Dumb stuff you believed as a kid?

[Floyd R. Turbo]

When five or so, I believed my aunt Faye when she told me that bad little boys were sent to the pickle factory where they were turned into good little girls.

I stayed out of trouble for a couple of days, but I didn’t eat pickles for several years!

[angstlessk]

1. I thought dogs were boys and

cats were girls.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

22. As did my brother!

[lapucelle]

28. I did too.

[jberryhill]

103. Wait, they're not?

[Aristus]

2. I thought dust came from the sun.

Because when the sun shone through the window, there was always all this dust floating around in the beam.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

23. Makes sense to me!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. If you took a golf ball apart you'd die instantly if you touched the liquid center.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

24. Me too! Who the hell started that?

[Butterflylady]

43. My grandpa.

We lived next to country club and every day he would pick up golf balls that were over the stone fence into the street. And yes he said they would explode. Made a nice little side line selling them back to golfers.

[dhill926]

25. Jesus...forgot all about that.....

what the hell....

[RockRaven]

38. I heard something similar, about golf ball interiors being toxic/dangerous...

I wonder how wide spread that one was...

[dameatball]

88. This was actually partly true. Some golf balls had a center that would explode if you cut into it.

My then 11-12 year old brother was laying on the couch whittling at the cover of a golf ball with a pocketknife when the pressure inside sprayed some kind of white stuff into his eye and onto his face....as well as onto one of the ceiling beams a good eight feet above the floor where he was sitting. Fortunately the foreign substance washed out of his eye and no real damage done. But there is some substance behind this tale.

And, yes, after it was determined that he was not injured he had some "splainin" to do.

[jberryhill]

104. Yup - tightly wound rubber band-like material, in some kind of liquid

And it would indeed come shooting out of there.

[Coventina]

4. Due to the Narnia books, I went looking for hidden worlds everywhere.

Never did find one.

Otherwise, I'd be there right now.

[Moostache]

52. If I had a magic wardrobe that took me away from reality...

You bet your ass I would be in it right now and refuse to come back until Trumpy clump was evicted from 1600 PA. Ave. or planet Earth...whichever comes first!

[mercuryblues]

5. I was 6 when my Mom was pregnant

with my younger sister. I also learned about kangaroos and how they kept their babies in a pouch. I insisted that she was going to have a baby kangaroo.

[Coventina]

6. That if you ate Pop Rocks while drinking Coke you would explode and die. n/t

[mr_lebowski]

9. Is it not true that somebody did? Coulda swore that was a real story lol (nt)

[jberryhill]

10. Poor Mikey

[CrispyQ]

101. LOL

Good one!

[smirkymonkey]

94. I bought that one!

I heard that Mikey from the Life cereal commercial died that way. I totally fell for it.

According to Snopes, this was not true and little Mikey is now an adult, alive and well and working in advertising.

[wryter2000]

7. My mother told me once

That children were born like angels with wings, but the doctor cut them off. For a while I was pissed I didn't get to keep my wings. After a while, I figured that couldn't be true. It was weird because my mother almost never said anything that wasn't true.

[mr_lebowski]

11. She probably just overestimated your ability to grasp metaphors as a small child ;) (nt)

[wryter2000]

12. That wouldn't have been hard to do

I wasn't big on metaphor. I'm still not.

[Coventina]

8. That the "Three Kings" were from a mysterious place called "Orientar"

I never could find a reference to it any other place or on a map.


Fun fact: I'm a terrible poker player. I remember I ended a hand once by humming "We Three Kings"

Drat!

[Cousin Dupree]

19. Same place where a onerzopen sleigh is!

[elleng]

120. HAHAHA!

There a Rose SUCHAK LADDER!!!!

[RobinA]

21. I Thought This Too

Also, because my mother was a nurse and my father a doctor I thought you had to marry the other gender version of whatever your job was. I couldn't figure out who a teacher would marry, because all my teachers were female (this was the early '60's) and I didn't know what the male version of a teacher was.

[applegrove]

29. I though Orientar was a place too. I also thought mersidotesndoesydotesnlittllamsytivy

wasn't a song about what farm animals eat "mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, kids eat ivy too wouldn't you?"

[Totally Tunsie]

74. I thought Olive was the other reindeer.

[CatMor]

13. From religious instructions teachings ..

as a child I thought if you weren't a Catholic you would burn in hell forever when you died. I was so upset for my non-catholic friends.

[rurallib]

27. there were so many things I 'learned' as a catholic kid

that took a while getting over.
The first crack in the wall was eating some meat one Friday night and not dying and going to hell.

I was afraid to have non-catholic friends......

[CatMor]

39. I remember meatless Fridays vividly ....

waiting until 12:01 AM to eat a hamburger I always seemed to have a craving for on Friday.

[LibDemAlways]

65. My 96 year old mother still refuses to

eat meat on Friday, even though that rule went by the wayside years ago -- except during Lent, of course. So many rules. No wonder there are so many ex-Catholics.

[CatMor]

72. I find it sweet she still follows that rule as ridiculous as it was ...

I remember another ridiculous rule when women had to wear a hat or scarf when going into the chirch.

[LibDemAlways]

54. I remember my Catholic family was

invited to attend a wedding at a nondenominational chapel and my parents insisted we stand just outside because going in would be a sin. Such BS and so disrespectful to the couple.

[CatMor]

57. None of it ever made any sense.

[hunter]

100. My wife and I married in the Catholic Church so it wasn't a problem.

My wife's Catholic cousin, our age, married a Lutheran in a Lutheran Church that same year and it was a huge issue among older Catholic friends and relatives. Many did not attend.

That generation has passed.

My grandfather boycotted our wedding not because it was Catholic but because men in his white wild west family didn't marry, in his own words, "Mexican girls." To his credit he got over it.

The only religion my family had any outwards antipathy towards was Mormons, which wasn't a problem at weddings because Mormons didn't allow anyone to attend who wasn't Mormon.

My parents have diverse friends and family. One thing I learned as a child was how to be respectful and not uncomfortable in other people's places of worship.

Within our own family it wasn't that way at all. Religious Holidays, especially Christmas, were often times of intense religious warfare, mostly between those who would celebrate it, and those who would not. Either way was the path to hell.

[LibDemAlways]

114. There are Catholic blogs today where the issue of

attending a wedding involving a Catholic outside of the Church is still a hot topic of debate. I've seen responses even urging parents not to attend as it is condoning an "invalid" marriage. Apparently the official doctrine is that once you are a baptized Catholic, you are a Catholic for life and the only valid marriage you can enter into is one taking place in a Catholic church...unless you jump through a series of special circumstance hoops and receive a dispensation from a bishop. My dad used to say that the clergy responsible for all these rules had a lot of time on their hands.

[MiniMe]

14. That you could dig a hole to China

Spent a lot of time digging a hole in a neighbors yard. Got pretty deep for a 6 year old

[Bayard]

15. That a virgin could get pregnant...

[mr_lebowski]

17. Good one! (nt)

[flor-de-jasmim]

16. On a drive across the country, I couldn't figure out how musicians kept moving radio stations!!

[mr_lebowski]

18. When REALLY little I thought that the people were inside the TV like a puppet show ...

Other than that I can't think of anything dumb I believed aside from things like 'going to heaven/hell when you die' and other closely-related 'stuff' ... that I outgrew by the time I was 11 or 12.

[The Genealogist]

44. Something not unrelated I thought, and this reminded me of it

Before I started Kindergarten, I liked to watch The Price Is Right. My favorite game was he mountain climber. A little man goes up a mountain and if the contestant sucks at bidding, it falls off the top. I thought when it made the crash it was falling out the back of the TV and I'd go looking for it in the heat vent behind he TV.

[Cousin Dupree]

20. "If you sit on that cold cement, you'll get piles"

[LakeArenal]

32. Are you sure that ain't true? Cuz....

[IcyPeas]

63. I thought this was bad for your kidneys?

[ploppy]

67. Haha

I can still hear my mom telling me that one!

[MontanaMama]

26. That a ghoul would eat my leg off

if I dangled it off the bed at night...I knew it wasn’t true but why take the chance?

[yardwork]

113. I still won't dangle my arms or legs off the bed.

[MontanaMama]

115. Better safe than sorry...

😳

[yardwork]

116. That's my feeling. Just in case.

[lapucelle]

30. That we pledged alligience to a republic for Richard Stans.

Who the heck was he to get his own republic?

[LakeArenal]

31. That when the science teacher rolled mercury in your hand everything was cool with that.

😳

[Midnight Writer]

60. Toy store in our town sold mercury to kids. Guy had a jar on the counter he'd dip it from.

[LakeArenal]

64. 😳😬😵

[Ohiogal]

33. My grandmother told me

that if I ate a watermelon seed a watermelon plant would grow inside my stomach.

Not that I wanted to eat a seed, but I made extra sure I never swallowed one by accident!

Now all the watermelons you find these days are the seedless kind.

[jberryhill]

79. Yep

[dixiegrrrrl]

123. Seed melons still exist.

We buy a few during the season, from the local market. But I have noticed seedless
in the chain stores.Not fond of them.

[The Genealogist]

34. I thought Sonny and Cher lived down the street from me

And Mama Cass lived around the corner. In my defence the woman around the coroner's last name was Cass, and people called her Mama Cass. But, I thought it was THE Mama Cass.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

59. My best friend insisted that the ghost of Benjamin Franklin lived down the street from him.

He was adamant about it, too.

[sdfernando]

107. It could have been true.

Maybe he saw dead people.

[True Dough]

35. That someday

a madman would run the country while espousing that we should build a wall along the southern border. He'd talk of building a Space Force. He'd befriend despots around the world. He'd refer to himself as the "Chosen One".

Crazy stuff, huh?

[Gidney N Cloyd]

36. As a kid with a poor sense of direction I believed our car knew where we needed to go.

Because
1) If I had no idea then how could my parents?
2) Those little arrow lights on the dashboard always flashed to tell mom and dad which way to turn. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Kids whose parents weren't so considerate about using turn signals would not have drawn this conclusion.

[jberryhill]

80. That's brilliant

[lapucelle]

37. Someone I worked with has the name Pat, and her husband's name was Pat too.

Her kids thought all sets of parents had to have the same name.

[BarbaRosa]

40. My Mom's name is Jacqueline and my Dad's name is Jack,

so I thought all parents had a derivative of the same name.

[RockRaven]

41. That chewing gum was indigestible and stayed in your stomach for 7 years if you swallowed it

Why 7 years? I don't know, but that's what "everyone" said.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

42. When I was about 3 years old, I remember going down to Florida for the first time.

Not accustomed to palm trees where I lived, I looked outside our hotel window and saw several palm trees. It also happened to be in middle of a fierce thunderstorm.

So I somehow put two and two together and.....assumed palm trees were responsible for causing thunder.

[dem4decades]

45. I believed voting was legit.

[Niagara]

46. When I was 5

I believed that I was purchased at a store, so I asked my mom what store she had bought me at. I had imagined kids standing around like mannequins with string price tag around their wrists.

To this day, I feel that I wasn't that far off base with this theory. Even before starting kindergarten, I got the concept that when one needed shoes, clothing, groceries, or gas for the car that it was purchased. I even watched mom pay the babysitter. I couldn't figure it out because when we went shopping, there wasn't any kids for sale in the store.

[Doc_Technical]

47. I thought that when airplanes were on the ground,

they were moved by the landing gear.
I figured there were drive shafts going down the
landing gear struts to drive the main landing
gear wheels.

[LAS14]

69. How do planes move on the ground? nt

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

77. The same way they move in the air, only slower - with engine thrust.

But the engines aren't connected to the wheels. The wheels just roll because thrust from the engines (or just one engine; sometimes they taxi on one engine to save fuel) propels the plane forward, just not fast enough to make it fly.

[LAS14]

95. I think you are to be forgiven, as a child, not understanding these subtleties. It's certainly news

to me!!!

Thanks!
LAS

[walkingman]

48. Noah's Ark along with other crazy religious stuff.

[Runningdawg]

49. If I walked into another church other than ours, God would strike me dead

My first attempt at suicide was at age 10 when I snuck into a Catholic church. I sat there and cried for an hour because it wasn't true.

[LibDemAlways]

50. That a carpool was

a car with a pool in it.

[Watchfoxheadexplodes]

51. Running in the kitchen would make cake fall

Playing in fire would make you pee the bed.

[emmaverybo]

53. 1) that T.B. had something to do with the television 2) that the iron curtain hung somewhere between

American and Russia 3) when you got “fired,” your employers did some kind of a ritual involving actual fire, like chasing you out the door with lighted matches or something 4) Santa Claus really liked milk and cookies in the wee hours of the morning because on Xmas day they were gone. 5) that if you ducked under your desk and held tight, you could be safe from a nuclear bomb.

[klook]

83. LOL! I love the one about getting "fired,"

like losing a job would involve some kind of Game of Thrones type ritual humiliation.

More often than not, the firee is skipping out the door, a burden lifted, while their beleaguered co-workers are hunched over at their desks, secretly envious of the victim’s new-found freedom.

[emmaverybo]

86. LOL back at your response! Exactly, "GOT type ritual humiliation." NT

[OilemFirchen]

90. You may not have been wrong...

Around these parts, legend has it that the term "getting fired" referred to then NCR (National Cash Register) owner John Patterson discharging an employee - letting him know by setting fire to his desk on the company lawn. That employee, BTW, was Thomas Watson, later the head of IBM.

Top 10 Worst Bosses

[emmaverybo]

93. Oh, that's incredible. Thanks for the research,

[Wawannabe]

55. That my Dad

Fought alligators and walked uphill both ways to school. 🙄

[dawg day]

56. Drinking Coke with lemon would make you drunk.

Oh, and that prayer would make my soon-to-be sibling a girl (Sorry, little bro... I wanted a little sis).

[mbusby]

58. My mom...

...telling me that if I didn't stop doing what I was doing, she would rip off my arm and beat me with the bloody end of it.

[asiliveandbreathe]

61. Dragonflies could sew your lips together...we called them darning needles...

Oh dear....

[LAS14]

70. Yup. I almost totally believed that. One of those...

... things it was best not to test.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

78. Oh yeah, I remember that now.

Dragonflies scared me. Now I think they're cool.

[marked50]

62. That the industrial vacuum at the car wash was going to suck me out of the back seat.

And what was with "party" lines. I never saw a party when people were on them.

[backtoblue]

66. If I swallowed watermelon seeds...

I'd grow melons in my tummy

[WestLosAngelesGal]

68. Mom said that pregnancy resulted from...

... wine.

[Texasgal]

73. If I made an Ugly

face my Mom told me it would freeze like that.

[zanana1]

112. Yup. A time-honored mother's tale. nt

[Totally Tunsie]

75. My sons believed (because Mama told 'em so) that their nose would wiggle

if they told a fib. Thus, when they were so inclined, they'd cover their nose to hide their indiscretion!

[50 Shades Of Blue]

76. I believed tiny little people lived inside the radio.

[stonecutter357]

81. cigarettes won't kill you !

[John Fante]

82. I thought the sun dropped down every night behind the mountains (I live in Los Angeles)

for repairs and whatnot. 😂

[Shrek]

84. That lie detectors were infallible

And should be used to predict the future by asking people yes or no questions about stuff that might happen.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

121. I believed my Magic 8-Ball was infallible.

[klook]

85. I believed elves lived in subterranean houses under the roots of old trees

in the woods near the lake our family often visited. My sister and I would actually see them, just disappearing underground as we approached.

I also believed that all kinds of exotic sea creatures might appear at the shore at the beach where we vacationed in summer, if only one were there at the right time. Ten-foot-long sawfish, hammerhead sharks, those weird bottom-of-the-sea fish with rows of glowing lights along their sides and alluring appendages sprouting from their foreheads to help them catch prey — these could show up, and did, right where I waded and swam every day.

[madaboutharry]

87. I believed that grown-ups told the truth.

[dameatball]

89. Handling toads causes warts.

[OilemFirchen]

91. When I was very young, my mom told me that if was bad, the gypsies would take me away.

One day my dad's cousin and family paid a visit from their home in Mexico City, wearing cheesy tourist sombreros and sarapes. I hid in my bedroom closet for what seemed an eternity, before my mom was able to convince me that I was safe.

[LibDemAlways]

92. I perpetrated some dumb but harmless stuff

on my own daughter when she was little. In response to "Where did you get me?" I spun the tale of the baby store. She was the cutest baby and at checkout the clerk scanned her rear end! Eventually, my smart daughter caught on, but it was fun while it lasted.

[jberryhill]

99. Those things are great

Just the other day, one of my sons told me about how he believed, for years, some bullshit that I made up right on the spot. I think it was that eating alfalfa sprouts will make hair grow on your chest, or some such nonsense.

The BEST, however, was when one of my boys saw a confederate flag and asked me what it is. I told him:

"Oh, that's the universal symbol of stupid people. If you're really stupid, the government makes you carry one of those around with you, so that everyone will know you're stupid."

Okay, so, I totally forgot about ever saying that. It was just some spur-of-the moment bullshit.

Months later, we are driving along some back roads on a warm summer day with the windows down. I stop at a stop sign, and my youngest son excitedly starts pointing at a driveway, and shouting:

"HEY, LOOK! THAT GUY HAS THE UNIVERSAL SYMBOL OF STUPID PEOPLE ALL OVER HIS TRUCK!!!!"

Oh, dear, Lord...

[Kali]

117. BWAHAHAHA!!!

[consider_this]

96. Alkaline

???
So this was a story a pal told me - who was a big Detroit Tigers fan growing up. She loved AL Kaline. Imagine her delight at a young age when she discovered they now sell Al Kaline batteries!

[Danmel]

97. I thought if you opened the car windows in a tunnel

You would get sucked out and die. Since I grew up in NYC, we traveled through tunnels frequently. I always lobbied for using the bridge.

[jberryhill]

102. Amtrak trains will suck you under, if you stand too close to the tracks

[Gidney N Cloyd]

98. I was convinced our church minister was the same guy who played Capt Binghamton on McHale's Navy.

[Freddie]

105. Mid-60s there was a series in Life magazine

Photos of human embryos and fetuses in various stages of development. Fascinating stuff. My parents made sure we saw it to teach us the “facts of life”, I was about 8. The baby grows in moms belly, etc. Not a word about a man having anything to do with it, so I just thought that at a certain age a woman grew a baby in her belly. I look a lot like my mom so I overheard a family friend saying I didn’t look much like my dad and I just thought, why would I?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

108. I thought the same way.

Then I remember the confusion after the first sex ed class: “Okay, so the sperm meets the egg, but how does it get....oh, now I get it.”

[sdfernando]

106. Oh My!

Who knew...so that is where pickles come from!

[Laffy Kat]

109. If you don't eat your vegetables they come back and night and dance at the foot of your bed.

I was never told that but a friend of mine was and it creeped me the hell out. Still does.

[akraven]

110. An original "healthy foody" Euell Gibbons?

Died from eating poison mushooms….blush....

[KY_EnviroGuy]

111. God and other mythical stuff from that old book that....

I toted to church three times a week as a kid. Took me into my late 40s to realize otherwise.

We were never taught that the Baptist church was the only true religion but it was suggested that...

* Catholics were all sinners 'cause they drank and danced in church and spoke in tongues,

* Jews were all going to hell 'cause they didn't believe in Jesus, and

* Methodists and Presbyterians were skating on thin ice 'cause we thought they did funny stuff in the church basement.

My, how me and the times have changed.......

[Kali]

118. that my parents were infallible

[bluecollar2]

119. My girlfriend told her younger brother

That you could cure athlete's foot by peeing on your feet...

That cracked me up...dont know how long she let that go on.

[demosincebirth]

129. That was suppose to take care of it when I was in the army

[sakabatou]

122. That pro-wrestling was real

[OxQQme]

124. Ditto roller derby

[Tommy_Carcetti]

125. I used to think that if you were playing the lottery....

...you got to be one of the people on television who actually picked the balls out of the machine.

[saidsimplesimon]

126. I also had an aunt Faye.

She told me that their were monsters in the river to keep me from tagging along. I didn't learn to swim until I was 16.

[pnwest]

127. That I could pick up the stars that fell

down from fireworks. For some reason my mom wouldn’t take me over to where the fireworks were shooting off so I could prove it to her...

[demosincebirth]

128. Dragon Flies would sew your ears up.

[TexasBushwhacker]

130. That my baby brother's penis

would dry up and fall off like his umbilical cord.

[912gdm]

131. I was 4ish and there were these jawbreakers called Dinosaur Eggs

So I rolled up a towel and made a nest, and sat on these damned piece of candy for a few days in the middle of the living room trying to hatch a dinosaur.

[Generic Brad]

132. Fireflies only flew east and west

During the summer we would always see fireflies on one particular road we drove at night. I noticed we never seemed to see any when we visited relatives north of us. My dad told me that was because fireflies only flew east to west.

I went three years believing that whopper.

[mucifer]

133. Before a certain time the world was in black and white and there was no color