Strange things you thought as a child

[rallyingaround]

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

I thought the same

The the pages of a book were blank until you opened it, then the words would appear.
I spent lots of time quickly opening and closing books trying to catch them out.

My 5 year old thinks this too. He also thinks that tall tv is live!

That if you were run over you would be a perfect 2D image of yourself - or as I described it a "flat picture on the road".

I also thought the post whooshed around the country in underground tubes after you put it in the post box.

That the world of leather was a shop full of leather jackets, not sofas, until about 30 years old.

I thought I could remain a child forever, if I cried hard enough, sadly it didn't work.

I used to think my grandmothers lodger was a witch.

She scared me terribly as a child. To be fair she was in her 80's and had long fluffy badly pinned white hair and a long black dress and very big teeth. She would have been born in the 1890's.

I thought that milk was just provided to everyone, like it was at school. I thought that some people had it provided at the doorstep and others like my mum collected it at the shop.

One early morning, when we had no milk for cereal, I went out the front door and collected a milk bottle from the neighbour's doorstep.

That was when my mum explained that nothing was free. Shattered my life view at a young age!

Like a few others here, I used to think as a small child, that there was a monster under the bed that would drag me under if I let my legs dangle, and also one down the plughole in the bath, that would suck me down when the last bit of water drained out. So I used to shoot out of the bath before it emptied, right up to when I was about 8!

ALSO used to think all dogs were boys and all cats were girls.

Thought the pee came out of my actual vagina, (not the completely separate peehole.) I thought that til I was about 17! (Didn't pay enough attention in Biology!)

I couldn't understand why the steering wheel wasn't in the middle of the car, but actually on the right.

I was scared if I ate seeds/pips from apples or grapes that apples and grapes would start growing inside my stomach!

Also, I used to think that when people had sex, the man would put his willy in the woman, and the baby came out when his willy came back out. 😬I thought that from about 9 when I first heard about sex, (from older cousins,) to about 13!

I still think those things @mellongoose @Roseyleaf 😳

I thought that everything used to be in black and white, because of old black and white TV shows.

I thought that at the fly over in Nottingham, the whole car actually flew over a river into Nottingham. I would close my eyes everytime so I thought this for ages!

also thought that in the public swimming bath, the sides could come up at anytime and release sharks into the pool.

That post system was used on a small scale back in the day.. Check out Pneumatic post for info.

I thought Mr Bean was real. I didn't know he was acting 😂
I actually got confused with acting a lot and didn't understand it but Mr Bean sticks out 😆

Oh and I thought there was a wolf under my bed. Little red riding hood terrified me 😅

That the pictures you saw of people signing the marriage papers on their wedding day was them telling god how many babies they wanted and when (because how else would he know?!)

Also that Princess Diana died on a log flume ride at Thorpe park because they kept playing that clip of her at Thorpe park with the boys on the news when they were talking about her death.

I thought that there was a very tall thin man who lived inside every lamp post and turned them on when it got dark.

I also thought electricity was like a big thick goop. I pulled the bathroom light cord really hard and broke it one day as I wanted to see it come out.

That only married people could have a baby, which they chose from a shelf at the local maternity hospital. I imagined it to be just like a shop where you went to the counter, pointed to a baby which was in a shoe box type of box and bought it
Despite being seven when my younger sibling was born via a home birth.
My pregnant mum had a huge bump, I just thought she was getting a bit fat and was very surprised when my grandma asked me if I wanted to see the new baby in my parents bedroom.
I had no idea they'd been to the hospital that Sunday morning and bought a baby 😂
Also used to think that if I peered down the grate on the road outside for long enough, I would be able to see my grandad who was a miner walk past. 😂

I also thought that once you'd started your period, it just gushed out of you constantly at all times for the rest of your life.

Reminds me of a question my young nephew asked me at the top of his voice in Sainsburys one day…….’is it true that you get borned out of your Mums bum?’ I wanted the ground to swallow me up 🤣

That Mum really did go to Iceland for the shopping.

@Lizzy1980 that cracked me up 😂😂

When I was little and my Mother and I would get the bus she’d tell the driver where we were going. She’d say one adult and one child to North Street for example. I always wondered how the driver remembered all the places people wanted to go. I didn’t know that each bus had a set route, I thought you got on and told the driver where you wanted to go and he’d take you anywhere, just like a taxi. I thought the drivers must have amazing memories to remember where all the passengers wanted to go to. I remember watching them when Mum paid our fares to see if they wrote anything down but they never did so I concluded that the bus companies employed people with good memories 🙄

My two are:

• I used to think there was no colour in the olden days, everything was in black & white like in the movies
• I thought old people had always been old, that they'd never been young

When I was small I remember my mother sometimes saying about my clothes that 'that's too small for you now' and I assumed that clothes got smaller rather than me bigger. I tried putting a T-shirt on my teddy bear but it was too big and I thought it must be the dark that made clothes smaller, so I hid it under some other clothes in a drawer and tried it again about a week later and it was still too big. It was quite a long time before I found out that it was me growing rather than clothes getting smaller!

HOWEVER during Covid lockdown we could't go out and many of my clothes just stayed in the wardrobe. Image my shock when, after lockdown, I put some of these clothes on and they were really tight so clearly, clothes do get smaller in the dark. I was right all along.

(I suspect that I'm not the first person to discover this...)