Stupid thing you thought when you were a kid

[glitteryboots]

I'm watching the first episode of Schitt's Creek on Netflix and the boy and girl in it are arguing over who gets what bed in the motel because if someone were to break in they would murder the person in the first bed. I thought the exact same thing when I was a kid - made sure my brother slept in the bed nearest the door because then I thought I was safe. Not an AIBU but what weird things did you think as a kid?

My cousins told me that the reason the British soldiers always walked backwards was because they had an extra pair of eyes in the back of their heads! Being little, gullible and terrified of the paras ( Belfast in the 70s) I believe them as I could think of why else the walked/ dived around like that in the middle of the streets...

Couldn’t think of why they walked backwards I mean!

My uncle told me when I was young that a wind turbine is put up if someone died there. Spent most of my childhood thinking a wind turbine was a memorial where someone had died

I used to believe the world was black and white in olden days because old films were. I thought at some point humans discovered colour. We learned about the stone age and iron age at school. I believed we lived in the colour age.

I thought that all English people dressed either in a uniform or suit as the only ones I ever saw were either soldiers, or government officials/ politicians.
I didn’t met a ‘ ordinary’ non authoritarian Englander until I was 12 and on a school trip to London...

Having seen silent movies on tv, I was convinced that people "walked funny" in the olden days.

When I used a cotton swab to clean my young DD ears I'd say, "wow, you must have been doing a lot of listening today because your ears are very dirty !" She's in her 30's and recently told me she'd just found out that I'd made that up....I felt soooooo bad!

Nurses were women
Dogs were men.
That in order for a,baby to keep in growing in the womb. The parents to bee had to keep on having sex right up until the baby was born.

When I first found out about sex, I thought a couple would only have to do it once (on their wedding night) and then automatically have children every 2 hears or so until they decided they had enough. Could not understand why anyone would want to do it more than once!

To be fair to me - I grew up in Ireland and many families did have a baby every 2 years!

I thought that if you didn't take the pill you'd have a baby every month

I was prob about 8 and my mum had started to explain things to me but I got a bit muddled

I used to think Florida was an island to the south of the USA. I was well into my 20s when I found out it was attached.

FFS Doctors not Dogs

I thought that every couple who had children were married. I remember my mum sitting me down to tell me my aunt and uncle had split up. I asked if they were getting a divorce and she said no, they weren't married. And I literally couldn't believe it. I was so shocked 😂

Like the rabbit and Guinea pig story above, I thought lions and tigers were the same animal and tigers were the female ones and lions were the males.

I was in secondary school before it clicked that I was wrong

That all ginger cats are male (as in, ginger toms)

That if you play/fiddle with your belly button you’ll die (my Aunty said this to me)

I thought that the letter W was a ‘proper’ letter in its own right. It only dawned on me a few years ago that a W is... a double U I even started a thread about this at the time - slightly different username. I blame my Mum for teaching me to read before I started school and so I skipped all the 70s phonics stuff, or however learning to read was taught then....

When I was little I saw some film of a baby being born and saw what I now know to be the umbilical cord being cut. I thought that that was the willy and the parents chose if they wanted a boy or a girl. If they wanted a girl they cut the whole thing off, but if they wanted a boy they could cut the willy to size.

I was embarrassingly old (12?) before I knew where babies came out when a woman gave birth. I thought that they just busted through the mother's stomach like alien. Then my mum said "Noooo! They come out the same way they got in"
I was

I believed - really firmly - that you got a credit card and could get money from cash machines once you were an adult because you were then responsible enough to spend it. I thought you could have a limitless supply because you’d know what to do with it. Imagine my disappointment!

I've so many. It's hard to believe I've got a high IQ.

The 80s AIDS campaign on the TV and the lack of sex education made me decide that if you had unprotected sex, you'd get AIDS (I didn't know about HIV, just heard about AIDS) and figured that that the human raise would die out in that case. Needless to say, I didn't lose my virginity until 21!

I thought vinegar came out of stones.

Didn't realise cows didn't just "give" milk. But are actually inseminated and the baby cow taken away.

@chinateapot I thought that too!!!

I thought handbags were called hambags, and that you use them to carry... well, you get the idea.

This is an odd one.

When I was about 3 Material Girl by Madonna came out. The only material I knew of was the sewing material my mum used so I thought it was a song about a girl who was made of fabric.

)@Coffeeandcrumpets my ds1 thought the world used to be black and white too. He asked my mum once if she was surprised to wake up and suddenly have colour

I truly believed that we would all be destroyed by a nuclear bomb at any second. This was in the 80s.