What were your misconceptions as a child?

[Geekster1963]

I always used to think when a pub said 'free house' it meant you got free drinks. I also thought a '99' was so called because it cost 99p. (Was a lot less when I was a child).

I was horrified when going to church for a baptism (I'm from a non religious family) at all the cannibals eating the body and drinking the blood of someone. My parents had to explain as I was hysterical.

That private ambulances were for rich people.

That you were shrunk to go on a plane. I didn't go on a plane until I was an adult and had only ever seen them in the sky.

When we got our first car, I asked dad how he knew which side of the road to drive on. On being told that everyone drives on the left, I was horrified and pointed out that somebody has to drive on the right or they’d all hit each other!
He had to stand me in the road on the left facing one way, then turn me round facing the other way on the opposite side before I got it, that it was the left side of wherever you were going!

I thought "the law" was a person, because of the phrase "the law says...".

I thought that "poor" always meant poor like Hansel and Gretel, and having to be abandoned in the woods.

I believed a myth I had been told that if you wore shoes without socks, your toes would vanish, but sandals were OK because you could see your toes were still there. I was scared when a babysitter tried to put slippers on my bare feet, and when at school, we were told to put our shoes on without socks to walk from the classroom to the assembly hall for PE.

I lived in area with 3 power stations in when I was small. Always puffing steam out of the cooling towers.
I thought they were cloud factories. And that was how the adults knew it would rain.

As a young child, I remember being totally confused about teenagers: were they grown up or not? My mum was a secondary school teacher, and she occasionally took me into her school. The boys were in suits, so they looked like grown ups, despite their young faces, and some of them were taller than my mum. I called one of them a "boy-man". Also, it didn't help that adult women were often referred to as "girls".

Showing my age here but I believed the old Milky Way advert that they were whipped out of air......I did sit there once during dinner, furiously whipping up the air with my fork and was inconsolable that a Milky Way didn't appear.
I also thought the Mile High club was some form of frequent flyer club but then I didn't fly for the first time until in my twenties, so thankfully no embarrassing scenarios around that one.

The 99 thing: "From the Cadbury website: An Ice Cream served in a cone with a Flake99 is the UK's favourite ice cream. In the days of the monarchy in Italy the King had an elite guard consisting of99 soldiers. Subsequently anything really special or first class was known as "99".

I thought when you paid by cheque you weren't actually paying for it with money. You just handed over the cheque and that was that.

My mum used to pay for the weekly shop with a cheque in the mid 90s (lol imagine that now) and I would ask why we didnt pay for everything by cheque?!

Peter God is brilliant 🤣🤣🤣

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Flake#Name
Some ideas for a 99

My DD has come up with a few; recently she was on the waiting list for an op and I said they were going to expedite her place she took this as ‘extradite’ and asked what country was she going to and would it be on a plane 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I thought Brains faggots were made from people’s brains so wouldn’t eat them!

I thought when you deposited money in the bank it was kept in a box with your name on it. I used to get 50p to put in the bank but asked my parents if I could maybe deposit notes as when I withdrew it I didn't want a massive heavy bag of coins!

My mum used to buy mint flavour peas. They were lovely
I was quite disappointed to find that peas are not naturally minty

I once got told that if you chewed your hair it would wrap around your heart and you’d die, same with spaghetti if you didn’t chew it thoroughly enough. Believed that for years.

I also used to think you gave birth out of your bellybutton

When extremely little, I thought there were little people talking in our big old 'wireless' and was so disappointed when I managed to get behind it and see only wires and little light bulbs.

By the time I could read, I thought that putting 'dilute to taste' on squash bottle labels was daft, since obviously you could taste it much better if you didn't dilute it.

This is great! I found a stone with a horse shoe shape on the beach when I was young & showed my dad who said 'oh it's a seahorse fossil'. I then thought seahorses were little horses that lived in the sea for ages!

I had no idea about mortgages even as a teenager. When I would hear that someone bought a house for £100,000. etc., I thought they had actually saved all that money and couldn't figure out how long it took to save that.

My classroom in primary school had a poster saying 'quality not quantity!'...
For many many (MANY!) years I thought 'quantity' meant the opposite of quality. So when I would see order forms with 'quantity' on I thought why would I want this if its not good, why am I having to enter a number for the amount of quantity I require???

I grew up in a seaside town with lots of visitors and so plenty of hotels/b n' bs.

I used to think the Vacancies sign was for jobs

I thought that Ready Brek would really give that warm red forcefield and was deeply disappointed that it didn't.

@fuckingtwats Oh God you've just ressurected one of my most mortifying teenage moments.

I'm also from a seaside town and when I was about 14 one of my friends had a job cleaning at a BnB and it paid much better than my paper round. So what did I do? Yup, went and knocked on the door of about 6 different BnBs with vacancies signs saying I was looking for work. When the last one said no I was starting to get frustrated so I asked quite petulantly why the owner was bothering to advertise vacancies if she didn't have any! She gave me such a withering look that the penny dropped immediately. I went straight home and kept my paper round

I'd forgotten about that entirely and am now cringing!

That emoji should have been a blushing face, not a bottle of gin. I didn't go home and hit the bottle.

I was late to school one day (about Year 5, though in the mid-60s) as watching my cat give birth. I proudly reported she gave birth through her bum. As you do.