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

[soy_king]

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.

I think I accidentally cut my eyes reading all that edge

 

[tasty humane burger]

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.

I once had to write a story for homework and I made the main character have an older sister who lived with their cousin across town. They came over to the house and I quote for "sis on sis play time and (cousin) came too". Fair to say I know why my family and teacher found it so funny when I was told the story years later.

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

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.

I mean, I can't believe I'm asking but... what did you think happened?

 

[tasty humane burger]

I mean, I can't believe I'm asking but... what did you think happened?

I thought a similar thing. As a very young kid, I thought the idea of being gay was weird but saw no issue with being trans as I assumed it was just people changing their appearance. When I was still very young, but a bit older, I thought trans women could get pregnant. I also thought lesbians could make a baby. Even though I knew men had dicks.

 

[AnOminous]

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

When I was a little kid I thought it was actually illegal to refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance and I'd get arrested if I didn't, so I didn't. And they didn't arrest me.

Even though I knew men had dicks.

I used to just look up shit in the dictionary and encyclopedia so it was pretty early that I learned what gay was and what it meant and it struck me as pretty disgusting, but normal sex also was pretty disgusting too. I didn't get why it was a big deal. Learning about sex at a time when you're still in the girls are gross phase doesn't really make you inclined to study it more.

 

[Strange Wilderness]

I thought that if I turned my pajamas inside-out and wore them backwards then the next day would be a snow day. Every kid in my class at Elementary School did that as well so I guess we were all stupid?

I also believed that if I didn't go to bed before midnight the ghost of Paul Revere would kill me and that was why I had to go to bed at night. Pretty sure I mixed up some urban rumor and made my own bullshit one.

 

[OrionBalls]

I still believe that umbrellas can't have owners, because of a Carl Sandburg story my Dad read to me, growing up.

Basically, umbrellas come and go. You can never hold onto one that you've bought, because it will leave you when you least need it, and seek out someone who does, and help them instead.

Based on the anecdotal evidence of many people who have bought several umbrellas over the years, and then mysteriously lost them, I still belive that parasols have no true owner. Eventually, they end up back on the shelf of the spider-armed salesman, who refuses to sell what he knows will come back to him.

 

[A Grey Cat]

I thought that if I turned my pajamas inside-out and wore them backwards then the next day would be a snow day. Every kid in my class at Elementary School did that as well so I guess we were all stupid?

I also believed that if I didn't go to bed before midnight the ghost of Paul Revere would kill me and that was why I had to go to bed at night. Pretty sure I mixed up some urban rumor and made my own bullshit one.

my parents actually told me my bedtime had to be 830 BECAUSE that's when ghosts come out, and any little boy or girl not in a bed by then would be found by them and haunted all night until the sun came up...and yes not even the light from a tv or flash light could keep them away (something most little kids believe when they believe in ghosts)

 

[OrionBalls]

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 just thought that woman was the boss, and that didn't upset my world view at all. Home, daycare, school, were all led by women. Of course this random woman of whom I only ever see stockings and house shoes is in charge. I thought she was mean to Tom. He was just trying to do his job.

 

[A Grey Cat]

I thought Palestine was a country

I thought Transylvania was a country and Dracula was still alive and ruling it as a king (Vlad tepes Dracula) still alive because of the whole vampire thing. It's not a country its a region of Romania.

 

[Bongocat]

if you didn't pay life insurance, you would just die

 

[A Grey Cat]

The saying that a pregnant woman has a baby in her belly literally meant babies grew in the woman's stomach and not the uterus

 

[Nero You're DeadWeight]

If my animal lost weight it meant they would get younger.

 

[I Love Beef]

I thought Airheads candy made you feel lightheaded when you ate it. I don't even know why, probably from the commercials where kids heads turned into balloons. Definite placebo effect on me too, from what I remember. I really "felt" it.

I legit thought Airheads were as elastic and stretchy as portrayed on the commercials, like an edible gum. I was convinced to stretch them out as I bit into them, only to find they degrade into a sugary paste. The flavor and the crunchy chewy consistency helped otherwise.

I thought anime and video games were only created in the US because animators were paid by Japan and other nations to make cartoons and video games, and that the whole aesthetic, including schools and modern settings was made in the US as well, because other nations would only draw things specifically as to their own ethnicity or had severe restrictions; seriously, I thought Japan and the rest of Asia only drew slanted eyes and like ukiyo-e or traditional art, and they all lived like olden times, unless they came overseas to learn in the States and work in America. I also thought anime was popular overseas but underground with a cult following locally because of their supposed intended overseas appeal and commission, and Toonami and Pokemon was started to host these commissions to compete with Nickelodeon and MTV.

For some reason, I had an immense fear of Japan growing up. Probably because I grew up hearing about WWII and how they were one of the enemies, I thought they were pacified but still active enemies awaiting the day they could take over and attack the US again if the US stopped allowing them to work. Because I grew up going to church as a child, I also misinterpreted Shinto as Satanism glancing at a page in a book because of this stigma, lol.

When I read at a young age, I learned that Japan served fugu, and because I heard it was a poisonous fish and with the help of The Simpsons, I was paranoid to think that sushi restaurants openly served fugu as a compliment. Thankfully my eldest brother's college graduation and a local Japanese friend who ran a sushi bar in the college town helped dispel a lot of this stuff. He's doing great these days too.

I also believed China was the major nation of East Asia like an Eastern USA, and that it was peaceful and tranquil and was the real Asian nation that had wealth, while Japan was on the bottom because of World War II. How wrong I was. Man I am laughing like an idiot. I also had a really bad case of thinking the world was black and white in morality back then too, and that the US was the only good nation that made a stand in leading the world to not constantly wage war on each other.

The town I grew up in also was a neat place where the elementary schools were really nice and up to date, and they had years with themes to learn about along with the general curriculum, like an environmental year or a world ethnicity year. I thought that the world would had been as openminded as the school would be. Well, at least I learned more from school at that point in my life on an ethical scale than anything after that.

I also thought that superheroes were celebrated gloriously if they had an animated series, so when Justice League got aired, I thought it was a huge nationwide premiere like a cartoon primetime. I was half right, still better than anything later live action later on.

I used to think that there would be a day when the world's gravity would stop working, and we'd all have to learn to walk on the ceilings and adapt to life literally upside down, or else we'd fall endlessly through the sky like a bottomless pit. I also believed that the end of the world would happened in the year 2000, and because I didn't pay attention, I had this phase later in December. It wouldn't be bad though, as the thought included everyone being sent up into space in colonies and we'd all find a new planet or something like in Titan AE.

I also didn't understand how microwaves worked, and I thought they worked like slow cooker/air fryer ovens like today. When I was four years old, I put in a McDonald's hamburger in the microwave and set it for 20 minutes. That shit caught fire and I was taught to never use the microwave until I was older. Then I used the microwave at 10 to reheat some beef and I destroyed the stovetop microwave because that also caught fire. It's funny how life works.

I had the obvious fear that basements had monsters in them, and specifically zombies, because they'd crawl through the earth into your house. While some houses we had never felt off, there was one that scared me the most, and it was a house where the basement would only meet halfway while there'd be a lone narrow room with one side of it a cement cinder block wall that was only partially finished, and you could see the hole, which was nothing but pitch black. I honestly thought that was a mausloeum where zombies would crawl out of or a place where the previous owner was a psychopath and hid his victim's bodies in there.

 

[The Un-Clit]

I used to think that there would be a day when the world's gravity would stop working, and we'd all have to learn to walk on the ceilings and adapt to life literally upside down, or else we'd fall endlessly through the sky like a bottomless pit.

I've REALLY got to ask how you came up with this theory, bro! That's def. one of the stranger ones on here.

 

[Sped Xing]

I still believe that umbrellas can't have owners, because of a Carl Sandburg story my Dad read to me, growing up.

Basically, umbrellas come and go. You can never hold onto one that you've bought, because it will leave you when you least need it, and seek out someone who does, and help them instead.

Based on the anecdotal evidence of many people who have bought several umbrellas over the years, and then mysteriously lost them, I still belive that parasols have no true owner. Eventually, they end up back on the shelf of the spider-armed salesman, who refuses to sell what he knows will come back to him.

I believed umbrellas were for fags.

I still do.

 

[mario if smoke weed]

That I'd become a successful video game developer the second I stepped out of college.
This was when I was eight and had little to no concept of how things worked in the real world.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

As a small child I suspected that my father couldn't read, because he wouldn't read us goodnight stories. He always picked up one of the story books we liked, the ones with a shitty drawing and two lines of text per page, leafed through it and looked like this

So he made up his own stories instead of being creatively bankrupt like the people making books for children. Lots of folklore and shit in that plus unexpected additions, I'm still a bit afraid of encountering a hippo around train tracks.

 

[Don Yagon]

Speed bumps on roads are for whatever reason called "laying policemen" in my language. Because of that, I thought policemen who died on duty are literally buried in the middle of the road as some sort of honor act, and this is where the bump comes from.

 

[EnemyStand]

When I was little I used to think I had conversations with God.

Amazingly, I'm not a serial killer.