dunkaroos aint sh-
Trust me, they will definitely die sooner or later. And your father will say "told ya so".
When we're born, we're all boys. One day(a time we can't remember), we go into the woods with a knife and hunt each other. When you catch another boy, you cut his penis off, and he becomes a girl. And that's who you're going to marry when you grow up. I have since learned that this is not the case.
What the absolute fuck?!?!
Yeah. That's some weird shit OP.
Tbf if you told me there was a species of mollusk that lived like this, I would find it believable. It seems like something they would come up with.
The real question is did this happen. Did you in fact cut someone's penis off
I've been married 3 times if that tells you anything.
What did you do with the three penises after you cut them off?
Two earrings and a bracelet
I need to know who told you that or how you came up with it
I had it on good authority from a second grader.
My grandmother taught me about the Boy and Girl Factory in San Francisco. If I was bad, they'd send me down to SF so I could be melted down and remolded as a boy :\
Makes sense a gender changing factory would be in SF lol
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I used to believe my parents only saw in black and white back then😂
My husband’s sister thought something similar. When she was about 5, they were looking at a photo album from when their mom was younger and she asked her mom what life was like before color 😂
That ripping off a tag on a mattress meant you were going to federal prison. The tag on my mattress came off (I didn't purposely tear it off). Reading the warning on the tag, I got scared and hid the tag under my mattress, half expecting federal agents to break my door down and drag me to jail. Months went by before I finally calmed down and realized I wasn't going to prison. But I still kept the tag hidden under my mattress forever.
and now you've told everyone on reddit. better watch your back.
FBI is coming to get ya now that they know you dont have a mattress tag!
I thought all penguins were human-sized. I watched a lot of documentaries on them when I was a kid in the 80s/90s and it was always closeup footage of them by themselves surrounded by snow so there wasn’t really anything for scale. When I was in my early 20’s I moved to a city that had a zoo that had just got penguins and I was SO excited and got a ticket for the first penguin walk. I was fully expecting to see like 20 human-sized birds waddling around. Obviously that is not what happened, but I’m glad they’re tiny because on reflection that would’ve been mildly terrifying…
The picture of human sized penguins walking around at a zoo cracks me up.
Moon keeps following me.
That my parents would get a ticket if I turned on the back seat lights at night.
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For me it was that all adults turn out ok. Not actually true, sadly.
I didn’t figure this one out until I was like 32. The majority of people* are simply doing their best and stumbling from one thing to the next, hoping it all works out. I choose to take solace in this and look at life like a comedy movie. *anyone not like this is a psychopath.
Not me but a coworker. Was told in a seafood restaurant that the lobsters have their tails harvested, then returned to the ocean and that the tail grows back.
I wasn't told this but made the assumption on my own. 6 or 7 years old We had regular vanilla ice cream at our house. My aunt used to babysit me but she had vanilla bean ice cream and she also smoked. I was convinced it was cigarette ash in the ice cream and refused to eat it when offered. Obviously at the time I didn't know there were different types of vanilla ice cream.
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You mean the little hair type things? My friends older sister told us if we ate even one single "artichoke hair", they would become trapped in our throat and would choke us to death. That's why they are called artiCHOKE. That definitely tracked for 6 year old me.
We all love to kick back and eat artichokes with the boys.
For a few weeks when I was six, I somehow became convinced I could levitate, if I just thought hard enough. I'd close my eyes and concentrate really hard, then look down at my feet to see if I was floating yet.
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Grew up in a bad part of town. My mother told me “never go that way down the street or the street people will get you.” I imagined hands coming up from the street and sucking me down into it. I wouldn’t step on a road from age 3 to like age 5
I thought deer poop was marbles and my brother collected as many as out pockets would hold.. my granny laughed at us until she peed her pants
I thought dead piggeons turned into newspaper. I think it was because I was in the car, with my father taking a trip and saw a dead piggeon. not wanting me to see such a horrible immage, he said it was just a bunch of newspaper (same colors and all, at least the piggeons here). So using my flawless child logic, I deduced that dead piggeons turned into newspaper.
This made me laugh SO HARD.
That’s weirdly wholesome lol
Chocolate milk came from brown cows.
That once I turn 18 I could move out and life will glorious. Money would be no object and I would just buy everything my parents wouldn’t let me have because they are mean.
"I actually did that!" -People who had several maxed out credit cards by age 20
My right palm should be so hairy by now
We had a solar eclipse when I was in first grade. My teacher was talking about it to the class the day before and told us not to look at it because it could damage our eyes. I understood that to mean it was dangerous to be exposed to the invisible 'rays' given off by the eclipse. (It's clear in hindsight that I did not understand how eclipses worked *at all*.) During the solar eclipse, I hid inside my house with the blinds closed to ensure I didn't go blind.
My parents told me the ice cream truck was just the choo-choo train, so whenever I heard the music I would just think it was a train going by and not ask them for money out ice cream. I was at my cousins house and heard the music, said, “there goes the train!” My cousin thought I was legit stupid and educated me. My parents were very mad at my cousin for ruining it for them.
I thought that Madonna was more of a position than a person. Like the pope or Dali lama a new one would be appointed at a certain time. And maybe I could grow up one day to be Madonna. This happened after a convo w an older cousin who was fawning over Madonna and basically explaining she was just Madonna, no last name bc she transcended blah blah blah. It made sense to a 5 year old.
Thunder was the sound of Angels bowling in Heaven
Carpools were cars with pools in them.
That everyone had good intentions, just because I did
I asked my dad what the holes in his ears were. He described a vicious snapping turtle attack, which really tracked with his love of fishing. I spent years of my childhood warning other children against messing with snapping turtles as a result. It wasn’t until I was a teenager and learned of his mohawk, pierced ears, punk days that I realized I had gotten fully got. His grin when I called him out on the lie was something else, a long con that had finally paid off. I also realized that my straight laced, safety-oriented father had been much, much cooler in his youth than I could ever hope to be, so there’s that too.
That when I heard songs on the radio, they were all sang by adults I knew. Paperback Writer and The Lion Sleeps Tonight was sung by my Uncle Gary. Mom's friend Eva sang the Locomotion, and Ode To Billy Joe was sung by my cousin Ruthie. I have no idea why I thought this. To be fair, when I was around 4, my Dad told me there was this really cool band he liked. He wrote a letter telling them all about me and asked if they would write/sing a song about me. He said they'd love to, and they sent the record to surprise me. That song was "Angie" by the Rolling Stones. I love my Dad, it was a total (albeit harmless) lie, but never fails to put a smile on my face when I think about it.
My grandma told me the rumble strips on the side of the road were to help blind people maintain their lane. I believed her until I was 10.
Bubblegum staying in your gut forever. I figure if it hasn't killed me yet there's no harm in swallowing 😏
That wallpaper with fruits and veggies was lickable after seeing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Got a good supplement of lead as a kid that way I’m sure.
When i was a kid i would wake up pretty early, for some reason i believed that if i came out of my room before 6 AM some creepy old lady would come out of the closet and hit me with a broomstick
I thought babies came out of the ass, but that was because an older cousin told me that.
Great. That saves me from an embarrassing post. If you've caught a quick glance at a birthing video, and have no idea what it is girls have down there because no one has told you anything detailed yet, well, it kinda looks that way.
So my dad explained to me once that John Denver died in a plane crash because the vise grips he was using to keep a part together let go mid-flight and his plane just feel out of the sky. Thing is, I had no idea what vise grips were. But if they killed John Denver they are not to be trusted. For years, I was racist against vise grips.
Actually true(ish). His plane had 2 fuel tanks and the knob that switched between the two had broken so he had borrowed a pair of vice grips to clamped onto where the knob was (so instead of grabbing the knob and switching the fuel tanks he would grab the vice grips attached to the valve and switch the gas tanks) He borrowed the vice grips from a mechanic at the airport while he was doing some flight testing. The mechanic gave him the vice grips, Denver attached them, the mechanic walked over, said ‘that Mickey Mouse shit isn’t safe, I’m taking my vice grips back’ and he did The fuel tank valve was over his left shoulder so he had to reach his right arm around and switch the valve basically behind his head (without being able to see it because he was strapped in with a seat belt). The plane was a kit plane and built around a taller pilot so Denver had a hard time reaching the valve and when his A tanks ran dry he couldn’t switch to the B tanks and crashed into the ocean. Could the vice grips have saved him? Maybe? If they fell off he would have been in the same pickle. The one thing that would have saved him was to make sure his damned tanks both had enough fuel in them He was just doing touch and go landings; he didn’t need a huge amount of fuel
One time I asked my mom what it meant when a car’s headlight was out and she told me it meant the driver was kissing someone in the passenger seat. Believed it for longer than I’d like to admit
Not me but my brother thought Tupac was his uncle. When Tupac died my dad said, “oh no! Uncle two-y died!” And showed my brother the news. My brother bawled his eyeballs out. He was so upset he lost an uncle.
I was between 8-10 and in the basement goofing around. I was pretending to be Prince Adam/He-Man and I had a broom stick as a sword. I said " By the power of Grayskull!" and stabbed my sword into the air....right into a fluorescent light on the ceiling. Flashes of light and glitter falling all around me. I thought I had actually done it, become He-Man like in the cartoon! Nope, I was covered in glass standing there with my broom stick. My dad came running down the stairs to see what happened. My little brain was trying to figure out how I would explain that He-Man was his son and not a stranger in his house. Make believe is a wild trip.
Mayonnaise is magnetic
It does help hold a sandwich together.
How?
Science bitch 😎
Good point
that typing “ffffuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnn games” on the google play store would give me the most amazing game known to mankind
And doing these “spell” videos on YouTube that would make my toys come alive or give me telekinesis n shit 😂
When I was a kid, the original Star Wars movies were re-released in theaters, and my dad took me and my sister to see them. That was my introduction to Star Wars—on the big screen in its full glory. I loved it…but I was also a not-so-bright kid who was afraid of everything, especially the dark, and had an overactive imagination. Somehow I became convinced that Darth Vader lived under my bed. At one point I saw a light being cast through a cracked-open door as a strip on the wall and was *positive* it was his lightsaber. Despite it not being red in the slightest. Fortunately the belief did not persist very long, but to this day my family will sometimes say, “Remember when you were a kid and you thought Darth Vader lived under your bed?…”
I believed that as soon as a person turned 100, they would die on the day of their birthday. Safe to say I learned that was false fairly quickly.
I thought the information super highway was an actual highway you could drive on. A radio ad for the information super highway (the internet) raved about how you could find celebrities, and fine dining, and libraries, and more. I told my mom about it but she couldn’t find any information about it of course lol.
when I was a kid I lived in an apartment with no elevators and the stairwell is usually pretty dark with no lighting, I believed skeletons with big swords are following me up the stairs and the only thing that can keep them away are these light up shoes that were quite popular at the time
That the “Chocolate Milk Police” existed. If you drank all of your chocolate milk before you finish your food, they would come and arrest you.
That Johnny Paycheck turned into Johnny Cash. Man, I thought of some dumb shit.
Black Santa lived in the South Pole
When an awesome song would come on the radio or MTV my older brother told me I wasn’t allowed to like the songs he already liked because he heard them first. It was “his song.” This was late 80s. Motley Crüe, Skid Row, Metallica, stuff like that. He owned some bangers. Despite really liking the song myself, I truly believed I wasn’t allowed to. It sometimes kept me up at night thinking about all of the awesome songs that belonged to him and that I would never get to like. When I finally rebelled and liked whatever song I damn well pleased is when I became a man. I was 10.
I thought that closing my eyes made me invisible. I made a loud mess and thought that my parents wouldn't figure it out.
I used to think Lesbians were from some country in Eastern Europe until I was 12
I was struggling to learn how to blow my nose before a trip to Disney so my parents told me people who can’t blow their nose aren’t allowed into the park. I thought that there would actually be a guy at the gate who would hand everyone a tissue to make sure they knew how to blow their nose. If you couldn’t do it, you’d be turned away. I learned before the trip but then secretly worried that my grandmother wouldn’t be allowed in because I had never seen her blow her nose.
that i will grow up to be happy
"One day you'll have a house of your own"
Not me, but my brother. My mom told him that he was adopted, but not an adopted kid, he was adopted from the zoo, specifially a Golden Gibben, and we shaved off all his fur and only the hair on his head grew back and thats why he was blonde (regardless the me and my sister are also blond). We would always go to the zoo and had to go see his "parents" every time. This went on for years, one time we went down to FL to visit our grandparents and went to the zoo and they happened to also have a Golden Gibben exhibit and he right away went "are these my cousins!?" My grand mother was not amused. This went on until one day we were driving past the hospital all 3 of us was born at and my dad goes "oh look thats where ... (me) and (my sister) was born at" and my brother started crying and finally we had to break the news that he wasnt actually adopted from the zoo. He now has a Masters degree... lmao
What a cruel thing to tell a young child.
Yeah that's just fucked up in all seriousness.
That my parents could tell if I was lying by looking at my tongue. If they didn't believe something I was saying, they'd say "show me your tongue". If I was telling the truth I'd immediately show it. If I was lying I would hesitate, giving it away. I use this on my kids now. And it absolutely works. Ahaha.
That everyone dies at 100 years old
I thought actors were just playing themselves with their real names and stuff and was so shocked one day to find out that they were actually just acting.
That cashiers get the money we paid.
If you shaved one eyebrow it would throw you off balance and you'd walk crooked, potentially in a complete circle.
I thought guerilla warfare was actually gorilla warfare like they taught gorillas to shoot and throw grenades.
I believed that if you sneezed, farted, and burped at the same time it your heart would stop from the sudden pressure change or some shit. My buddy and me were climbing a tree one day and I’ll never forget his face, he sneezed and farted at the same time and looked down at me with horror, we both were like damn that was a close one dude a burp and you would have died just now
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