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Original poster

What were your misconceptions as a child?

188 replies

Geekster1963 · 14/07/2019 21:58

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).

OP posts:
Satterthwaite · 15/07/2019 11:57

My grandmother always always wore a hat when she went out shopping and used to secure said hat with hat pins. I was convinced she stuck the hat pins straight into her head to keep the hat on.

AnguaUberwaldIronfoundersson · 15/07/2019 11:58

I thought:

The Wombles of Wimbledon, common are we.

Kissing made babies - I was horrified when I saw an unmarried couple kissing on TV and declared the woman was going to get pregnant!

French kissing was exactly the same but your lips didn't touch so you could french kiss across the room from one another.

The olden days were black and white

TV was live. It was only when my grandparents explained that the people on Stars in their Eyes weren't doing a fast change that I understood it! I honestly thought the contestants would walk through the door, quickly whip on a wig and make up and then walk through the smoke.

That cars only moved because the earth moved - cars didn't have working engines or move by themselves at all, they used the movement of the earth to get to where they were going. The kids in primary school pissed themselves when I declared that one. To be fair I was about 5!

JonnyPocketRocket · 15/07/2019 12:14

That music on the radio was all being performed live in the studio.

That conception was somehow related to wedding rings, and babies were born through your belly button.

That sex was something mostly involving urine! Don't know where I got that idea from Blush Think I had a vague awareness that "bits" and bodily fluids were involved, put 2 and 2 together and got a golden shower 5!

That the split-second change in sound when the driver changed gear in a car was the car taking a breath.

That the first page or two of children's books (containing the copyright info, dedication etc) contained the instructions for reading them, e.g. what voices different characters should have. That was the only information I could think of that would need to be included in every book but wouldn't form part of the story.

God I was an idiot 😂

JonnyPocketRocket · 15/07/2019 12:15

Oops, strikethrough fail!

PintOfBovril · 15/07/2019 12:49

I thought your body was full of hair and it just grew and grew out through your head until there was none left and then you went bald.

I also thought it was 'ZINGERRR ZANGERRRR' at the end of 'sing hosanna'..

QueenBlueberries · 15/07/2019 12:51

I didn't realise that countries' borders were man made. I thought the planet had been 'born' with the counties' borders already on it...

Original poster
Geekster1963 · 15/07/2019 13:05

Deltaflyer I grew up close to a few power stations too.

Peter God Grin

OP posts:
formerbabe · 15/07/2019 13:07

I thought the people on TV could see me too. I used to wave and be amazed at how they were so professional as to ignore me...

HiGunny · 15/07/2019 13:11

I thought people on the tv were in their own little world and we were watching them there. And that something bigger was watching us on their tv. I thought it was probably dinosaurs watching us 😂

Natsku · 15/07/2019 13:28

I used to think people would start talking as they walked past me just to be rude because I couldn't hear them before they got near so I assumed they only just started talking when I could hear them.

Cattenberg · 15/07/2019 13:33

TV newsreaders kept talking about “Marxist guerillas”. For years I thought they were gorillas who’d managed to get hold of machine guns.

I believed that estranged” meant insane and dangerous, and thought newsreaders were very rude for referring to “Nelson Mandela and his estranged wife, Winnie”. I always watched Winnie Mandela very warily, wondering when she’d “turn”.

When the TV news showed a building being demolished using explosives, they also reversed the film and showed the building putting itself back together again. I didn’t realised the film was reversed, and thought this process was real. This really messed with my understanding of cause and effect for years - I thought that just about everything could be reversed, and that all broken objects could be mended.

custardcreamzz · 15/07/2019 13:36

In the lords prayer "forgive of us our trespasses", my parents spoke it quietly and I thought it said "forgive us for our crisps" - hence referred to it as the crisp poem🤪🤣

tinkering · 15/07/2019 13:41

that the sign language woman that appeared on some television programmes was trapped inside the television and the sign language was actually her asking to come out!! and if I sat close enough to the television I would be able to get sucked inside the TV through the speakers, like she was. Oh I thought this would be great - I'd get to boss all the cartoon characters about! Wrong - Mum thought I had problems with my sight and I ended up in glasses for years!

Grin at Peter God

Every time I saw a 'to let' sign up near a house or building I thought it meant 'toilet' and wondered why no one could spell 'toilet' Confused

NeverGotMyPuppy · 15/07/2019 13:48

I thought 'to let' signs were 'toilet' signs that had been vandalised or damaged.

I thought if you paid using a credit card then it was free

I thought people said 'pleased to meet you'at church ('peace be with you') - people should enunciate!!!

formerbabe · 15/07/2019 14:08

When I was a child, a new McDonald opened near us. The sign said "drive thru". I assumed it was a spelling mistake and they actually meant...drive thurs... so the drive through facility was only available on Thursdays. Took me years to realise that thru was through Grin

CanCanAGoGo · 15/07/2019 15:15

When i was a child, i was convinced that if i looked down the grate on the roadside outside my home, i would see my Father who was a miner pass by. I used to spend hours looking down it, especially if the drain cleaner wagon had been and cleaned it out Grin

alphasox · 15/07/2019 15:20

I remember hearing about Guerilla Warfare on the news as a kid and imagining giant apes with guns 🦍

TheNoodlesIncident · 15/07/2019 15:22

I thought that bookmakers did just that, making books you could read.

And when people spoke in other languages (such as French), when they heard the French words they were somehow translated in their brain into English. I couldn't conceive that people might think in another language, full stop. Very odd.

I also thought that my mum really did have eyes on the back on her head, as she seemed to know what I was doing even with her back turned. Spooky! I guess that's why she never wore her hair in bunches, like I did; I might have spotted the rear eyes!

I also staunchly believed my mother probably had to go to school without shoes, like the Victorian kids in our school history books. I was unwise enough to ask her about this and felt she was not reasonable for being upset. (I have a better idea about how rubbish children's sense of time is and don't get upset when my dc refers to my childhood time (the 70s and 80s) as "the olden days". Yes, I had a pet dinosaur. We all did then, ds. Honest.)

SiliconHeaven · 15/07/2019 15:33

My mum and dad used to go shopping at a freezer centre and they told me they had to wrap up warm because the whole shop was a big freezer. I pictured a building-sized chest freezer and I used to worry about how they had to climb up to the lid on a long ladder and lift the lid to get into the shop Blush

AnguaUberwaldIronfoundersson · 15/07/2019 15:34

I too thought foreigners translated their language to English in their heads to understand it.

I also believed foreign alphabets were rather same as ours but the letters mixed up so instead of ABC it was GEU

Grumpbum123 · 15/07/2019 15:36

Free cash I thought you popped in and it gave you free cash not that the machine didn’t charge you

Nonstopbuttmachine · 15/07/2019 16:03

I used to feel really sorry for librarians as I thought they were unpaid and relied on fines from overdue books as a 'wage'. I would deliberately return my books late every week and feel very virtuous paying 15p out of my pocket money so the poor ladies could buy some food Grin

RiftGibbon · 15/07/2019 16:13

Not me but a close friend. We used to go to Sunday School together. She told me that she was surprised we sung a particular song as it had a 'bit of a rude word' in it.
The word was "darn" and the song..."Dance then wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the darn settee..."

CigarsofthePharoahs · 15/07/2019 16:16

I remember thinking that it was terribly unfair that a youth who had been helping the police with enquiries had been charged with a crime. After all, he'd been helping the police.
My sister made me believe that my "birthday suit" was the brand new pink tracksuit I had been given on my birthday. Sigh.
I also thought that the sea was salty because someone a long time ago had put salt in it on purpose to stop people they didn't like drinking.

TypingoftheDead · 15/07/2019 16:27

I thought people disappeared to an alternate dimension/got destroyed somehow if they went to the bus stop. To be fair I probably wasn't any older than 5, but I used to see people waiting there when I walked past with mum, then never see them again, so I assumed something bad had happened to them.
You can imagine how distressed I was when I caught the bus for the very first time in my life Grin