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What Were YOUR Erroneous Childhood Beliefs?

AmStramGram said:
When I was a very small child, I used to dream that I was a meaningless grain of sand in the immense expanse of the universe. I could feel it viscerally. And I could "see" that this universe itself was a globe, suspended to the ceiling of a child's room, among many other similar globes.
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That one might just be true, sadly, and applies to us all...
 
I just remembered a childhood belief that swept through my infant school in the mid-70s, I suppose I would have been about 6 years old. A nurse came in and did ear examinations with the earometer thingy (just looked it up, an otoscope apparently). Of course, no-one told any of the kids what they were doing, so all the kids started looking at each others' ears to work out what was going on. One of the kids noticed the previously-unnoticed incisura intertragica (intertragic notch), the hollow at the bottom part of the external ear, and became convinced that it wasn't there previously. Suddenly, we all believed that the nurse was using the otoscope to cut out a piece of the ear, even though the examination didn't hurt, and the ear didn't bleed.
 
GerdaWordyer said:
I thought postage stamps upside-down meant "I love you" to the addressee.
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Me too. Never heard it was forbidden.

Coal said:
That there was fate.

There's no such thing and waiting for something good to happen is a waste of time. Go make it happen.
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I had trouble parsing your first sentence. I read it as a reaction:
- Something happened to me.​
- That there was fate!​
And I didn't know who you were reacting to.

It took me a while to realize you meant belief in the existence of fate was your childhood belief.
 
When I was about 3 or 4 I had a eureka moment when I worked out what thunder was! I ran in to mum excitingly telling her that it was 'God having his coal delivered!!!'. I'd just watched the coal man emptying his sack into our coal shed. The loud rumbling noise was the same and there was all the black dust (clouds) and the lightening was Himself striking a match to light his fire. Made perfect sense to me and I was amazed that the adults around me hadn't worked it out for themelves!
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
We always had at least a couple of cats in the house when I was growing up and I can recall my mum buying the occasional little carton of cats' milk.
At first I didn't realise that it was simply cow's milk which had been chemically treated to lower the lactose content and I had visions of weird farms out in the countryside where big fat mama cats were kept in pens, with their teats plugged into milking machines, while they moo/meowed softly.
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Until I read this I thought the special milk for kitten came from cats who were kept for this purpose, never occurred to me it was modified cows milk.

every day is a school day here at FT
 
Being the youngest of 3 boys back in the 1970’s when money was a bit tight, I was convinced by both parents (and my grinning eldest brother) that the Woolworths 1 stripe square toed moulded football boot, was a far superior item of footwear that the more expensive classic retractable stud Adidas Profi football boot.

I was told they would make me run faster on the football field, but of course they didn’t

I had blisters on my heels the size of grapes lol
 
I used to think if you had a magazine photo of a scantily-clad lady, you could scratch the clothes off to see her 'nudie-bits'!
We didn't have many catalogues in our house and discovering the joys of wild jazz-mag hunting, I realised I didn't need to scratch bits off.
 
When i was very young there used to be large billboards at the railway stations showing someone about to have a cup of tea or an icecream.
I used to ask when they were going to have them and my parents used to say it was when our train left the station, much to the amusement of the other passengers.
 
Herr Cloaca said:
I believed that the mannequins in shops used to display clothes were people who were employed to stand very still all day. To be fair, some of those things look really realistic and I was only two foot tall at the time.
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Some of them were people. I think it's a career option that has died on its feet, so to speak.
 
Herr Cloaca said:
I believed that the mannequins in shops used to display clothes were people who were employed to stand very still all day. To be fair, some of those things look really realistic and I was only two foot tall at the time.
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My parents - ever the sticklers for reality - told me that they were people who had demanded too many sweeties.
When you saw them with limbs off ... well, the hazards of eating too much ice cream!
 
When I was four years old , I thought that little men, with pointy heads were going to come ,on a flying carpet, to take me away!
The reason I came to this erroneous belief ,was that ,at that time, I naively believed that all grown-ups were completely honest and never lied.
I'd never had any reason to doubt anything an adult said.

At the end of my street , lived an elderly lady, known locally as Gran Stewart. I was always a bit frightened of her and felt that she didn't like me, for some reason. It turned out, that I was right!

One day, Gran Stewart's granddaughter, who was a year ,or two older than me , came to visit her. I ended up playing with her . We were in Gran Stewart's kitchen ,playing with scraps (remember them?) at the kitchen table. I'd noticed that there was a three penny bit (i'm showing my age, now!) next to the sink, and a short while later, that it had gone. As I was contemplating the whereabouts of the disappeared coin, Gran Stewart came in and also noticed it was missing.

She demanded to know if either of us had taken it. We both denied having done so, but Gran Stewart rounded on me , accused me of theft and said I was a wicked child ! She said that I'd be punished and that little men , with pointy heads , would come on a flying carpet, to take me away. ! Then , she promptly threw me out of the house!

I was terrified! So scared that I didn't dare to run down the street , back home because I was sure the little men, with pointy heads were lurking somewhere , waiting to grab me and whisk me off!

I fled into the garden of the next house along , and hid there , with tears streaming down my cheeks. My mother, with that sixth sense mothers always have, when there is something wrong with their child , came out into the street , to look for me. She found me cowering among the neighbour's shrubs .and had a hard time, coaxing me out!

She was furious when I told her what had happened and made me look up at the sky. She asked me if I could see any little men , with pointy heads , on a flying carpet. I was relieved , to see nothing but clouds and then my mother marched me back to Gran Stewart's house , where she explained that I was very upset , to have been accused of a theft That I hadn't committed!

However , Gran Stewart was unrelenting and said that , as there was no one else in the house , who could possibly have taken the three penny bit , it had to have been me! It didn't occur to her , for one second, that her grandddaughter may have been the culprit!

My mother looked Gran Stewart dead in the eye and replied that it must have been the little men with pointy heads . Hadn't she heard? First they come for your money , then they come back for you! and with that , she dragged me off , home , telling me that Gran Stewart was a silly old woman and that I shouldn't believe anything she said!
 
Cloudbusting said:
I often got mixed up and called the Angel of the North the Fairy of the North... :nods:I really don't think that's what Antony Gormley was going for!
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Angel Of The North and Fairy Of The North is some weird fan fiction....
 
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