Stupid things you thought as a kid - we were all dumbasses when we were kids

[A Grey Cat]

I may be a slasher fan now but back when scream came out and I accidentally saw it on TV I thought ghostface was a real killer on the loose somewhere and would kill me. So I asked my parents to make sure the door was locked every night and begged them to get a security caller ID because I was too scared to awmser the phone for years.


Oh and I had a young jerk uncle who knew this and whenever he called and I answered the phone he'd say the "do you like scary movies." Line I freaked out the first time it happened and hid under my bed for hours

 

[spergetti & NEETballs]

Cottage cheese -> college cheese
I thought that you could simultaneously have as many girlfriends or boyfriends as you wanted and everyone was fine with it, but you could only have one spouse. This was before all the polygamy nonsense.

Somewhat related, when I was ~7, an older relative once tricked me into trying to move a penny with my mind. In hindsight, that's a great prank to pull on a kid.

 

[A Grey Cat]

Because of that cartoon gag of characters going through the ground and ending up in China. I thought China was at the bottom of the world were Antarctica is and I was surprised when I first saw Antarctica on a globe. Speaking of Asia also because of cartoons and other assumptions I thought it was still a monarchy, everyone wtire those blue shirts and straw hats or elaborate silk robes and the great wall was still used to protect it from invaders. Where in reality only a few parts of the wall are still standing in good condition and soley as a tourist attraction. I also thought Japan still had samurai as soliders and ninjas were like some kinda enemy faction at war with them...given how fucked up Communist China is and how far Japan has fallen since the Middle ages I wish I was right

 

[The Un-Clit]

Because of that cartoon gag of characters going through the ground and ending up in China. I thought China was at the bottom of the world were Antarctica is and I was surprised when I first saw Antarctica on a globe. Speaking of Asia also because of cartoons and other assumptions I thought it was still a monarchy, everyone wtire those blue shirts and straw hats or elaborate silk robes and the great wall was still used to protect it from invaders. Where in reality only a few parts of the wall are still standing in good condition and soley as a tourist attraction. I also thought Japan still had samurai as soliders and ninjas were like some kinda enemy faction at war with them...given how fucked up Communist China is and how far Japan has fallen since the Middle ages I wish I was right

Speaking of Asia, as a little kid I thought all Asia = China. I had an Asian friend get extremely angry at me at about age 7 or 8 when I offhandedly said something about him being Chinese. "I'm not fuckin' Chinese, I'm Korean!!!" he said, genuinely pissed off for reasons I had no idea of at the time. I didn't know what a Korean was or why he was so pissed. All I could say was "Oh." and go home. "Mom, what's a Korean?" Cue my first geopolitical education.

 

[Pitere pit]

One night I passed through the living room where my parents were watching a grown up film that included cocaine snorting and its effects. I thought it was sugar.
I believed that until my ma told me that it was coke and I shouldn't snort it.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

I also had this weird idea about WW1 where it looked like the Napoleonic wars, so I was very confused how my grandfather was born just couple years after that.
Probably because it was such a strange confusing thing in my brain it later became one of my favorite historical events.

 

[Kinnie]

I thought the "Wrong Way" road signs were saying we were going the wrong way to our destination rather then into oncoming traffic. So I wondered how they would know we were going the wrong way or not as if they were psychic.

This is like how someone once told me cars are telepathic, and that’s how they know when to put the turn signals on. Then when I tried it myself and it didn’t work, I concluded that cars only read grownups’ minds.

 

[LongtimeLurker]

My bus stop when I was in like kindergarten was on a dead end road. Waiting for the bus one morning I asked my father what "dead end" on the sign meant and he said it's when "the road just stops." Not wrong, but my dumb kid mind interpreted that as it literally just cut off like a cliffside and the end of the world was on the other side. I begged him to go up and see and was very confused as to why it was just woods. Even asked him where the dead end was.

Unrelatedly, I also thought tampons were used to hold your pee in. Like if you couldn't get to the toilet but had to pee you'd put a tampon in to hold it. Why I thought you'd be able to do this but somehow not use the toilet, I don't know.

 

[Big Nasty]

When I was a young kid, many of my relatives were very poor and I didn't actually realize this. I just thought it was perfectly normal to live out in the woods in a half-built house with a yard full of junk.

 

[Hummingbird]

I had this theory as a kid that explained why despite them being famous singers, Alvin and the Chipmunks weren't that rich in the cartoons. Since they only did cover songs I figured that they had to pay a lot in royalties.

 

[saralovesjuicyfruit]

When I was a little kid, I learned about how old cartoons weren't always the most sensitive with their portrayals of blacks. When I looked at the black mammy/maid from the old Tom & Jerry cartoons, I pretty much thought: "This lady has her own place, she's in charge and answers to no one, that's really forward thinking of the creative team to do that." Please note that at the time I didn't know what the mammy stereotype was.

I pretty much thought the same thing. I just assumed she was the lady of the house, I don’t think I ever even thought about her being black.

 

[TheImportantFart]

Not me personally, but I managed to fool my younger brother into thinking that "Suddenly I See" was sung by Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons. I'm not entirely sure why I made that up, I just always thought KT Tunstall's voice in that song sounded a tiny bit like a softer version of Nelson's.

 

[AnOminous]

I used to think that life was fair. That kindness was good. That all that religious shit I was told was good. That if I acted decently towards other people, things would work out. That the world was good. Imagine such stupidity, such naivete.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

When I was a kid I thought it was interesting that penises and vaginas were opposites and I wondered if you could put one into the other. On an unrelated note I thought babies were made by putting people's foreheads in close proximity which then signalled to the woman's body that it should begin growing a baby.

I used to think that life was fair. That kindness was good. That all that religious shit I was told was good. That if I acted decently towards other people, things would work out. That the world was good. Imagine such stupidity, such naivete.

The problem is that you're stuck in the mindset that death is the end. This world is just a journey so don't sweat it too much, it's about the destination.

 

[Ilikeoreos]

When I was in kindergarten I thought that the last words of the Pledge of Allegiance were "please be seated, have a nice day" because that's what the principal said over tha PA system every morning

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

I used to think that life was fair. That kindness was good. That all that religious shit I was told was good. That if I acted decently towards other people, things would work out. That the world was good. Imagine such stupidity, such naivete.

Who hurt you man?

 

[Lonely Grave]

Before I was given my lessons on the birds and the bees I, as a child, believed in the insane idea that women also had penises and both hers and the man's had to be used together to conceive. You can imagine my horror upon discovering the truth, and my later consternation that trannies exist.

 

[Hummingbird]

I was in early grade school when the Peanuts gang did a bunch of specials about the history of America and there was one on the railroads (and how the Chinese helped with it). So when they mentioned how "there were no Chinese" in the photos they took of the workers after the rails were done, I assumed that the Chinese all died while building the rails and couldn't be in the photos.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

I just remembered this one time where I was in the bath and I needed to shit, and I thought "well if it's ok for me to piss in the shower it must be fine for me to shit in the bath right?" so I shat in the bath. My mum was very angry.

 

[Saw the tables of tyranny]

I used to think that when it was really windy outside it just meant the earth was spinning faster.

I told a girl in elementary that guys pee in girls to get them pregnant, and she believed me.

I used to think there were two different types of pushes for women. One push to give birth, and the other one to poop. So I didn’t think women pooped themselves while giving birth.

Once I told my sister while I was cuddling my dog that we were making love. She then laughed her ass off and explained to me what that meant.