Random things you believed as a child light hearted

I know so many people who grew up thinking this too.

@JuliettaCaeser I too thought foxes were dangerous man-eating animals: it was all those stories like The Gingerbread Man. I was quite disappointed when I saw a real fox, and how small it was.

@TrishM80 As with your roundabout, I remember feeling a similar disappointment about my first school "playground". It didn't have any equipment in it at all: it was just an open space! It had a small patch of grass which we were forbidden to walk on.

@SandyY2K I too thought weird things about closing my eyes: I used to imagine everything around me changing while my eyes were closed, and my imagination would go into overdrive. One time I was blindfolded at school, I wondered why I couldn't see the pattern on the scarf, and I zoned out and forgot what I was supposed to be doing (pointing in the direction of any sound I heard).

My cousin told me that they'd get into your ears and burrow into your brain and eat it!

I was terrified of earwigs for years.

Me too. I thought it was triggered by being in love. I couldn’t understand why there was any problem with an unmarried girl having a baby because that just proved that she and the boy really loved each other.

Quicksand!

I love the time and effort you put into this drawing… it’s really made my day 😍😆

My grandma told me that farting in church was one of the seven deadly sins. I only realised it wasn't true after I watched the movie "Seven" and wondering how someone was going to be killed by farting in such a serious movie. Luckily I never said anything out loud.

Not much in here makes me lol.. but the thought of your parents faces… I’m still smiling now !!!

When I was young my dad told me it was illegal to beep the car horn on a Sunday. It seemed logical, Sunday is the day of rest. I was 28 when my now husband disillusioned me of this fact. Even now I can’t bring myself to beep the horn on a Sunday, just in case he’s wrong and there happens to be a police car about!

When I was around 7 I thought my baby was currently really tiny in my stomach and then when I was an adult it would grow 😂

I thought deep sea diving was "dipsy diving" 😂

I really thought African killer bees, quicksand and the sun imploding would be a much more significant threat to my life in Yorkshire than they actually are.

I thought the exact same about the bridge at Plymouth that goes into Cornwall!

I firmly believed that those old gas engineering vans that had Gas written on the side were full of the stuff, and if someone carelessly chucked a fag end or a lighted match near them they would explode

Not read the full thread so some have probably been repeated

I believed everything back in the old days was in black & white.

I believed if a car overtook you, and you then re-overtook that same car, that you'd have to start shooting at each other.

My town had a (traffic) roundabout built in the 80s and my parents told us they were bringing us into town to see the new roundabout. I thought they meant it was a playground roundabout and was very excited to go see it, so was very disappointed to discover it was only a fucking road that went round in a circle!

I grew up in a town with a big railway viaduct and was always curious about how they built the arches. My Dad told me that it was built upside down in a wooden frame to keep the bricks in place and then flipped over when it was finished. I believed it for an embarrassingly long time,

I used to think Santa was real at one point. It faded away after a couple of days.

That if I didnt eat my crusts my hair would not curl
That if I ate carrots I would be able to see in the dark
That if I ate fish I would be "brainy"
That if I swallowed chewing gum it would wrap around my heart

On a more serious note I was made to believe that as I was jealous of my new baby sister I had "broken" my mothers heart and she might die if I was not a "good girl". I was also made to believe that as I was such a "bad girl" a man with a van was coming to take me to a home for naughty children. In fact she had heart problems following the birth and this was my parents way of rationalising events. I was 8 years old when they told me this.

There were lions under the wooden gates in the pavement. I was scared to walk past.

There was a small man inside my toy computer called Henry.

I thought all roads connected eventually and you could take any random turn-off in the car and pick your way to your destination.

When you bought a box of hair dye you turned into the woman on the front 😂

That spiders inject poison into the ends of bananas. I still cut the ends off. I'm 68.

I thought this too, my auntie used to send me Irish £5 notes in my birthday cards and I would pay them in the bank, I was really upset when I went with my mum to withdraw them that they gave me English ones, I kept saying that these weren’t my notes, I made a big fuss about it 😂 I was only about 6 though!

Back home I realised my parents were a bit slack with their Annie routine, so I took it upon myself to do a check just as it was getting dark whenever I could. Better to be safe, a member of the Boddy family is out there with her huge head and eyes and wants to get in after all. What if once she is inside she lets more of them in through the door?

Eventually my mother worked out that I was up to something when I came in to the kitchen, checked behind the blind and lowered it.

“What are you up to?”

‘I don’t want Annie Boddy getting in’. And I made the eyes.

She laughed.

I already had suspicions that my mother wasn’t really into being a parent, and this strengthened them. So I explained the situation to my brother (18 months younger) and enlisted him in making sure that we could manage the anti-Annie routine together despite our parents not taking it seriously. It worked best when one of us distracted them as the other went round doing the checks and closedown as furtively as possible.

I frequently stayed with my father’s side Gran as a child. Her accent is a mix of Donegal and North London with a sprinkle of something else. I loved my Gran and still do; she has a patience and desire to nurture and explain that made up for some of the issues my parents had (nothing terrible, but they were more into themselves and each other, but especially themselves, to an extent that meant that my brother and I just got on without them as much as we could whenever necessary).

My Gran’s ritual when it gets dark (or earlier in summer) is to go round ‘locking up’ and pulling curtains etc. – I was not too sure what the careful curtains part of the ritual was but it was probably to take care not to knock over the plants between them and the glass, especially the precious cacti.

Child me asked her what she was doing when I noticed how involved things were and she turned to me and said ‘we wouldn’t want Annie Boddy getting in, would we?’ and she made these big eyes at me, which I took to be an imitation of Annie who probably had a really big head as well as huge eyes.

The ritual made me feel secure, but Annie Boddy being out there somewhere bothered me a little.