Share Your Childhood Misconceptions- Page 2

[Jilani]

Posted: 8/14/12 at 7:17pm

I love this subject, though I can't think of any good/funny ones I had. I used to think that writing a check was basically a way of hand-printing your own money.

NPR's This American Life had a story that partially featured childhood misconceptions. One of my favorites was the guy who thought Nielsen ratings were generated by surveying everyone in the country whose last name was Nielsen. Another guy thought "quesadilla" was Spanish for "What's the deal?"

Here's a website that has a treasure trove of these - if you click on "commonly beliefs," a number of the ones already mentioned in this thread show up:

http://www.iusedtobelieve.com
Updated On: 8/15/12 at 07:17 PM

[StageManager2]

Posted: 8/14/12 at 7:19pm

I thought the Best Supporting Actor/Actress nominees financially supported someone else in the cast.

Ha! That reminds me, I thought the people who won Supporting Actor/Actress were runners-up in Best Actor/Actress. For instance, if an actress won in Supporting, it was because she came in second in Best Actress.


Girls don't fart.

I thought celebrities and good-looking people didn't fart or go to the bathroom.


There was no difference between George Bush and Michael Dukakis except that I liked Michael Dukakis and my dad liked George Bush.

This just reminds me of a personal anecdote. That year, my elementary school had a mock election. We were herded into the gym, class by class, and were told to vote. I had just come to this country, knew very little English, and had no idea what the hell was going on. My tutor broke it down for me: "Go in the little room and pick a name." So I walked into the makeshift booth and it didn't take me long to choose. In Spanish, I'd always preferred "Miguel" and thought "Jorge" was a stupid, old man name. I knew that "Michael" and "George" were the English equivalent, so I checked off Michael Dukakis. Later at dinner, when I told my adoptive parents what we had done at school, they confirmed that they too were voting for Dukakis, and I felt like I'd done the right thing. [I live in Massachusetts, but Bush won the election in my school.]

Updated On: 8/14/12 at 07:19 PM

[nygrl232]

Posted: 8/14/12 at 7:47pm

I thought the world was in black and white until the 50's, and I thought guns were fictional. When my mom told me they existed, I was really upset.

Updated On: 8/14/12 at 07:47 PM

[madbrian]

Posted: 8/14/12 at 7:52pm

I couldn't think of anything when I first read this thread, but driving home I saw something that triggered a memory. You know those cone-shaped storage units along the highway that store rock salt? I used to think those were missile silos.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 8/14/12 at 7:58pm

After seeing Carnival of Souls on TV, I was terrified of looking out of night windows. Thought you could see the dead looking in on you!

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 8/14/12 at 8:29pm

Not necessarily a mis-conception, but I would get so mad at the lady on Romper Room (I can't remember her name, other than Miss whatever-her-name-was) because she would never say my name when looking through her magic mirror. I stopped watching when she said my cousin's name (Heather) and would never watch after that.

[Marianne2]

Posted: 8/14/12 at 8:32pm

Remembered another one. I used to be afraid of escalators because I thought if you didn't step off fast enough you would get your toes chopped off.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 8/14/12 at 8:43pm

I just remembered another one. I didn't know the difference between the couple of darker-skinned Filipino kids in my kindergarten class and African-Americans. I was convinced that I knew black kids just like some of the kids on Sesame Street.

I was also terrified of elevators because of the number of times people in movies or on TV were trapped in one, or, even worse, had one that broke and plummeted to the bottom.

[Jon]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 2:37am

I thought that the reason the first part of The Wizard of Oz was in black & white was that they hadn't invented color film when they started making the movie.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 3:06am

You don't want to know where I thought babies came out of.

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 4:06am

Back in kindergarten one day, I heard the F-word for the first time (remember, I'm older than some of you, and it wasn't ever on TV or in movies back then ... and I was five).

That day when I got home, I walked through the door, and at full volume, I looked at my mother and said, "Mommy, what does F*ck mean?"

She didn't freak out, but it caught her off-guard, needless to say. And unfortunately, she gave me an incomplete and ill-prepared explanation that was something like this:

"First of all, that's a crude word, so you shouldn't say it. But it's a word that describes what happens when two people are together and they love each other, and they touch and hold hands and kiss ... then eventually they have a baby together."

I nodded and left it at that.

But when my next door neighbor who was a girl my age wanted to hold my hand while we walked together to school, I refused.

I told her we couldn't ever hold hands because we'd have a baby if we did.

Updated On: 8/15/12 at 04:06 AM

[SNAFU]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 5:21am

Ha! A few years back, I was working on directing a children's show. We had a kid working with us. He went home one night and told his mom we had potty mouths. She asked him; "What did they say?". He looked at her and said, "They used the 'O' word!" Mom looked at him confused and said, "The 'O' word? Not sure I know what that is!"
"Sure you do mom, they kept saying, OH F*CK!"

[BDrischBDemented]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 6:07am

I thought than when women reached a certain age, they would just have a baby on their own. Additionally, because my other had childless friends close to her age, this only happened to some women and they really had no say in the matter.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 8:10am

I thought Happy Days actually was made in the 1950s for real. Which is weird because I actually thought many re-run shows took place closer to the present if not the present. So I thought Nick at Nite and TV Land were the only stations for primetime television, pretty much.

My two neighbors were these lovely ladies with an awesome dog who let me play with him in their yard. I remember once that they had a special party with nothing but women and it never occurred to me until years later, when they sadly no longer occupied the house, that they were lesbians. I think I asked where the men were at the party at one point but really, I just thought they were best friends living together and I am certain that is what I referred to them as to their faces when I was five.

I used to think that my Upstate NY home was in fact in very close proximity to New York City, particularly Sesame Street. For perspective, it takes 3 hours at least for a drive down the thruway into the city from my hometown. This revelation was more devastating for me than Santa Claus.

I thought all severe weather patterns had the potential to be just like the weather in those disaster movies. The fact that I always seemed to be with my easily terrified grandmother when this happened did not help.

Updated On: 8/15/12 at 08:10 AM

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 9:50am

As the 5th of 6 kids, I didnt wonder about too much. I learned alot, way too early. But I did think, because of my wondering why we eat some eggs and some make chicks, with the response being that a rooster was present, that babies came just because a man and woman lived together. I'm sure I learned the gross truth by kindergarten.

My favorite was, because it gave my dad so much pleasure at my expense:

Dad was a smartass and if we inquired "where are you going" if he was getting in the car, his response was usually "Crazy, wanna come?" He did it all the time, and my mom sometimes pulled that too. For YEARS I thought there was a great store called "Crazy" that I was never allowed to visit. I think I was more upset that the "Crazy" store didnt exist than Santa.

[Marianne2]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 10:39am

This was from one of my sisters. The one right below me in age. She claims she was the reason our youngest sister got her crib removed from her bedroom. She said she didn't like her, so she told her to get out of it and stand on the outside if it in hopes that she would fall and disappear. She claims she didn't think about her getting hurt, just that she thought she would disappear. She didn't fall because our mom caught her standing like that.

[Kad]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 10:53am

I was familiar with the concept of animal adoption before person adoption, so I assumed orphaned children were kept in pounds.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 10:55am

I thought Fruma Sarah was "the butcher's dear darling retarded wife".

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 11:39am

^ LOL

Oh, the lyrics I butchered at an early age! That's a great one, though.

I think the worst one for me was "Wipin' the Vaseline."

... for "Life In the Fast Lane."

Updated On: 8/15/12 at 11:39 AM

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 11:42am

For YEARS I thought there was a great store called "Crazy" that I was never allowed to visit. I think I was more upset that the "Crazy" store didnt exist than Santa.

Oh, it exists, doodle. Just read some of the posts here on BWW. You don't have to go far to find the Crazy store.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 1:17pm

Some people treat BWW like a Crazy Costco.

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 1:35pm

So, I guess I found it!

I thought it'd be more fun...

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 1:51pm

You can buy in bulk like Honey Boo Boo Baby Mamma.

[Renart]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 2:34pm

"- I thought the songs on the radio were performed live at the station"

Me too.

I thought the person on TV every night reading the day's news was the President of the United States. The name Walter Cronkite meant nothing to me.

[Jon]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 4:13pm

I thought every house had it's own zip code.