Things you used to think

[Misty Avich]

What did you used to believe when you were a child? I don't mean things like Santa, but I mean just facts or anything that you "got wrong" and learnt as you grew?

I'll start.

I used to think that an electrical appliance will blow up in water even when not plugged in. I found this was false when I saw an old TV thrown in a river and I asked my mum why it hadn't blown up from being in water.

I used to think women only got pregnant with baby girls, until I asked my mum where boys came from.

I used to think the world was like a snow globe, the sky being the glass bit at the top like a dome.

I used to think being drunk only makes you dizzy and disorientated but still conscious and your normal self, no matter how much you have drank. If only it was.

I used to think Santa hated me because I wasn't a well-behaved child and he was resentful because my mum still made him buy presents for me.

I used to call towns countries for some reason. Like when we were riding in a car I'd ask what country we were in now, and my brother would sigh and correct me that we were still in the UK, just a different district lol.

I used to think electricity wasn't invented until the 1980s.

I used to think male cats couldn't have pink noses.

 

[Ken]

When I was really young, less than 6, I noticed that when the wind blew, all the trees waved about, flittering their leaves. So, I concluded that the wind blew because the trees fanned the wind by waving about and flittering their leaves.

More latter...

 

[Ken]

About the age of 7, I discovered the sound from a radio came from the paper cone of it's speaker. I reasoned that all the speaker needed was some electricity to play. I didn't understand the significance of all the other parts in the radio was, but still thought I would test my hypothesis.

I scavenged a speaker out of a discarded radio. Then cut the end off of an extension cord, stripped the wire ends and wrapped them around the terminals of the speaker. Upon plugging the cord end into a wall outlet, the speaker exploded, blasting the voice coil across the room, through the door and out into the hallway. I was totally astounded in wonderment as to how and why it did that. That was the beginning of my electronics design obsession and career.

My mom, very sternly, forbade me from ever playing with anything electrical again. Yea... that didn't work.

 

[Nitro]

About the age of 7, I discovered the sound from a radio came from the paper cone of it's speaker. I reasoned that all the speaker needed was some electricity to play. I didn't understand the significance of all the other parts in the radio was, but still thought I would test my hypothesis.

I scavenged a speaker out of a discarded radio. Then cut the end off of an extension cord, stripped the wire ends and wrapped them around the terminals of the speaker. Upon plugging the cord end into a wall outlet, the speaker exploded, blasting the voice coil across the room, through the door and out into the hallway. I was totally astounded in wonderment as to how and why it did that. That was the beginning of my electronics design obsession and career.

My mom, very sternly, forbade me from ever playing with anything electrical again. Yea... that didn't work.

I used to think that music played on the radio was live and each time a new song came on it was because the performers from the previous number exited the stage so the next band could get on it

I grew up in a time when The Beatles had a hit song on the airwaves titled "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"


Too much Ed Sullivan Show...

 

[NDR2]

I used to think the people working in stores lived there. I wondered if there were beds in the back of the stores.

 

[Dagan]

I was maybe 6 before I didn't believe my uncle's ventriloquist doll wasn't somehow alive or cursed. He was just really, really good at scaring me with it.

 

[lovely_darlingprettybaby]

What did you used to believe when you were a child? I don't mean things like Santa, but I mean just facts or anything that you "got wrong" and learnt as you grew?

I'll start.

I used to think that an electrical appliance will blow up in water even when not plugged in. I found this was false when I saw an old TV thrown in a river and I asked my mum why it hadn't blown up from being in water.

I used to think women only got pregnant with baby girls, until I asked my mum where boys came from.

I used to think the world was like a snow globe, the sky being the glass bit at the top like a dome.

I used to think being drunk only makes you dizzy and disorientated but still conscious and your normal self, no matter how much you have drank. If only it was.

I used to think Santa hated me because I wasn't a well-behaved child and he was resentful because my mum still made him buy presents for me.

I used to call towns countries for some reason. Like when we were riding in a car I'd ask what country we were in now, and my brother would sigh and correct me that we were still in the UK, just a different district lol.

I used to think electricity wasn't invented until the 1980s.

I used to think male cats couldn't have pink noses.

I used to think u could look directly at the sun and I did it many times and not hurt ur eyes.

I used to look for the presents before Christmas and birthday and I could usually not find them though I looked everywhere. Mum had a good hiding place.
And I used to hunt chocolates and could find them and used to out them out of the side and hope mum did not notice

I knew very quickly easter bunny and Santa were not real but still believed in them anyway

I used to always believe in being myself and my own person and never let anyone sway me or be swayed by peer pressure

Not sure I was a lovely little girl and not spoiled at all and appreciate everything and tried my hardest at school and loved books and my toys and was a good sister and all the primary school teachers seemed to love me and I loved making friends despite being an autistic and kids not being nice and bullies and loved having little girlfriends who I went to their house and played their barbies and toys. Loved ballet and horses.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I used to believe in being a patriotic American. 1968 wrung that out of me.

 

[Fino]

I used to think that the button you push at cross-walks as a pedestrian makes a loud screeching noise inside all incoming cars, and that's why they stopped. Much later, I realized that I had ridden in a car hundreds of times and never heard a screeching noise.

I didn't know that people were physically attracted to one another until I was in college and that I'm asexual.

 

[Ella Spell]

I thought God made babies on an assembly line up in the clouds.

I thought he forgot a few steps, causing me to be different (my undiagnosed ASD).

I thought I could do telekinesis or had done it as a young child.

I thought the dude in "I Shot the Sheriff" should go to jail even if he didn't shoot the deputy.

I thought the universe must have a brick wall at the end because I couldn't conceive of it going on forever.

I thought time was scary and I was afraid of it.

I thought trees with no leaves in the winter were like witches' hands and they could grab me.

I thought the game Candy Land was scary because I didn't know the rules but felt too shy to ask.

I thought ketchup was only for boys.

I thought if I told my parents that my Kindergarten teacher lifted me up by my ponytail, they would make me quit school and I'd never learn how to read.

 

[Progster]

I used to think that if someone talked to me, it meant that they were my friend. Wrong.

When I was about 5 and there was a particularly fantastic sunset, my older sister told me that the world was going to end and I believed her. I was very upset.

I used to be easy to prank, because I was quite gullible. Not any more.

 

[Luca]

^Same, I used to think that anyone who was nice to me was going to end up being my friend. How very wrong I was.

I think I've mentioned this on here before but when I was in elementary school, I didn't know where babies came from and I thought all girls just randomly became pregnant someday. This triggered a lifelong phobia of becoming pregnant without having sex, which almost got me hospitalized at one point.

I thought all cats were girls, although I never thought all dogs were boys.

I didn't realize that everyone dies someday until I was significantly older than most kids are when they find that out. I had an existential crisis lol

In elementary school, I thought I could become one of the "popular girls" if I dyed my hair blonde, acted like I was white, and wore brand name clothes and jewelry. Spoiler: it didn't work. They still hated me and they still made fun of me for liking books and science.

I thought the singer from Smash Mouth, and Guy Fieri were the same person. And I thought Gordon Ramsay, Eminem, and Martha Stewart were fictional characters.
I also thought the Backstreet Boys were Disney characters lol and I have no idea how I came to that conclusion.

When I was very young, I thought Hogwarts was real and it was a college, and I thought I could go to college there someday. Which is super weird because I wasn't really that into Harry Potter.
Until I was pretty grown up actually, I thought all colleges resembled Hogwarts. Certainly not the one I ended up going to.

I thought goths were paranormal and occult beings lol.

Every time I saw a murderer or a serial killer on the news, I thought they were going to come break into my house and kill me. I developed a very real paranoia about home invasions.

I'm ashamed of this, but for the longest time, I refused to believe that Earth was a planet and I thought the ground was just the ground and the planets were all in the sky. Kids are really dumb sometimes lol

*Some people have told me that a lot of the characteristics in the above paragraphs sound like OCD, but I've never been assessed for it. These issues have gotten more manageable with anxiety medication and with maturity though.

I guess this was very progressive of me for the time, but when I was young I didn't even realize that there were different races of people, I just thought everyone looked different from each other just simply because they did. I thought having dark skin was no different than having a beard or something.
I wish kids still thought like that today but now they're exposed to too much questionable content too early.

In a similar vein to my last comment, I thought it was totally normal for me to have crushes on girls, I didn't even know I was gay or that there was a word for it. This was in the 1990s to around 2001 so it was obviously very taboo at the time. And then I was taught to suppress it and act like I liked boys and wanted to get married, until I was very much an adult. :/

 

[Ella Spell]

My friend lived across the street from me. One day I went to her house and looked out her bedroom window to see my own house. I got very upset that her house was backward and it was facing the wrong way because I was used to seeing her house when I looked out windows, not mine. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that her perspective or literal point of "view" could be different than mine. I guess that was the end of my egocentrism stage but I was older than I should have been, at about five.

Likewise I remember my friend going down our swimming pool slide. I looked at her and realised that my view of seeing her was opposite to the fact she would see me, instead of seeing herself.

I had a bit of a catharsis about the fact we were separate people.

Then I started thinking about relative point of view in every circumstance, like the fact there was no objective truth. A blade of grass could be seen from every conceivable angle or even from a view under the ground. It could be seen from the inside if you were a cell. As such I determined reality was an illusion because we all see different things.

 

[Ella Spell]

I thought "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" was the true story of Santa.

I believed every part of it including the way Christmas stockings originated, and how reindeer developed the ability to fly.

Most importantly I believed Mrs Claus's name was Jessica and she was a school teacher.

 

[lovely_darlingprettybaby]

^Same, I used to think that anyone who was nice to me was going to end up being my friend. How very wrong I was.

I think I've mentioned this on here before but when I was in elementary school, I didn't know where babies came from and I thought all girls just randomly became pregnant someday. This triggered a lifelong phobia of becoming pregnant without having sex, which almost got me hospitalized at one point.

I thought all cats were girls, although I never thought all dogs were boys.

I didn't realize that everyone dies someday until I was significantly older than most kids are when they find that out. I had an existential crisis lol

In elementary school, I thought I could become one of the "popular girls" if I dyed my hair blonde, acted like I was white, and wore brand name clothes and jewelry. Spoiler: it didn't work. They still hated me and they still made fun of me for liking books and science.

I thought the singer from Smash Mouth, and Guy Fieri were the same person. And I thought Gordon Ramsay, Eminem, and Martha Stewart were fictional characters.
I also thought the Backstreet Boys were Disney characters lol and I have no idea how I came to that conclusion.

When I was very young, I thought Hogwarts was real and it was a college, and I thought I could go to college there someday. Which is super weird because I wasn't really that into Harry Potter.
Until I was pretty grown up actually, I thought all colleges resembled Hogwarts. Certainly not the one I ended up going to.

I thought goths were paranormal and occult beings lol.

Every time I saw a murderer or a serial killer on the news, I thought they were going to come break into my house and kill me. I developed a very real paranoia about home invasions.

I'm ashamed of this, but for the longest time, I refused to believe that Earth was a planet and I thought the ground was just the ground and the planets were all in the sky. Kids are really dumb sometimes lol

*Some people have told me that a lot of the characteristics in the above paragraphs sound like OCD, but I've never been assessed for it. These issues have gotten more manageable with anxiety medication and with maturity though.

I guess this was very progressive of me for the time, but when I was young I didn't even realize that there were different races of people, I just thought everyone looked different from each other just simply because they did. I thought having dark skin was no different than having a beard or something.
I wish kids still thought like that today but now they're exposed to too much questionable content too early.

In a similar vein to my last comment, I thought it was totally normal for me to have crushes on girls, I didn't even know I was gay or that there was a word for it. This was in the 1990s to around 2001 so it was obviously very taboo at the time. And then I was taught to suppress it and act like I liked boys and wanted to get married, until I was very much an adult. :/

That is cool that you thought hogwarts was real. I knew narnia too and I always hoped for a closet you could go into or a faraway tree maybe you could climb but knew they were not real.

I knew how babies were made I think because I saw my parents do it and saw it on TV and knew it and knew I came from my mum's belly.
When I watched horror movies too I also thought the scream guy might phone me or get me or the I knew what you did last summer guy would get me with a fish hook.
Also I was scared of edward scissorhsnds too because when I saw parts of it on TV I thought he was a murderer who would get people with his scissor hands.
I always jumped the bit when he wrecked the waterbed no matter how many times I watched I kept getting scared
Anti thought emos were so stupid and kind of weird how they wore black liner, had gay kind of haircuts and wore black clothing and listened to my chemical romance and panic! at the disco so 90ss and never wanted a friend like that
I thought too like blink 192 and foo fighters were very masculine bands and hated them with a passion

I knew a lesbian in high school and she was my bully in primary school but I did not see anything wrong with her same sex attraction really I think in was harder back then because no one knew anything about same sex attraction and probably thought it weird and taboo and prob lots of kids struggled because of it. But you know shows like buffy willow and Tara and other, sex and the city with the gay men and movies that had random gay men like my best friends wedding and greys anatomy like with Callie and arizona shows like that made it seem more acceptable

 

[Luca]

Also I was scared of edward scissorhsnds too because when I saw parts of it on TV I thought he was a murderer who would get people with his scissor hands.
I always jumped the bit when he wrecked the waterbed no matter how many times I watched I kept getting scared

Most Tim Burton movies scared me as a kid too. But that reminds me, I thought Edward Scissorhands was the guy from The Cure. Lol

I was really sheltered as a kid and I didn’t realize I was the only one who thought these things…

 

[Slime_Punk]

Every time I saw a murderer or a serial killer on the news, I thought they were going to come break into my house and kill me. I developed a very real paranoia about home invasions.

I still do this. I had to put a cap on watching too much of this kind of stuff on purpose because I would sleep with one eye open and start feeling really paranoid about it

 

[lovely_darlingprettybaby]

Most Tim Burton movies scared me as a kid too. But that reminds me, I thought Edward Scissorhands was the guy from The Cure. Lol

I was really sheltered as a kid and I didn’t realize I was the only one who thought these things…

Yes I get scared by beetlejuice and batman too esp because of the penguin and joker and Catwoman a bit and batman himself and robin
And I think the corpse bride is freaky too
Even charlie and the chocolate factory is a bit creepy

 

[Slime_Punk]

I feel really dumb admitting it, but up until very recently I thought most people would be mostly fine if they jumped off of a bridge because water would cushion the blow. I'm not sure how I managed to believe this well into adulthood, but it was one of those 'duh, that's common sense' notions in my brain that I had to go back and rewire. Right after asking myself, "What did you think happened to people who jumped off bridges???"

I don't even think this is because of my ADHD / ASD, either, I just missed the boat on physics or something.

I also still refuse to believe that the earth is spinning as fast as it is because I'll start convincing myself that I'm dizzy because of it. Now that's my ASD talking. Insert that owl city song to make me feel better

 

[Outdated]

I knew the Boomtown Rats were a Perth band but I thought that was Perth in Western Australia, not Scotland.