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What Were YOUR Erroneous Childhood Beliefs?

"Closed Stacks" A stack is an array of shelves

Or Restricted in the BL. The Victorians were dis-GUST-ing
 
I'm very surprised I've never heard that before, nor heard of the group.

It's mandatory in my house to shout "BONG!" in a deranged kinda way if you happen to hear Big Ben's chimes on the radio or TV - supposed to be the "News at Den*", but generally happens before the 6 o clock news too. This will only make sense to people of a certain age.

*As done by Den Hegarty, the boggle-eyed nutcase singer from Darts, when he was on Tiswas.
 
Closed Stacks! I loved the Stacks at university. I was always tempted by the unreadable.

Challenged by a lecturer who said that no one had ever read Lydgate's Life of Our Lady, I felt duty-bound to find it. I remember those electric stacks, which kept things nice and tight.

Did I read it? Every word! And who is calling me out on it? :p
 
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Mmmm. Deep fried dried starch....
Hang on though...from your link
In only a few seconds they expand from thumb-sized semi-transparent chips to white fluffy crackers, much like popcorn
hehe

For deep fried starch with some questionable seafood flavoring, they're pretty good.
 
Reading over some of the earlier stuff on this forum I remembered a phobia from my childhood. My Father had told me when I was 5 that if a cow ate string that it would tie up their intestines and they would die. As a result I went away and processed that information and decided that if a cow, which was a big animal that could eat grass (and string is generally made from plant material like cotton or sisal or something), and if a cow can't digest that, how could I. This had the corrolary of "how little string do you need to eat to die"? Is just having threat in your mouth enough due to the microparticles that come off the string as dust? And if you can't eat string, how much less can you eat other inedible things? It snowballed. My new phobia was discovered when I refused to eat anything covered in string or that had touched string. I became increasingly anxious over about 2 years before my parents actually gave me the details and I cooled off.

I was discussing this with a friend of mine who told me that he had full-blown Chronophobia as a child, but that is another story.
 
After many years of singing the “We Three Kings” christmas carol one day I finally asked where “Orient R” is located.

I remember lying on the back seat of our car one night looking up out of the back window and being very excited to see the moon following us.
 
We sang in Primary School
"There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall ..."

I was of mature years before it twigged that 'without' meant the opposite of 'within'.
 
scots uses outwith. Not in the hymn though!
 
I thought that the people shot off horses in "Cowboy and Indian" films on the T.V. really died :fire::Givingup:

I knew they were actors but I knew America had the death penalty (I was born '63) `also, they were American films about America
so it was like a form of execution.

When people fainted from shock in t'fillums I thought they were acting that they'd dropped dead from shock, and when they got up or later reappeared I'd frown at the poor continuity.
 
We sang in Primary School
"There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall ..."

I was of mature years before it twigged that 'without' meant the opposite of 'within'.

Puzzled me too, until it was explained to my primary school class. I reckon the teacher herself had been irritated by the term and decided to pass on her interpretation because she didn't want us singing unintelligible rubbish. A true educationist.
 
As a child (and to some extent now) I was terrified of The Elephant Man. For some reason, my mother was fascinated by him, so we travelled to the Royal London Hospital to find out more about him, and I was made to watch the David Lynch film starring John Hurt. The film gave me nightmares, as I was terrified that he would find my house and come into my room at night.

My mother reassured me by saying that he was dead.

Of course, I then was terrified that his ghost would find my house and come into my room at night.

:Givingup:
 
Like Escargot, I was blessed with teachers who WROTE DOWN AND EXPLAINED the lyrics to carols and hymns. Okay, we still had to suffer carols and hymns, but at least we knew what the hell we were singing about.

My own, particular misunderstanding as a child came about as a result of the TV adverts for Kennomeat (or it might have been Pedigree Chum) dog food. They'd show a tin full sliding out onto a plate and being fed to the dog and then the voice over would say something along the lines of 'packed full of stamina', For YEARS I thought 'stamina' was that jelly stuff that stuck the bits of meat together.

I also thought the skin on rice pudding was called 'fowl', until my mother explained that meant chicken. I think I must have heard someone say that the skin on rice pudding is 'foul' and misunderstood...
 
After many years of singing the “We Three Kings” christmas carol one day I finally asked where “Orient R” is located.

I remember lying on the back seat of our car one night looking up out of the back window and being very excited to see the moon following us.

My father is/was a Tottenham supporter. At school and at home we'd sing the adaptation of the hymn:

When a knight won his spurs in the stories of old...

Became:

When Spurs won their matches in the stories of old...
 
Like Escargot, I was blessed with teachers who WROTE DOWN AND EXPLAINED the lyrics to carols and hymns. Okay, we still had to suffer carols and hymns, but at least we knew what the hell we were singing about.

That reminds me of 'Pedagogical Pop', a 15 minute show I used to catch sometimes on the BBC World Service, where the lyrics to current chart songs were dissected & explained for the benefit of foreign listeners. All done in a very dry BBC way.

I remember it from the 70s/80s where they'd pick a song such as Every Breath You Take by Police. It could be a bit comical depending on what song was the subject - "he's expressing his love for her & appreciation of her shapely body using fruit as a metaphor. A metaphor is.."
 
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