Weird things that you believed would happen to you when you were a child

[CrazyFoxLady]

Just washing my face and remembered that when I was young my mum used to say that if I didn't wash properly, I'd get a tidemark around my neck and people would know.

A friend's mum wouldn't let her go outside if she'd washed her hair that day as she'd catch a chill - even when her hair had dried!

Still don't stick my tongue out in case the wind changes and I stay like it

Anyone else have any weird ones?

I had the opposite - something I didn’t believe would happen! When I first heard about the fact people died, although I knew intellectually it applied to everyone I had this secret fierce belief that I literally couldn’t die. As if I was the sole immortal person on the planet. It was weird, I genuinely believed it for a while even though I must’ve known deep down I was kidding myself 🤣

I also had a weird fear of kites as I thought they might drag me up into the sky. Similarly I couldn’t lie on the grass and stare at the sky for too long as I got a weird kind of vertigo and felt like I would get sucked up into the clouds. I still feel a bit funny doing it now!

I fear this has exposed me as a complete freak

@bumblenbean I can't lay down and look at clouds either, you're the first person I have ever known who feels the same. People think I'm barmy when I say it!

Yes to the clouds too!

I always wanted curly hair and my mum always used that to ensure I ate my crusts as 'crusts give you curls'. Que me feeling very put out a few years later, when my little sister was born with gorgeous curls and later hated her crusts and I was stuck with poker straight hair despite eating every last morsel of the things.

That I’d be rich. Not famous though. I just wanted the cash, not the attention

I used to think that my parents turned into werewolves when I went to bed .
I also thought that when I became an adult I could choose what sex I was and this was way way way before trans became a thing.

My Mum explained the bodily differences between boys and girls...but I obviously didn't quite understand as I didn't realise I had a vagina... I thought the 'hole' would appear later when I was grown up and wanted a baby!

I was always a bit concerned that my ears weren't firmly attached well enough!

That chewing gum would wrap round your lungs if you swallowed.

As I could feel the vertebrae at the back of my neck quite clearly, I thought/ worried I was developing a hunchback.

I don't know where I'd heard about hunchbacks to have that concern; I'd have been about 10/11.

Alien abduction
Spontaneous human combustion
Attacks by poltergeist

Spent far too much time reading my best mate's mum's Arthur C Clarkes Tales of the Unexplained .

We still talk about that bloody book now and we're in our forties.

My dad knew if I hadn't washed my ears properly because potatoes were starting to grow.

If I ate an apple pip an apple tree would grow. I obviously had to try it and it never grew.

After watching chucky as a kid I had a secret fear that my teddies came to life when I slept.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit how ridiculous. Everyone knows it wraps around your heart if you swallow it.

My childhood was blighted with a mortal fear of quicksand and rabies. No one bothered to tell me this wasn’t a huge risk in rural Shropshire.

That if only I could concentrate reeeeally hard when jumping up, I would muster up the mental strength not to come back down, and with practice would be able to fly.
Also immortality, but that wouldn't require any effort. When I was a little older, I managed to skirt around the inevitability of death with the conviction that when Jesus returned I would obviously, as a Good Person, be taken straight through the Pearly Gates without enduring any unpleasant dying malarkey. What did they teach in school assembly back then?

[quote Tankflybosswalkjam]@EineReiseDurchDieZeit how ridiculous. Everyone knows it wraps around your heart if you swallow it.[/quote]
That was it!

My mum told me chiropodists ate children. I was terrified of walking past the local chiropodist shop and also baffled at how they could get away with it and advertise.

I was sure that any cuts while shaving armpits would lead to cancer straight away. It’s what my mum told me.
And of course you can’t go outside after washing hair because you will catch a chill. My mum still believes in it, just secretly now.

@FossilisedFanny I had a similar belief that everyone was a monster and only looked human when I was looking at them. I was terrified of turning round too fast and actually having to see them. As an adult I think there was something very wrong with me at that time.

@Tankflybosswalkjam I remember quaking in my bed to scared to sleep in case my sludge green carpet changed into quicksand! I was also petrified of rabies. I was also terrified I might get beheaded like Anne Boleyn! 😁

That Astral Projection (spirit travelling) was real and I would be able to do it if I tried hard enough.
Also, that there was something seriously wrong with my face and nose - they are pretty normal but I always expected strangers to say, "Oh my God, what is wrong with your face?"

@EugenesAxe my sister also fully believed that she was becoming hunchbacked for the same reason. We would wind her up mercilessly, say “oh, you’re walking a bit stooped today...” etc. She lost her temper one day when my grandad, always a joker, started doing his best Hunchback of Notte Dame “the bells.... the bells!” And we were all in fits. Poor kid, she was about 8 or 9 and we were really mean (although thought we were hilarious). That said she’s 40 odd now and remains neither a hunchback nor emotionally scarred (and will even gamely cry “the bells!” Herself whenever the anecdote arises).

This wasn’t me, but my best friend was told the facts of life at around 7 or 8. She grasped the main concepts, but because of all the talk of the bits that are urinary as well as reproductive, she got hold of the wrong end of the stick and thought that grown ups had sex in the bathroom, alongside the loo. This was further added to by her mum later telling her as a teenager that girls should go for a wee after the deed to avoid UTIs. So her earliest imaginings of sex were of two people having at it next to the knitted toilet roll lady cover

That I could refuse to die, simply by continuing to take breaths

@PCar20

That I could refuse to die, simply by continuing to take breaths

You haven't been proven wrong!

I remember a few of thr ones mentioned, wind changing, crusts... also remember my sister sucking her hair and being told a furball would grow in side her, and if you eat cheese st night you'll get nightmares.