What weird stuff did you believe as a kid?

[NamelessGem]

When I was younger my over active imagination and my comedic parents led me to believe a series of bizarre things ....

For example -

Sequins gathered in dark corners would fly off to parties in the night.

Yorkshire puddings grew in mines and naughty kids had to go down to mine for them.

Old photos were taken from the ‘black and white days’ where everything really was just black and white, until the first colour was invented (red) which is why postboxes, telephone boxes buses etc are red. Also why some Tudor houses are black and white - they were accidentally missed !

• mum and dad were born during the dinosaur ages

• a cupboard in my room turned me invisible

And I read one on Facebook (which prompted this thread) a boy was adopted as a baby but was black, his adoptive family were white. They told him the other kids were born in the day, and he at night !
This lad then began telling the other black kids at his school that they were simply born at night, and white kids in the day .... ahahaha

I’m sure there’s more !

What weird stuff did you believe ?!

That people who were in my dreams would know what I dreamed about. It was a shock to learn this was not true!

That foxes were big, fierce creatures that would eat you up, like they do in stories such as The Gingerbread Man.

My dad pointed out underground rivers; there are lots of them in London, and pointed out manhole covers where you can hear water underneath. If we tried to drop stones through the holes, he told us that trolls sailed in the rivers in little boats, and might come up if we disturbed them. I always hoped to see them in the places where these rivers surfaced!

Lots of things about shoes - that they might walk away without me, or that if I wore them without socks, I might find my toes had vanished when I took them off. Sandals were OK, because then I could check my toes were still there!

That war was just a made up event. Could not believe that people could ever kill each other.

Mine ( totally made up by me ) was to wonder what I would do when it was my time to have a war. Mum had been a land girl in the second world war and my paternal grandfather had been a sergeant in the army during the first world war. I just assumed that each generation had to have a world war.

My second is really a condemnation of the sex education in the 50s. I had been told that a man's penis stuck out before sex. I concluded that, as a penis stuck out horizontally, my vagina should have been just under my belly button. I further concluded that as my vagina wasn't there, I had been born with some sort of disability and so could never have sex and children.

My dad used to eat the whole apple and he always told us he had a tree growing in his belly from all the seeds and the branches grew out of his ears at night.... and he got up super early to cut them off before we got up. I believed him for years. I tell the same story to my kids when I eat something with seeds in it!

And that the tooth fairy only accepts clean teeth as she makes fairy dust with them so that's why we had to brush them... tell my kids that one too. Although, I don't know if that's particularly weird.

That for every baby born someone needs to die to make room in the world for them. Waiting for new arrivals was always awful because I was waiting for someone to die.

I remember getting hysterically upset at nursery after the nursery nurse told me a tree would grow in my tummy after I ate an orange pip.

That there was dwarfs that lived in my nose that organised my bogies. They had to work extra hard if I was poorly or crying cos of all the extra snot.

I went on an aeroplane as a child and didn't understand that there was a hold where you put your luggage. I thought there was a second plane with all the suitcases on which followed the first plane to the destination.

My granddad told me if I picked a dandelion I would pee the bed that night-I still can’t pick one!
School taught us that Robin Hood and merlin where real people

I believed that earwigs would get into my ears and burrow into my brain. I slept every night with my hands over my ears.

I used to think there were skeletons hiding in the spare room cupboard and would come out and dance when it was dark. I wouldn't go upstairs alone when it was dark. I never told my parents why as I knew they'd think I was ridiculous but I really believed that and I don't know why. I think I was still asking to be tucked in when I was 11!

We live by the coast on an estuary and the beach is pebbles and big stones. My dad told me they were there because in the olden days sailors used to fill the bottom of the ship with big stones to keep them more steady in bad weather then when they got close to shore and where they were at the end of their journey they would chuck them out and that's where the pebbles came from. As a young adult, I told people this!! It's absolute rubbish!! My dad has never let me live it down

That if I pulled my belly button my bum would drop off. That bogies were dried up bits of my brain. That Grotbags lived in mum's wardrobe.

I also thought the world/life was black and white.
Had to be careful as some puddles were never-ending.
Dolls/toys really came alive at night.

That false teeth would eat things even if they weren't in someone's mouth.

That you'd be married to someone if you wore their wifes wedding ring (traumatised by this one when the ring of a family friend got stuck on my finger).

That I'd grow up and look like one of my dolls.

I thought cabbage patch dolls came out of cauliflowers. No idea why I thought this but I used to always look inside to see if there were any.

@Mayalready I remember thinking that with war, it wasn't the loss of life I was afraid of - it was being evacuated!

I was convinced we had a time bomb in our house. When all was quiet you could hear 'tick, tick, tick'. It was the electric meter.

This is outing but my Dad has a brother who is a Mormon (very unusual where we live), who is a Vegan (literally unheard of in the 70s) and unmarried/no kids. I thought to be a Mormon you had to be the other two.... like it was a requirement of this exotic religion.

We also had black cats and so did both sets of grandparents and my aunt, so I thought that black cats were the standard-issue ones you probably got free from the government or whatever (like NHS specs) and other colours of cats were clearly exotic/more expensive because “normal” people only had the black kind.

I was an odd kid.

The birds standing on telephone lines were cold and were warming their feet up! 🤷🏼‍♀️

That if you swallowed chewing gum, it'd wrap around your heart and you'd die 🙄😳

That the teachers didn't live at school. I was most surprised once when I spotted one in town.

Laughing so much at
Some of these !! Haha

I also believed that trees would grow in my tummy if I ate fruit pips! And that chewing gum swallowed was akin to death 🙈 I remember worrying senselessly that I’d be bunged up from accidentally swallowing chewing gum!

I love the black cats thought aha !!

@elephantoverthehill

I got an alarm clock for Christmas once, sat bolt upright at 6am Christmas morning worried I’d been so naughty Santa had given me a bomb !!!!!

My dad told me that sheep had two legs shorter than the others so they didnt fall off the hills. I believed that for a long time hahaha

That you only had sex for each child you had. Our neighbor had one child so I thought they’d only done it once.