Strange things you thought as a child

[rallyingaround]

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

I thought the next road to us (UK) was Canada 😆

I used to think that if you had an unkind thought about someone it would appear above your head like in a comic. I used to wave my hand above my head to check there wasn't one there!

When being driven anywhere on the motorway I was convinced that commercial buildings with TO LET signs on were toilets.

Also on the motorway we frequently drove past Fort Dunlop. At the time it was a delapidated building with many of the windows smashed, presumably due to vandalism, but no to my childish imagination there were cowboys and Indians fighting in there!

I was born abroad and when I first moved to the UK as an adult, I was in a pub.

The waiter with a very regional accent said 'Todays special is steak and OWL pie'

I said, 'Oh, I didn't realise you could eat them! Are they farmed or wild'???

It was clearly a steak and ALE pie, but I'd never heard of that where I grew up. Steak and kidney, yes, but never with ale or owls 😂

Guerrilla warfare was gorillas recruited as soldiers.
Friendly fire was people having a laugh by shooting things or blowing things up and it going wrong .
Same as posters above on black markets.

When I saw the trombone being played on television (such as the Kenny Ball Jazz Band), it baffled me as to why the slide did stick out the back of the player's neck.

I don't recall if I had given any thought to where the music on the radio was coming from. For some reason though, I pictured Terry Wogan as a little old man in a brown overall, like Arkwright in Open All Hours, in something akin to a garden shed, where other people would occasionally drop in to talk with him. No idea how I thought their chats were coming out of our radio at breakfast time.

I don't know if this is relevant but as a child when I thought of days of the week I saw them as colours.
Monday - blue
Tues - pink
Wed - yellow
Thurs - purple
Friday - brown
Saturday - green
Sunday - orange
As an adult when I think of a day or if someone says I'll see you on x-day I see the colour.
That's weird isn't it, anyone else do this, I've only ever told one person and it freaked them out 😁

That's synaesthesia, Campervangirl.
Me too - and at least one of my brothers, as we found when we argued over the right colours!

I thought that holy ground was full of actual holes. And that nuns were called onions.

I thought "one sugar" meant one grain of sugar and not a spoon

I also thought babies popped out the top of the stomach when being born and not out of the vag

That only children were lonely children. I think I either misheard one day, or mixed up the words but I believed this for years. I have a sibling so it seemed perfectly plausible that only children were lonely.

That what I saw through the edge of someone’s glasses was what they would see without them 🤔

That the news readers (specifically, not actors etc) on TV could see me. That if I dug a hole deep enough I would get to China.
That any clothes I received on my birthday was my birthday suit. In the same vein, that bed clothes were what you wore to bed.
That mud pies were edible.
That people with trade sounding surnames had to be That when they grew up, ie Butcher, Baker etc.
I was a strange child 🤣

Me too!! And I would stare at my fingers trying to figure out if they looked any different.

That mass was maths class

That something fell off the back of a lorry meant just that and how lucky it was we found it

I was convinced fairies were real but only showed themselves to those who were in on the secret.

There are videos of me whispering in the corners of gardens from age 3 to about 9.

I thought I'd fake it until they trusted me enough to appear.

That the ground must be awfully far away for adults and a long way to fall. (I think I must have been forever tripping over).

@Campervangirl -this is a known condition called synethesia. I don't have it though but it must be very interesting for those that do.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

I thought this too!!!

I did the same with numbers as well.
1 was white.
2 was purple.
3 was yellow.
4 was dark purple.
5 was light blue.
6 was orange.
7 was always green.
8 was gold.
9 was navy.
10 was silver.
🤣

I thought when you became a teenager you went to work for the local newspaper (absolutely no idea why).
I thought if there was an earth quake that I would be separated from my mum, so she'd be on one tectonic plate and I'd be on another (in the UK lol).
If I ate an apple pip I'd grow an apple tree in my stomach (thanks grandma).
That babies were plucked out of bushes (random auntie's neighbor told me that when I asked where his baby came from when I was 5).

Also, I believed in fairies and thought one died when you littered.

Still think that now 😂

I thought when people died god put his large hand down and you climbed on it, then it raised you up to heaven. I had heard my mum say “when god takes you home” and this is what I believed.

If you wrote a cheque for something it meant you could buy it without having to spend any actual money.