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Pierson posted:I thought the 'D' in the Disney logo was some kind of hosed-up swoosh and not a letter at all. I'm a grown rear end man, and that 'D' still looks like a super fancy backwards 'G'. Anyway, when I was a kid, I thought all the buildings that had the word plaza was actually pizza being misspelled. There is also a chain of breweries in my town called Big Dog's Brewing Company, with a dog as part of the logo. So little kid me figured that was a place where people took their dogs to hang out with other dogs.
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Jul 3, 2014 03:01
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My little brother had some really messed up ideas about space. One conversation led to me asking him what he thought stars were made of and how big they were. He stated that stars were made of blown up planets and were no bigger than a baseball. I of course laughed my rear end off since he was 13 when he said this. I have no idea how he managed to get good grades in his science class when he had such a horrible misconception.
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Jul 3, 2014 03:56
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When I was in first grade, there was an option to send your child to "religious education" every Wednesday afternoon for a couple hours. We just called it "Religion," as in, "Hey, do you go to Religion?" I believe our choices were either Catholic or the local Pentecostal freakazoid church. My mom and dad, being lapsed C or E and agnostic, didn't want me to go to either. But those kids? They got loving candy. I had occasionally been to church with my friends and grandparents, and I knew that once all the boring poo poo was over, you got cookies and candy. At my house, I was lucky to get a carob-covered rice cake. We also did not attend church. Ergo, I decided that once I started going to church, I would be allowed to eat all the good poo poo I wanted. But gently caress giving up Sunday, the only day all week that I could sleep in. I might as well go on Wednesdays, since all the non-"religion"-going kids did was sit around eating paste and picking their noses. After a prolonged session of begging, my mom reluctantly agreed to let me go. I got on the bus with my friend Lisa, and went off happily, dreaming of all the Jesusy snacks that awaited me! I should probably have twigged on to the fact that Lisa wasn't allowed to celebrate Halloween because, as she said, "it's the Devil's holiday." Long story short, when I cheerfully told the lady that we didn't go to church at my house, she told me I was going to hell and so was my whole family. I thought she was going to tell Jesus or something and we were all going to die SOON and go to hell. It was a very upset me that arrived home and barricaded myself in my bedroom with the only Bible I could find in the house, which was that picture bible they used to advertise on infomercials. Also, one time when I was 3, I pooped in my pants because I thought it would make it look like I had a bunny tail.
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Jul 3, 2014 04:57
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Parasol Prophet posted:Being a totally smart kid, I put two and two together and decided that if you drank too much whole milk your arteries would literally explode.
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Jul 7, 2014 00:20
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I don't remember how, but when I was about 6, I found out the character on MADtv that goes "Tcha, you know what? Uh uh!" was called The Vancome Lady. Apparently she was supposed to be a makeup saleswoman at one point. But as a dumb male kid I didn't know what Lancome was so I asked my big brother what a Vancome is. "It's an old term for vampire, duh." So, from when I was six to when I was about nine, I thought some vampires just went "Tcha, you know what? Uh uh!"
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Jul 7, 2014 12:27
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When I saw signs for stores/companies that said "Est. 1950" or something, I though "Est" meant "Estimated", as in the founding of the company was so long ago that they weren't sure of the exact year anymore. Only the guys with "Founded 1950" had their history all figured out.
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Jul 7, 2014 13:10
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Datasmurf posted:And when I was a kid, after getting sex ed from a two year older girl in the neighbourhood (so that would make me 5 years old I guess), I thougth the man peed in the woman and that's how you got pregnant. I find it a bit interesting that I had the other parts correct though, and that since the age of 4. drat it, I was going to post this one. I don't know where I got the idea, but I thought babies were made by the man peeing into the woman. Then I told my mother and she said that's not right and later she and dad told me about how it all works. A couple of years later my primary school had a really thorough sex ed class that, without being inappropriate or anything, explained in more detail. Which sucks because whenever you learn something in an academic setting as a kid, no matter how otherwise awesome it might be, it becomes really boring because you have to learn it, and later get tested on it. Case in point: we spent more effort, and learned far more of the language, learning Greek insults to hurl at this intellectually disabled kid who only really understood Greek, than we learned in actual Greek class. Another childhood misconception: that bullying is ok as long as you're not the victim.
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Jul 7, 2014 13:46
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A few that stand out: -The weather was the same everywhere. Whatever conditions were wherever I was at - sunny, rainy, overcast, etc. - that was how it was across the entire world. -If you lost property in a crime (valuables stolen, car vandalized, etc.), the government would fix/replace everything damaged/lost for free. -Wars were fought by each country gathering all of their soldiers/weapons into a big field somewhere and killing each other until all the people on one side were dead. Whichever side had survivors was the winner. If anyone hasn't heard of it, I Used To Believe is a pretty good collection of goody things people thought when they were kids.
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Jul 7, 2014 19:41
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IronClaymore posted:drat it, I was going to post this one. I don't know where I got the idea, but I thought babies were made by the man peeing into the woman. Then I told my mother and she said that's not right and later she and dad told me about how it all works. My earliest bit of sex ed came during Sunday school for some reason (Catholic). We watched some cartoon video that explained the sperm + egg = baby bit, but I don't remember it covering how the two came together. I do remember a shot of the mom and dad sitting together on a loveseat, kind of cuddling. Young effervescible:  That's all it takes?!I thought the sperm just sort of...floated through the air or something and BANG. Pregnant. It made for a worrisome few days at recess until I forgot about it.
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Jul 7, 2014 20:59
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The first couple times I saw Return of the Jedi when I was little, I thought the second Death Star was actually just the remains of the first one that they were repairing.
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Jul 7, 2014 21:33
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I thought the start of a new year was in September because that's when a new school year started. How could two different years start at two different times?
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Jul 8, 2014 01:07
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gradenko_2000 posted:When I saw signs for stores/companies that said "Est. 1950" or something, I though "Est" meant "Estimated", as in the founding of the company was so long ago that they weren't sure of the exact year anymore. I'm ashamed to say that I was probably way out of childhood when I finally figured this out. It clicked when I saw signs like, "Est. 1995" or something really recent, and thinking "That wasn't long ago at all, how the hell could they now know the exact year?"
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Jul 8, 2014 01:10
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I used to think that Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget was just an evil talking arm (after all, that's all you ever saw).
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Jul 8, 2014 15:39
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I thought babies came out of the woman's mouth. I also thought women had cloacas. I mean, I saw that the front and the back were big folds, so they have to connect, right? Mikedawson has a new favorite as of 23:22 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 23:19
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In my hometown, there's a decent sized power plant that's built right alongside a lake. On the top, there are three smokestacks that release steam/smoke into the air. For some reason (around the ages of 3 or 4), both my sisters and I were convinced that it was a cloud factory, and all three of us kept calling the place "cloud makers," much to our mom's amusement. Our mom never corrected us. None of us really recall when we eventually figured out that it was part of a power plant, but I presume right around third or fourth grade.
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Jul 9, 2014 02:17
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The TV in my parent's bedroom when I was very young had a slot in it for keeping the remote when not in use. I thought this was a magic portal into the TV, and would stuff slices of cheese into it to feed Garfield. The closet in my sister's bedroom was haunted. I came to this conclusion because one day, when I was sitting in a high-top chair and reading, the door opened on its own. In reality it just wasn't shut all the way and the draft between my closet and hers eventually pushed it open. But this belief got me four more years of sharing my room with my sister because she was scared to sleep alone. My dad and my grandmother were magic and could fix anything, no matter how broken. I still feel this way about my grandmother even though she's been dead over a year.  Before I was old enough to start school, my grandparent's church was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Until a new building could be had, services were held at the community center and Wednesday night children's sessions in the Gym classrooms of the elementary school. The playground was awesome. There was a great big slide, and it was the best thing ever. I went to a different school fore Pre-K because it was the only class in the county. I was extremely disappointed to find out, upon starting kindergarten, that the slide had been removed and replaced with one of those "all-in-one" playground things. We were told some kid had jumped off the top of the slide and had broken his arm, and that's why it was removed. In the lobby there was a painting of the town and school that showed the slide, a dome jungle gym and a merry go round. I thought they'd all been gotten rid of for the same reason. Stupid kid, ruining everyone else's fun by misusing the playground equipment. In fifth grade I believed I had human rights. This was a few years after No Child Left Behind was passed, and my grade was stuck into some remedial bullshit math program called "America's Choice." I attempted to petition, then forgot all about it, not even knowing what a petition really was. The next day I was in all sorts of trouble from everyone for daring to be unhappy about having to explain why 2+2=4 when I was supposed to be learning the basics of pre-Algebra. Nope, turns out you don't have actual rights until 18, none while in school regardless, and really you're never an adult because there are progressively higher and higher benchmarks of "adulthood" where you become allowed to do things like drink, or rent a car without an "idiot under 25" fee, or pay affordable car insurance rates. I went through the gamut of things little girls want to be when they grow up. The funniest was when I wanted to be a ballerina because my mom's best friend's daughter (I'm named after both the friend and daughter) was a ballerina. Mom told me all about how much ballet hurt Lindsey's feet and that it would make your toes bleed. I didn't connect this to en pointe dancing until much later, and was terrified of shoes that looked like dance shoes because I thought they'd eat my toes. I thought my mom's best friend (from the story above) was an actual witch until I was about 17. Then I thought it was just a bullshit explanation mom came up with to keep me from parroting her calling Olivia a bitch. Nope. Turns out I'd heard right all along, but that it was just a joke.
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Jul 9, 2014 03:16
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I thought the glass insulator dishes on powerlines were lights that could be turned on at special occasions (I just hadn't seen it yet).
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Jul 11, 2014 18:24
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My son thought that only women could do splits because "They have a crack from their butt all the way almost to their belly button so their legs open enough." Watching men's gymnastics cleared all this up later.
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Jul 11, 2014 20:32
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Whoever posted the electric Twister thing, I totally forgot about that. I thought that about the commercials, too, and didn't want to play Twister for that reason. I think something similar would happen in those old Skip-It commercials. I wasn't scared of tripping on the Skip It, I was scared it was going to zap me. One day in pre-school they gave us each a big gummy worm to eat. I wrapped mine in a napkin and threw it away. I mean, it was a real worm, wasn't it? In retrospect i'm not sure why this was the big no-go for me, as at the time me and the other kids used to eat ants out of the sandbox together  In elementary school, one boy in our class who was beloved by everyone was allergic to peanuts. At lunch he had a special table and if you didn't have any peanut stuff in your lunch you could sit with him that day. I was so scared that I was going to trigger his allergies that if I had eaten a Reeses or pb&j and saw him coming toward me at recess, I would run like hell away from him and hide. I was six years old when the show "KABLAM" first started airing on Nickelodeon. It was rated Y7. I was normally a huge stickler for rules, which should have prevented me from watching it, but I felt like such a badass. When I was 2-3 years old, in the town we used to live in, the road perpendicular to ours got some big speedbumps installed. Meanwhile there had also been a storm that hit and my parents were talking about how a big tree got knocked over by it. I figured that when trees fell, they were just too heavy and big to be moved, so if they fell on the road, you'd have to repave the road over it. Also when I was very young my dad used to take me with him when he'd get his haircut at the barbershop. I was a curious kid and was looking through the drawers at the place and came across a plastic bottle with the word "poison" somewhere on it. I dropped it back in the drawer in fear and backed quickly away. It wasn't until many years later that I realized the contents probably had poisonous elements, but it wasn't just literally a bottle of poison sitting there in the barbershop like I had been convinced. (I never did figure out what use they had for a bottle of poison, anyway) The state of Wisconsin was pronounced "Wisskin sin." England and Europe (but specifically England, that was the most important part) were on the eastern coast of Canada. This made the sinking of the Titanic exceptionally sad and tragic because they could have just walked or driven or taken trains to the US anyway. I'm not sure why I had this geographical misconception as one of my favorite possessions in the world in my young life was a globe. I didn't realize that multiple people could have the same first or last name. I also had pretty significant vision problems when I was really young and had terrible difficulty telling faces/people apart from one another. Therefore, our old, old neighbor Bill who never mowed his lawn was clearly Bill Nye, and Mrs. Bush the school nurse was obviously the First Lady. I wondered why no one made a big deal about the fact that the First Lady was working as a nurse at our very own school! I made sure to be very respectful of her. When I was about 10 or 11 years old, I was hanging out at a friend's house. He was a year younger than me but for some reason knew a lot more about "grown up" things than I did. Anyway, we're playing upstairs and sitting on the carpet when I see what looks like a nipple off a baby bottle sitting there in the hallway. I pick it up, laughing, and he explains that a man puts it on his penis for when he has sex. I thought this was so hilarious, the idea of this flat disc-like bottle nipple looking thing precariously stuck on the end of a dude's schlong. Again, years later, I was able to put two and two together. The question that was never answered though is why was there an unused, unwrapped condom sitting in the hallway of my friend's house.
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Jul 15, 2014 19:53
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When I was little my dad presented a hypothetical to me to prove some kind of point? Can't remember what the point was. But I took it as fact and wound up convinced that this girl who went to my school and her family were the Last Koreans On Earth.
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Jul 15, 2014 20:19
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When I was reading up on Mt. Everest in 2nd grade I thought Hillary and Norgay were literally the only people to summit Everest. I mean, you can't even get near the top without oxygen tanks, right? Who on earth would want to do something that dangerous?
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Jul 16, 2014 04:36
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Whenever I saw a car with 4WD written on the side, I thought that must be one of those Fords I kept hearing about. I think that was pretty clever for a 6 year old, even if I was totally wrong.
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Jul 16, 2014 06:25
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Same, except GMC meant "gimmick".
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Jul 16, 2014 11:36
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To be fair you weren't that far off the mark.
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Jul 16, 2014 12:45
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When I was very young, maybe about 4, I used to think that cars could totally transform into other modes of transport and my mum just didn't use them because... uh..  This button obviously turned the car into a rocket. See, that's totally a rocket, why else would they have a picture of a rocket on a big button? (There were never any smokers in my family and this was a while before the ubiquity of cigarette lighter appliances)  This one was behind the big bit of glass behind the steering wheel, guess you've gotta keep it safe there because you don't want to be turning into a boat in the middle of the road! (Bizarrely, it was actually burned into my memory as a pictogram of a little boat floating in water.) Imagine my confusion when we came across a flooded road one day and my mum just sorta sat there and tried to think of a road around it. Come on, the boat button is right there! You never use it!
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Jul 16, 2014 16:09
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I think Arkansas was pronounced "Are-Kansas". I mean...its spelled that way. I told everyone I lived in New England for a few years when I meant the UK. New Englad was a region of the US derp derp. I thought the hood of the car was the top of the area we sat in. So they'd say "pop the hood" and I would crouch down because surely the roof was going to pop off!
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Jul 16, 2014 16:30
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When I was a kid I really loved going to pet stores just to look at the animals and stuff, so I was very excited when a very big store that I thought was called "Pet Boys" was opening up. Alas, it was *Pep* Boys, and it only sold boring car stuff, not cute animals. What a rip-off. I also used to think that butterflies would eat my nose. I have no idea where that came from.
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Jul 16, 2014 16:48
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When I was around 2 - 4 years old, I thought that I'd turn invisible if you poked my bellybutton, and I was terrified that if I became invisible then my Mom and Dad would never be able to find me again. To be fair, I'd gotten the idea from a kid's TV show about a girl who became invisible when she poked her bellybutton, and if it was on TV with real people it MUST be real, right? 
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Jul 16, 2014 16:51
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Foxkit posted:When I was around 2 - 4 years old, I thought that I'd turn invisible if you poked my bellybutton, and I was terrified that if I became invisible then my Mom and Dad would never be able to find me again. Hulubulu Lotte hvor er du henne? They had some great kid's TV at that time. Hulebr00670065006e has a new favorite as of 20:03 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 20:00
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Jastiger posted:I think Arkansas was pronounced "Are-Kansas". I mean...its spelled that way. When I was about 5 or 6, I watched a dvd of a Madonna tour (certain it was Drowned World). There was a part where she pretends to shoot a dancer and he falls over. I thought that Madonna actually killed the guy so every time she had a concert, she had to find dancers willing to die at the end of their performance. There was also a guitar player wearing a shirt that said "Rock God." I guessed it meant that he was the god of rocks.
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Jul 16, 2014 20:08
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I was convinced that moving the hands on a clock backwards would make it run backwards instead of forwards. This continued well into high school as a habit even after the belief behind it dissipated. EDIT: I forgot about this one! It's not my misconception, but one which I saw from the opposing side. The children in my elementary school thought I was British because I don't have a stereotypically southern accent. I admitted to having English ancestry and they claimed that was why I "talked funny." In reality I just enunciated, but try telling that to 80 nine-year-olds. GabrielAisling has a new favorite as of 22:39 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 20:46
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When I was 8 I thought that if I put on a dumb accent or a dumb parody voice, I might lose track of what my real voice was like and then I would be stuck the rest of my life saying things like Elvis or in a Bad British accent until I found what my normal voice sounded like. I think I was a smart enough kid the wave it off as a dumb kid thing, but it lingered in the back of my mind for at least a couple of years.
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Jul 16, 2014 21:53
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bringmyfishback posted:At my house, I was lucky to get a carob-covered rice cake. Nnnnnngh. Memory triggered! So, I know there's a regulation against giving blood before you're 17, but I distinctly remember strapping in and getting my plasma sucked out far, far younger than that. Part of the reason, I guess, is that I have the magic O Neg blood type - and the other part is that I got goddamn Oreos afterwards. I had hippie parents. Cheese on fruit was my treat. I would sure as poo poo endanger myself and get woozy for a few minutes to get my hands in that glorious bucket of free cookies at the blood drive, and everyone was so happy I was there for some reason! My parents were all over the place in regards to religion, so I didn't really encounter any Jesusy stuff except by proxy for the first ten years of my life. It was only in Girl Guides where I met my first real believer, a troop leader who was very eager to explain what Hell was and that it was full of sinners who did drugs, had sex, and made music and art. After quizzing her for a bit, I found out that Jimi Hendrix, Freddie Mercury, all of the awesome philosophers who existed before Christ and most of the awesome laudanum-sipping poets I loved were all happily burning in Hell. The whole "eternal torment" thing didn't click, but the "all the dead people you like are there" bit sure did; I figured Hell was a completely awesome place, like an enormous concert that never ended. I gladly told all the very religious adults how much I wanted to go there. When I was much younger, I believed that since I kicked in a flimsy chainlink fence, I could BEND METAL and had SUPER STRENGTH. Cue an eternity of playground brawls.
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Jul 17, 2014 01:04
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When I was young, I was convinced that computers were incapable of playing games. Every AI player was actually a live person, and there were warehouses full of employees playing every single game there was, so that people had opponents to square off against. I sent taunt after taunt to the computer when I played Age of Empires, because that would surely upset the guy playing the AI and cause him to mess up. e: Umbilical Lotus posted:I believed that when I was playing my Nintendo, there was an actual other person somewhere else in the world that was controlling all the monsters and opponents that I was fighting. I had no concept of even rudimentary AI, but hey, phones existed, surely this couldn't be so hard. Half of the super-secret cheat codes and Gameshark gibberish I tried was attempts to get access to the "other side of the game", so I could harass little girls halfway around the world with endless barrages of Final Fantasy goblins for once. Ofaloaf has a new favorite as of 02:22 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jul 17, 2014 02:14
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I think every one of us laughed at the kid who said "orgasm" instead of "organism" while reading the Science textbook out loud.
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Jul 17, 2014 02:47
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^^^^ In junior high we watching a film and some one asked was plankton was. Wanting to be the smart rear end I shouted out "Its microscopic orgasms" took me a few seconds for my brain to parse what I had just said. I use to think when ever I was sleeping, there was another me the same person awake on the other side of the world. Thats why I had such vivid dreams because I was seeing his life, and my life was his dreams. I also refused to eat cheesecake because who would want to eat a cake made out of cheddar cheese? Darth Freddy has a new favorite as of 02:52 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jul 17, 2014 02:49
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Caedus posted:I think every one of us laughed at the kid who said "orgasm" instead of "organism" while reading the Science textbook out loud. First sex ed talk, guys and girls in separate groups, fifth grade. We were doing final review, and a student asks "So... boys have a penis, girls have a Virginia?"
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Jul 17, 2014 02:51
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Darth Freddy posted:I use to think when ever I was sleeping, there was another me the same person awake on the other side of the world. Thats why I had such vivid dreams because I was seeing his life, and my life was his dreams. I also refused to eat cheesecake because who would want to eat a cake made out of cheddar cheese? I was disappointed to discover that this wasn't what cheesecake was.
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Jul 17, 2014 03:16
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Jastiger posted:I think Arkansas was pronounced "Are-Kansas". I mean...its spelled that way. I thought Worcester was pronounced "War-Chester." e: vvv Here in New England it's "Wister" or "Wistah," depending on the severity of your accent. Neurion has a new favorite as of 04:23 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jul 17, 2014 03:34
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Neurion posted:I thought Worcester was pronounced "War-Chester." Well, depending on the Worcester...
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Jul 17, 2014 04:04
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