Silly things you thought or believed when you were a kid

[NovaBrunswick]

When we were kids, we didn't know much about the world or how it worked. We invented a lot of beliefs that we hung onto until we inevitably grew up and wised up.

However, it's fun to revisit those childhood beliefs and laugh or cringe at them. So did you have any silly childhood theories, beliefs or thoughts?

Here's some of mine:

• My mum once told me that when you turned 100, your stomach would develop a horrible bug (which I misheard as 'bog') and you would die of sickness.
• I thought that you would keep growing taller and taller until you hit 100. (I probably blame Pokémon for this one, as until normal gameplay you can't go higher than level 100.)
• Another one from my mum: she said if you sleep facing the full moon, you will have nightmares. I still kind of believe this one, and I'm 23.
• I thought anyone could build a rocket out in their back yard and blast off to space without any prior experience.
• I thought cartoon characters lived their own lives when we weren't watching them. What we watch of them on TV is just for show.
  
• I thought that if I left my toys alone in my bedroom, they would come alive Toy Story style.
• I thought a ladybird/ladybug's spots indicated its age. (So for some weird reason, all the ladybirds I found were seven years old.)
• I thought that if you flew through a rainbow, you would get all wet and colourful. (This comes from a story I read once.)
  
• A Pokémon one: I thought a Pokémon's level was its age. So a level 31 Pokémon was 31 years old.
• Another Pokémon one: I thought Pokémon actually died when they fainted.
• I thought bees and wasps were evil and only wanted to sting you. (Nowadays I've learnt to appreciate bees for their pollinating of flowers and making honey, but I still think wasps are evil stinging machines.)

 

[Auraninja]

Someone showed me chocolate coins as a child, and then I believe all coins had chocolate in them.

You will not believe how hard it is to peel those dimes.

 

[ouiaboo]

I believed a lot of stupid things when I was a kid, a lot of them I came up with myself:

• Toronto is in Mexico
• The Netherlands is just a region of Europe and the country is called Holland (I think this could be a common misconception?)
• Sabertooth tigers still exist (nobody told me they were extinct)
• EA is a good company

 

[GrizzlyB]

When I was a boy, my mother drove a car with a manual transmission, and my father drove one with an automatic transmission. Watching them, I always thought, "When I'm old enough, I'm going to get an automatic, because it's less work!" Little me was a dipshit, but luckily I now understand the superior performance of a manual transmission, and would never drive an automatic. Also, one time my older cousin tricked me into thinking that candle wax would stick to your skin permanently, and he tried to pour some on me. What a jerk.

 

[NovaBrunswick]

When I was a boy, my mother drove a car with a manual transmission, and my father drove one with an automatic transmission. Watching them, I always thought, "When I'm old enough, I'm going to get an automatic, because it's less work!" Little me was a dipshit, but luckily I now understand the superior performance of a manual transmission, and would never drive an automatic. Also, one time my older cousin tricked me into thinking that candle wax would stick to your skin permanently, and he tried to pour some on me. What a jerk.

My mother's always driven with manual transmission. She says it's easier to use than an automatic.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

When I watched Bambi for the first time, I didn’t cry when Bambi’s mom got killed. I literally had no idea she was dead. I believed she abandoned her child to live in another part of the forest which is even more disturbing. Even worse no one corrected me when I said this either. I literally didn’t know what death was until I was ten and my friend’s grandpa died and since my dad was good friends with the man we went to the funeral home. My friend and I had no idea what was going on and all I knew about death was from what I saw on an episode of Full House. I thought people instantly became ghosts as soon as they died back then and I said to my friend, “I guess you’ll see him everywhere now,” and I got grounded for saying that and my family never once asked me why I said it. I bet if they had asked me and found out I didn’t know what death was then I wouldn’t have been punished.

I used to think that the ATMs found on bank walls gave people money and were operated by a person at a computer behind the machine inside a small room. And that said person would type a message telling you that you put in the wrong amount into the machine. I got this idea from a Rugrats episode. Yeah a cartoon about talking babies probably shouldn’t have been used as a learning tool.

I used to think if a woman was fat it always meant she was pregnant. Even if it was for over a year. I also thought for awhile that smoking made you fat after seeing a fat woman light a cigarette.

 

[Mega Altaria]

When I watched Bambi for the first time, I didn’t cry when Bambi’s mom got killed. I literally had no idea she was dead. I believed she abandoned her child to live in another part of the forest which is even more disturbing. Even worse no one corrected me when I said this either.

Me too, I never knew Bambi's mother was shot dead when I was little but I was told so soon after. I thought she was just there and I thought she'd be somewhere waiting for him, which I think would be utter nonsense on this day. Also I never really understood for a long time how she died because it wasn't so obvious and pretty much the purpose is to hide the disturbing plot events to the kids.

 

[NovaBrunswick]

Me too, I never knew Bambi's mother was shot dead when I was little but I was told so soon after. I thought she was just there and I thought she'd be somewhere waiting for him, which I think would be utter nonsense on this day. Also I never really understood for a long time how she died because it wasn't so obvious and pretty much the purpose is to hide the disturbing plot events to the kids.

I saw Bambi when I was really young, and the only thing I can remember is that Bambi's mother and another deer fell down a waterfall while the forest was on fire. So I thought she'd burned to death while trying to escape the forest. It did traumatize me a little, since characters don't usually 'die' in Disney movies.

I used to think that the ATMs found on bank walls gave people money and were operated by a person at a computer behind the machine inside a small room. And that said person would type a message telling you that you put in the wrong amount into the machine. I got this idea from a Rugrats episode. Yeah a cartoon about talking babies probably shouldn’t have been used as a learning tool.

I had a similar preconception too.

 

[Mega Altaria]

I saw Bambi when I was really young, and the only thing I can remember is that Bambi's mother and another deer fell down a waterfall while the forest was on fire. So I thought she'd burned to death while trying to escape the forest. It did traumatize me a little, since characters don't usually 'die' in Disney movies.

But I guess it’s one of the less orthodox Disney movies where darker themes are present and there are character deaths. I just simply thought ‘What happened to Bambi’s mother after she told him to run ahead of her?’ once she was never to be seen again in the film.

 

[Beat!]

Up until i was like 12 years old, whenever i heard the term 'Oral Sex' ( in TV or movies) i thought that it meant saying dirty words to each other....

 

[NovaBrunswick]

But I guess it’s one of the less orthodox Disney movies where darker themes are present and there are character deaths. I just simply thought ‘What happened to Bambi’s mother after she told him to run ahead of her?’ once she was never to be seen again in the film.

The Little Mermaid is another one. I remember freaking out at the part where Ariel's father goes berserk and destroys all her stuff, and the bit where Ursula turns into a giant sea monster. Her death was pretty graphic for a Disney film, with guts floating to the bottom of the sea.

On that subject, one scene in Up which has always confused me is when Ellie (I think that's her name) is crying in the doctor's room, with Carl beside her. You can't hear them talking (only the music), so I always thought the doctor told her she couldn't have kids, or maybe she had a miscarriage. They were thinking of having babies in the scene prior to that one, where they're cloud-gazing and one of them looks like a baby, so that's probably the most likely explanation.

 

[Mega Altaria]

The Little Mermaid is another one. I remember freaking out at the part where Ariel's father goes berserk and destroys all her stuff, and the bit where Ursula turns into a giant sea monster. Her death was pretty graphic for a Disney film, with guts floating to the bottom of the sea.

I don't remember too much of what happens in A Little Mermaid, but that definitely seemed frightening. Having another look at it, I thought it was her tentacles that sunk rather than her guts. I never thought that there were a couple of Disney movies could be that dark for a long time in my childhood due to their movies being known for more lighthearted adaptations of fairy tales, which were darker anyway. Or something similar to Kirby games where it seems to be lighthearted at first but it starts to get dark as you progress.

 

[NovaBrunswick]

I don't remember too much of what happens in A Little Mermaid, but that definitely seemed frightening. Having another look at it, I thought it was her tentacles that sunk rather than her guts. I never thought that there were a couple of Disney movies could be that dark for a long time in my childhood due to their movies being known for more lighthearted adaptations of fairy tales, which were darker anyway. Or something similar to Kirby games where it seems to be lighthearted at first but it starts to get dark as you progress.

The scene that freaked me out the most was the one where Ariel is forced to turn into a human by Ursula. The darkness doesn't help either.

 

[Mega Altaria]

The scene that freaked me out the most was the one where Ariel is forced to turn into a human by Ursula. The darkness doesn't help either.

But then she was mute for the whole time while she was a human which I always wondered why in the first place. I would have thought she would still be able to talk anyway but I guess that was for the sake of introducing a drawback to some 'benefit' because her voice was required for the spell to work.

Generally I used to be quite bamboozled with events in a movie because it was hard for me to pay attention to hints. I wouldn't have believed in that stuff as a kid but it was just hard to understand why things happen without any given context, which still happens to some extent today.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I used to think ALL of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz were little kids. I didn’t know about there were people that small that were adults.

I used to think Olive Oyl was pretty. I was four at the time.

 

[NovaBrunswick]

I used to think ALL of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz were little kids. I didn’t know about there were people that small that were adults.

I thought a similar thing with the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Which is a weird film in itself.

 

[Mega Altaria]

I thought a similar thing with the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Which is a weird film in itself.

I think I did think something similar when I was a kid. Like just looking on their height, it probably would’ve been hard to tell if they were adults or children but I assumed they were some kind of children. At least I remember the factory was quite weird compared to what’s outside.

 

[NovaBrunswick]

I think I did think something similar when I was a kid. Like just looking on their height, it probably would’ve been hard to tell if they were adults or children but I assumed they were some kind of children. At least I remember the factory was quite weird compared to what’s outside.

And the way some of the kids 'die' too. Augustus gets stuck in a chocolate pipe, Mike is shrunken down to the size of a pea, and of course Violet... turns violet. A giant violet blueberry.

 

[Deadeye]

I thought bees and wasps were evil and only wanted to sting you. (Nowadays I've learnt to appreciate bees for their pollinating of flowers and making honey, but I still think wasps are evil stinging machines.)

Nowadays governments could just build wasp-sized robots to sting you. Or spy on you hehe.

In other news, I used to believe that people on TV such as anchormen could see you watching them everytime you watched them on TV. Was quite relieving this wasn't the case, but it could be possible now... or in the future. Even while the anchormen themselves wouldn't probably care or couldn't really pay attention to real-time feed of who is watching them.

I also used to believe if you practise super powers long enough, you could actually do them in physical realm rather than them being mere imaginary things... So I used to jump down rocks and swings until teenage in hopes of learning how to fly without having to rely on man-made things such as planes etc.

 

[Mega Altaria]

And the way some of the kids 'die' too. Augustus gets stuck in a chocolate pipe, Mike is shrunken down to the size of a pea, and of course Violet... turns violet. A giant violet blueberry.

I kinda found that really hilarious too. Some of the transformations were just funny.

I thought that rainbows were tangible because of Mario Kart.