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What Were YOUR Erroneous Childhood Beliefs?

As a child I was convinced that if you twiddled your finger in your navel your legs would come unscrewed, poor understanding of anatomy or over exposure to Sindy dolls?,

It worried me for years that ladies in bikinis could accidently loose their legs when towelling off after swimming. :oops:

Nic
 
Many years ago, when I was 8-ish and my brother about 5, the family went on a trip to Cannock Chase which included a visit to the German War Cemetary (I believe all Germans who died on British soil in WWII are there - apart from the ones in "The Eagle Has Landed"!).

As we arrived, since my brother didn't know what a cemetary was, Dad explained that it's where they put dead bodies. So we went in, and my brother looked terribly disappointed. "Where are all the bodies?", he asked. Well, Dad had promised!
 
I believed that Margaret Thatcher was the Queen's daughter and that she would be Queen next and the Queen would then be the Queen Mother.

I also believed, and convinced my sister, that we could store up enough energy using the see-saw to make lightning strike - we put hours of effort in to that one.

Believed that Americans often travelled in barrels (I think this is to do with Niagra Falls attempts on the news)

Thought that sinks had one tap for water and the other for Lemon Barley Water.

:)
 
Rarebird's on to us, everyone! Hide your barrels!
 
When i was really small we lived in a lane with a farm further up it.
Every morning I suppose after milking.the farmer would drive them up the lane to a field to graze.One day I was watching them go by with my dad,and I suddenly noticed the cows udders,for the first time.When I asked my dad what they were he told me they were freshly plucked chickens that the cows were carrying to market for the farmer.I was so taken in by this story that I even hallucinated straps around the cows bodies holding the chickens in place.

Oh.....my dad also got me with the mating dog story about how one was poorly and the other one was trying to push it to the doctors! :oops: :roll:
 
It's hard to say, at this remove, how much we took these things seriously and how much we "believed" in them in the same way we did the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus - in whom I know we never really believed once we started going to school, maintaining a show of belief for fun. However -

In my family, we spoke of the "fat lady" who lived in our stomachs and ate what we sent her. She had a pet tiger, responsible for the growling noise, and her husband kept our brains in working order. You could hear him working on the machinery by pressing your ear to the back of your chair. This worked great in the house we had at the time, which was heated by an old-fashioned furnace in the basement which sent a lot of noise vibrating through the solid parts of the structure - the back of the chair conducted this sound well.

We also said that if our bellybuttons came unscrewed our bottoms would fall off.

My mom insisted that eating bread crusts made your hair curly.

Also, if you drop your knife you'll be visited by a man. A spoon, you'll be visited by a woman. If a fork, by a man in striped overalls! I know a lot of people who had the knife/spoon superstition, but as far as I know the man in striped overalls was a central Iowa addition - and in central Iowa for a lot of the previous century a man in striped overalls was not an unlikely visitor.
 
PeniG said:
Also, if you drop your knife you'll be visited by a man. A spoon, you'll be visited by a woman. If a fork, by a man in striped overalls!...and in central Iowa for a lot of the previous century a man in striped overalls was not an unlikely visitor.
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My great aunt used to say almost the same thing, and, indeed, she was from Iowa. Her change was that if you drop a fork, you'll be visited by a child (in stiped overalls, I'll bet).
 
My Girlfriend believed (as a child, naturally) that old films were black and white because the world was black and white then.

I believed that Frankenstein (the monster, really, but I was young) was buried under a stone in New Elgin. I know the boy responsible for this particular lie. (Not that far fetched, really - Elgin can resemble the sort of lifeless tundra he's last seen on, on a bad day...).
 
I thought that "Pedestrian" was a Protestant denomination. So wherever you saw a "Pedestrian Crossing", there had to be a "Pedestrian Church" nearby.

Later on, I thought it was rather unfair that the Pedestrians would get their own signs on the street, but the Presbyterians, Baptists, and Catholics did not.....
 
I believed the girl next door when she told me that spaghetti was made from worms...
 
I blame most of my childhood beliefs on my older brother, whom I worshipped as the font of all knowledge until I was about 7 and realised that maybe he didn't know everything...

North isn't always in front of you;
The past wasn't in black and white (that seems to be a common one);
There are no little people in the TV (ditto)

Jane.
 
Lanark_And_Rima said:
(Not that far fetched, really - Elgin can resemble the sort of lifeless tundra he's last seen on, on a bad day...).
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Especially on a Sunday - it's like a ghost town!
 
Tyger_Lily said:
I always believed that when the sun gave off rays of light from behind clouds it was God looking at that part of the world.
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I believed that those were the pathways for the spirits of the newly-dead to leave their bodies and go to Heaven
 
I knew that radio one played cool music that young people liked listening to. And I knew radio two played uncool music that parents liked listening to. Radio three and four - one of them had classical music, which was obviously attracting even less people. And as for whichever was the last, mysterious station - I just thought it must be for really really uncool people.
qed - I now find myself listening to it every morning.
 
I believed that if you turned the cold tap on while the toilet was flusing the water came straight from the loo and was unclean.
 
One of my sisters who is, shall we say, not the most clued up about matters sexual, asked my Mum what oral sex was. When my Mum told my sister didn't believe her as she thought it was when people talked about it (aural sex). BTW my sister was 24 at the time, God's honest.
 
I couldn't understand why sitting on a hard stool made it difficult to go to the toilet. :?
 
When I was about four, I could not understand why I could not pick myself up. Like, if you were tired of walking, why could you not pick yourself up and then you wouldnt have to walk. I even did it in dreams (maybe thats why i thought I could do it in real life)

I also thought that even if you touched a can with the poision symbol on it, you were as good as dead. Once we even had to leave a hotel because I saw paintcans with the symbol on them the way to the room.

My little sister thought that 'Europapark' (sp?) was 'her-ropapark' and she just owned it. And for years, there was just no telling her different.
 
When I was around five or six, I had a theory that the statues (of angels, weeping women and so on) in the local cemetery were actually the deceased people. They lived on at a different, Heavenly vibration to us so they seemed immobile and silent when, in fact, they were moving around and talking at their own speed in the afterlife. Just SOMETIMES they would catch sight of us driving past, because a car went much faster than a pedestrian and the speed somehow made us visible to them for a second, as if WE were ghosts. I was known at infant school for my "vivid imagination" and I'm still a bit weird . . . :D
 
This thread would make an amusing sidebar in the mag. :D

I used to believe the human brain was somehow bar-shaped. I have no idea where that came from!
 
elffriend said:
"I believed that if you turned the cold tap on while the toilet was flusing the water came straight from the loo and was unclean."
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You mean it DOESN'T do that? Oh.....

PS Years ago when attending science fiction conventions in posh hotels in major US and Canadian cities, I'd walk with my companions into the lavatory, while wearing my "Kentucky" convention badge, and announce in a very loud voice, "Why look-kee hyar, Zeke - they've got them new-fangled FLUSHIN' torlets jist like ovah thar at th' county seat!"

My friends didn't quite see the humor in this.
 
I believed that "Evangelical and Reformed Churches" were composed of two separate groups of congregants. And the "Evangelicals" looked down their noses at the merely "Reformed" and made 'em all sit in the balcony.

This particular belief-structure came crashing down the day my late Dad informed me that his family had been Evangelical and Reformed during his childhood and I then asked him to which side his parents had belonged.
 
In early 1945 (I was 3 1/2) I rode on a train with my Mom and Dad through the American West. The conductor announced that there would be a layover in "Shy Ann."

We got off the train for a quick meal and a short walk. I hoped to see "Shy Ann" but figured I wouldn't because she was so shy.

Back on the train I mentioned this to my Dad whereupon he attempted to explain to me that "Cheyenne" had been named for an an Indian tribe.

What a strange name for Indians, I thought. Were they all shy? And why were all the braves named Ann?
 
I had a similar mishearing - my mum and I were on a boat trip from somewhere to somewhere, I don't remember where cuz I was only small. Anyway, I remember I was drowsing in my mum's lap when the man giving the trip said "...if you look to your left you'll see a fairy..." I leapt up to catch a glimpse of this magical creature, but all I could see was a big ship with P&O written on it o_O

Oh, and I also remember asking my mum what "odours" were (I'd heard the word on an advert for a detergent), and thought she said "snails" when she said "smells." I thought the detergent was for killing the snails that crawled into your clothes when they were hanging on the line.
 
When I was about eight, I used to go to a holiday camp in France. We did some walks in the woods, around the town.
There was one place where there was a disused fenced schack belonging to the Water Board, which in french is Service des Eaux. Eaux is also the homophone of os, bones.
An imaginative girl, the same age as myself, told us vehemently that a witch lived in there and she kept the bones of dead little children who slept in a iron bed without any beddings.
I kept trying to tell her it was all bull, that it was the wrong spelling for bones, but she kept telling us it was the truth !
However, in that wood, we met a little boy who said that he wanted to run away from home and that his parents only gave him the clothes he wore !
Also, my 5 year old cousin thought he could find Roman-time cassettes recorders in a field next to his house.
My same cousin had heard about earth, for plugs etc. One day, he tried, in his basement to lit some xmas lights by putting the plug directly in the ground !
I had a thing about the universe, wondering where it ended, etc. I used to put myself inside cardboard boxes and think very deeply, wishing the answer would come like that in the dark. Also, I believed around 5 years old, that someone, one day in the middle ages had invented God and everybody thought it was a good idea.
 
I've been laughing so much reading this thread, still chuckling about LuvPixies Dad's explanation for the frisky dogs. :D

I believed as a child that God made everything, like clothes, books, buildings etc.

And also thought for years that adults didn't go to the toilet, only children did. Was very confused when eventually I found out that they did.
 
I had a very early understanding of free will/determinism. I used to have a play-mat with an outline of Generic British Town 1A - or somesuch place. I used to spend hours playing with lego men/dinky cars/plastic soldiers on this mat, it was like I was God and this was my creation. Occasionally when one of the figures would fall over due to vibration/mum hoovering he would be shot by a soldier on my command because he moved by himself. Bwaaahaaahaaa!

When I was about 13 I also managed to arrive at Socrates
'I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance'

albiet at a much less modest way. I summised that

'I know the things I know.
I know there are things I don't know, - but I know that they exist.
Anything that does exist that I don't know about I don't know,
Therefore I know everything.'
 
Eponastill said:
I knew that radio one played cool music that young people liked listening to. And I knew radio two played uncool music that parents liked listening to. Radio three and four - one of them had classical music, which was obviously attracting even less people. And as for whichever was the last, mysterious station - I just thought it must be for really really uncool people.
qed - I now find myself listening to it every morning.
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I still believe this ;)
 
Kids I teach, a great number of them believe that men have one rib less than women.

Some of the older ones (the girls) believe that there is a bone in the back of a girls body that disappears when she loses her virginity. All boys know about this bone and when kissing and hugging they can check for the existance of this bone and ascertain if the girl is 'intact'.

PS. I used to work with a woman who still believed, from her childhood, that moleskin trousers were made from the skins of moles.
 
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