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Original poster

What were your assumptions about the world as a child?

163 replies

OneUmberJoker · 21/09/2025 12:22

I thought being rested as in sport star rested meant arrested

OP posts:
Worralorra · 21/09/2025 20:56

That the politicians were honest and truthful, and that generally, life is fair!

ShootingCoyotesOutTheWindow · 21/09/2025 20:55

When very young, I wondered why criminals were taken into “custardey” (baths of custard?? Like, why would the police do that??)

When I put my dolls in their beds at night, I wondered if, when I was asleep, giants played with me in “their doll’s house” (ie my house)

I thought being a good person would mean being rewarded with a good life.

GentleSheep · 21/09/2025 20:51

That whenever a song played on the radio, the group was there playing it live. 😂

fivetriangulartrees · 21/09/2025 20:51

I didn't realise that "teacher" was a job, I just thought they were the nice friendly people who helped us learn stuff. Once I asked my teacher what she did for a living. "I'm a teacher." Mind blown.

My German friend told me that, while we were all worrying about quicksand, our German contemporaries were crying themselves to sleep at the prospect of ball lightning coming through the window and chasing them around their bedroom. She couldn't believe I slept with my window open - and had never heard of ball lightning.

AliceMaforethought · 21/09/2025 20:43

padso · 21/09/2025 20:38

@AliceMaforethought yeah, it's the interim bit that's the problem & it's impacting our economy now. Things are only going to get more expensive!

I agree that that is a problem, but the solution is not to keep having more kids. It is to reorganize the economic system. How that would best be done is beyond me, I'm not an economist. But with the way the world seems to be going, I have no idea why anyone would want to bring kids into it anyway.

TheExcitersblowingupmymind · 21/09/2025 20:42

ilovepixie · 21/09/2025 20:28

Also the Bermuda Triangle fear.

Lots of documentaries on it in the 70s never hear of it now.

OnlyInsomniaInTheBuilding · 21/09/2025 20:41

Yes to near-inevitable death by quicksand 😂
Also that teachers knew everything. In primary school we had to write a piece of work on our favourite meal. I asked the teacher how to spell a dish from my grandmother's (very small, unwritten) language and was so bewildered that she didn't know! And that teachers lived in school and were all married to one another, harem style 🙈
That the conception of babies somehow involved wedding rings.
As a teenager in the late 90s, that all the nice but lonely 40-year-old men hanging around in Yahoo chat rooms genuinely just wanted to be friends with me, a 14 year old girl.
In hindsight, I was a very naive child!

Orangelogfi · 21/09/2025 20:39

When I was very young I thought that girls grew up to be men and boys grew up to be women. I was a very confused child.

padso · 21/09/2025 20:38

@AliceMaforethought yeah, it's the interim bit that's the problem & it's impacting our economy now. Things are only going to get more expensive!

slanksy · 21/09/2025 20:38

That everyone was really kind. I knew there were bad people on the TV and in the news but thought that everyone I knew was really nice and kind. Until I hit my teens (not sure if it was earlier or later) and realised what an awful bunch of people I had around me, the family secrets, the lies, and more generally the real personalities of adults vs the ones used in-front of children.

Bowling4soup · 21/09/2025 20:34

I used to think in the jungle and in the wild vets would go out and cut open the wild lions/elephants/giraffes etc tummy’s to get their babies out and that was the only way a baby could be born

AliceMaforethought · 21/09/2025 20:34

padso · 21/09/2025 20:30

It's a good thing that birth rates are declining. The planet is very overcrowded and you want to add even more people?

Wrong again, reducing the amount of people is a good thing. More old and fewer young? Nope, nope, nope. Maybe go and read up on it!

The old aren't going to live forever, are they? With the planet in the shape it's in, the fewer people the better.

padso · 21/09/2025 20:33

I thought every TV presenting couple were actually married because of Richard & Judy.

Newsenmum · 21/09/2025 20:32

Nomorebullshitnotavailable · 21/09/2025 20:30

I thought being a teenager was a job and they worked at the county council.

Hahaha

Nomorebullshitnotavailable · 21/09/2025 20:30

I thought being a teenager was a job and they worked at the county council.

User415373 · 21/09/2025 20:30

That if I went to uni and worked hard, my life would be different to what I grew up with (most of my family were on benefits, we all lived in council houses. Lots more to it than that but it wasn't a happy childhood). I thought I'd have a nice house, could afford furniture new, would go on holidays.
I am happy though.

padso · 21/09/2025 20:30

It's a good thing that birth rates are declining. The planet is very overcrowded and you want to add even more people?

Wrong again, reducing the amount of people is a good thing. More old and fewer young? Nope, nope, nope. Maybe go and read up on it!

LemondrizzleShark · 21/09/2025 20:30

I imagined my life would be exactly like the Impulse woman’s when I was in my 20s - random men giving me flowers. I assumed that happened to everyone all the time, I didn’t realise flowers cost money.

padso · 21/09/2025 20:29

That pancake day was the only day of the year you were allowed to eat pancakes.

I still only eat pancakes on pancake day!

ilovepixie · 21/09/2025 20:28

Also the Bermuda Triangle fear.

AliceMaforethought · 21/09/2025 20:28

padso · 21/09/2025 20:26

@AliceMaforethought Not with birth rates as they are!

It's a good thing that birth rates are declining. The planet is very overcrowded and you want to add even more people?

padso · 21/09/2025 20:27

We have a serious underpopulation problem which immigration wont fix but let’s not ruin the thread

Yep it's way too depressing for this lighthearted thread although in the same vein I assumed I would retire at some point when I got old 😆😆😆

ilovepixie · 21/09/2025 20:27

I was also terrified of Quicksand!

AliceMaforethought · 21/09/2025 20:26

Newsenmum · 21/09/2025 20:25

I assume they mean just a ‘normal job’.

Show quote history

Probably. I still think that they are looking back with adult eyes on what they thought they thought as a child, rather than actually having had those thought processes as a child, if that makes sense.

padso · 21/09/2025 20:26

@AliceMaforethought Not with birth rates as they are!