Strange Things You Believed As a Kid (Return of a DU Classic)

[CO Liberal]

I grew up in New Jersey. Back then there were three ways to get from New Jersey to Manhattan - the George Washington Bridge (named after George Washington), the Lincoln Tunnel (named after Abraham Lincoln), and the Holland Tunnel (named after Clifford Holland, the man who designed it).

When I was a kid, I though the Holland Tunnel would take you to Holland....

:-)

[cmd]

1. Mom's maiden name was Polen

Naturally, I thought we were Polish.

[Gothic Sponge]

2. From the tone of news reporters....

I Believed Communists were all evil killers.

[jedicord]

3. I was the only real human

and everyone else were robots put here for my entertainment.

Might not have been that off base...

[BlueJazz]

14. Ah..What is your address...Human...?

...um, I mean jedicord...Our units, ah people.... would like to converse....ah..speak to you.

[SiouxJ]

15. I had thoughts like that too

is that a sign of self-centeredness or what?! lol

[Parrcrow]

4. Guerilla warfare in Vietnam

was fought by Gorillas.

[fudge stripe cookays]

5. Ha!

I thought that too.

I pictured crazed monkeys running everywhere.

Hey everybody look! It's parrcrow and those great legs of his! :P

FSC

[Parrcrow]

9. Then the movie Planet of the Apes came out

and really fucked me up

[MaryH]

6. Gorillas?

That's funny because when I was little my Grandmother (who came from Southern Missouri) told me that there were roaming bands of gorillas during the Civil War.

I couldn't figure out why Gorillas would be roaming around.

[Gothic Sponge]

7. Wait!

They aren't fought by Gorillas?



;)

[Blue-Jay]

8. Running in the rain.

When I was little, I believed that if you were quick enough and agile enough, you could actually run between the raindrops without getting wet. Needless to say, I was never quite that quick. I think my older brother told me that one to screw with my head.

Also, I believed that if you sneezed with your eyes open, your eyeballs would pop out of your head. I'm still too scared to test that particular theory.

[Lavender Brown]

11. That does hurt your eyes!

[Snow]

20. But that's true! Any native Seattlite can walk between raindrops...n/t

[jedicord]

10. The Colored People were coming to the Mormon Tabernacle

in Salt Lake City - 1965. HUGE news.

Imagine my disappointment when they came through the door and weren't purple, orange, green, blue, etc.

[Crunchy Frog]

12. When I was really little

I used to think that grownups literaly spoke an entirely different language than children. It seemed that way, when they spoke to each other, it was entirely incomprehensible, but they would speak our own language when they talked to us.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

13. I thought toys were created by magic, a la "Alakazan! POOF!" by Santa

I would caress a toy box, feel the texture of the cardboard and think to myself "Wow! This material was created by MAGIC!"

Also: comic books came up monthly from a vertical tunnel behind the newsstand counter where I couldn't see. Supposedly, from the center of the Earth.*

Also: a couple of maize spikes that hanged at the kitchen wall gave electrical shocks. Mom said that so I wouldn't go and mess with them.

Also: drawing money on a piece of paper so Dad could buy more toys for me.

Also: Ernie, Bert, Big Bird, Cookie Monster etc. really lived. Strangely, ALL other fiction was correctly regarded as fiction by me.

Also: Brazil could NEVER EVER EVER lose a football (soccer) match. When Brazil lost to Holland in the 1974 WC I cried a river.

*this one has an explanation: it was a period of high inflation in Brazil, and the price of everything rose every month. In short form, you'd say "Comics raised" instead of "Comics prices raised". I immediately interpreted that as them going up through the tunnel.

Edit: added Sesame Street thing

[SiouxJ]

16. Well there's the old "swallow a watermelon seed . . .

grow a watermelon in your stomach" thing.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. I was a very advanced and compulsive reader for my age

and I used to read my mother's magazines, including a feature in the Lady's Home Journal called "Tell Me Doctor," whjch was mostly about gynecological problems.

I thus learned about menstruation before I was officially supposed to, and I knew from the magazines that the blood came from the uterus, which I knew to be in the abdomen. I couldn't figure out how the blood got out, but I concluded that it must come out of the navel and that one dabbed at it occasionally with a "sanitary napkin." (My knowledge of anatomy was incomplete at the time.)

Then when I was in fifth grade, we saw the movie and received the pamphlet put out by the sanitary pad company, and I was surprised to learn how the blood actually got out.

[Teddy_Salad]

18. I thought color was invented in the 1950's

All my parents' childhood photographs are in black and white so as a young child looking at them, I naturally thought the entire world was black and white.

The trees, the sky, everything was black and white.

And then I'd see photographs of them when they were older and they would be color photos.
So, naturally, I thought color must have been invented between these two stages and the world was colored by a team of painters or artists.

I asked my Mother one day how old she was when the world was colored. :silly:

Imagine my shock when I learnt it was colored from the beginning of time!
I still haven't gotten over that!

[geniph]

19. I was afraid to flush the toilet,

but not for the normal reason - most little kids are afraid they'll get sucked down - no, I had to be contrary even about that. I was afraid something would come OUT of the toilet when it was flushed and attack me. I think my fuzzy little brain conflated two unrelated events - one was a friend who claimed she'd found a snake in her toilet bowl, and the other was a horrific toilet overflow incident that I witnessed when very small (plumbers were called and carpets were replaced). I'm still paranoid about toilets overflowing.

I had it in my head that if I got out of the room before the toilet bowl emptied, I'd be safe from the crapper demons. So I used to stand like a sprinter, reach as far as I could to flush, then sprint from the room and slam the door behind me. It drove my mother berserk, but not quite as berserk as leaving the toilet unflushed.

[wyldwolf]

21. I thought the cast of TV shows sang the show's theme songs

[TrustingDog]

22. LOL. that's so cute! Grew up in rural Cdn prairies, a town called...

'Ladywood' was often travelled by for visiting relatives...
I remember waking up in the back seat, all sleepy eyed and asking: "Are we in Hollywood yet?"

[SarahB]

23. That straws with aluminum foil could be magic wands.

[NightTrain]

24. I used to believe that the only right way was the American Way.

But then I grew up.

[HEyHEY]

25. That there was a real land where everyone was a cartoon

[gmoney]

26. I thought the bands were at the radio station

...that the Beatles or whoever were somewhere, performing live, taking turns. I guess because on TV, whatever is said appears to be coming from someone's mouth, so it's all performed "live."

Didn't occur to me for a long time that they were simply playing records...

[Champ]

27. I got one

I remember my mom used to always complain, I'm gonna be late, their going to fire me. I thought the place she worked at ACTUALLY set people on fire for being late.

[BlueJazz]

28. When I was about 3 my Mom would take me with her when...

she went shopping. Every time we passed a dress store, I would see the signs: "Ladies Hose" and I couldn't figure out why dress stores sold Garden Hoses for Ladies. :)

[cedahlia]

29. I was a strange, imaginative kid

:)

for starters,

I went through a phase where I thought all the people on Earth were robots and I was the only one who was really alive.

I thought that those big brown, cone-shaped structures that hold road salt actually held orange juice in them (because they resembled those plastic juice extractors.)

In the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, there used to be these steel "rooms" with glass windows along the inside walls of the tunnel, every 100 feet or so...as a kid, I just matter-of-factly decided that witches lived in them. I wasn't scared, I just thought, "yeah, that's where the witches live." :shrug:

[eyesroll]

30. I believed my dad had a friend or relative named Ammy

He talked about taking a trip to see "My Ammy." I asked him who his Ammy was.

Turns out he was just going to Florida.

[LoZoccolo]

31. People had a baby every time they had sex.

So they'd only have it like two or three times their entire lives. I didn't know about contraception until I think like fifth grade.

[LoZoccolo]

32. Also, the "moonies" were people who were just like flashers...

...but they went around showing their butts.

[King Of Paperboys]

33. I always thought the word "misled"

Was pronounced MYzuld.

As in, "Curses! I've been MYzuld again!"

[cleofus1]

34. in kindergarten

someone told me if you swallowed your gum...you would turn into a rug...i believed...the horror...the horror...

[Tom_Foolery]

35. My dad worked in a factory...

so whenever he left for work and said that he was heading off to the plant, I had visions of him as he entered an actual big green plant.

[King Of Paperboys]

36. I love that!

They always told me my dad was an engineer. Naturally, I assumed he drove the train...

[zanana]

39. That I could get a "calling" from God on the phone.

My older sister would torment me sometimes when the phone rang--"It's God, calling you to be a nun"! I'd run and hide under the bed.

[CO Liberal]

37. About Those Tunnels....

I used to think that the Lincoln and Holland tunnels were just lying on the riverbed, when they're actually drilled through the bedrock under the river.

This strange belief was reinforced one afternoon when i was listening to Ted Brown on the old WNEW-AM. He said that the Port Authority had been working all morning drilling holes in the Lincoln Tunnel and plugging them up with corks. And they were going to pull the corks out at 5 0'clock and give everyone a free car wash.

It took my mother a while to explain to me exactly where the tunnels were....

[traco]

38. I thought that if I changed my shorts before going out

it would magically keep them from being soiled if I were to be in an accident!