Strange things you thought as a child

[rallyingaround]

I used to think there was 100 pennies squashed up into a pound.

That thunder was clouds bumping into each other. (Can't imagine why I believed that for so long)

Citrus and dairy together will curdle in your stomach and make you sick. Still can't bring myself to have fresh orange and cereal with milk at the same time. (And apparently my sister does too!)

That Pakistan was where Iceland is on the map - no idea why. Don't know where I thought Iceland was. Was about 10 when I realized I was wrong - can still remember the shock it was that Pakistan wasn't Iceland.

Remember asking how they got the cats to lie in the road for cats eyes and where was the rest of the cat?

I'm not sure if I actually believed it but when i was very little I'd imagine different countries were like their names. Turkey was a dusty pen with a big fat turkey. Wales was a roman bath with an Orca swimming around...

I thought it was such a shame that eyes didn't work better. I was genuinely impressed with brains and legs and whatnot, but thought God really dropped the ball when it came to eyes.
I was about 8 when I voiced this to my parents who looked utterly horrified. Turns out I was really short sighted, but never mentioned it because I thought it was normal.

It can be!

That people mostly lived in the same type of house and I would grow up to live in one too!

We lived on an estate where every house was pretty much identical so all of my friends lived in 'the same' house as me. We mustn't have gone out very far because I just thought that's what houses were and I'd have my very own one day!

Speaking to my year 6 class last year, they thought the same thing!

I thought the moon followed me because I could see it wherever I was.

I thought moving house was literally picking up your house / flat and moving it to a new location. I remember being very confused at how to get my gran's top floor flat off her building to move somewhere else.

I thought by writing to the BBC, I could be picked to star in an episode of goosebumps. Had no idea it was all done in the US and extremely difficult to get into.

I thought the word union was onion in infant school. Used to walk past “union (aka onion) street” every day to school. My poor mum must have got really sick of explaining phonetics to me and then hearing my little jokes about it.

I thought my parents must be really well off! (We lived in a semi,and DM worked in a shop DF worked in a factory!) I always thought they were so wealthy!

I remember mixing up island, Ireland and Iceland when I was very little. I was about four or five when my Granda died suddenly and my mum had to rush off to Ireland. I’m sure my hearing issues and my Polish Babcia’s strong accent can’t have helped matters.

Omg bless you! What a revelation glasses must have been

My DH was similar but he was 13 before his short sight was spotted.

I had a reasonable idea of how babies were made (my mum was fairly forward thinking that way) but I must have got confused somewhere, because I also thought pregnancy happened if a boy peed in you 🤢
Oh, and that you could take the baby out, change its clothes, and put it back in again until it was ready to be born!

My niece thinks that mum's die pretty much as soon as their children becomes mothers themselves, as that's what happened in her family.

I couldn't actually work out how the word 'union' would be pronounced if it wasn't onion whilst reading that comment.
It took me a while.

TBF with some Scots and Ulster dialects (and I’m not talking about Gaelic or Irish) you wouldn’t be all that far wrong.

Me too.

Also thought my mums name was 'mum' and was not happy when I found out that wasn't her name

When you see a sunbeam shining from the sky that was because someone has died and there spirit is going up to heaven

I was 22 before I first had an eye test and they told me I had stigmatism in both eyes!

I thought everyone saw things a bit blurry round the edges. When they put the test lenses thing on to test I was amazed that the world was actually clear and what shocked me most was that everything was so “3D” and not flat like it had always been for me! It was also a revelation of why 3D glasses never worked for me.

I’ve only ever worn them for driving though, 20 odd years along. I quite like my slightly fuzzy view of life.

I thought morning sickness was you just feeling sick in the morning from hunger. Told my mum anxiously I was suffering from morning sickness. I was about 7.

I used to think I would literally go down the plug hole if I stayed in the bath when the plug was pulled out! I used to hop out of it pretty quickly 😂

I remember visiting my Uncle and Aunts one Christmas and my Aunt saying we've got some of the neighbours popping in later on.
I was so exited wondering who from "neighbours" I would get to meet as I watched it everyday.

How disappointed I was when their next door neighbours arrived.

I thought you had to be on your period to get pregnant until I was about 15 and then realised everyone meant you have to have a cycle to get pregnant not physically bleeding at the time of sex 😂 I remember silently figuring out in my head in a biology class

I thought this too. Lol.