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.

OK - this is a super embarrassing one - But as a child I thought that everyone who used a wheelchair had a 'choice' only had to use them when they were outside and that they could stand up and walk when then were at home.

There is a reason for this - My DGM badly broke her hips/pelvis in a bus accident in her 50's (way before I was born) and although could walk short distances afterwards, was very unsteady on her feet generally in a lot of pain and got tired easily when walking more than a few meters at a time. SO consequently always used a wheelchair while out but would use a combination of sticks and basically propping herself up on strategically placed furniture in her own home or when visiting ours etc.

I only realised that this was not the in fact the case for all wheelchair users when I went on a play date to a friend from school's house who's teenage brother was a wheelchair user (spina bifida Ps. I know that not all people who have spina bifida are automatically in a wheelchair all the time but he as it happened was) and basically said some massively insensitive, probably really offensive things to them all - along the lines of - But you home now so just get up? You cant still be tired you have been sitting all day - You don't need to pretend - I now how it works (like somehow I was also convinced it was a secret and not everyone knew people could just get in an out of their chairs when they wanted) Fortunately the friend/brother/family didn't just throw me out the house and when my DM turned up to collect me and asked about it - was able to explain where I must have to the idea from (eg. DGM)

It actually became a bit of an insider joke between my friend, brother and me for years after - whenever i would see him - he's say stuff like - oh Talcott you just missed me doing my daily lunges - but don't worry you know my secret!

I was an odd child. Things came in pairs including animals - so lions and tigers were a pair, cats and dogs were a pair, mice and rabbits, zebras and giraffes, so on and so forth. I have no idea why.

Also colours have a smell and taste.

That when you were born, you were born as a child and stayed as a child, or you were born an adult and stayed an adult, or you were old and stayed old.

I've just remembered another one! Haha!

As a child I didn't realise organ donations were generally from dead people. I thought people agreed to die, to donate their organs. I remember in the early 90s when they did a big campaign to increase organ donors being hugely conflicted, feeling really sorry for the people who needed organs but also not wanting to volunteer to die....!

I think it was eventually an episode of Casualty that educated me!!

When I was at school, early high school years, I had this weird idea that if you put the book you were studying under your pillow at night, All the knowledge went straight to your brain. I soon found out the hard way that it didn’t work. Haha

When I was little, I believed that if you wore shiny patent leather shoes, the boys could see up your dress.

That pineapples grow on trees! Until very recently.

As a child, that you made up your own birthday

@janaus50s you’re not the only one. I had some patent leather shoes as an adult and quite a few people (at work!!) made jokes that implied that the shoes meant I was a bit... slutty?? I was very confused so finally asked one of them what they meant and it was because “those shoes mean people can see up your skirt don’t they”. He was amazed when I pointed out that they didn’t and he shouldn’t be looking anyway

Where I lived for a while as a child there was a really old Victorian prison with huge imposing gates and walls. People used to talk about things that went on (both in Victorian times and now) as going on 'within the prison walls'.

Then my mum had all her cavity wall insulation done when I was about 9.

The coalescence of these two things meant I believed that the prison walls were made (like houses) of two skins of brick with a cavity in the middle. I believed that the Victorians made this cavity wide enough for a man to stand in facing outwards. And that, I believed, is how prisoners were housed... literally 'within the prison walls'.

Haha Witch Wife.

I was convinced Bill Clinton was blind until I was about 15 and my friend’s mum told me he wasn’t. I googled it because I didn’t believe her. I have no idea why I thought he was blind

Iv got two that stick out for me one I just thought up myself and the other was my mothers doing lol

I used to think my grandad was jeremy beadle
I have no idea why because he didn't look anything like my grandad at all but I never really saw my grandad a lot

The second was that my mother told me that walking along on the curb (of a path) Was called curb crawling and you could be arrested for it
It's a good job I didn't go school the next day telling everyone I'd been curb crawling the night before
I think the teacher would of been horrified

[quote BiscuitLovers098124]@bellinique pretty sure he was going to be sold at market for food right?[/quote]
Yes, that makes a lot more sense!

And I definitely realised that before today...

I watched Dirty Dancing and didn't know what 'knocked up' meant but did understand that the woman had a problem.

Patrick Swayze offered her his salary (for an abortion) and she said it wouldn't be enough.

I didn't know what salary meant either so I decided that she was poorly and he was offering her a celery drink which would make her better but he didn't have enough.

I was definitely too young to be watching that film thinking back!

I thought all fire engines were named Dennis because that was what was written on the front of them.

it wasn't until I was in my 20s and went to a meeting at Dennis Eagle that I realised that was the name of the company that made them

I can't believe I forgot these.
When I was little my mum broke her leg so was obviously given crutches and I was messing around with them and my mum said 'They're mummys', but I must have took it to mean 'They're called mummies rather than they belonged to my mum IYSWIM because I began calling them mummies after that..

Also that your birthday change d every year

For a while I thought that prisons were still like how they're depicted in stories and films: deep underground, ball and chain, prisoners in striped or arrowed outfits.

We had lots of Ladybird books with a cassette to go with them, often with "when you hear this sound, turn the page". I believed that the cassette player somehow "read" the book.

I didn't understand at all about how couples got together until my teens, partly because all the adults in my life were already happily married or totally unattached, so I never observed the process of falling in love/dating/engagement and so on, and I never attended a wedding until I was nearly 30. I thought that marriage "just happened"; two people would randomly meet and marry. The whole "boyfriend and girlfriend" thing was a complete mystery to me at the age of twelve, and to my mind very overrated in books and on TV; it just didn't occur to me for a long time that this was the process that might lead up to marriage!

"Colours have taste and smell"

I'm like that with names and hair colour. e.g. All Lailas have dark hair. Emilys are blond. Georgias have red hair.
Also numbers and days of the week have their own personality.

We were visited at school by the Gideons who we're giving out Bibles. Both men were war veterans - one had an arm missing and the other had a finger missing. For years I thought the Gideons were a society for people with missing body parts. Embarrassed to say that I was 29 when DH finally corrected me.

I always thought Agatha Christie was a man. Even though she was called Agatha. This lasted into adulthood.
I have no idea why.

When I was quite small, my dad and I were watching Top of the Pops and I remember him saying that they weren't singing 'live' and I completely misunderstood.

I didn't realise he meant that they were standing there miming to their own record, I thought he meant that they weren't physically in the studio and they were some sort of hologram projection.

As a child (45 years ago) I used to have sleepovers with my NDN (rural so NDN about 1/4 mile away..

The mother used to have'uncle Brian' over on Saturday & Sunday morning when 'Daddy' played golf.. the BRILLIANT line they employed was to bring 'Uncle Brian's' kids with him ,who we adored...

So the line was this .. 'Dont tell 'Daddy' that 'Uncle Brian' was here.. because Daddy doesn't like uncle Brian.. and then the girls can't come over. If he knows they are here .. and you mustn't interrupt me and and 'Uncle Brian' because we are discussing 'important business' .. (in mums bedroom) .. took me twenty two years to work it out . (Never told 'Daddy' who was a complete arse) ...

These are lovely.

Custardy sweet. Mmmmm.

For years everytime a grown up said they were going on a diet I had a mental picture of them climbing on to some sort of machine (the "diet"), and eating salad, because "going on a diet" was usually accompanied by, "I'm only having salad for lunch."

@TheMostHappy
Colours having tastes & smells is called synaesthesia. I have it, except for me, different words & numbers have their own colours.

I thought you got boobs on your 18th birthday ( and a good and body like Barbie) as you became a women . It was a bit of a shock when my boobs started appearing about age 10, and so I wished really hard for them to go.( I seems to be maturing quicker than the other girls at school and felt self conscious in PE / swimming. ) Then I believed I had wished them to stop growing. I turned out to have very small boobs, once everyone overtook me. The irony ! I was such a deluded soul.