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What Were YOUR Erroneous Childhood Beliefs?

My co-workers are very amused that I don't like the cold, even though I come from a cold country. I have to explain that in my country, we have something called indoor heating, which doesn't exist here and is sorely missed in the few weeks of the year when it gets below 10°C.
 
My co-workers are very amused that I don't like the cold, even though I come from a cold country. I have to explain that in my country, we have something called indoor heating, which doesn't exist here and is sorely missed in the few weeks of the year when it gets below 10°C.

Seriously - no indoor heating? In Hong Kong?
 
Whenever I saw the Remington shaver adverts I used to be amazed that the President of the United States was presenting them... :doh:

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Seriously - no indoor heating? In Hong Kong?
Not unless you're on a bus, or certainly not anywhere I've ever worked. It's exactly parallel to how in the UK we don't have air-conditioning, because we only have a week or two each year when it would be useful.
 
Not unless you're on a bus, or certainly not anywhere I've ever worked. It's exactly parallel to how in the UK we don't have air-conditioning, because we only have a week or two each year when it would be useful.

Right - I was assuming it got cold at some point in winter but if not, then no need. But most have air-con for summer?
 
Right - I was assuming it got cold at some point in winter but if not, then no need. But most have air-con for summer?
It does get cold in the winter, just not for long enough that people will invest in heaters.

Air-con is not just for summer but for almost all of the year round.
 
Just remembered another one, when I was very young, I thought that cars ran on porridge. I have no idea where that came from, I'm wondering if there might have been a children's story involving a car being fed porridge or something. Either that or I've misheard fuel as food or something.
 
I was 7, two Teachers were having a quiet conversation between themselves and I overheard the words 'Concentration Camp' for the first time. I had no context or understanding of the term but it filled me with dread. I imagined rows and rows of desks where you had to do hard sums whilst some-one stood behind you making sure you didn't fidget and that you concentrated ALL THE TIME.
 
That one had to wait an hour after eating before going swimming lest you got a stitch and drowned. This was the bane of my young summers (as well as many other young Australians) as this was a common belief. Summer days at the pool or the beach often were met with cries of "I'm not hungry'' at lunch time otherwise you had to sit bored, counting the minutes down until it was safe to enter the water again.
I did, until this post, still believe this! The cramps, the cramps!
 
I believed that all the events in the Bible happened in Britain.

A friend of mine believed Phil Collins was in Darts.

What is 'Darts'?

Do you mean the arrow-throwing pub game?
 
I'm very surprised I've never heard that before, nor heard of the group.

In one of Danny Baker's autobiographies, he said the band he toured with that partied the hardest, were completely wild and out of control, were not some metal or punk band, but Darts. Make of that what you will.
 
Tapioca was tropical frogs eggs

Local Public Libraries had underground storage with all the books hidden there
 
My auntie (actually one of my dad’s cousins – but they were all ‘aunts’ to me) was a water bailiff – managing her particular river kingdom from the early 50’s right through into the 80’s, and allegedly the first woman in Britain ever to be employed in such a capacity. When I was very young I was not familiar with the word, or with the concept of a bailiff – but I watched The Herbs, and I knew that Bayleaf was a gardener, so I thought she had something to do with making water grow. This didn’t seem entirely illogical to my young imagination: when there was a flood, then someone had grown too much; when there was a drought, it was because the crop of water had failed. My auntie of course grew just the right amount to keep the fish happy.

On one visit to her differently organised cottage I was fascinated by the carcass of a rusty motorbike, wheel-less and forlorn, propped up on a sturdy old workbench that served as her kitchen table. Not being exactly sure what it was, I asked my dad.

Now, I’m really not sure now whether my dad was mucking around with me, or if I just misheard his response, or if he had misunderstood what I’d asked him - but for a long time afterwards I believed that my auntie had invented something called a Teasmade, and that it looked a bit like a motorbike without wheels.
 
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I used to believe that prawn crackers were made from 'popped prawns'. You know like popcorn. To this day I'm not entirely sure that's not true.

Here, let me help you with wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prawn_cracker
Everything you ever wanted to know about prawn crackers but were afraid to ask.
On a related topic, I could never credit the idea that Oyster sauce actually contained oysters.
I thought it was just a condiment for use ON oysters (like dumpling sauce).
Nope. It has oysters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_sauce
 
Local Public Libraries had underground storage with all the books hidden there

I learned to use the library's catalogues* at an annoyingly early age. Certain pages were stamped with a large, red C. S. I soon worked out that these were the items which did not appear on the shelves. I should have worked out that it meant Closed Shelves but I imagined it meant Cold Storage. The books and records I delighted in sending the librarians to retrieve were always rather cold, so I imagined they did come from a cellar!

I know that some libraries used the Closed Shelves system to protect the eyes of the public from risqué material. Maybe I should have explored beyond the unpopular Russian operas it was my delight to have called back from Hades! :crazy:

*These were solid wooden block-type binders, bound in maroon leather or leatherette, much wider than they were high. Entries were monotyped on India-paper with red and black ribbon. The assembly could be unscrewed to interpose new leaves. I mention this, since many may never have encountered them! They may exist in some libraries still but I have never had to use one in decades.
 
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I learned to use the library's catalogues* at an annoyingly early age. Certain pages were stamped with a large, red C. S. I soon worked out that these were the items which did not appear on the shelves. I should have worked out that it meant Closed Shelves but I imagined it meant Cold Storage. The books and records I delighted in sending the librarians to retrieve were always rather cold, so I imagined they did come from a cellar!

I know that some libraries used the Closed Shelves system to protect the eyes of the public from risqué material. Maybe I should have explored beyond the unpopular Russian operas it was my delight to have called back from Hades! :crazy:

*These were solid wooden block-type binders, bound in maroon leather or leatherette, much wider than they were high. Entries were monotyped on India-paper with red and black ribbon. The assembly could be unscrewed to interpose new leaves. I mention this, since many may never have encountered them! They may exist in some libraries still but I have never had to use one in decades.
 
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