Random things you believed as a child light hearted

[NimbleHiker]

I thought that my neighbours were moving their furniture about when it thundered. I thought that the moon was made of cheese. I thought that periods started on the first day of each month.

I remember when I was at primary school our class was read a story about some children who came from Warsaw. I think the story was about them escaping the nazis and it seemed a rather frightening place to live, which really confused me as I knew that we went there every year to see the illuminations at the arboretum (in Walsall).

Salt cooled your food. My brother told me this and I believed him.

I imagine a lot of us thought that - possibly to an age when we should have known better!

When little, and sitting upstairs on the front seat of a bus, I thought the traffic coming towards us was going under the bus. I couldn't see it going past us.

I thought everyone that was married was married to someone the same age as them.

My Aunt was not happy when I commented about her being 50 because we'd just had a 50th party for her DH and she was only 35!

I thought that there was a village - and I could picture it very clearly - called Mowermeadow, where one man and his dog went.

I was shockingly old when I realised that Stars in their Eyes was edited, and people didn't immediately transform into pop stars when they walked through the doors

I thought that it was against the law not to have a roast dinner on a Sunday. I can still remember going to the seaside on a Sunday when i was 6. I was convinced that we would get arrested because we had fish and chips for dinner.

Same!

Where had he heard that, or was he just messing with you?

I also thought guerilla warfare was ‘gorilla’.

Mind you, I also thought the Cod War was rival groups of fish fighting! (In my defence, this belief was fuelled by a line drawing in the local paper that always accompanied regular updates on the issue, which had two cod facing off whilst looking very annoyed!)

I can remember seeing vouchers or coupons in the newspaper, magazines, cereal boxes etc that were mean to be cut out and filled in. They always had a dotted line round the border with an image of scissors obviously indicating which bit you were meant to cut round.

I must have only been about 2 but I remember pointing and saying "cut, cut". In my head I was asking if the image of the scissors was a real pair of scissors but whoever I asked didn't speak toddler and answered something like "yes, you can use scissors to cut".

For years after, I was convinced that image of the scissors somehow came to life with adult magic and would cut the coupon out, I tried so many times to magic that picture into real scissors and funnily enough never managed it 😳.

Whoa, so Mowingmeadow isn't a place? Oops 😆

I thought Town Twinning was something to do with herbal tea bags well into my teenage years!

I thought Margaret Thatcher was married to Arthur Scargill. I felt really sorry for them having such an unhappy marriage. I'd have been around 7 years old at the time!

I also thought the channel tunnel was a tunnel under the sea, sitting on the sea bed. Rather than a tunnel under the ground under the sea.

No idea. We were really young.

I had a squint and had to have eye surgery in 1962. The staff had to cut my eyelashes short and told me that they would grow back longer. I believed it for years!

Two, that my family still love to remind me about (my siblings and I are now in our 50s and 60s):
1 - football scores “on aggregate” - I thought that if teams were so well matched they kept drawing, that they had to play on gravel to make it harder.

2- haggis - my dad was half Scottish and very proud of his roots. We grew up in London in the 1970s and he’d spend every January hunting for Haggis for Burns’ Night. He must have said something like “it’s cooked inside of sheep”, because for years, I thought the special thing about it was that it was cooked inside sheep whilst they were still alive. I had an image in my head of a sheep with a little fire under its belly. I thought this was very cruel! I must have been 30 by the time I was being ridiculous.

Well, I've actually walked over the equivalent part of the Newport transporter bridge. Very unnerving.

In the song which goes: 'There was a cop who had a dog, his name was Bobby Bingo. B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O...' I didn't realise the name was being spelled out, and couldn't work out what 'engeo' meant.

I thought Mow was a place, and that it was a-meadow, the way we say atop or akin. I think I got over the second part of this, but I went on thinking Mow was a place for much longer, after I learned about Mow Cop in Cheshire.

When we went on holiday to Cornwall I thought to myself: 'the first time I've been to another country' (I dare say some Cornish people would agree with me). But when a few years later we went to Wales I don't think I properly appreciated that this really was another country.

I used to think people's bodies contained a substance called monia which sometimes had to be replaced, because I heard of people getting new monia.

That's interesting, are you in the USA @FlorbelaEspanca ?
Here in England (and rest of UK?) it was always:

'There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-oh
B.I.N.G.O., B.I.N.G.O., B.I.N.G.O.
And Bingo was his name-oh'

DD used to love it when she was little.

@Pemba That's interesting, are you in the USA?
No - grew up in south London, now elsewhere in England.