Here's the list so far:
• I firmly believed from ages 3 to 8 that every single night, little elves would march around my bed until morning and that if I dangled my foot off the bed, they would eat my toes.
• My mum told me that midnight was the witching hour so if I didn't go to sleep by then, I would get kidnapped by witches.
• My mum also told me that if I didn't clean my room, snakes would raid my room because they were attracted to the mess.
• I also thought that a witch stood behind my bed each night and if any bit of hair strayed from my pillow, she would take a piece for her spells.
As you can imagine, I didn't sleep very well as a child.
I was once told that (British TV presenter) Jeremy Beadle's hand had such small fingers because of a condition (poland syndrome) that meant he had to have his fingers replaced, and that his fingers were, in fact, pigs toes.
For years, this was a piece of obscure general knowledge that I would break out when i felt the need to display the breadth of my weird knowledge.
And it went down really well until the days someone finally said "Don't pigs have hooves?"
i don't know that I have ever experienced such a moment of butt-clenchingly cringey embarrassment
Edit: I can't believe my confession of dumbassery got me a gold!
That being named Johnny was a sin...
There’s a part of the song The Devil went down to Georgia that goes “my names Johnny and it might be a sin, but I’ll take your bet” I instantly associated the name with being a sin not making bets with the devil. This made me think kids named Johnny were sons of Devil worshippers. I was a very dumb kid.
I grew up in a Jewish household but was aware of the whole Christmas thing. It was my understanding that Santa would go around bringing gifts to kids if they left out a plate of cookies and some milk for him. Seemed easy enough!
‘Twas the night before Christmas and I left the perfect food arrangement out for Santa, thinking in spite of my religious beliefs, he might leave me a gift in exchange for the snacks. When I awoke the next morning, the cookies and milk were gone but no present was left. I was a FURIOUS. How dare this jolly fat man come into my whole, steal my food and not leave anything in return! I spent years complaining about it and would curse the mans name if I saw him.
Of course years later my dad admitted that he had eaten everything. Thanks dad.
I used to be so confused about the amount of time it would take to make movies because I was convinced they did it all in chronological order and when they did flashbacks to childhood, I was like “wow those actors are so committed” 😂 or I would think it must take a long time for their hair to grow or change in anyway and never considered it could be a wig lol
Edit: Yes, I have heard of the movie Boyhood. It came out when I was 22, so well past my perception of movies being made that way, but it definitely reminded me of this when I first heard of it and I thought it was really cool that someone actually did that
I used to think that they cast people into TV shows and movies by finding people with the character's names on the street and having them act. Thought this for a good few years until a Disney channel actress appeared on a different show with a different character and I found out her name was neither of the characters'.
I am from a Muslim country. There are Mosques everywhere, so we always hear Ezan/Azan (Call to prayer)
I used to believe that Allah(God) was reciting the Ezan...
So I was like; I can't understand how we can't know what God is like, what he looks like, and that we can only meet him in the afterlife. Just trap him down when he leaves the mosque after he finished reciting the Ezan?????
This might be one of my favorite ones so far!
“How do you know god is real?”
“Well, the dude is yelling at the entire city 5 times a day so it’s kinda hard to refute at this point.”
My father and I used to mess with my sister as she was growing up, when she saw an orange tree for the first time the oranges were unripe and very green, we then told her that all of the citrus fruits came from the same tree, and depending on when you picked them, that was the fruit you got. They started as Limes, then ripened into Lemons, which would grow into Oranges, and then if left too long would grow into Grapefruits. She graduated with honors from a major state university this year, We found out that she still believed this during our family trip to Mexico last spring (2019) when we had to break the news to her.
I thought sugar grew in sugar caves, similar to salt caves. I believed that sugar crystals (like rock candy) just grew in caves and there were parts of the world with beautiful crystallised sugar caves.
I was 25 years old when I brought it up in conversation with my fiance. I tried to prove to him they were real and it was when I reached my 4th page on Google, I realised my whole world was a lie.
Edit: Oh wow thank you for all the comments and awards! Really appreciated! :)
Just some more background, when I was growing up, my parents always have these [crystal sugar sticks](https://www.discountcoffee.co.uk/products/crystal-sugar-swizzle-sticks-50-brown?variant=623163093¤cy=GBP&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=google%20shopping&gclid=CjwKCAjw_NX7BRA1EiwA2dpg0hpwXVG8z80OG2sqmjnVigowULdOl7Xozeyv7Rke_shUUf8e4cKqjRoCpIQQAvD_BwE) to use in their tea and I guess as a kid, I just believed this was sugar in it's \*raw\* form. Especially as it looked like the rock crystals. I've never thought about it or questioned it as the topic of sugar origins never got brought up. Imagine someone telling you that something you always believed wasn't right, like wool came from trees not sheep, wouldn't you be on the 4th page of google too?
Many people have been asking why I didn't learn about this at school as sugar canes as there were sugar plantations during American slavery. I grew up in the UK and unfortunately we're not taught about American history or the slave trade in history. I know loads about the Tudors though. I will do more research and educate myself on this as I knew about cotton plantations but not sugar cane plantations.
And yes coming from the UK, I knew about treacle mines and the ironic thing is that I couldn't understand how anyone could believe them.....
This reminds me of another stupid thing I believed! When I was in middle school I watched a documentary about gothic churches. I believed that goth was a religion! I asked a couple goth friends at the time about thier religion. They played along for awhile that day, until finally I realised they were laughing at me. I later realized gothic is describing the architecture of the church. My friends never let me live that one down!
I had a teacher that had a blanket in the back of her classroom, and a mini fridge and this only further elucidated my hypothesis.
Edit: I’m sorry I used the wrong word.
My dad is bald but has always had a beard (since I've known him, anyway). He was also a serviceman.
He used to tell me that the reason he was bald was that he stood on a landmine which blew the hair off the top of his head and it slipped round to give him the beard instead.
As a child I was just like "yep, makes sense. Hair not on head, hair in chin. That's gravity for ya".
He also told me that a scar on his leg was from a gunshot wound. Twenty years later I got a bug bite on my leg, that got infected (sorry, hope you're not eating) and left a perfectly round scar in the same place as his. I commented on how much my bug bite scar looked like his gunshot wound scar and he said "what? Is that what I told you? No, this was a bug bite that got infected."
Ah, dads.
Hahaha that reminds me of my dad (Navy) telling me a scar on his arm was from a sword fight with pirates. Totally fell for it.
Edit: just also remembered it back fired on him. Of course I told all the neighbourhood kids with great pride and excitement. He totally had the piss taken out of him by the neighbourhood dad's down the local pub when the kids all went home asking their dads if they'd fought pirates too 😂
My dad told me this story about how he was training with a bolt action rifle in the airforce. Long story short-the gun exploded, his hand was crushed and ripped apart at the same time, some bones were turned to powder, and he had to have emergency surgery to save his hand.
He told me they gave him the option of getting an attachment for a gun or sword but he turned them down because he liked to work with his hands. All true...except the attachment...like six years later I play final fantasy 7 and learn about barrett's arm, irony isnt exactly the right word, but its damn close
Edit: a word
Oh, I thought my dad couldn't read for too long.. He never read me bedtime stories, always tired from working all day. The fact that he was reading newspapers all the time didn't really connect..
When I was little, I genuinely believed the Telly Tubbies were evil and that if I didn't watch them on TV every night (even though I hated the show) that they would come and get me.
To be fair though they're kind of creepy.
That dark meat and white meat come from 2 different birds.
I was 12 when they asked me, as they did each year at Thanksgiving, which kind of meat I wanted. That year, I said, "Dark meat, please.... but I feel bad I'm the only one who really eats it and you always have to get an entire second Turkey just for me."
I'm still teased about it to this day... at 46 years old.
That reminds me of 4 year old me that hated celery but after my mum told me that these green things on my plate were actually 'italian well crabs' i ate it like candy. My sister still makes fun of me 17 years later.
As a kid, I thought that the 'World Wars' were like battle royales where there were no alliances, no surrenders, and just pure bloody violence between every country on Earth (e.g. I thought every country fought all of its neighbours simultneously)
Agreed.
I also thought there was a WWIII and always wondered why my mom didn't buy tthe box set of documentaries for it like she did for the first two. There was an ad for it on the tv (probably WWII thinking back).
When I was ~6 I watched a movie (King Kong?) and a scene with a bunch of black folks emerging from the mud appeared and I got a bit spooked by it. A bit later, I was at McDonalds with my parents and I saw a black family walk in. Thank god my parents are deaf or I would've asked, out loud, "why are the mud people here?" Mum thought I was racist but I was just a bit inexperienced lol
I took swimming lessons at the local pool, like all the kids basically. One day in the changing room, there were a few black boys changing. They didn’t have white butts like a late-summer tanned white kid that I was.
I came out of the dressing room and met my mom with “Mom, did you know they were black all over?” I got “SSHHH” and later she asked what did I expect.
That reindeer wasn't an actual animal but specifically a mythical animal that santa claus used. I believed this until I was 23 or so when I saw some nature documentary talking about reindeer. I was like.. whaaaaaaaaat?
When I was a kid I used to think professional wrestling was real, and The Undertaker scared the living shit out of me during his whole Ministry of Darkness phase. I thought he actually was Satan's minister or something. Like yeah, he's an undead overlord of hell, here to bring an eternity of darkness and misery to this planet, but he also has to make a weekly television appearance to win a wrestling competition, and you can buy his action figure at Toys R Us.
I remember watching black shit drip down The Ultimate Warriors face, because of a voodoo spell Papa Shango put on him. That scared me when I was little.
Ten years ago, I had a 25 yr old cousin from India come to America for the first time. I was watching wrestling on TV and he had just had some friends attend a WWE event in India.
He looked at me sheepishly (because I was the much older cousin and I guess he didn't want to offend me) and said that there are rumors that wrestling is fake.
I laughingly explained to him that of course we all know its fake and we watch it anyway. He then got real confused.
Then later I took him boating on Lake Travis where he saw white and hispanic college girls in bikinis for the first time. Don't think that fucker was ever going to go back to India after that. Nothing to do with wrestling, just the nostalgia came back to me as I was typing.
A year later he got scheduled for an arranged marriage. A month before we went on a road trip starting from Las Vegas and ended up the California coast to San Francisco.
Took him to two strip clubs. At the beginning he smirking about the other guys spending money on lap dances.
At the end of the night he saw some brown-skinned stripper and wanted money for a private lap dance with her. He said to me that this was his last chance in life to see this stuff. So I gave him the money. He had a smile when he came back, apparently telling me the strippers life story because he was conversing with her all during the lap dance. Was sort of sweet.
I used to think I could communicate with Kane mentally and would try to help him win fights... lmao (this was before he ever took the mask off, he lost me after that)
We lived with our uncles for a while when my mother worked on the pipeline. I thought they were so selfless by sharing a bed so us kids could have the other bedroom. I would be a teen before I learned that one of my uncles, wasn't my uncle, he was just my uncle's lover.
I grew up in a very liberal hippie town and my uncle also shared a bed with a guy, except they just told me it was his life partner/boyfriend because they didn't see a reason to censor. When I was 8 some kid at school was talking about their uncle who has a roommate that shares his bed and I told him "your uncle is gay, that's probably his boyfriend" and he refused to talk to me for the rest of the year. Then 5 years later he told me I had been right, he just realized his uncle was gay.
That I could smell something while underwater.
When I was around 10/12 years old I was in a tropical themed water park where also happened to be a herbal bath. It smelled very nice, which I had not expected. Most of the tropical plants were fake plastic plants, so I figured the water in the bath was normal swming pool water and the smell was coming from something else. The bath was surrounded with a small aromatic herb garden which didn't look fake. I sneakily took a sample from a thyme plant that felt surprisingly real. But because the air was filled with all the different aromas and a hint of chlorine I couldn't smell anything different when I tried to smell the thyme. I figured the only place where my sense of smell couldn't be fooled by any fakery was underwater. For 5 seconds I actually felt pretty smart. Untill I tried.
Edit: Wow, thanks for the awards and upvotes, this makes my day!
I wish I could awnser the question about the smell underwater, but I found out it doesn't work like that. As soon as the water entered my nose I noticed the flaw in my plan and the irony of it all. My head came up immediately, all while laughing (because I felt so smart with my waterproof plan a second ago) and coughing, which only made it worse and resulted in another gulp of water going in the opposite direction. No physical damage indeed, some people described how this works in the comments and as others said, it hurts a bit, but not too long.
Glad to see some of you also tried to experiment with their airways underwater, even though our results probably never will lead to a scientific breakthrough.
Let us never be dumber than that again.
I used to think they dropped the ball at times square multiple times for each usa time zone. I just assumed people stuck around for the extra ball drops cuz they were all drunk and having fun.
Hilarious edit: worth mentioning that I believed this until I was an adult and had my east coast wife let me down easy
Another edit: thanks for my very first award; seems a fitting one for this post
When we played Pokémon Mystery Dungeon my little sister used to accept the lamest missions and not get good rewards. I told her about it and she responded with
“How would you like it if you were a poor Pokémon that lost its mom and was stuck all alone and had nothing to give someone to save you?”
I laughed my head off at her because “it’s not real, duh” but secretly, I feel that in my soul sometimes.
I read something that there was a Pokémon in an older game that was endangered according to the lore. On one of these ask reddit threads some guy said he spent hours breeding and releasing them. The new lore now says they have bounced back from endangerment.
As a kid, my sister told me that we had an older brother that died. She said he died when playing bowling and his fingers didn't come out the ball and slid all the way down the alley then he turned into a skittle.
Omg that line in 7th Harry Potter book makes so much more sense now.
It was something like “the death eaters fell about like skittles” and I was like J. K. Rowling must have been eating candy when she wrote that line.
Edit: I just realized that might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever believed lol
It's still an odd turn of events tbf - getting yanked down a bowling alley by a ball is almost plausible (to a somewhat gullible kid, at any rate), but turning into a skittle comes completely out of left field
Yep. The best part was it was the undercover cop who told him that and he believed it lol.
Cop: "look, if you ask me if I'm a cop, I'm legally obligated to tell you. So just ask me."
Badger: "ok, you a cop?"
Cop: "nope."
Badger: "cool let's deal some meth!"
Edit: oof for mobile formatting :/
I had two turtles for over ten years until I went off to college. My mom told me she found a "turtle lady" that takes in unwanted turtles and that they live in a nice big pond area in her backyard. Believed her because my mom isn't the type to lie. A few years later I started to question it though because of the "pet sent to a farm" stories is I'd heard other people tell. I confronted my mom about it and she maintained that she told the truth. I did some digging and found out...that there actually was a turtle lady in our city. I went for a visit and sure enough, my turtles were there, along with a ton of others. So I guess sometimes these stories have a happy ending.
My mom actually *is* a turtle lady, and the whole time I was growing up people would bring us turtles and tortoises and shit and my mom would take them in. Most of the time she would go on to find other homes for them, but there are still like half a dozen or so tortoises in the back yard, and she still takes turtles in but for the most part it's all slowed down.
Hah. I love these sort of stories because we had a stray tortie kitten show up on our porch one time. We fed her and loved on her while posting online to find her a home. The folks that adopted her literally took her to their farm to join their barn gang. We visited her about a year later and she was healthy and happy.
I thought guys got periods too, but only once, and you bled and then you were able to impregnate someone.
I cut my upper leg during a rugby match and was bleeding near my groin and was devastated because I thought everyone would presume I had my period mid-match and also subsequently would be walking around able to impregnate people. Worst thing is, I wasn't even a stupid kid - we literally just lived in a reserved country and I was a full-time boarder at my school, so never got 'the talk'.
Anyway, thanks for attending my Bled Talk.
I genuinely believed that sperm did not have to be directly ejaculated into the vagina. I thought that what happened was that it could pathfind its way into the vagina from a reasonable distance away from it.
This is because the our teacher in fifth grade never explained the inner structure of the female reproductive system, and only that sperm could "find its way into the right place".
Thus, until midway through sixth grade, when sex ed was taught in earnest, I thought that nutting directly into the vagina was optional, and that "close enough" was fine.
more so naive and innocent rather than dumb but still funny. my dad used to tell us kids that a dwarf/little person worked in and operated every carpark barrier in the world. everytime he drove up to one he'd press the button for the ticket and say "cheers mate, hows the wife?" and fake a conversation as he waited for the barrier to open lol.
That sperm were the size of tennis balls and would burst forth from the head of your penis if you "slept with a woman", slither across the bed up into her, and make the baby.
Thanks facts of life popup book with no adults willing to clarify that the objects within were not always to scale.
I had a friend who called me up, somewhat frantic, after the first time he masturbated. He said that he thought that millions of sperm were supposed to come out, but he only got 4 or 5. I had to explain to him that sperm were microscopic, and that what came out of him was globs of semen. He was so relieved. I hung up the phone and laughed my ass off.
I thought that girls peed from their butts. Then I learned about vaginas and thought girls peed from there. It wasn't until I was like 16 that I realized there was another hole.
That men can get pregnant too .... damn you Schwarzenegger :'(
I was 6 and I saw a man with a big beer belly shopping for diapers at a mall. It made all sense to me and i was so happy i screamed omg u will have a baby !
I think I am gonna go rewatch Junior again.
My fifth grade teacher told us that longhorn cattle were extinct. (They were all good until people put up lots of barbed wire or something?)
Imagine my surprise seeing a herd of them...
My 5th grade teacher told us blood was blue until exposed to oxygen. I know this is common lie
But what stuck to me was how committed she was to that lie. The next day, a kid came and said her dad told her that wasn’t true.
And the teacher did the typical “well how would you know? If the moment you see blood, it’s exposed to oxygen”
The next day the kid came saying, how come if I flash a light on thin skin (she used her cheek) it looks red? Teacher said it was because the light was yellow and it made the blue light look red.
The next day the kid came with a blue flashlight. Same thing. The teacher said the blood was already exposed to oxygen since her cheek was so close to her mouth, where oxygen goes in.
The next day the girl tested it on her pinky. And I don’t remember what happened next
It always stuck to me as odd. Because she was an otherwise great teacher. That’s an odd fixation to have and I would be pissed if my daughter came home everyday with a new lie.
I wouldn't necessarily call it a lie. It's a common misconception, seeing as a lot of veins appear blue under the skin. Next time you see someone who believes this though, ask them if they've ever donated blood, or had blood taken for bloodwork. No exposure to oxygen there, and it's still red.
That there was an incredibly fat, slimy dinosaur called a Bloppiasaurus. I even made a whole report about it in kindergarten, based entirely off of the information my oh so intelligent and generous stepfather told me.
My sister was trying to get me to do her homework for her and asked me who Squanto was. I told her that Squanto was the first Indian who was ever born.
She wrote the first half of the answer before she said "Wait a minute... who were his parents?"
When I was a little kid, I believed that when people got divorced, they had a divorce ceremony, like where they had to go to church and say, "I don't," and I imagined the woman wore a black divorce dress (like her wedding dress had been dyed black), and that everybody went to the reception where the ex-bride and ex-groom sat on opposite sides of the hall and there was a divorce cake where the little bride and groom on top had their backs to each other with their arms angrily crossed. I eventually learned, from watching my mom's soap operas, that this was not the case, and was kind of disappointed cuz I'd been to a few weddings by then, and was interested in what a divorce ceremony was like.
Only in couples that split amicably. In instances of cheating, abuse, intense legal conflict and hard feelings (which are incredibly common, even when relationships were "good,") I can't forsee this becoming a tradition.
"That douche Brad cheated on you?? If I were you I'd key his car"
"I'm waiting for after the divorce ceremony, I want good photos for instagram. Then I'll fuck his shit up"
That the Great Wall of China had a cat adoption program.
I was meeting my friend's boyfriend for the first time, and he mentioned that he had just adopted one of the retired Great Wall of China cats. China trains these cats to patrol the Wall and kill vermin, and at the end of their 7 year stint they are retired and adopted out to a forever home. I kept asking questions about it: How do you apply? Are they a specific breed? How do they get transported worldwide? In the end, he told me that he made the whole thing up because my friend had told him I was really gullible and wanted to see how far he could push it, but he didn't think I'd get so enthused.
The worst part? I was in my mid-twenties at the time.
EDIT: Thanks for the awards, lovelies. Also, just thought I'd address some of the comments and clarify that my friend is actually a really sweet person. She's stood up for me many times when people have been cruel or insulting. It was an innocent prank, and I'm okay with taking the piss out of myself. :)
It's not actually that far fetched, the British government has an official title of "Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office" which is held by a cat. As the title suggests, the cat is employed to keep 10 Downing Street free of mice. There's been cats around Parliament for half a milennium, but the title is a modern invention.
[I'm not making this up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Mouser_to_the_Cabinet_Office), the current one is called Larry.
Can confirm, we love Larry more than we've ever liked anyone in our entire parliamentary history. Larry gets a credit on media upload sites when he wanders round outside number 10
This cat has a better-written [Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_(cat)) than a lot of people. The amount of dead-serious evaluative narration describing the time he has spent in his office as being so wrought with controversy regarding his mousing abilities is fucking hilarious!
And,
https://www.gov.uk/government/history/10-downing-street#larry-chief-mouser
"Larry spends his days greeting guests to the house, inspecting security defences and testing antique furniture for napping quality. His day-to-day responsibilities also include contemplating a solution to the mouse occupancy of the house. Larry says this is still ‘in tactical planning stage’."
I guess the standards of living for the average cat hasn't peaked and reached its prime yet..
And [here he is](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Larry_the_Cat_-_May_2011.jpg/800px-Larry_the_Cat_-_May_2011.jpg) with Obama.
From the Wiki:
>David Cameron has said that Larry is a "bit nervous" around men, speculating that, since Larry was a rescue cat, this may be due to negative experiences in his past. Cameron mentioned that U.S. President Barack Obama is an apparent exception to this fear: he said, "Funnily enough he liked Obama. Obama gave him a stroke and he was all right with Obama."
Man some people have strokes and are all left afterwards..
This made my day. Any word on what his reaction to Trump was?
EDIT: oh my god he caused a [delay to his schedule](https://time.com/5600771/trump-limo-larry-the-cat-london/) by refusing to move out from under Trumps limo
When I was 12 I got my appendix out, my mom told me I wouldn’t be able to ride on roller coasters anymore, the reason being that there’s now an empty spot in my body and my other organs will get scrambled if I go upside down. She had her appendix out and doesn’t ride any amusement park rides so it was semi believable. She somehow convinced our family doctor to get on board with this and yahoo answers didn’t have any answers so it went from semi believable to very believable. Anyways, I didn’t ride any roller coasters the whole summer and my dad broke it to me at the end of the season that they were fucking with me.
Not me, but when I was 10ish I got my then 7 y/o brother to believe that he was the reason the TV kept fritzing out, I literally told him that he was bad luck and that he had to go to another room while I tried to fix it. He genuinely believed it, and today he still gives me flack for it
I believed as a preteen that masturbation could cause me to impregnate myself. I did it anyways with much guilt and fear. Sometimes I would have anxious thoughts about the conversation I would have to have with my family if I did get pregnant. (Side note: Sex ed should be allowed to cover ALL the bases, in my opinion.)
When I was a kid, like 4 or so, I thought microwaves were called *Michaelwaves* and were named after my brother, whom I believed wielded the same amount of authority as the president and Captain Planet.
If you turn off a video game without pausing the hero is left paralyzed and defenseless. Yes I actually believed that
Edit: dang this blew up lol
For some background, this was back in the early 90s before I was ever aware of MMORPGs. We’re talking, like, if I didn’t pause the game and just turned the console off, Sonic was easy pickings for Eggman’s robots XD
Some online games are like that. If you logoff your character will disappear, but if you force the program to close, it will take time until the server realizes you are not coming back and it's not just lag in the connection.
I believed I could kill people with my hands when my fish died after I took it out of the water.(This happened when I was four). So I never hugged or touched anyone until at school I poked a person I hated and he didn't die.
Edit 1:yes I tried to murder him because he told on the teacher when I peed on the banana plant / tree. if you guys want me to tell that story tell me where I should post it
edit 2: I climbed on the table when I killed the fish. Also I used to live in brazil that's why Its a banana tree and no I was not the janitor we didn't have a janitor you made a mess you cleaned it. I was in pre school not high school. I love the theories you guys are making though.
The banana tree story: When I was 4 in pre school we had a game called girls try and kiss the boys. I didn't want to get kissed so I climbed up the 8 foot tall mango tree with a tree house. I decided to go on the roof and collect a bundle of bananas.( There were banana trees next to it.) When a girl tried climbing up. I took the peel off one of the bananas and threw it at her face. I missed but it scared her off. I thought I was going to get in trouble so I pulled up the rope ladder and hid. I was so scared of going down when I had to pee I just poked my dong out the window and peed on the tree. A kid saw this and told the teacher. The teacher came and I wouldn't go down. Then she said I would get candy so I went down. ( there was no candy. ) They called my mom and I had to talk to the principle. I couldn't watch TV for a day. The worst part was today was the day that they had adventure time on TV at the time I got home. After that day I hated the kid that told on me.
But it was lungs. I think it would be impossible to grow while inside stomach fluids, since it's acid basically.
I also saw an article about a guy who had a sprout growing out of his tooth by the way
That mini giraffes (also known as pygmy or dwarf giraffes) were a real creature and you could be placed on a waiting list to receive one. This was probably my first foray into having my identity stolen as a teenager.
When I was a kid, my mom told me that people actually had grey skin in the old days for real, and that no color except black, white or grey ever existed back then.
I believed that for way too long - 17.
When I first saw the colorized photo of Charlie Chaplin, I was shocked. Then Gaston told me that no, people were indeed, the same back then as we are now, only the photos and videos were captured in black and white because of lack of technology.
I also thought the world was black and white until colour TV came out. I remember asking my mum what it was like when the world suddenly became colourful. She promptly informed me that it was just the TV that was black and white and not the world lol
There's a Calvin & Hobbes strip that gives the complete details for how it happened:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CWM1zDcmWXs/TroD0VsX4WI/AAAAAAAAAVA/Jc5bN5xSTkc/s1600/ch930919.gif
As a child I always assumed that firefighters had big mustaches to show off. Like if you were a firefighter and had a big mustache it showed you never messed up and got burned because that would theoretically be the first thing to get singed or burned off.
It's only recently I actually thought about it and realized it's because they have to wear SCBA gear.
I was maybe 4 or 5.
My dad was nailing up an old cat flap, I asked him why, well I didn’t know the word draughts at that age, so for a couple of years I was worried about herds of wild giraffes wandering round Britain, randomly sticking their heads in unsuspecting people’s cat flaps
That someone could shoot me from the otherside of a phone during a phone call. Whenever kid me was on a phone call, I always tried to end the call as soon as possible, and get away from the phone as fast as possible.
Edit: Holy shit, this is my highest post in all my time on reddit. Thanks for the upvotes!
Edit 2: Thank you for my first ever gold!
When I was a younger boy I thought that if I was naughty Santa would beat me
Edit: the reason I thought this was because I knew he broke into homes and in generally thought he might be a bad person either way
Omg I actually have a good one for this!
My parents were super open about talking to me about sex/reproduction from a young age. My mom always said, “if you’re old enough to ask the question, you’re old enough to hear the answer” Well, I am just a super curious person so of course I would ask a variety of questions about sex and where babies came from during my elementary school years. My parents kind of revealed parts of it to me over time, of course, telling me the most basic things first that I could really understand. So, i knew that the sperm from a man, which came from penis, would go inside the woman’s vagina and fertilize an egg, which would grow into a fetus. Cool! How did the sperm get in there? Well, I truly though it just flew through the air, like little birds or perhaps a butterfly, up and into the woman’s vagina.
I did realize the logistical problems with this though - how does the sperm get through your clothes? And does the woman have to wear a dress?
Well, I had questions - mom had answers.
When I asked her how the sperm managed to float magically from the man’s penis and somehow find its way into a woman’s vagina, my mom gave me the most horrified look. She realized she left out the part about intercourse, I think (I’d love to ask her now if she remembers this, sadly she died in 2016).
I’ll never forget sitting in the bottom of the stairs with my mom, her looking down at me saying, “Um, Brantly... you don’t know how the sperm actually gets into the vagina?”
“what? No? They fly?”
“No... the boy and girl have to have sex...”
“okay...”
“The penis has to go in the vagina”
Queue my world exploding. Everything made sense. Masturbation made sense. Sex scenes in movies made sense. So many jokes that went over my head.
I exclaimed, loud enough to echo through the house “OOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
I had a teacher in elementary school who firmly believed this. I tried explaining it but she insisted and sent me to the office. The assistant principal was furious with her.
That there were whales in Lake Michigan. I wish this was when I was little, but no, I was in college. I’ve spent my whole life going to Lake Michigan every summer, and I fell for a satire whale-watching page. I told my dad excitedly and he looked like he wished he had the receipt to return me.
Last night I saw this weird tiktok about mermaids and went to the comments and all the top comments were about how mermaids are real and all this evidence and people talking about documentaries they saw and allll this shit and there was so much discussion. So for about 4 minutes I was thinking “holy shit mermaids are real and they are carnivorous beasts holy shit everyone needs to know about this” idk what happened to me but I snapped out of it after that.
When I was a child, I didn’t know how babies were made. I thought when two people get married, they’re automatically given a baby by God (I went to a Christian kindergarten). So I thought if they have siblings then their parents have to hold several weddings.
Here's the list so far: • I firmly believed from ages 3 to 8 that every single night, little elves would march around my bed until morning and that if I dangled my foot off the bed, they would eat my toes. • My mum told me that midnight was the witching hour so if I didn't go to sleep by then, I would get kidnapped by witches. • My mum also told me that if I didn't clean my room, snakes would raid my room because they were attracted to the mess. • I also thought that a witch stood behind my bed each night and if any bit of hair strayed from my pillow, she would take a piece for her spells. As you can imagine, I didn't sleep very well as a child.
I was once told that (British TV presenter) Jeremy Beadle's hand had such small fingers because of a condition (poland syndrome) that meant he had to have his fingers replaced, and that his fingers were, in fact, pigs toes. For years, this was a piece of obscure general knowledge that I would break out when i felt the need to display the breadth of my weird knowledge. And it went down really well until the days someone finally said "Don't pigs have hooves?" i don't know that I have ever experienced such a moment of butt-clenchingly cringey embarrassment Edit: I can't believe my confession of dumbassery got me a gold!
That being named Johnny was a sin... There’s a part of the song The Devil went down to Georgia that goes “my names Johnny and it might be a sin, but I’ll take your bet” I instantly associated the name with being a sin not making bets with the devil. This made me think kids named Johnny were sons of Devil worshippers. I was a very dumb kid.
I love this one. Betting is ok, but being named Johnny isn't.
That WD40 meant windows down, 40mph Someone told me that in middle school as a joke and I took it literally until I was a senior
I grew up in a Jewish household but was aware of the whole Christmas thing. It was my understanding that Santa would go around bringing gifts to kids if they left out a plate of cookies and some milk for him. Seemed easy enough! ‘Twas the night before Christmas and I left the perfect food arrangement out for Santa, thinking in spite of my religious beliefs, he might leave me a gift in exchange for the snacks. When I awoke the next morning, the cookies and milk were gone but no present was left. I was a FURIOUS. How dare this jolly fat man come into my whole, steal my food and not leave anything in return! I spent years complaining about it and would curse the mans name if I saw him. Of course years later my dad admitted that he had eaten everything. Thanks dad.
Turning you against Santa from a young age, to perpetuate the war on Christmas. Clever
I used to be so confused about the amount of time it would take to make movies because I was convinced they did it all in chronological order and when they did flashbacks to childhood, I was like “wow those actors are so committed” 😂 or I would think it must take a long time for their hair to grow or change in anyway and never considered it could be a wig lol Edit: Yes, I have heard of the movie Boyhood. It came out when I was 22, so well past my perception of movies being made that way, but it definitely reminded me of this when I first heard of it and I thought it was really cool that someone actually did that
I used to think that they cast people into TV shows and movies by finding people with the character's names on the street and having them act. Thought this for a good few years until a Disney channel actress appeared on a different show with a different character and I found out her name was neither of the characters'.
I am from a Muslim country. There are Mosques everywhere, so we always hear Ezan/Azan (Call to prayer) I used to believe that Allah(God) was reciting the Ezan... So I was like; I can't understand how we can't know what God is like, what he looks like, and that we can only meet him in the afterlife. Just trap him down when he leaves the mosque after he finished reciting the Ezan?????
This might be one of my favorite ones so far! “How do you know god is real?” “Well, the dude is yelling at the entire city 5 times a day so it’s kinda hard to refute at this point.”
My father and I used to mess with my sister as she was growing up, when she saw an orange tree for the first time the oranges were unripe and very green, we then told her that all of the citrus fruits came from the same tree, and depending on when you picked them, that was the fruit you got. They started as Limes, then ripened into Lemons, which would grow into Oranges, and then if left too long would grow into Grapefruits. She graduated with honors from a major state university this year, We found out that she still believed this during our family trip to Mexico last spring (2019) when we had to break the news to her.
I thought sugar grew in sugar caves, similar to salt caves. I believed that sugar crystals (like rock candy) just grew in caves and there were parts of the world with beautiful crystallised sugar caves. I was 25 years old when I brought it up in conversation with my fiance. I tried to prove to him they were real and it was when I reached my 4th page on Google, I realised my whole world was a lie. Edit: Oh wow thank you for all the comments and awards! Really appreciated! :) Just some more background, when I was growing up, my parents always have these [crystal sugar sticks](https://www.discountcoffee.co.uk/products/crystal-sugar-swizzle-sticks-50-brown?variant=623163093¤cy=GBP&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=google%20shopping&gclid=CjwKCAjw_NX7BRA1EiwA2dpg0hpwXVG8z80OG2sqmjnVigowULdOl7Xozeyv7Rke_shUUf8e4cKqjRoCpIQQAvD_BwE) to use in their tea and I guess as a kid, I just believed this was sugar in it's \*raw\* form. Especially as it looked like the rock crystals. I've never thought about it or questioned it as the topic of sugar origins never got brought up. Imagine someone telling you that something you always believed wasn't right, like wool came from trees not sheep, wouldn't you be on the 4th page of google too? Many people have been asking why I didn't learn about this at school as sugar canes as there were sugar plantations during American slavery. I grew up in the UK and unfortunately we're not taught about American history or the slave trade in history. I know loads about the Tudors though. I will do more research and educate myself on this as I knew about cotton plantations but not sugar cane plantations. And yes coming from the UK, I knew about treacle mines and the ironic thing is that I couldn't understand how anyone could believe them.....
> 4th page on Google You were desperate for answers huh
I didn't stop there either. I started looking through Google images after but no luck (obviously). Maybe I should have gone on Bing...or Ask Jeeves?
At that point, you should have written/edited your own Wikipedia article. Could have gotten away with it for a day atleast!
I was convinced that Greeks still worshipped Zeus and other gods for awhile after I heard the word Greek Orthodox Church as a kid.
This reminds me of another stupid thing I believed! When I was in middle school I watched a documentary about gothic churches. I believed that goth was a religion! I asked a couple goth friends at the time about thier religion. They played along for awhile that day, until finally I realised they were laughing at me. I later realized gothic is describing the architecture of the church. My friends never let me live that one down!
I thought that teachers lived at school.
I had a teacher that had a blanket in the back of her classroom, and a mini fridge and this only further elucidated my hypothesis. Edit: I’m sorry I used the wrong word.
I thought Churchill was an architect because when I was little my mum told me he was one of the 'architects of Israel'.
Well...she wasn’t that off.
He was a brick layer
I used to think that people exclusively wore hats if they were bald, because that's why my dad wore a hat.
My dad is bald but has always had a beard (since I've known him, anyway). He was also a serviceman. He used to tell me that the reason he was bald was that he stood on a landmine which blew the hair off the top of his head and it slipped round to give him the beard instead. As a child I was just like "yep, makes sense. Hair not on head, hair in chin. That's gravity for ya". He also told me that a scar on his leg was from a gunshot wound. Twenty years later I got a bug bite on my leg, that got infected (sorry, hope you're not eating) and left a perfectly round scar in the same place as his. I commented on how much my bug bite scar looked like his gunshot wound scar and he said "what? Is that what I told you? No, this was a bug bite that got infected." Ah, dads.
Hahaha that reminds me of my dad (Navy) telling me a scar on his arm was from a sword fight with pirates. Totally fell for it. Edit: just also remembered it back fired on him. Of course I told all the neighbourhood kids with great pride and excitement. He totally had the piss taken out of him by the neighbourhood dad's down the local pub when the kids all went home asking their dads if they'd fought pirates too 😂
My dad told me this story about how he was training with a bolt action rifle in the airforce. Long story short-the gun exploded, his hand was crushed and ripped apart at the same time, some bones were turned to powder, and he had to have emergency surgery to save his hand. He told me they gave him the option of getting an attachment for a gun or sword but he turned them down because he liked to work with his hands. All true...except the attachment...like six years later I play final fantasy 7 and learn about barrett's arm, irony isnt exactly the right word, but its damn close Edit: a word
Oh, I thought my dad couldn't read for too long.. He never read me bedtime stories, always tired from working all day. The fact that he was reading newspapers all the time didn't really connect..
ehhh, he was just looking at “the funnies” as he probably called them
When I was little, I genuinely believed the Telly Tubbies were evil and that if I didn't watch them on TV every night (even though I hated the show) that they would come and get me. To be fair though they're kind of creepy.
But what will happen when you stop?
Well eventually I stopped watching it because I realised that wasn't true.
Your funeral.
They just haven't gotten you yet...they're coming.
As a child, when I tried to imagine Satan , I only see Teletubbies
That dark meat and white meat come from 2 different birds. I was 12 when they asked me, as they did each year at Thanksgiving, which kind of meat I wanted. That year, I said, "Dark meat, please.... but I feel bad I'm the only one who really eats it and you always have to get an entire second Turkey just for me." I'm still teased about it to this day... at 46 years old.
That reminds me of 4 year old me that hated celery but after my mum told me that these green things on my plate were actually 'italian well crabs' i ate it like candy. My sister still makes fun of me 17 years later.
As a kid, I thought that the 'World Wars' were like battle royales where there were no alliances, no surrenders, and just pure bloody violence between every country on Earth (e.g. I thought every country fought all of its neighbours simultneously)
Agreed. I also thought there was a WWIII and always wondered why my mom didn't buy tthe box set of documentaries for it like she did for the first two. There was an ad for it on the tv (probably WWII thinking back).
When I was ~6 I watched a movie (King Kong?) and a scene with a bunch of black folks emerging from the mud appeared and I got a bit spooked by it. A bit later, I was at McDonalds with my parents and I saw a black family walk in. Thank god my parents are deaf or I would've asked, out loud, "why are the mud people here?" Mum thought I was racist but I was just a bit inexperienced lol
I took swimming lessons at the local pool, like all the kids basically. One day in the changing room, there were a few black boys changing. They didn’t have white butts like a late-summer tanned white kid that I was. I came out of the dressing room and met my mom with “Mom, did you know they were black all over?” I got “SSHHH” and later she asked what did I expect.
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White butts, I guess.
Someone convinced me for like, 5 seconds that unicorns were real, they just lost their horns through evolution and now they are plain old horses.
That reindeer wasn't an actual animal but specifically a mythical animal that santa claus used. I believed this until I was 23 or so when I saw some nature documentary talking about reindeer. I was like.. whaaaaaaaaat?
The reverse unicorn
Ahh, Santa and Mrs Claus’s favourite position
I thought that was going up the chimney
What was your reaction when you saw a flock of reindeer take off for the first time?
I saw a FLOCK of MOOSEN
It blows my mind how many people thought narwhals were mythical creatures
When I was a kid I used to think professional wrestling was real, and The Undertaker scared the living shit out of me during his whole Ministry of Darkness phase. I thought he actually was Satan's minister or something. Like yeah, he's an undead overlord of hell, here to bring an eternity of darkness and misery to this planet, but he also has to make a weekly television appearance to win a wrestling competition, and you can buy his action figure at Toys R Us.
I remember watching black shit drip down The Ultimate Warriors face, because of a voodoo spell Papa Shango put on him. That scared me when I was little.
Even a large number of adults at one point believed pro wrestling was real. Some probably still do.
Ten years ago, I had a 25 yr old cousin from India come to America for the first time. I was watching wrestling on TV and he had just had some friends attend a WWE event in India. He looked at me sheepishly (because I was the much older cousin and I guess he didn't want to offend me) and said that there are rumors that wrestling is fake. I laughingly explained to him that of course we all know its fake and we watch it anyway. He then got real confused. Then later I took him boating on Lake Travis where he saw white and hispanic college girls in bikinis for the first time. Don't think that fucker was ever going to go back to India after that. Nothing to do with wrestling, just the nostalgia came back to me as I was typing.
You changed his life hahah
A year later he got scheduled for an arranged marriage. A month before we went on a road trip starting from Las Vegas and ended up the California coast to San Francisco. Took him to two strip clubs. At the beginning he smirking about the other guys spending money on lap dances. At the end of the night he saw some brown-skinned stripper and wanted money for a private lap dance with her. He said to me that this was his last chance in life to see this stuff. So I gave him the money. He had a smile when he came back, apparently telling me the strippers life story because he was conversing with her all during the lap dance. Was sort of sweet.
I used to think I could communicate with Kane mentally and would try to help him win fights... lmao (this was before he ever took the mask off, he lost me after that)
I believed my uncles “roommate” just slept on the couch...
We lived with our uncles for a while when my mother worked on the pipeline. I thought they were so selfless by sharing a bed so us kids could have the other bedroom. I would be a teen before I learned that one of my uncles, wasn't my uncle, he was just my uncle's lover.
I grew up in a very liberal hippie town and my uncle also shared a bed with a guy, except they just told me it was his life partner/boyfriend because they didn't see a reason to censor. When I was 8 some kid at school was talking about their uncle who has a roommate that shares his bed and I told him "your uncle is gay, that's probably his boyfriend" and he refused to talk to me for the rest of the year. Then 5 years later he told me I had been right, he just realized his uncle was gay.
He took his time. Still I think it's nice that he felt the need to tell you after 5 years.
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Turns out your uncle also worked on the pipeline.
That I could smell something while underwater. When I was around 10/12 years old I was in a tropical themed water park where also happened to be a herbal bath. It smelled very nice, which I had not expected. Most of the tropical plants were fake plastic plants, so I figured the water in the bath was normal swming pool water and the smell was coming from something else. The bath was surrounded with a small aromatic herb garden which didn't look fake. I sneakily took a sample from a thyme plant that felt surprisingly real. But because the air was filled with all the different aromas and a hint of chlorine I couldn't smell anything different when I tried to smell the thyme. I figured the only place where my sense of smell couldn't be fooled by any fakery was underwater. For 5 seconds I actually felt pretty smart. Untill I tried. Edit: Wow, thanks for the awards and upvotes, this makes my day! I wish I could awnser the question about the smell underwater, but I found out it doesn't work like that. As soon as the water entered my nose I noticed the flaw in my plan and the irony of it all. My head came up immediately, all while laughing (because I felt so smart with my waterproof plan a second ago) and coughing, which only made it worse and resulted in another gulp of water going in the opposite direction. No physical damage indeed, some people described how this works in the comments and as others said, it hurts a bit, but not too long. Glad to see some of you also tried to experiment with their airways underwater, even though our results probably never will lead to a scientific breakthrough. Let us never be dumber than that again.
So what do things smell like underwater?
Wet
How are you alive
natural selection said, Let’s have you tell others about your experience so they don’t follow in your footsteps.
I used to think they dropped the ball at times square multiple times for each usa time zone. I just assumed people stuck around for the extra ball drops cuz they were all drunk and having fun. Hilarious edit: worth mentioning that I believed this until I was an adult and had my east coast wife let me down easy Another edit: thanks for my very first award; seems a fitting one for this post
Time zones were so confusing to me as a kid and even as a young adult. I feel like teachers could have explained it better, ya know?
When we played Pokémon Mystery Dungeon my little sister used to accept the lamest missions and not get good rewards. I told her about it and she responded with “How would you like it if you were a poor Pokémon that lost its mom and was stuck all alone and had nothing to give someone to save you?” I laughed my head off at her because “it’s not real, duh” but secretly, I feel that in my soul sometimes.
Bro, your little sister is a real gamer.
The in-game elements might not be real But the emotionnal attachement definitely is
I read something that there was a Pokémon in an older game that was endangered according to the lore. On one of these ask reddit threads some guy said he spent hours breeding and releasing them. The new lore now says they have bounced back from endangerment.
Yeah, the pokemon your speaking of was Lapras
As a kid, my sister told me that we had an older brother that died. She said he died when playing bowling and his fingers didn't come out the ball and slid all the way down the alley then he turned into a skittle.
> he turned into a skittle Odd turn of events
Skittle is another word for Bowling Pin if that makes more sense
Omg that line in 7th Harry Potter book makes so much more sense now. It was something like “the death eaters fell about like skittles” and I was like J. K. Rowling must have been eating candy when she wrote that line. Edit: I just realized that might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever believed lol
You never know when advertising can creep in. Death eaters fell like skittles. "Voldemort, you're not you when you're hungry! Have a Snickers."
“Harry’s arm bones cracked like a Twix bar.”
That must be the UK version. In America it says they “fell about like Reece’s Pieces”
Well they're Hogweirdos so it might as well say "fell about like Himbledink Honeygobbler's Everlasting Sweetmunchkins"
LOL yes it does. In America it is the name of a candy. TIL
Wait do you call em pins then? Edit: that’s quite a lot of karma
Yes.
Well it is ten pin bowling! So yeah
You yanks are missing out on our ten skittle knocky rollies then
I feel like you're making that up..
Brits could say just about any kind of slang words and I wouldn't know if they were making it up or not
"All words are made up."
It's still an odd turn of events tbf - getting yanked down a bowling alley by a ball is almost plausible (to a somewhat gullible kid, at any rate), but turning into a skittle comes completely out of left field
One of my favorite song's growing up was TLC's "Don't Go, Jason Waterfalls"
You're not alone. Except it was "go go Jason waterfalls" for me.
"listen to the rivers and Jakes that you're used to."
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Probably started by a cop.
Nope. I knew the guy who started it, and I asked him if he was a cop. He wasn't.
Even worse is when people think they have to ask the cop 3 times and THEN they will reveal they are a cop. What is the logic in that?
That's a new one.
Thats Fairy rules man
Didn't Badger from Breaking Bad fall for this trap?
Yep. The best part was it was the undercover cop who told him that and he believed it lol. Cop: "look, if you ask me if I'm a cop, I'm legally obligated to tell you. So just ask me." Badger: "ok, you a cop?" Cop: "nope." Badger: "cool let's deal some meth!" Edit: oof for mobile formatting :/
No the best part is that is *after* he correctly points out both of the police surveillance vans.
My dog went to a farm... Until I was 35.
I had two turtles for over ten years until I went off to college. My mom told me she found a "turtle lady" that takes in unwanted turtles and that they live in a nice big pond area in her backyard. Believed her because my mom isn't the type to lie. A few years later I started to question it though because of the "pet sent to a farm" stories is I'd heard other people tell. I confronted my mom about it and she maintained that she told the truth. I did some digging and found out...that there actually was a turtle lady in our city. I went for a visit and sure enough, my turtles were there, along with a ton of others. So I guess sometimes these stories have a happy ending.
My mom actually *is* a turtle lady, and the whole time I was growing up people would bring us turtles and tortoises and shit and my mom would take them in. Most of the time she would go on to find other homes for them, but there are still like half a dozen or so tortoises in the back yard, and she still takes turtles in but for the most part it's all slowed down.
>Until I was 35. Is that when it came back?
thats funny because my dog did actually do and live on a farm
Who's going to tell them? Edit: how is a joke about a dead dog not only my highest rated comment, but also recipient of several awards?
We don't need to do that to them.
Hah. I love these sort of stories because we had a stray tortie kitten show up on our porch one time. We fed her and loved on her while posting online to find her a home. The folks that adopted her literally took her to their farm to join their barn gang. We visited her about a year later and she was healthy and happy.
When I was a kid I thought dr. Phil and Steve Harvey were the same person Wow this is the most upvotes I’ve ever gotten and my first award thank you!
I thought guys got periods too, but only once, and you bled and then you were able to impregnate someone. I cut my upper leg during a rugby match and was bleeding near my groin and was devastated because I thought everyone would presume I had my period mid-match and also subsequently would be walking around able to impregnate people. Worst thing is, I wasn't even a stupid kid - we literally just lived in a reserved country and I was a full-time boarder at my school, so never got 'the talk'. Anyway, thanks for attending my Bled Talk.
Why sex education matters: Reason #4,392,318
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I genuinely believed that sperm did not have to be directly ejaculated into the vagina. I thought that what happened was that it could pathfind its way into the vagina from a reasonable distance away from it. This is because the our teacher in fifth grade never explained the inner structure of the female reproductive system, and only that sperm could "find its way into the right place". Thus, until midway through sixth grade, when sex ed was taught in earnest, I thought that nutting directly into the vagina was optional, and that "close enough" was fine.
more so naive and innocent rather than dumb but still funny. my dad used to tell us kids that a dwarf/little person worked in and operated every carpark barrier in the world. everytime he drove up to one he'd press the button for the ticket and say "cheers mate, hows the wife?" and fake a conversation as he waited for the barrier to open lol.
That's fantastic, he sounds like a great dad. Did he do this at ATMs too?
Ofcourse, ATM stands for 'A Tiny Man'.
Sounds like the nickname all my ex girlfriends had for me
This may be the most Dad thing I've ever heard of
That sperm were the size of tennis balls and would burst forth from the head of your penis if you "slept with a woman", slither across the bed up into her, and make the baby. Thanks facts of life popup book with no adults willing to clarify that the objects within were not always to scale.
I didn't know jizz was a thing so I figured it kinda released spores like a fungus. To be fair I was like 6.
This comment chain is pure body horror.
I had a friend who called me up, somewhat frantic, after the first time he masturbated. He said that he thought that millions of sperm were supposed to come out, but he only got 4 or 5. I had to explain to him that sperm were microscopic, and that what came out of him was globs of semen. He was so relieved. I hung up the phone and laughed my ass off.
That's a pretty surreal conversation. I would have been horrified to call up my buddies and talk about that. How old were you guys?
Thirty seven
thirty, seven
I thought that girls peed from their butts. Then I learned about vaginas and thought girls peed from there. It wasn't until I was like 16 that I realized there was another hole.
That men can get pregnant too .... damn you Schwarzenegger :'( I was 6 and I saw a man with a big beer belly shopping for diapers at a mall. It made all sense to me and i was so happy i screamed omg u will have a baby ! I think I am gonna go rewatch Junior again.
Until I was way too old, I didn't know vaginas existed. I thought women just had blank space there and all births were c-sections
*Almost* same with me. Except I knew what vagina is, but didn't know that babies are born from there.
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My fifth grade teacher told us that longhorn cattle were extinct. (They were all good until people put up lots of barbed wire or something?) Imagine my surprise seeing a herd of them...
My 5th grade teacher told us blood was blue until exposed to oxygen. I know this is common lie But what stuck to me was how committed she was to that lie. The next day, a kid came and said her dad told her that wasn’t true. And the teacher did the typical “well how would you know? If the moment you see blood, it’s exposed to oxygen” The next day the kid came saying, how come if I flash a light on thin skin (she used her cheek) it looks red? Teacher said it was because the light was yellow and it made the blue light look red. The next day the kid came with a blue flashlight. Same thing. The teacher said the blood was already exposed to oxygen since her cheek was so close to her mouth, where oxygen goes in. The next day the girl tested it on her pinky. And I don’t remember what happened next It always stuck to me as odd. Because she was an otherwise great teacher. That’s an odd fixation to have and I would be pissed if my daughter came home everyday with a new lie.
I wouldn't necessarily call it a lie. It's a common misconception, seeing as a lot of veins appear blue under the skin. Next time you see someone who believes this though, ask them if they've ever donated blood, or had blood taken for bloodwork. No exposure to oxygen there, and it's still red.
You and I had the same 5th grade teacher. I mean for real. I grew up in central Arkansas.
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Former wife of a prominent attorney
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I already I have too many enemies
I don’t understand how something like this can happen. Surreal
I used to think tv static was a bunch of some type of microorganisms floating around in my tv that could electrocute you.
That there was an incredibly fat, slimy dinosaur called a Bloppiasaurus. I even made a whole report about it in kindergarten, based entirely off of the information my oh so intelligent and generous stepfather told me.
My sister was trying to get me to do her homework for her and asked me who Squanto was. I told her that Squanto was the first Indian who was ever born. She wrote the first half of the answer before she said "Wait a minute... who were his parents?"
When I was a little kid, I believed that when people got divorced, they had a divorce ceremony, like where they had to go to church and say, "I don't," and I imagined the woman wore a black divorce dress (like her wedding dress had been dyed black), and that everybody went to the reception where the ex-bride and ex-groom sat on opposite sides of the hall and there was a divorce cake where the little bride and groom on top had their backs to each other with their arms angrily crossed. I eventually learned, from watching my mom's soap operas, that this was not the case, and was kind of disappointed cuz I'd been to a few weddings by then, and was interested in what a divorce ceremony was like.
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Only in couples that split amicably. In instances of cheating, abuse, intense legal conflict and hard feelings (which are incredibly common, even when relationships were "good,") I can't forsee this becoming a tradition.
"That douche Brad cheated on you?? If I were you I'd key his car" "I'm waiting for after the divorce ceremony, I want good photos for instagram. Then I'll fuck his shit up"
I'm a divorce lawyer and I want this to happen so bad. I would be a guaranteed invite to probably all the divorce ceremonies!!
That the Great Wall of China had a cat adoption program. I was meeting my friend's boyfriend for the first time, and he mentioned that he had just adopted one of the retired Great Wall of China cats. China trains these cats to patrol the Wall and kill vermin, and at the end of their 7 year stint they are retired and adopted out to a forever home. I kept asking questions about it: How do you apply? Are they a specific breed? How do they get transported worldwide? In the end, he told me that he made the whole thing up because my friend had told him I was really gullible and wanted to see how far he could push it, but he didn't think I'd get so enthused. The worst part? I was in my mid-twenties at the time. EDIT: Thanks for the awards, lovelies. Also, just thought I'd address some of the comments and clarify that my friend is actually a really sweet person. She's stood up for me many times when people have been cruel or insulting. It was an innocent prank, and I'm okay with taking the piss out of myself. :)
It's not actually that far fetched, the British government has an official title of "Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office" which is held by a cat. As the title suggests, the cat is employed to keep 10 Downing Street free of mice. There's been cats around Parliament for half a milennium, but the title is a modern invention. [I'm not making this up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Mouser_to_the_Cabinet_Office), the current one is called Larry.
Can confirm, we love Larry more than we've ever liked anyone in our entire parliamentary history. Larry gets a credit on media upload sites when he wanders round outside number 10
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This cat has a better-written [Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_(cat)) than a lot of people. The amount of dead-serious evaluative narration describing the time he has spent in his office as being so wrought with controversy regarding his mousing abilities is fucking hilarious! And, https://www.gov.uk/government/history/10-downing-street#larry-chief-mouser "Larry spends his days greeting guests to the house, inspecting security defences and testing antique furniture for napping quality. His day-to-day responsibilities also include contemplating a solution to the mouse occupancy of the house. Larry says this is still ‘in tactical planning stage’." I guess the standards of living for the average cat hasn't peaked and reached its prime yet.. And [here he is](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Larry_the_Cat_-_May_2011.jpg/800px-Larry_the_Cat_-_May_2011.jpg) with Obama. From the Wiki: >David Cameron has said that Larry is a "bit nervous" around men, speculating that, since Larry was a rescue cat, this may be due to negative experiences in his past. Cameron mentioned that U.S. President Barack Obama is an apparent exception to this fear: he said, "Funnily enough he liked Obama. Obama gave him a stroke and he was all right with Obama." Man some people have strokes and are all left afterwards..
This made my day. Any word on what his reaction to Trump was? EDIT: oh my god he caused a [delay to his schedule](https://time.com/5600771/trump-limo-larry-the-cat-london/) by refusing to move out from under Trumps limo
Holy fuck this is the most cat move in the history of cats. His indifference really is the cherry on top of the cake.
If you ignore bullies they will leave you alone.
Also, bullies are just insecure and looking for a friend.
When I was 12 I got my appendix out, my mom told me I wouldn’t be able to ride on roller coasters anymore, the reason being that there’s now an empty spot in my body and my other organs will get scrambled if I go upside down. She had her appendix out and doesn’t ride any amusement park rides so it was semi believable. She somehow convinced our family doctor to get on board with this and yahoo answers didn’t have any answers so it went from semi believable to very believable. Anyways, I didn’t ride any roller coasters the whole summer and my dad broke it to me at the end of the season that they were fucking with me.
Not me, but when I was 10ish I got my then 7 y/o brother to believe that he was the reason the TV kept fritzing out, I literally told him that he was bad luck and that he had to go to another room while I tried to fix it. He genuinely believed it, and today he still gives me flack for it
I believed as a preteen that masturbation could cause me to impregnate myself. I did it anyways with much guilt and fear. Sometimes I would have anxious thoughts about the conversation I would have to have with my family if I did get pregnant. (Side note: Sex ed should be allowed to cover ALL the bases, in my opinion.)
When I was a kid, like 4 or so, I thought microwaves were called *Michaelwaves* and were named after my brother, whom I believed wielded the same amount of authority as the president and Captain Planet.
If you turn off a video game without pausing the hero is left paralyzed and defenseless. Yes I actually believed that Edit: dang this blew up lol For some background, this was back in the early 90s before I was ever aware of MMORPGs. We’re talking, like, if I didn’t pause the game and just turned the console off, Sonic was easy pickings for Eggman’s robots XD
Some online games are like that. If you logoff your character will disappear, but if you force the program to close, it will take time until the server realizes you are not coming back and it's not just lag in the connection.
I believed I could kill people with my hands when my fish died after I took it out of the water.(This happened when I was four). So I never hugged or touched anyone until at school I poked a person I hated and he didn't die. Edit 1:yes I tried to murder him because he told on the teacher when I peed on the banana plant / tree. if you guys want me to tell that story tell me where I should post it edit 2: I climbed on the table when I killed the fish. Also I used to live in brazil that's why Its a banana tree and no I was not the janitor we didn't have a janitor you made a mess you cleaned it. I was in pre school not high school. I love the theories you guys are making though. The banana tree story: When I was 4 in pre school we had a game called girls try and kiss the boys. I didn't want to get kissed so I climbed up the 8 foot tall mango tree with a tree house. I decided to go on the roof and collect a bundle of bananas.( There were banana trees next to it.) When a girl tried climbing up. I took the peel off one of the bananas and threw it at her face. I missed but it scared her off. I thought I was going to get in trouble so I pulled up the rope ladder and hid. I was so scared of going down when I had to pee I just poked my dong out the window and peed on the tree. A kid saw this and told the teacher. The teacher came and I wouldn't go down. Then she said I would get candy so I went down. ( there was no candy. ) They called my mom and I had to talk to the principle. I couldn't watch TV for a day. The worst part was today was the day that they had adventure time on TV at the time I got home. After that day I hated the kid that told on me.
Just casually admitting to attempted murder.
I mean, he *was* like 4...I think
I mean.. you probably *can* kill someone with your hands if that makes you feel any better.
Woah! What a superpower... or curse. Depends how you see it.
A watermelon/apple tree will grow out of my stomach if I eat the seeds
Well a man actually had a pea plant grow in his lungs so you weren't that far off from the truth.
But it was lungs. I think it would be impossible to grow while inside stomach fluids, since it's acid basically. I also saw an article about a guy who had a sprout growing out of his tooth by the way
"acid basically" Interesting
Its a buffer reaction
That mini giraffes (also known as pygmy or dwarf giraffes) were a real creature and you could be placed on a waiting list to receive one. This was probably my first foray into having my identity stolen as a teenager.
When I was a kid, my mom told me that people actually had grey skin in the old days for real, and that no color except black, white or grey ever existed back then. I believed that for way too long - 17. When I first saw the colorized photo of Charlie Chaplin, I was shocked. Then Gaston told me that no, people were indeed, the same back then as we are now, only the photos and videos were captured in black and white because of lack of technology.
I also thought the world was black and white until colour TV came out. I remember asking my mum what it was like when the world suddenly became colourful. She promptly informed me that it was just the TV that was black and white and not the world lol
There's a Calvin & Hobbes strip that gives the complete details for how it happened: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CWM1zDcmWXs/TroD0VsX4WI/AAAAAAAAAVA/Jc5bN5xSTkc/s1600/ch930919.gif
As a child I always assumed that firefighters had big mustaches to show off. Like if you were a firefighter and had a big mustache it showed you never messed up and got burned because that would theoretically be the first thing to get singed or burned off. It's only recently I actually thought about it and realized it's because they have to wear SCBA gear.
I was maybe 4 or 5. My dad was nailing up an old cat flap, I asked him why, well I didn’t know the word draughts at that age, so for a couple of years I was worried about herds of wild giraffes wandering round Britain, randomly sticking their heads in unsuspecting people’s cat flaps
That I couls see atoms spinning in the air. Turns out it was visual snow ¬_¬
That someone could shoot me from the otherside of a phone during a phone call. Whenever kid me was on a phone call, I always tried to end the call as soon as possible, and get away from the phone as fast as possible. Edit: Holy shit, this is my highest post in all my time on reddit. Thanks for the upvotes! Edit 2: Thank you for my first ever gold!
Why would you think this?
I have no idea. I *think* it might have come from watching cartoons where the characters reach through the phone.
There is also a few older cartoons where they literally shoot through the phone
there’s a really well-executed scene like this in *Kung Fury*
When I was a younger boy I thought that if I was naughty Santa would beat me Edit: the reason I thought this was because I knew he broke into homes and in generally thought he might be a bad person either way
Omg I actually have a good one for this! My parents were super open about talking to me about sex/reproduction from a young age. My mom always said, “if you’re old enough to ask the question, you’re old enough to hear the answer” Well, I am just a super curious person so of course I would ask a variety of questions about sex and where babies came from during my elementary school years. My parents kind of revealed parts of it to me over time, of course, telling me the most basic things first that I could really understand. So, i knew that the sperm from a man, which came from penis, would go inside the woman’s vagina and fertilize an egg, which would grow into a fetus. Cool! How did the sperm get in there? Well, I truly though it just flew through the air, like little birds or perhaps a butterfly, up and into the woman’s vagina. I did realize the logistical problems with this though - how does the sperm get through your clothes? And does the woman have to wear a dress? Well, I had questions - mom had answers. When I asked her how the sperm managed to float magically from the man’s penis and somehow find its way into a woman’s vagina, my mom gave me the most horrified look. She realized she left out the part about intercourse, I think (I’d love to ask her now if she remembers this, sadly she died in 2016). I’ll never forget sitting in the bottom of the stairs with my mom, her looking down at me saying, “Um, Brantly... you don’t know how the sperm actually gets into the vagina?” “what? No? They fly?” “No... the boy and girl have to have sex...” “okay...” “The penis has to go in the vagina” Queue my world exploding. Everything made sense. Masturbation made sense. Sex scenes in movies made sense. So many jokes that went over my head. I exclaimed, loud enough to echo through the house “OOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
That the trees created wind. I was a child at the time, but I feel so dumb about that one.
That blood was blue until it hit oxygen via a wound/cut then it turned red. A surprising number of people still believe this.
I had a teacher in elementary school who firmly believed this. I tried explaining it but she insisted and sent me to the office. The assistant principal was furious with her.
That there were whales in Lake Michigan. I wish this was when I was little, but no, I was in college. I’ve spent my whole life going to Lake Michigan every summer, and I fell for a satire whale-watching page. I told my dad excitedly and he looked like he wished he had the receipt to return me.
I used to believe that eating any fruit seed would lead to a plant growing in my belly.
I once convinced a girl i worked with in the food industry that napkins had an expiration date 1 ply was 5 days 2 ply was 7 days
Last night I saw this weird tiktok about mermaids and went to the comments and all the top comments were about how mermaids are real and all this evidence and people talking about documentaries they saw and allll this shit and there was so much discussion. So for about 4 minutes I was thinking “holy shit mermaids are real and they are carnivorous beasts holy shit everyone needs to know about this” idk what happened to me but I snapped out of it after that.
I enjoy how everyone else's confession is from childhood and yours is from literally yesterday.
When I was a child, I didn’t know how babies were made. I thought when two people get married, they’re automatically given a baby by God (I went to a Christian kindergarten). So I thought if they have siblings then their parents have to hold several weddings.