Things that you've thought that were in fact absurd

[Pacificplaza]

Inspired by another current thread: what things have you thought to yourself, and accepted as true, which on telling someone else have quickly transpired to be completely ridiculous?

E.g: I always thought that when drinking a hot beverage, that the misty effect observed should you happen to glance down into the cup was your EYEBALLS getting STEAMED UP in the manner of a pair of glasses. When I casually mentioned this at work everyone kindly pointed out that I was just... seeing the steam.

My car is an old banger with no air con, just the air blower. For my entire life until my ExDP corrected me, I thought you had to 'run' the hot air until it turned from cold to hot eventually in the same way you do the tap. Rather than just turn it on once the car's warmed up. The hours I must have spent grimly tolerating a stream of freezing air in winter .

I'm not normally a simpleton by the way, I've got degrees and stuff and mostly manage to function.

So please tell me I'm not alone!

That Washington dc (the capital of USA)

This has reminded me. For years I believed that New York was the capital of the US.

Oh yay that too Backie

*yeah

My own theory that cats eyes on the road had a mechanism to somehow turn themselves on when they 'saw' a car coming was held firmly until my twenties.

I even wrote and performed a song call 'stop all the war and constipation'

I am HOWLING at this and also Kumbaya/Cumbria

You know the saying 'a leopard never changes its spots'? I thought it was 'A LEPER never changes it's spots' until a few years ago

"Euston, we have a problem"

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Thanks, NoParticular, that was worth the wait!

Until quite recently I believed every time America got a new president his face was carved on Mount Rushmore. Didn't find out this wasn't the case until I asked my husband if he thought they'd ever run out of space.

And I thought a turf accountant sold grass. 😳

I am genuinely astounded that so many folk thought you had to "run in" hot air in a car!

I am certain there are a whole bunch of these I've forgotten, as my dad was a real pest for telling lies and i do remember often realising he had lied! The ones I can remember though - We were told local people weren't allowed to go to the local fairground, it was just for tourists. There is a switch in the car which switches on the cat's eyes on the road. And, cars won't start unless the seatbelts are done up. The seatbelt one I believed right up until I had my first driving lesson!

I also thought Sinn Fein was a person until well into my 20's...!
Still thought having the light on in the car was illegal, you learn something new every day!

I thought cauliflower and cabbage were the same vegetable until my twenties. I blame my nan and my mum...the only time we ever had them was on a Sunday when they would be cooked in the same pan with bicarb then served up as a pile of mush. I thought it was called colleyandcabbage.
"Brassica oleracea is a plant species that includes many common foods as cultivars, including cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, savoy, kohlrabi, and gai lan." Wikipaedia
So cauliflower and Cabbage are the same thing!

I was amazed by the peanuts though! Went straight off to google.

I thought swimming pools on ships were cut out of the bottom and you were swimming in the sea as the boat moved 🙊

Puffinnose Yes! I learned narwhals were real from my eight year old a couple of weeks ago.

timbuktu is real In our house it was "Auchnagatt" Whenever you asked dad something about a place or where he was going or had been, he would respond with "Auchnagatt" I was quite old before I realised it was a real place. It's near where KW1091's grandfather was probably a Haggis farmer.

Incidentally, Haggis do run wild in the mountains. They have two short legs and two long legs so they can run round hills without falling off. If you want to catch them, you chase them the other way and that unbalances them and they roll down the hill. And I know that's true because my dad told me.

My nana thought you had to be utterly silent when video recording a tv show. She once went ballistic at me and my cousin for 'talking all over her programme'.

Iklboo, your nanna had something there
Obviously I don't know how old you are but in the 80s if you used to record something on tape (say your fave song off the top 40) you had to be completely silent otherwise it'd tape all the waffling in the background.
Crap for if you wanted to tape the actual song, brill for if you wanted to sing along and pretend you were duetting with Madonna or whoever lol!
Your nanna probably thought it was the same with videotapes and didn't realise they were a bit more technical and sophisticated

Timbuktu were real places until a couple of years ago. I had books when i was little with weird animal creatures that lived in Timbuktu.

Me too, known for several years now that Timbuktu was a real place, but I was still a grown adult with a blown mind when I found out!
I used to love those books (Roger Hargreaves books called stuff like Oink, Meow etc and they all lived in Timbuctoo.)

RestlessTraveller

What? I always thought it was '3 old ladies locked in a lavatory'. Are you saying that NOBODY was locked in a lavatory?

Haven't RTFT but so far it's making me cry with laughter.

@SparkwoodAnd21 I love the idea of people applying for the position of Lulu

Kryten - I remember audio tapes (much fun recording nana & us having a sing song). It took quite a few playbacks of dummy video recordings showing her no sound outside the tv was picked up before she was mollified

I thought Davidoff Cool Water aftershave was a celebrity aftershave by David Hasselhoff - combining the David and the off!

Oh...is it not then?

Sitting on cold concrete does not give you piles.

This was when I was little, but I told my reception teacher that I'd coloured my picture "monkey bum pink" because my dad always referred to it as if it was a standard shade (like sky blue or pillar box red).

My dad also referred to woolly hats that tie with two ear flaps beneath the chin as Peruvian birthing helmets, and I thought that was the actual name for them until very recently. Used to feel quite cultured informing friends that's what the style is called. Like a knob.

My dad told me we were related to Christopher Columbus and by rights most of America should actually belong to our family.

Until I was around 12 I think.

"That spatial is spelt spatial and not spacial"

I have a friend who used to pronounce spatial as spat-ial. Bizarrely his job, at the time, involved knowing about 'spatial awareness'. Why didn't any of his colleagues tell him?!

Mimsy, re 'oh dear what can the matter be?'. Check this out en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_Dear!_What_Can_the_Matter_Be%3F. Apparently nobody was locked in the lavatory in the original song - although it appears that most of us grew up believing that some people might have been locked in the lavatory - including me, (believing, not locked in)

Cold floors DO give you piles.

There's a song on the radio - think it's Calvin Harris and Katy Perry. Kids fell about laughing when I thought the lyrics were "Don't be afraid to catch fish".

I'm SO not down with the kids.