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What Were YOUR Erroneous Childhood Beliefs?

Ah bananas, milk an sugar a family favourite in our house. If you were really lucky an it was a Sunday you might get banana an evapourated milk as a treat.
on another fruit related belief, probally already bin dun.....
I believed that apple pips if eaten would grow into trees in your body and swallowed gum would wind itself round your organs and slowly strangle them.

Another apple related one i had was i thought you could get apples out of the junction boxes that hold the wires/gubbings for telephones, traffic lights etc. This was because i saw a guy when i was little fixing one of these. He had the door to the box open and he was crouched down in front of it. He suddenly produced an apple and some change and put them on the top of the box. I presumed, at the time, the apple had come out of the box and the money was change from buying, it.
I used to drive my mum mad requesting a apple when we passed these as a kid an nothing she said would pursuade me that it wasn't true that apples came out of the control boxes for traffic lights.
I now know that the apple was probably from his lunch and the change out of his pocket. He was crouching so the change could have been uncomfortable in his pocket so he took it out, the apple perhaps in the way of him working.
 
:lol: Your own little cargo cult!
 
*bump*

This is such a fun thread, I was thinking maybe it could use some new input.
 
Thanks to the Beano I thought that a haggis was a real animal (I know its been mentioned before, but I thought it was true as a kid).

I also thought until a few years ago that 'detritus' was 'detrious'. It wasn't a word I tended to use so it never came up in conversation that I had the word completely wrong, and I don't recall reading it either! I find it quite astonishing really.
 
If we're including mistaken impressions about words ...

I once had a pair of teachers bring me my graded achievement test (an extraordinary action in and of itself) to specifically inquire why I'd missed a basic vocabulary question.

It turned out that I didn't recognize 'spigot' as the official textual representation for what I'd known for years (phonetically) as 'spicket' (in southern American dialect).
 
I used to think that Idi Amin was the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer.

I was about nine or ten..
 
davidplankton said:
I used to think that Idi Amin was the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer.

I was about nine or ten..
An understandable mistake considering he misappropriated his country's wealth.
 
davidplankton said:
I used to think that Idi Amin was the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer.

I was about nine or ten..

I used the think the VeeExCheqequer was a country and the Chancellor was like the PM or some such.
I also used to think that East Anglia was a different country, this was in the days of East Germany so it's no so much of a stretch.
We had Radio 4 on constantly, except for the daily service, in our house so I heard a lot of terms that I didn't understand. For example I thought that sexual abuse was when people said 'girls are rubbish' or such like. Wish I'd kept hold of that idea.
 
I thought that the Astronaut Scott Carpenter, was actually a Scottish carpenter who was sent into space.
 
I was told - and completely believed - that eating the bruises on bananas stopped your leg bones from breaking. :roll:

I also thought that to become a nun you had to be tortured, and if you could stand that, they let you join up! I'm sure I saw a film at a young kid where nuns were in ice baths, etc and thats prob where the idea came from.
 
I think they torture you after you join up!
 
Well, and I hesitate, apparently when I was around four years of age I asked my grandmother whether everything used to be in black and white. My only excuse is that the saturday television comedies were harold loyd , the three stooges and laurel and hardy re runs. Although looking back the question should have been 'gran were people indestructible in those days?' Thankfully Im far stupider now and know how to enjoy that stupidity.
 
I remember thinking that the Queen and my Nan were the same person when I was very little. Similar hair, and I guess Grandad had a vague look of Prince Philip about him. :lol:
 
CarlosTheDJ said:
I remember thinking that the Queen and my Nan were the same person when I was very little. Similar hair, and I guess Grandad had a vague look of Prince Philip about him. :lol:

Your name isn't Carlos, is it? ;)
 
The town I grew up in was surrounded by hills and me and some other kids convinced ourselves China was just over the one of them!

Also when I was little I believed that you 'went somehere' if you had a dream and any people you saw in the dream were having the same experience and seeing you.
 
celticguy said:
Also when I was little I believed that you 'went somehere' if you had a dream and any people you saw in the dream were having the same experience and seeing you.

How do we know that isn't what happens?
 
I once saw Kenny Everett fall down the plug hole on his TV show. Couldn't get me in the bath for weeks...
 
Mythopoeika said:
celticguy said:
Also when I was little I believed that you 'went somehere' if you had a dream and any people you saw in the dream were having the same experience and seeing you.

How do we know that isn't what happens?
I really don't think it happens that often.
 
pain1277.gif
 
I thought the whole sky was moving, not just the clouds.

I thought Jarrow was somewhere foreign. In reality it was a town a couple of miles away. To be fair I'd never been. It was across the river and that might as well have been foreign. I still think it sounds foreign!

I think many will relate to this one...that the North and South poles had big candy striped poles marking the top and bottom of The Earth.

That all people from Africa, Australia and New Zealand were black. I was very confused when a choir of Kiwi kids came on a variety show and were all white!

That my nails wouldn't grow back if I bit them (thanks mother)
 
Ilikepencils said:
I think many will relate to this one...that the North and South poles had big candy striped poles marking the top and bottom of The Earth.
:oops:
 
For years and years, I thought Billericay was in Ireland.

I still remember the shock when I found out; I was in my early twenties :oops:
 
Fluttermoth said:
For years and years, I thought Billericay was in Ireland.

I still remember the shock when I found out; I was in my early twenties :oops:

you mean to say it's not?? :oops:
 
cherrybomb said:
Fluttermoth said:
For years and years, I thought Billericay was in Ireland.

I still remember the shock when I found out; I was in my early twenties :oops:

you mean to say it's not?? :oops:
it's not, but it should be! It sounds Irish.
 
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