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What Were YOUR Erroneous Childhood Beliefs?

OldTimeRadio

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Here are three of mine to start this thread:

1. There are two huge wooden boards out in the middle of the ocean, slimy with seaweed and yoked together by great iron hinges. These boards rhythmically slap together, over and over, creating the tides.

2. The only difference between common yellow clay and solid gold is that the latter has been steeped in water for a very long time.

3. The most intelligent man in the world was a mathematician named Frankenstein, who had been raised from the dead by science so he could build the atomic bomb.
 
I believed that whenever the police caught a "bad guy" they put him in the back of the traffic lights and kept him there to turn them on and off.

Also believed for a while that lemonade was simply made of water and bubble bath. Quickly found out this wasn't true with a little home experimenting.
 
Jahoosafat said:
I believed that whenever the poloce caught a "bad guy" they put him in the back of the traffic lights and kept him there to turn them on and off.

:lol:
You mean they don't? Then how do traffic lights work? :confused:
 
When I was in infant's school, I somehow got the idea into my head that a rather elaborate war memorial in the local park was, in fact, the tomb of Jesus.
 
I believed that watermills had an engine inside which turned the wheel and moved the stream along.

I obviously hadn't thought this through, when you consider how paddle steamers and windmills work. :lol:

The ex-husband, though - a high school science teacher with responsiblilites for sex education - believed until his early 20s that a woman's breasts grew bigger every time a man felt them. So a large-breasted woman must have been very naughty indeed. :shock:
 
I think I've mentioned it before, but I though that little people lived inside the TVs and performed all the programmes. They got into the TV by crawling through the cable which was in fact hollow. (In my defence, I was about four at the time)
 
I think I thought I was a boy. There was certainly some kind of confusion there.

I thought that my mum's name was really Mum. I thought she'd been called by her own name before she had me, and then changed her name to Mum. She told us that she was 21, which I didn't believe, but my brother believed it and told everyone at school.
 
You know, I also believed that things were going to get better, I came home tonight, half full. I had been playing my regular game of texas hold'em tonight. I didn't win, but I did better than I normally do. I got home, and "Deep Rising" is on the TV. Cool, I thibk, a good bad movie is on. This night is going sweet. Then as I'm reading this thread I feel a cockroach crawl over my foot. A really big one too. I have to agree. Life really is only going to get worse isn't it. The sooner I accept this, the happier I can be. I sprayed shitloads of bugspray. Now I can Here the bastard dying. Damn hell of a way to fininsh a good night,

Ithink my point is

I use to think alcohol made adults have a good time, now I'm not so sure.
 
My mother told me the pigeons on the roof opposite were crows who listened to my every word. Not good for mental health and youthful development.
Her hard core catholic beliefs were mixed with a degree of animism, such as turning the mirrors around and putting the cutlery away in a thunderstorm. Basically there were warnings or interdictions for just about everything.
 
colpepper1 said:
My mother told me the pigeons on the roof opposite were crows who listened to my every word. Not good for mental health and youthful development.
Her hard core catholic beliefs were mixed with a degree of animism, such as turning the mirrors around and putting the cutlery away in a thunderstorm. Basically there were warnings or interdictions for just about everything.

wow, and I thought I was a bit weird.
 
My older brother told me (when he was about 7 and I was 4) that if you set foot on the sun, you'd become taffy.
 
I used to believe that I was found under a gooseberry bush - as this is what you would tell an inquisitive child asking where they 'came from' in my local area. A cruel brother also had me thinking I was adopted for the better part of my childhood by using this against me as whenever I asked my parents, I would get this reply. I didn't find my birth certificate until I was 11.

I also believed that attending fitness classes would automatically make you pregnant as my mother would also say that everytime she went to a fitness class or lose weight, she would fall pregnant.

It took me some time to realise the full implications behind that one.
 
When I was about five we were told that an inspector was coming to our school and we had to be on our best behaviour as he had very sharp eyes. I had nightmares for ages about someone with long spikes for eyes.

My friend's daughter came up with a lovely one recently. We were in the car park of a large superstore and she was staring up at the high lamp posts. Then she turned to me and said "Is that what they use to hold up the sky?"
 
Not exactly on-topic, but this made me laugh a few years ago.

A bloke was on t'wireless taking part in a live discussion about mental health.

He said, 'When I was ill, I used to believe that I was outnumbered by psychiatrists and that my thoughts were being broadcast over the air.

Today, here I am, on this platform, facing a panel of members of the psychiatric profession and speaking my opinion live to the nation...' :shock:
 
TheQuixote said:
I also believed that attending fitness classes would automatically make you pregnant as my mother would also say that everytime she went to a fitness class or lose weight, she would fall pregnant.

It took me some time to realise the full implications behind that one.
:rofl: I'm not drinking anything but if I had been I'd have just spit it over my keyboard!

I had a perfectly logical (I thought ;) ) belief when I was a kid. When you watch people on telly you can see them but they can't see you, right? And they are all acting like the camera isn't there, right? So the cameras must be hidden around their houses, obviously. And mine too, obviously. I used to make my own "documentaries" to the cameras that were obviously there. One particular masterpiece, and my finest work to date I suspect, was a documentary on crayons, the different colours and the different effects that could by had by simply pressing harder etc. To this day I still have a vague sense of disappointment that my work was wasted.. :)
 
When I was quite young, probably about 4-6, I spent the whole day from the elevated view of the block of flats we lived in watching a church be demolished*, from what I recall I was waiting for "God to come out", and was quite dissapointed when he/she didn't.

* there's a McDonalds on that site now. Seriously, there is.

My mother also instilled me with her own blend of Catholic upringing and Rosicruianism which screwed me up no end, and yet probably had a great influence on my attraction to Forteanism.
 
I thought that Antarctica was hot and tropical; college students were required to go around in caps and gowns to their classes; getting a bachelors' degree meant staying single. :roll:
 
Nah, it's graduate school which makes you stay single (well, if you're a woman; if you're a man you've probably got some grovelling woman to support you. What, me bitter?!)

When I was a kid, I thought that if I shouted into the TV speakers, they'd hear me back at the studio. I also thought that if a couple got married in a program, they really WERE married, and wondered what the actors thought about it. Also thought you could get to Africa from the end of our street. :) I suppose you could, if you kept going long enough...

This site is hilarious:
http://www.iusedtobelieve.com/
 
Continuing

I believed:

4. If you leave the slightest bit of detergeant film on washed dishes, glasses, cutlery and so on the very next person to use them will drop dead right at the table from "soap poisoning."

5. Prisons have little child-sized electric chairs for younger miscreants.

6. If you put one hand into very hot water and the other into ice water, at the same time, you will die.

7. Roman Catholic altar boys are a special race of midgets who live right in the church.

8. Babies are "delivered" in a panel truck.
 
Second World War lasted Longer than You Thought

Around 1960 my very young first cousin believed that World War Two was still in progress, but that only Bellevue, Kentucky and neighboring Dayton, Kentucky were still fighting it.

Just a few years earlier my younger brother asked me if Mom and Dad had had pet dinosaurs when they were kids.

No, no, I explained, "all the dinosaurs died out millions of years ago."

"Okay," kid brother replied, "So did George Washington have a pet dinosaur?"
 
When I was a kid I used to sleep at my grandmother's place when my parents had a night out. To get me into bed, my granny told me that at 10pm, the electricity company would switch off the electricity, so I couldn't watch TV anymore and might as well go to bed.

I also wondered how fax machines worked and figured out that there was a tightly rolled bit of paper with a message on it that travelled through the cable from one machine to the other...
 
Re: Second World War lasted Longer than You Thought

OldTimeRadio said:
Around 1960 my very young first cousin believed that World War Two was still in progress, but that only Belleve, Kentucky and neighboring Dayton, Kentucky were still fighting it.

How bizarrely specific. Why those two places?

At least he had some idea of when the war was...most of the students I meet don't seem to.

ObOddBelief: I used to think that parents spanked babies a lot, and that's why they cried so much.
 
Re: Second World War lasted Longer than You Thought

Leaferne said:
"How bizarrely specific. Why those two places?"

Because Bellevue (the correct spelling, which I've just corrected in my previous post) is his home town (as well as my own) and there has been for the past century and more an intense high school sports rivalry between the two small cities.
 
1.That " God." existed.


2. That "Prosecuted" meant the same as "Executed " - so when I saw a sign that "trespassers willl be prosecuted" i thought it was a pretty severe punishment just for going on someones property.

-
 
TheQuixote said:
I used to believe that I was found under a gooseberry bush - as this is what you would tell an inquisitive child asking where they 'came from' in my local area. A cruel brother also had me thinking I was adopted for the better part of my childhood by using this against me as whenever I asked my parents, I would get this reply. I didn't find my birth certificate until I was 11.

Oh, you poor thing. You make me want to cry. I used to believe in Santa. Please someone tell me he's real.
 
When I was young, I and a schoolfriend knew that babies 'grew in Mummy's tummy', but we were a bit baffled about how they got out. :?

When his mother told us, we were both a bit shocked! :shock:
 
For years I believed that it was my mate's dad who struck the gong at the beginning of the Rank films .

Another friend said that the cartoon cavalier on the front of McEwans Export cans was based on his dad . I believed it for a while , and funnily enough there was a strong resemblance.
 
I believed that all the events in the Bible happened in Britain.

A friend of mine believed Phil Collins was in Darts.
 
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