What were your assumptions about the world as a child?

I thought teachers lived at school and was really quite shocked to discover they had their own houses and families.

That it was the wedding ring that got you pregnant! 🤭

When i was about 6, a friend told me about someone being sacked. I didn't understand what they meant so they repeated 'sacked, you know, fired!' I remember asking, 'what, they put him in a sack and shot him?'

Amazingly, the world of work is not quite as bad as I thought it would be.

I thought if an adult took their tea black or drank coffee they must be a bad person (only observed my parents drinking tea with milk lol).

My dad loved westerns, there was always somebody or a horse and / or carriage sinking into it !

I thought grown ups were obsessed with money and it’s all they were bothered about.

I wasn’t wrong really 😂.

I thought the jobs that adults have, all paid roughly the same amount of money. I knew there were some very rich people, but they were in a special category. So I thought everyone else earned more or less the same.
So even when I went to university, it didn't occur to me to think of earning potential when choosing a career. (luckily I'm in STEM).

That we'd all be whizzing around on hover boards and in flying cars in the year 2000

I'd love a book dedication like that. "Thank you to muffsies for blowing a hole in my plot, you couldn't just suspend your disbelief for 5 minutes, could you?"
🤣

Oh, that’s very sweet. It could still happen! Befriend some writers! I’ve been in quite a few people’s acknowledgements, but it’s slightly misleading because it never says ‘Thank you to MaybeIf, even though you were the one to tell me I needed to rewrite the final 20,000 words…’😀

I remember noticing a 'love padlock' on a bridge a few years back - one of thousands on there - that said (I forget the first two exact names) but something like 'William & Lisa 4 Eva'.

I thought it sounded like quite an intriguing throuple!

It's the Neverending Story. I challenge you to watch it and not cry.

I was very concerned that when I was in year 6 (the oldest kids in primary school), I would need to move out of my house as I would be too tall and my head would touch the ceiling. I’m not sure how I thought my parents were coping because their heads definitely didn’t touch the ceiling!

I also must have heard something on television about who was ‘going on top’ to describe sex and for many years(!!) pictured bunk beds.

I knew babies were made from half the mums genetic material and half the dads... And there were hints the process somehow involved a bed.

So I used to imagine a squishy creature made up of the dads genes would leap off the dad in bed, and crawl along the covers into the mums tummy to create a baby while they slept.

Don't ask me why...

Oh was that the one with the weird male and female robot type machine illustrations? That totally confused me and also I wondered how long the making a baby incident would actually take ? I planned to make sure when I was an adult and it happened to me that I’d have my notepad, pens, solitaire set and my game gear nearby in case it took ages and I got bored 😂

Never wrote a book but got to write the acknowledgements for my Master's thesis, enjoyed that!

Another quicksand victim here. There were rumours about one corner of our local beach, so we never crossed over there.

I believed all adults were sensible, kind and grew in wisdom depending upon their age 😂

I also believed that when you grew up, you got to pick your own house. I wanted one of those small old railway stations that had been closed.

Coming here to say the same thing! I thought there were only a few countries, England, France, Germany, Italy, China, Japan, Australia, USA. I remember the moment, even vividly now, when I came across the fact that other places existed!

Plop, scrape, run

🙄

Exactly the same here Corey! I blame the Usborne book my parents bought - it showed the penis going into the vagina but absolutely no mention of moving back and forth. I know MN loves a diagram but they don’t show everything 😂

That by the time it was my turn to have babies, science would figure out a pain free way to be born.

They would also figure out a way to prevent death and bring people back to life.

These things just seemed to be the logical next step in modern science to my mind.

There was definitely a film where a pony got stuck in quicksand and couldn’t be saved - there was a little girl sobbing her eyes out 😭

Oh that reminds me- I knew the mechanics of sex from quite young, but I remember thinking for a very long time that the man put his penis in the woman’s vagina, once, made the baby, then took it out.
I was about 11, in the playground swapping real true facts about sex and another child put me straight, saying” oh no, the man moves it in and out 5 times!” And we all went “ eeeww”.
That one has occasionally been true 🤔

I was going to post the same, Notmy— that I thought adults literally never told lies!

Also, one child in the playground gave us a fairly accurate description of how babies are made, when I was about 8-10. I laughed in a very superior way and said I didn’t know exactly how it was done, but it certainly wasn’t like that! Smug little dope — I’m still embarrassed about my attitude!

I used to think that ‘abroad’ was only ever Spain. And any foreign language was Spanish. No matter what language people spoke, it was Spanish!

I also, for some unknown reason, thought it was illegal for children to have money in the form of notes and they were only allowed coins. I remember my father giving me a pound note one time and I cried thinking I would be in trouble - until he explained and then I calmed down.

I loved all that too. We had all those Readers Digest books of the unexplained. I fully expected to burst into flames at any moment.