Share Your Childhood Misconceptions- Page 3

[GlindatheGood22]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 4:16pm

As I was making coffee this morning I remembered that I used to think the Folgers jingle went, "The best part of waking up is vultures in your cup."

My brother also thought More Than a Woman was called Small Headed Woman. He's seventeen and didn't figure it out until a month ago.

[Yawper]

Posted: 8/15/12 at 4:43pm

That If I worked hard, was honest and a good person, that I would succeed in life.

You forgot the part about good grades and degree from a top university.

In our house the law (especially Dad's law) was absolute. I thought the law and courts were honestly about right and wrong, not which side argued the best.

[Marianne2]

Posted: 8/28/12 at 9:42pm

Just thought of a new and good one while I was driving.

I always thought if you were traveling up a really steep hill in a car, you were headed north because you were going higher.

[CalebMeyer]

Posted: 8/29/12 at 12:33am

I thought that it HAD to snow on Christmas; Some contract between Christians and Mother Nature said that each Christmas would be a white one. I was DEVASTATED when I woke up on the 25th to find there had been no snow...but the presents made up for it.

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/29/12 at 8:39am

When I was really young and oh-so-naive and she was still in the public eye (mostly for her political career), I used to think Shirley Temple Black was a little black girl who did everything the other Shirley Temple did.

There was "Shirley Temple," and "Shirley Temple Black."

It made sense to my little brain, probably because of all those toy commercials on TV at the time that were introducing black versions of popular dolls.

I didn't understand the older woman on the news program with the brunette beehive hairdo WAS Shirley Temple all grown up and married with a new last name. This was before I could wrap my head around the idea that children grew up into adults and got old.

[bwaylvsong]

Posted: 8/29/12 at 10:32am

Prostitutes cut off their body parts and sold them for money.
Alesbians were from Alesbia.
The fart heard 'round the world cracked the liberty bell.
The whole cheerleader/football player dynamic in HS was made up for TV... real schools didn't have that.
The f-word meant "baby."
The Greasy Spoon was a chain restaurant.
My parents were friends with Jerry Orbach.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 8/29/12 at 10:52am

My dad's office was near the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco and he told me that a guy with a pointy head worked on the top floor because he was the only one who could fit the top of the building.

I called all white people "English people."

Most of my friends had stereotypical nuclear families and until middle school I thought if you had a stepparent, you had to call them "Stepmother" and "Stepfather." (I didn't meet anyone whose parents weren't married to each other until 5th grade, there was just ONE girl.)

We used to watch some kind of Johnny Carson compilation show during dinner (just his sketches), and I didn't know he was a talk show host. I thought he was just a funny man who did funny skits. It never occurred to me that he was different ages throughout...

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/29/12 at 12:45pm

Lizzie--I love the pointed head one. And the "English people."

LOL

... says Shirley Temple Black.

[CJ N2N]

Posted: 8/29/12 at 12:57pm

I thought the lyrics to the Venus razor commercial was "I'm your penis, I'm your fire, your desire"... I'm not kidding. I also thought the lyrics to "Lovely Ladies" from Les Mis were "Lovely Ladies, Bash 'em on the head!". My mom still sings that.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 8/29/12 at 2:39pm

Late childhood, I guess, but when I first starting taking sex ed classes in 6th grade I thought girls could get pregnant from anal.

It just didn't makes sense to me, if they couldn't, why didn't they just always do it that way to prevent pregnancy? It made perfect sense to me.

[BroadwayFan12]

Posted: 8/29/12 at 8:08pm

When I first learned about sex at age eight, I thought it was a traumatic experience and that married couples only did it if they wanted to have a baby. It wasn't until sixth grade that I learned otherwise (thankfully not from experience)!

[artscallion]

Posted: 8/29/12 at 8:31pm

I grew up in New England. I always thought the word for passing gas was spelled fot. Since I never saw words like that in writing I just assumed it was spelled the way it sounds when said by New Englanders. It wasn't until I was 20 and saw it in writing in some book that it dawned on me. I later recalled a time when I had passed a note to someone in school calling them a big fot. The hilarity that ensued now makes much more sense to me.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 8/30/12 at 2:16am

Jerry Nelson's recent passing just reminded me of another one.

To get to my grandparents' house we would pass the local PBS affiliate's offices/broadcast center in Cleveland. I would get quite upset because I knew Sesame Street aired on PBS but my parents would never let me go to meet the cast. I had no idea that Sesame Street was not filmed in Cleveland and didn't believe that Cookie Monster was not hanging out in that building.

[Jon]

Posted: 8/30/12 at 3:19pm

The first time I heard the song "Kind of a Drag" on the radio, I thought it was a really long commercial for Canada Dry ginger ale.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/30/12 at 3:45pm

I had a dream my life would be so different from this hell I'm living, so different now from what it seemed.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 8/30/12 at 4:01pm

I thought the lyrics to the Venus razor commercial was "I'm your penis, I'm your fire, your desire"

OK I am officially OLD!

[AC126748]

Posted: 8/30/12 at 4:12pm

I remember overhearing my best friend's mom (I was 6 or 7 at the time) telling my mom that "Jared can't sleep over because he wets his bed." I piped up and said something like: "it's okay--Jared won't be sleeping in his bed, so he won't wet his bed!" My six year old mind didn't comprehend the fact that you wet the bed no matter where you slept.

Someone said that they used to think that radio songs were performed live. In the same vein, I used to think that at concerts, bands only played one song. This was before I realized that artists had more than one song.

It also took me a strangely long amount of time to realize that my parents and my cousins' parents were siblings.

[Playbilly]

Posted: 8/30/12 at 6:36pm

People wanted someone smarter than them to be President.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 12:48pm

I thought the lyrics to the Venus razor commercial was "I'm your penis, I'm your fire, your desire"

OK I am officially OLD!

I thought the same thing when I saw that song referenced as the "razor commercial". Like I should be a grandparent or something.

[Huss417]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 3:11pm

I have a couple but the first one I thought of I was a kid and my father must have bought condoms by the gross. One day in the basement there was this huge white box which I opened and saw all these circle things. I ripped one open and decided to blow it up. Talk about a head rush.

Anyway my father came into the basement and saw all these open condoms up and strewn all over the floor. I was told they were "daddies" balloons and to leave them alone.

Later that week in kindergarten it was my turn for show and tell and decided to bring daddies balloons to school with me to share with the class.

I was brought into the principals office and had to wait in there while they called my mother and explained what I had done.

40 or so years later people still talk about it. :)

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 3:16pm

That all black men were hung

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 3:24pm

^ A childhood misconception?

[Jon]

Posted: 8/31/12 at 3:44pm

We liv ed in Flushing, Queens - walking distance from the site of the 1964 World's Fair (we went opening day!) as well as the 1939 World's Fair.

One of the attractions at the 1939 fair was the Singer Midgets - A.K.A. The Munchkins. They did a stage show. After the fair closed, many of them stayed in Flushing. As a result, as a small child I always saw numerous "lttle people" on the streets, at the grocery, etc. I thought that midgets & dwarves were a common minority everywhere in the world. I mean, in 1964, there seemed to be more Munchkins than black people in Flushing!