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What Were YOUR Erroneous Childhood Beliefs?

My brother told his teachers and classmates in all earnest that our mother was a witch. He would have been about five or six and she found out at a parents evening.

If he bugged her what was for dinner or what she was cooking, she'd jokingly tell him "snips and snails and puppy dog tails". The freak really believed her and bragged about it to his mates.
 
I believed my Mum when she told me she was 21.
 
emmbob said:
I believed my Mum when she told me she was 21.
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Ha! Mums have a lot to answer for...I was doing a school project when young (Early junior school age.) and needed my mums date of birth. I figured out from it she was 29, which she agreed. Well, I've always stuck to that age line with her (Like happy 30th, 40th ect.) untill I tried planning a big 50th birthday party surprise for her with the help of her then current boyfriend. He helped alright, told me she was 50 the year before! Yup, I confronted her and she finally admited it. I can understand why she gave that age for school but not to tell me, her daughter, her real age for over20 years?!
 
I never knew my mother's real age until we threw her a big party for her 50th, and even then I wasn't convinced.
 
I, like a lot of people, believed the person on TV could see you, so I'd stop picking my nose when they were looking.

My friend told me when he was about seven he was peeing into a urinal when the big guy standing next to him told him that when you grow up you pee out those yellow chunks (urinal cakes).
 
escargot1 said:
I never knew my mother's real age until we threw her a big party for her 50th, and even then I wasn't convinced.
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Hmm, me too. :?

All these relatives posts have just reminded me of something. When I was really little and used to ask my grandad to play chase, or have a race, he'd say, "Ooh, I can't, I have a bone in my leg." He'd then offer up a leg and point to it to illustraite. I really belived he couldn't run because of his bone! :rofl:
 
H_James said:
emmbob said:
I believed my Mum when she told me she was 21.
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I believed my Grandmother when she told me she was 21.
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My Mom informed me that it was getting harder and harder for her to convince people that she was just 39 years old and that this was all my fault. She told me this on my 40th birthday.
 
akaWiintermoon said:
When I was really little and used to ask my grandad to play chase, or have a race, he'd say, "Ooh, I can't, I have a bone in my leg." He'd then offer up a leg and point to it to illustraite. I really belived he couldn't run because of his bone! :rofl:
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That particular disease seems to strike on both sides of the Atlantic.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
That particular disease seems to strike on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Seriously?! lol The wierd thing was, in his eighties he had to had both legs amputated. No bones, but he certainly couldn't run then!
 
akaWiintermoon said:
Seriously?! lol!
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Yes, but I was so literal-minded as a kid that I interpreted this as meaning "I have a painful bone in my leg."

I don't believe I ever fully understood the joke until today!
 
I can confess to having been the original source of a persistent childhood belief (on the part of my little brother).

As little brothers are wont to do, mine bugged me by following along everywhere. As big brothers are wont to do, I tried to 'shake him off' at every opportunity so I could run off to be with my friends.

One day we'd parked our bicycles at an abandoned barn and I was desperately mulling over how to lose him. When idleness failed to bore him into returning home, I decided to move out again. As he went for his bicycle a large fly-type insect landed on his bike seat. I forget the name of the insect - I seem to recall it being in the fly family, though it looked like a large fuzzy mosquito.

I grabbed my brother before he could touch his bike and pointed out the insect. I asked him if he'd not recognized the 'hairy mammothia'. When he said no, I went on to weave a tale of this oddball fly thing being as poisonous as a black widow and as mean as a hornet. I warned him not to mess with it and told him he'd just have to wait until it flew off of its own accord ... Scared, he backed away ... ... and (naturally) I took off on my bike ...

Fast-forward circa 20 years.

Now adults, my brother and I are hiking in a forest and take a break. At one point I reach around for a canteen, and he quickly grabs and restrains my arm. Huh? He then directed my attention to the canteen, upon which perched one of these insects known only to the two of us as the 'hairy mammothia'. It actually took me a minute to remember the term and how it originated.

... and thus ensued a strange (and occasionally tense) discussion in which I had to convince him there'd never been such a thing as a 'hairy mammothia' ...

In that moment, my brother was considerably less than amused (having told others about the hairy mammothia for years). We both laugh about it now ...
 
OldTimeRadio said:
captainwack said:
And also I remember believing that commercial jet planes were called skyscapers because of the trails they would leave behind.
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Doesn't that make you the inventor of chemtrails?
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Bloody hell! I don't think there were chemtrails in the 70's! Would explain
alot though! I also used to toy with the idea that the world was a fully functioning film set for some reason.

And I used to imagine that my whole life was just a set of experiences
fed to my mind while I floated in a vat of liquid in a laboratory!

Too much 2000AD methinks!
 
Being a solipsic little child, I remember wondering if reality existed when I was not observing it. I remember trying to turn my head very fast, thinking that perhaps I would then see a blank white space quickly being filled out with objects and people and reality.
 
Dylan Thomas' poem 'The Hunchback In The Park' is about a similar childhood idea, that the contents of a park where a child plays are not there at night and have to troop back into place before anyone sees them every morning. :D

The Hunchback in the Park
by Dylan Thomas

The hunchback in the park
A solitary mister
Propped between trees and water
From the opening of the garden lock
That lets the trees and water enter
Until the Sunday sombre bell at dark


Eating bread from a newspaper
Drinking water from the chained cup
That the children filled with gravel
In the fountain basin where I sailed my ship
Slept at night in a dog kennel
But nobody chained him up.


Like the park birds he came early
Like the water he sat down
And Mister they called Hey mister
The truant boys from the town
Running when he had heard them clearly
On out of sound


Past lake and rockery
Laughing when he shook his paper
Hunchbacked in mockery
Through the loud zoo of the willow groves
Dodging the park keeper
With his stick that picked up leaves.


And the old dog sleeper
Alone between nurses and swans
While the boys among willows
Made the tigers jump out of their eyes
To roar on the rockery stones
And the groves were blue with sailors


Made all day until bell time
A woman figure without fault
Straight as a young elm
Straight and tall from his crooked bones
That she might stand in the night
After the locks and chains


All night in the unmade park
After the railings and shrubberies
The birds the grass the trees the lake
And the wild boys innocent as strawberries
Had followed the hunchback
To his kennel in the dark.
 
I believed that the kind of facial hair men had was determined from birth, similar to what hair colour they would have. I just thought some men grew mustaches while others had beard or no facial hair not knowing it was about how they shave.
 
captainwack said:
Bloody hell! I don't think there were chemtrails in the 70's!
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I just wanna pinch your little cheeks. There have been "chemtrails" since there have been airplanes flying high enough for ice crystals to condense on their exhaust. I've seen them my entire life (i.e., since 1961) and it's only in the last few years that I knew anybody was weirded out by them. It's possible that, as an Air Force brat, I noticed them more than some people - living near bases, having my attention directed to airplanes because my dad and brother were interested in them, going to see the Blue Angels and other airshows and watching the complex webs of contrails dissipate gradually on the wind long after the planes had come down - but they've been here all along, whether anyone was noticing them or not.
 
There have been "chemtrails" since there have been airplanes flying high enough for ice crystals to condense on their exhaust
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Ah, but they are contrails.
They actually exist ;)
 
FABIO88 said:
I, like a lot of people, believed the person on TV could see you, so I'd stop picking my nose when they were looking.
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I remember that in my childhood such a view was rather encouraged by television children's proogramming hosts.
 
Xanatico said:
I believed that the kind of facial hair men had was determined from birth, similar to what hair colour they would have. I just thought some men grew mustaches while others had beard or no facial hair not knowing it was about how they shave.
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Oh, so THAT'S it.
 
Xanatico said:
Being a solipsic little child, I remember wondering if reality existed when I was not observing it. I remember trying to turn my head very fast, thinking that perhaps I would then see a blank white space quickly being filled out with objects and people and reality.
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My old friend the late Lou Tabakow told me that he'd often jerk his head around fast as a small child "to see if I could catch the scenes being changed."
 
FABIO88 said:
I, like a lot of people, believed the person on TV could see you, so I'd stop picking my nose when they were looking.
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When my hubby used to work on technical faults for NTL people used to ask if he could see them through the box! These are grown adults!!
Not that he ever did, but some people when they realised the caller was of limited mental power would play a tricks on them. One favourite was if they called to have a new channel added they would beam it to their remote. They would get the person to hold the remote out of the window so they could send the channel from the satellite, yes I know they are a cable company.
 
When I was younger I thought "Rock Me Amadeus" by Falco was the title song from the Oscar-winning film Amadeus.
 
PeniG said:
captainwack said:
Bloody hell! I don't think there were chemtrails in the 70's!
Click to expand...

I just wanna pinch your little cheeks.
There have been "chemtrails" since there have been airplanes flying high enough for ice crystals to condense on their exhaust.
Click to expand...
I've seen them my entire life (i.e., since 1961) and it's only in the last few years that I knew anybody was weirded out by them. It's possible that, as an Air Force brat, I noticed them more than some people - living near bases, having my attention directed to airplanes because my dad and brother were interested in them, going to see the Blue Angels and other airshows and watching the complex webs of contrails dissipate gradually on the wind long after the planes had come down - but they've been here all along, whether anyone was noticing them or not.
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I kinda meant the more sinister criss cross formations you see early in the morning that seem to hang around for hours, turning a sunny day into crappy overcast and sometimes rainy day!










I'll get me foil hat.
 
I remember the first impressive "chemtrails" I ever saw, back in the mid-1980s, several years before I actually encounted the term "chemtrails."

Five-to-eight trails crossed horizon to horizon, north to south, as fresh and as sharp as if they been drawn with a paint brush held against an artists' straight-edge.

An equal number crossed east-west in the same manner.

This created a checkerboard effect at the center.

The "checker board" was situated DIRECTLY over the intersection of Vine Street and McMillan Street, the first major intersection north of downtown Cincinnati.
 
I just did an exam in geomorphology, and remembered another one. As a kid I thought that volcanoes and mountains were the same thing, except that with volcanoes the top had fallen off so the lava could come out. I thnk it might have been inspired by a childrens book where someone flying too low in an airplane hit a mountain and the top of it came off.
 
Xanatico said:
As a kid I thought that volcanoes and mountains were the same thing, except that with volcanoes the top had fallen off so the lava could come out.
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Childhood belief? I still believe that one! Well, almost. <ggg>
 
Well, I thought I had already replied to this thread, but I can't find my post :roll: so here goes (sorry if you've heard it already! 8) ):

I thought that dogs and cats were the same animal, just that cats were the females and dogs the males (even tho I had a male cat and a female dog at the time!! :shock: :lol: )

I thought it was illegal for a woman to marry a man younger than herself (luckily I didn't know at the time that my maternal grandfather was two whole months younger than my grandmother lol)

I worried when eating watermelons that I might swallow a seed by accident; somehow I thought it would take root in my tummy and grow, so if I did swallow a seed or two by accident, I would anxiously watch my tummy over the next few days to see if my stomach was beginning to swell--and yes, I know Freud would have had a field day with that one..... ;)
 
I remember somebody saying that about cats and dogs, so your memory is probably correct. We might have both slipped into a universe in which you hadn't posted it from another in whichyou had, however.

Somebody probably told you about the watermelon seed. It's traditional, when a young child asks why a pregnant lady is so fat, to say that she swallowed a watermelon seed rather than explain the Hideous Truth (it being so much more desirable for them to find out how their bodies work after they get pregnant...)
 
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