When I was a child, I believed

[ginandwineandbaileys]

That people grew and grew until death
That the oldest person in the country became monarch, and I just had to live long enough and I too would become Queen of England
That my baby sister was actually my doll that had come to life
That my dog could speak (she understood everything I said to her, and would have "conversations" with me, barking in response)
That I saw Santa traversing across the sky
That the nuns in my nursery were witches (I was not a catholic)
That soup is the best food in the world (still do)

[purpleproses]

[quote OutrageousFlavourLikeFreesias]@purpleproses possibly there was! It definitely seemed to come up a lot in TV programmes. Maybe there was a genuine outbreak of quicksand related danger that we all needed to be aware of...[/quote]
I'm sure there was one so I googled.

The rabbit hole offered up this archive of all of the UK PSA broadcasts.

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/view_all_films.htm

[Blueuggboots]

That kisses looked like this - X
And were stored on the inside of your stomach and if you kept kissing people and didn't get any back that you would run out...

[OutrageousFlavourLikeFreesias]

@purpleproses possibly there was! It definitely seemed to come up a lot in TV programmes. Maybe there was a genuine outbreak of quicksand related danger that we all needed to be aware of...

[Honeyroar]

That the noise you could hear when a radio wasn’t tuned in properly was the next band warming up.

[purpleproses]

@OutrageousFlavourLikeFreesias

That quicksand was something I was likely to encounter quite often and would need to know how to get out of. For some reason there was a lot of getting-stuck-in-quicksand incidents in the TV I watched

Wasn't there some kind of TV campaign in the 1970s warning of the dangers of quicksand?

[giao]

SnappedandFarted My friend told me she couldn't do a wee because she had no spare tampon with her. We were in a nightclub at the time.

[OliviaKeeling]

That all dogs were boys and all cats were girls

Me too. But then I was never told about bodily changes nor sex education by my parents so my period took me very much by surprise when I was 11.

[MrsHugsxx]

I thought Cabbage Patch dolls grew in cauliflowers for some strange reason and believed people in Australia walked upside down and I believed it for years. Both things were told to me by adults and I believed for years.

[SnappedAndFartedInMaui]

That women only had two holes and if a woman wearing a tampon needed a wee, she had to remove the tampon!

That there were actual zebras at zebra crossings. I was very disappointed to find out the truth.

That when people were on TV, that they had to climb into the television set and that there were actually live people living in our tv!

[TheBadElfParade]

That mayonnaise was made from dolphins. I didn’t find out until I called my friends lunch ‘dirty dolphin juice’ and she looked at me bizarrely and asked me why I called it that. I was 14 when I found out it was made from eggs

[AliasGrape]

I remember being really curious as to how they got the houses from the ‘building site’ to the place that the house was needed. I genuinely thought the building site was a one-off, fixed place where all houses/other edifices were constructed and then somehow taken to where their permanent location. I concluded it would take some very special equipment and must happen at night as I’d never seen one on the move. I remember asking both my teacher and my mum about it but they clearly didn’t understand the question because it was a while before I twigged.

It’s quite embarrassing that I was that dim really!

I also thought seahorses were fictional creatures and my mind was BLOWN when we saw some at an aquarium.

[AdultHumanFemale]

...that if you turned up the volume on the TV, the characters or presenters would start to raise their voices until they were eventually screaming.

[Crankley]

LaMarschallin What confusion

I was a child of the 50s and my DM would have died of embarrassment at the thought of talking to me about the birds and the bees so she didn't. School wasn't much better, all I recall is my class being led into a Nissan hut in the playground and were shown a film. I think it was about amoebas but it was black and white and so grainy it could have been about anything.

How times change

[2BDIs]

That mushroom skin was poisonous and they must be peeled before cooking and eating otherwise you would die.
I, of course, no longer believe this but I do still peel and de stalk the mushrooms before prepping them
That raisins were dead flies and that's why they have a bit if a crunch to them. The though of eating a raisin makes me very hot and uncomfortable even now so I avoid like the plague. Again I know they are not really flies but its not something I can get over. Anything that crunches now, that mostly shouldn't, makes my stomach turn

[Joolsin]

That if someone had a surname with a place name in it, they lived in that place (I know that's how many surnames originated in the first place) - so Robert Boyle lived in Boyle, James Galway lived in Galway, etc. I was very confused when a boy called John Oxford started at our school, given that Oxford was in a completely different country - how did he get home every day?

[Cheeseycheeseycheesecheese]

@Robbybobtail

One that sticks in my mind is thinking when two people married they were automatically handed a baby by the priest! I remember going to visit my newly married aunt and uncle and wandering from room to room saying "where's the baby?" and them looking shocked and saying "What baby?"

This is soo cute!!!
I used to believe that if you wanted a baby you and your husband had to go to the maternity unit and tell them what you wanted (sex, eye colour, hair etc) and they had a store room full of babies that they could just get you there and then. When I told dad I was pregnant with ds he bought it up and asked when we were going to collect our baby 🙈

[EvieBoo2]

That happily ever after was a thing.
That there was A God that loved everyone and there was an afterlife.

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

I am really embarrassed about mine because I can’t believe how stupid I was...
An older child at school told me you must never put Hula Hoops on your fingers because they might get stuck and the year before a girl at school had done it and she had to go to hospital to have them taken off.

[LaMarschallin]

DH used to go out looking for the little stars in the garden that must have fallen after fireworks (obviously only on Bonfire Night in those days).

[Autumnchill]

I thought I could see France from the beach, it was Hull

That if you wanted a boy, you cut the cord longer and if you wanted a girl you cut it closer to the baby

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

@Robbybobtail

One that sticks in my mind is thinking when two people married they were automatically handed a baby by the priest! I remember going to visit my newly married aunt and uncle and wandering from room to room saying "where's the baby?" and them looking shocked and saying "What baby?"

Reminds me of my dd thinking that on the day you become a grown up you are automatically given a house, a car and a job.

[Insertfunnyname]

That anyone wearing anything camouflage pattern (joggers, hoody etc) was from the army and possibly a ‘baddy/enemy’

[Quirrelsotherface]

That there would be a hurricane if it was windy and then it went calm.
That my dad and brother would get sent to Iraq to fight.
That if I went to the beach I would step I. Quicksand and die.
That every rottweiler would kill me.

Child of the eighties who read a newspaper..which in hindsight probably wasn't a good thing!

[VenusClapTrap]

At infants’ school a friend me told that we were due to enter another ice age (this was the seventies, before anyone was aware of global warming), and I worried about how my mum would come and collect me if it happened while I was at school, if the ice flowed between our house and the school.

[Robbybobtail]

One that sticks in my mind is thinking when two people married they were automatically handed a baby by the priest! I remember going to visit my newly married aunt and uncle and wandering from room to room saying "where's the baby?" and them looking shocked and saying "What baby?"