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What Were YOUR Erroneous Childhood Beliefs?

Comfortably Numb said:
I never questioned this and wouldn't come out from under the sheets...

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Was that to make you go to bed and stay there?

In my home town (as I've probably mentioned) we kids were told to be in bed asleep before Ten o'Clock 'orses arrived.
This didn't scare me as there was no detail available about these enigmatic steeds. It was just a local saying.

As it turned out there really WERE Ten o'Clock Horses on patrol and every reason to be in bed when they passed. :salute:
 
Have we had the one yet about if you swallowed chewing gum it would wrap around your tonsils and kill you? .. I was talking about that with the Mrs a couple of days ago and she admitted she'd once swallowed gum as a kid and was convinced she was going to die.
 
Back as children in the mid 70s, we believed that if you cut the skin all around the wrist joint, your hand would fall off - presumably we believed the same for a foot, your head, whatever...
 
charliebrown said:
How old were you when you realized Santa Clause was not real ?

I don’t think I ever accepted that Santa Clause was real, maybe because my family was poor when I was young.

But my mom always had stockings hung with our names on them no matter what.

I did get a electric train set once and I was so happy I ran it to death.
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I don't think I ever believed in Father Christmas. If I did, I'd stopped at a very early age. My parents were rationalists and I was an exceptionally sceptical child though, so I think they probably took one look at me and thought 'let's not bother'.

I did, however, believe that there were no days or dates beyond Christmas day, time just sort of ...passed, and it all restarted when you got to 01 January of the next year.
 
In our house Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were always treated as fictions that were fun to pretend to believe in. On the other hand, influenced by various fantasy TV shows and movies, I maintained a belief for a very long time that Santa might really exist if you believed in him. I'm not sure that one has totally gone away. And I still have a fascination with depictions of Santa that deviate from the Coca-Cola standard, particularly the tall, thin St. Nick types.

I always believed stepping on cracks was bad luck, but didn't hear the common "...and break your mother's back" reason until I was 10 or so. When I asked my mother about it, she said she wasn't familiar with it, but grew up hearing "Step on a crack and you'll piss in bed." Here is Gahan Wilson's take on it from his "Strange Beliefs of Children" in an old National Lampoon:
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I just remembered another belief of my childhood: The Memorial Day ceremonies I would attend typically would have 7 rifles fired three times as a tribute to the war dead, followed by the playing of "Taps". I thought the "Taps" was in tribute to anyone who was accidentally killed by the rifles that had just been fired.
 
Swifty said:
Have we had the one yet about if you swallowed chewing gum it would wrap around your tonsils and kill you? .. I was talking about that with the Mrs a couple of days ago and she admitted she'd once swallowed gum as a kid and was convinced she was going to die.
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My mum used to tell me that too. Another one was if you swallowed cherry stones or pips they would get stuck in your appendix and you would have to have it taken out. I can remember accidentally swallowing the odd one and being convinced I could feel a twinge for a day or so:chuckle:
 
Giant R said:
My mum used to tell me that too. Another one was if you swallowed cherry stones or pips they would get stuck in your appendix and you would have to have it taken out. I can remember accidentally swallowing the odd one and being convinced I could feel a twinge for a day or so:chuckle:
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We were told apple pips would do this. I can still imagine the process whereby it would happen, with a passing pip being suddenly drawn into a sort of fleshy porthole to week havoc. Sharp end first. :chuckle:

I didn't believe it because while people must accidentally eat pips every day the streets weren't full of victims writhing in pain. :wink2:

If I swallowed any pips I'd still worry briefly, and then be distracted by the thought of lovely hospital food and kindly nurses. :)
 
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Giant R said:
My mum used to tell me that too. Another one was if you swallowed cherry stones or pips they would get stuck in your appendix and you would have to have it taken out. I can remember accidentally swallowing the odd one and being convinced I could feel a twinge for a day or so:chuckle:
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I remember reading a report of some man who'd ingested an apple pip and it had actually started growing in one of his lungs so it had to be surgically removed. It could be 'fake news' of course although the article did include an x ray of his/a lung with a small sapling looking growth.
 
Swifty said:
I remember reading a report of some man who'd ingested an apple pip and it had actually started growing in one of his lungs so it had to be surgically removed. It could be 'fake news' of course although the article did include an x ray of his/a lung with a small sapling looking growth.
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Yup, Mr Ballen covered that on YouTube.

(It reminded me of when I once coughed up a tree. o_O
Well, a lung cast. Horrifying.

I think it was when Techy and I both had a recurring cold-bug that had us too weak to shop so we ended up living off a box of canned food I'd bought from a car boot sale and shoved in the shed because I didn't want to admit where I'd got it. :chuckle: )
 
ChasFink mentioned Santa and Coke.

It occurred to me that when I was a child ( a long time ago ) that there must have been a million signs ( exaggeration ) showing Santa Clause downing a bottle of Coke-Cola.

Now it seems that their Christmas commercials have gone to happy Polar Bears downing a Coke-cola and looking at the Northern Lights.
 
charliebrown said:
I never went for storks dropping babies down the chimney for a family to have a baby.

At a young age I did not know how, but I knew pregnant women and babies went together.
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I was pretty much the same. In fact, I was blissfully naive of the details of sexual reproduction until about the age of 10 or 12 when I read about it in an encyclopedia. My parents, knowing I was bright for my age, assumed I had figured it out long before.

As for eating apple pips (or seeds, as we unimaginably call them in America): While the kind of horrors escargot and Swifty mention are unlikely, it should be noted that apple seeds are mildly poisonous, and eating more than a couple of apple's worth will make you sick.
 
ChasFink said:
I was pretty much the same. In fact, I was blissfully naive of the details of sexual reproduction until about the age of 10 or 12 when I read about it in an encyclopedia. My parents, knowing I was bright for my age, assumed I had figured it out long before.

As for eating apple pips (or seeds, as we unimaginably call them in America): While the kind of horrors escargot and Swifty mention are unlikely, it should be noted that apple seeds are mildly poisonous, and eating more than a couple of apple's worth will make you sick.
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I remember hearing, (maybe an UL), of a guy who liked to eat apple pips, he saved up a load and ate them causing his death.
 
I believe apple seeds have a trace amount of arsenic, but such a small amount that you would need to eat sackfuls of seeds to die from arsenic poisoning. I could well be wrong though!
 
SimonBurchell said:
I believe apple seeds have a trace amount of arsenic, but such a small amount that you would need to eat sackfuls of seeds to die from arsenic poisoning. I could well be wrong though!
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They also contain cyanide.
You'd have to eat a LOT in one go for them to poison you.
 
escargot said:
Was that to make you go to bed and stay there?
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That was indeed surely the plot!

Then I grew up and became a Partick Thistle supporter.

Often after watching a game, it's the same outcome, when I think about it...
 
My dad always watched a cowboy film on a Sunday afternoon and I grew up thinking those California back lots were somewhere down South - maybe near London. I had no idea America wasn't in England.
 
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