Randomly odd things you believed as a child and possibly beyond...

[Elmo230885]

I live this type of thread...

(I'm not talking about believing in Santa or the tooth fairy)

I'll start. I had a cousin named Stephen and he had the middle name Dean. For some reason he used to switch and go by either name. So as a child I believed that Dean was short for Stephen in the same way Bill is used for William.

I truly believed that swallowing chewing gum would kill me as it would wrap around my insides and choke me 😭😭🤣

Another shoes one was: I wasn't allowed trainers with big labels until I could afford them myself, but I was always looking at other people's, and imagining that you could feel the big prominent logo inside the shoe, with your foot.

Just remembered another one! When there were films or serials, and the child started off aged 6 for example, and later the same child was a teenager, I thought that they filmed the first bit when said child was 6, waited until she was older and then went back and filmed the next bit. I thought it must have taken years to make some films!

Oh just remembered one, when I went to a fair I got a giant mr blobby balloon, I was convinced that if I was very, very careful, I could cut it open and then step in and have a mr blobby costume. Unsurprisingly it didn’t work but I spent ages planning it out!

@Gulsink

I thought Thunder and Lightening were just different things in a thunderstorm. I didn't realise thunder was the sound lightening made (ahem...until about last year, when I read I in one of my son's lift the flap books).

I'm badly in need of one of your son's lift the flap books I'd truly no idea.

My dad worked in Milton Keynes sometimes. Also known as 'the branch'. I thought he was climbing trees and doing something with milk and keys.

I also believed boxing day was for punch-ups and got very frightened when my Dad tried to leave the house the day after Christmas. I didn't fancy his chances, clearly.

@Cavagirl As a kid, I dreamed that my school were doing some sort of fundraiser for elephants where you agreed to die to raise money to save them. I suspect this was because of the organ donation thing, thinking back - hearing about making donations to charity and organ donation!!

Ooh thought of another. Whitney was singing "I wanna dance with some bodip". Bodip was... some kind of bean? Sweetcorn? I was very small, I don't really know what my thought process was!

@Zaphodsotherhead you'd get on well with my kid. He once ran upstairs to wake husband up by shouting STAMINAAAAAAAA in his face. We don't know why. He was 4.

I always thought a folded piece of paper would weigh more than a non-folded piece. Like it was all compressing together so would be heavier.

Me and my now ex h would have this discussion, fairly frequently (more than should ever be necessary) and one day we got out the scales.
He just stood there smirking.

This was only a few years ago

My older sister’s bf was going to “give me a ring for my birthday tomorrow”.

He was going to call me! I was 9 and so excited to possibly be getting what I imagined was a gold shiny ring with a diamond in it. I was highly embarrassed when I realized (by myself - no one has ever found out my shame!)

Speaking of compass directions, I believed that you would always know which way you were facing, a bit like inbuilt GPS; if you were lost in a maze or a set of streets, you would instinctively know which direction was "home", you would know if you turned left or right, and so on.

My aunt saw fit to test me on this, and blindfolded me. In her garden, she turned me around a few times, and told me to point at where I thought the house was. Then she realised that I might be able to hear the main road, which would give me some idea: so she made me wear my walkman, spun me round again, making me take steps between spins, and told me to point again. She told me I was very wrong, and then told me to walk about with my hands in front of me until I could work out where I was. I couldn't see a thing, and when I touched something which was not where I thought it was, I realised that I was well and truly disorientated!

Having said that, I read that there's some truth to humans having a magnetic sense of orientation, and experiments have been done to show it. It didn't help me that time though!

I remember when I was at school believing that if you went in a building site or onto the train lines you would die. Not that there was a chance of accident, that you would die. I remember watching the safety videos at school designed to warn you and I guess they were very effective. I even recall a group of friends wanting to go near the train lines and I convinced everyone not to as we would all die, I said if they tried I would tell their parents or call the police before they had a chance to. There's a particular video shown where there was a steam roller and a a girls shoes next to it that is particularly burned into my brain. I also had a railway safety booklet that was illustrated by Quentin Blake.

Do they still show these types of videos to kids at school?

I also had a railway safety booklet that was illustrated by Quentin Blake.

I had that, and I remember those videos! Did you get the “I’ve been train trained” badge too?

"I didn't realise thunder was the sound lightening made"

Oh right, erm well I will tell my 'friend' that, she didn't know either.

I was always petrified of bats. I was told.they get caught in your hair and you can't get them out

I don't remember getting a badge @TeaStory probably did though if it was all part of the same safety thing

@Elmo230885 Was that railway safety book the same one written by Roald Dahl, which began with an interesting discussion about how adults are constantly telling children what to do, the evils of how the motor-car has ruined the world, and that our great-grandchildren might be born with hardly any legs at all, because we'll have no use for them? (How topical: no wonder adults don't like people like Greta and Boris telling us what to do.)

This booklet also told the story of why you should not throw things out of train windows, giving the example of a dad who got his son to wee into his hat, and the dad threw the contents of the hat out of the window, which hit a porter in the face.

[quote Cavagirl]**@Latenightreader* I believed that the belly button got its shape when the doctor or midwife tied a knot in it. I thought that the type of knot resulted in the shape, and outies were because they’d messed up the knot. I confessed this to my mum recently and she fell around laughing and asked when I’d realised. I had to confess it was when they didn’t knot my daughter’s cord (I was 40 when she was born).*

Errrrr - what???? They don't tie a knot?!?!? 🙈🙈🙈🤣😳😳😳[/quote]
Of course they tie a knot! How else do they untie it and open the stomach like a sack to get the baby out??

@letsgomaths I can't remember how it started but I can picture a page with a man getting electrocuted and one with someone putting their head out of the carriage door

Yeah the train book illustrated by Quentin Blake was not so much a book but a pamphlet, and exclusively about train safety IIRC. I remember the picture of the kid sticking his head out the window vividly... we all laughed at it!

@letsgomaths

To be fair, I generally know where North is, wherever I am. i don't think it's a sixth sense, I think my brain just works it out from where the sun is - but it can be most impressive.

For all those who didn’t know thunder was the sound lightning makes, you now get to play my favourite game!
When you see the lighting, you count, until you hear the thunder. Then when you see the next bit of lightning, you count again. Closer together? Storm is coming towards you. Further apart? Storm is going away.
Me and DC always do this when there’s a storm. Just for funsies.

My nana sink had ‘armitage shanks’ on it, which I misread as ‘almighty sharks’

I thought if you put your fingers near the overflow, a shark would bite them off.

When I was about 5 I heard my mum talking about a relative who had been sacked from her job (due to pregnancy ). However I thought it meant that your boss tossed you through an actual sack .

Also thought if you stayed at a bed n breakfast you got breakfast brought to you in bed.

Was very naive about sex too. Until I was about 12/13 I thought once a couple had sex, the women could get pregnant without having sex whenever she wanted . I don’t think I realised the actual mechanics of sex until I was about 14.

@FattyBoom phew, thought I was being really dumb there for a minute!! 😆

Actually disturbed by how many of these I still believed!! I had no idea about the little piggies I feel I’ve lost a tiny bit of innocence!