What were your assumptions about the world as a child?

[OneUmberJoker]

I thought being rested as in sport star rested meant arrested

I thought every TV presenting couple were actually married because of Richard & Judy.

The old aren't going to live forever, are they? With the planet in the shape it's in, the fewer people the better.

I used to think in the jungle and in the wild vets would go out and cut open the wild lions/elephants/giraffes etc tummy’s to get their babies out and that was the only way a baby could be born

That everyone was really kind. I knew there were bad people on the TV and in the news but thought that everyone I knew was really nice and kind. Until I hit my teens (not sure if it was earlier or later) and realised what an awful bunch of people I had around me, the family secrets, the lies, and more generally the real personalities of adults vs the ones used in-front of children.

@AliceMaforethought yeah, it's the interim bit that's the problem & it's impacting our economy now. Things are only going to get more expensive!

When I was very young I thought that girls grew up to be men and boys grew up to be women. I was a very confused child.

Yes to near-inevitable death by quicksand 😂
Also that teachers knew everything. In primary school we had to write a piece of work on our favourite meal. I asked the teacher how to spell a dish from my grandmother's (very small, unwritten) language and was so bewildered that she didn't know! And that teachers lived in school and were all married to one another, harem style 🙈
That the conception of babies somehow involved wedding rings.
As a teenager in the late 90s, that all the nice but lonely 40-year-old men hanging around in Yahoo chat rooms genuinely just wanted to be friends with me, a 14 year old girl.
In hindsight, I was a very naive child!

Lots of documentaries on it in the 70s never hear of it now.

I agree that that is a problem, but the solution is not to keep having more kids. It is to reorganize the economic system. How that would best be done is beyond me, I'm not an economist. But with the way the world seems to be going, I have no idea why anyone would want to bring kids into it anyway.

I didn't realise that "teacher" was a job, I just thought they were the nice friendly people who helped us learn stuff. Once I asked my teacher what she did for a living. "I'm a teacher." Mind blown.

My German friend told me that, while we were all worrying about quicksand, our German contemporaries were crying themselves to sleep at the prospect of ball lightning coming through the window and chasing them around their bedroom. She couldn't believe I slept with my window open - and had never heard of ball lightning.

That whenever a song played on the radio, the group was there playing it live. 😂

When very young, I wondered why criminals were taken into “custardey” (baths of custard?? Like, why would the police do that??)

When I put my dolls in their beds at night, I wondered if, when I was asleep, giants played with me in “their doll’s house” (ie my house)

I thought being a good person would mean being rewarded with a good life.

That the politicians were honest and truthful, and that generally, life is fair!

but the solution is not to keep having more kids.

Where did I say it was? You were the one who jumped on my fictional 4 dc 🤔

That teachers got to choose their ‘teacher name’, when they started teaching.

You were the one who said you wanted 4 children, and I told you it was just as well you didn't have them because the planet can't afford it. I stand by that.

This is such a cute misconception.

1. Quick sand was an immediate danger
2. leprosy was a threat to the entire population
3. the Thames was going to flood any day and we’d all be under water (I grew up in London)
4. Thousands of people went missing every year in the Bermuda Triangle

Another one who was vigilant to the dangers of quicksand!!! Why were we all so terrified of quicksand?! 😂

You were the one who said you wanted 4 children, and I told you it was just as well you didn't have them because the planet can't afford it. I stand by that.

And I'm saying it could have because birth rates are so low. I stand by that.

And saying birth rates are low and we have a serious economic issue with the changing demographics does not infer the solution is to keep having more dc. Even if that was my solution (it isn't) that ship sailed a long time ago!

I also grew up with the assumption that most people had a basic level of comprehension, MNs frequently proves this is not the case!

Public information films ala 70s style.
Designed to terrify children.

I thought cats (or anything with a tail really!) did wees and poos from their tails regardless of wether it was a boy cat or a girl cat

I thought my dad was a millionaire. He was far from it but I saw a small wad of £5 notes in his wallet and assumed that he was rolling in it. I cringe when I see a certain cousin sometimes as I remember adamantly telling him when I was 9 that dad was a millionaire and he kept annoying me by saying he wasn't.

When people at concerts used to hold up posters that said "Take That 4 Eva", "Robbie 4 Eva", I used to think that Eva was the same girl that attended all these concerts and I used to think she was really lucky.