Misconceptions from your childhood.

When you were younger, did you have any weird perceptions of the world/reality/etc. that were just completely off base?

E.g.
When I was about 5, my grandmother's church got a new pastor. He and his wife moved from Kansas, and I remember seriously asking them what it was like living in black & white. Growing up, the Wizard of Oz was one of my favorite movies, and it instilled the idea that if you lived in Kansas, the world was black and white versus...color.

i had the odd idea that if you kept car lights on at night while your parents were driving, it was illegal. apparently that is very common to tell kids though.

Yes, I thought the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland was a real breed of cat that probably originated in Cheshire. The name sounded real enough like Russian Blue, Scottish Fold, Egyptian Mau, Siamese. All of these are real cats so why not a Cheshire? The sad thing is that I assumed this for years, even through high school!

Also when my mom warned me that she had eyes in the back of her head when I was 5 I took it literally. I started brushing my mom's hair, carefully looking at her scalp, trying to find out where the extra eyes were!

Also when the movie Titanic was released I asked my aunt if she was a survivor of the Titanic. Obviously not because she would have had to have been about a hundred years old to be a survivor, and she was cloer to 40 but that still sounded old to me as a tot!

I also thought the rule, "Don't drink and drive" meant not to drink anything, even water. I remember calling my parents out for sipping soda pop in the front seat as we road away from the drive through window of a fastfood restaurant. I wagged my finger with authority, and in my sternest voice warned them not to drink and drive!

I also recall attending church and hearing everybody sing along to a hymn. I misheard the phrase, "meek and mild." It may have gone something like, "Mary Mother, meek and mild" but what I proclaimed instead was "Mickey Mouse!"

This is either going to sound embarrassing or sad depending on your views, but I legit thought that if I did the Bloody Mary ritual, I would die. Needless to say, I am still alive and nothing happened when I tried it much later.

I was told that if you pull a face and the wind blows you'll be stuck like it lol.

I went to bed new years eve 1999 thinking id wake up new years to like hovering cars and futuristic shit and I cried when everything was just normal.

I thought I could tear apart a land-line telephone, scotch tape in unrelated, smashed microchips from other devices, then plug in the phone and not only have it function again at all, but be a brand new device you'd see on something like Star Trek.

I thought civil wars were polite, verbal arguments and the Cold War was fought in the cold

When I was in 1st grade, my older sibling was in middle school. He told me about having lots of different teachers. I didn't understand the concept of different classrooms for different subjects. I thought I would have 8 teachers in one class.

One of my favorite movies when I was a kid was Mary Poppins. I had a fort in my backyard, probably about 12 feet high or so? I was really convinced I needed an umbrella just like her to soar over the countryside.

Needless to say, I didn't fly.

Ursula said:

One of my favorite movies when I was a kid was Mary Poppins. I had a fort in my backyard, probably about 12 feet high or so? I was really convinced I needed an umbrella just like her to soar over the countryside.

Needless to say, I didn't fly.

Click to expand...

I think I can top that film follie.

Do you know the films the Sandlot and Rookie of the Year?

In the former, Benny gives a demonstration of how to throw to our loser protagonist, illustrating in motion "When your arm gets here, just let go", which I thought at the time meant just dead stopping your arm halfway would then result in a mega throw akin to the latter film.

I tried it out and..... it barely went anywhere. Shock to no one.

As a kid I thought middle school, high school and college would be exciting but the hollywood illusion sure did trick me. I even thought I would be like those underdog nerds who got the girl in the end. I also thought we would be using lockers but they are so obsolete.

Naive me.

When Hong Kong was given back to China, I thought that meant the entire city was floated across the ocean back to wherever China was.

I also thought colour didn't exist back in the days of black and white TV because it was black and white...

I honestly can't remember any major misconceptions.
I feel like I'm missing out on great story potential :')

my mom told me that it was illegal to have a light on inside the car while driving at night and i believed that for 24 years

The world use to seem like such a big place when I was a kid.

If you swallow chewing gum it'll wrap around your heart and you will die.

University challenge contestants were stacked on top of eachother.

That I would grow up and have a happy life.

Also the car light thing.

i thought the people who died in movies actually died, which actually made me dislike watching films that involved death throughout my early childhood

I was always, for some reason, always under the impression that peacocks were flightless birds when I was a child and it wasn't until I saw a video of one flying quite recently that I learnt this wasn't the case O_o