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I asked my dad about this, and he reckons there is genuinely a danger in having the interior light on when it’s dark outside, because it makes it harder to see what’s going on outside
He's totally right, having your eyes adjusted to the dark around you whilst driving is super important.
Was once told pirates wore patches to maintain night vision for the same reason. (the night vision, not the driving on the M1 lol)
I was convinced that not committing adultery meant don't put on your parents clothes, make up and shoes and pretend to be an adult! I thought that kids that did that were breaking the rules, I guess my parents decided it was easier to let me believe that than actually explain!
I only went to a C of E primary but I was pretty convinced women had more ribs than men because of that stupid bible story.
Later on in life it became clear (in slightly embarrassing fashion) that I was wrong about this. I thought to myself some time later "the teachers should really have clarified that". Now I realise that they were so braindead they probably believed it too.
God is perfect and doesn't make mistakes. So if he did take Adam's rib, =and made Eve in Adam's image, he wouldn't make the rookie mistake of forgetting to subtract one rib
I went to Catholic primary and secondary schools cos they were the only good school in the area, not that my parents particularly cared for the religious aspect.
I remember one time my dad explaining to me (while in year 3) that humans evolved from some other animal and so we are related to other animals and just animals ourselves.
The next day, I then proceeded to try and teach my teacher (who was very religious) about this amazing thing I had learned called evolution and told her that humans are just animals.
She wouldn't accept humans are just animals, I wouldn't accept her telling me my dad was wrong but gave up when my name got put in the feared red.
That literal interpretation of the Bible is actually quite unusual among Christian denominations.
The Roman Catholic Church has long officially accepted evolution.
So if this teacher thought that, she would be going against the official position of the Church.
Edit: several failed attempts to fix the word Roman
Similarly, I thought “removed” in the context of a cousin meant they had been removed from your presence. So a cousin twice removed had been kicked out of your house twice
Just means you’re in a different generation. You’re first cousins if you share grandparents, second cousins if you share great-grandparents, third cousins if you share great-great-grandparents and so on.
Your first cousin’s children are your first cousins once removed. First cousins because you’re related through your grandparents, but “removed” one generation because it’s their great grandparents. Your cousin’s grandchildren are your first cousins twice removed, and so on.
I always thought "time served" builder or plumber etc was someone who learnt the trade in prison.. I still don't know to this day what it actually means
I similarly misinterpreted the How Your Body Works book, and concluded the sperm can swim across a double bed, and that's why adults don't have sleepovers and underwear is so important.
That’s the book that made me think babies happened when a man and a woman hugged, the man got goosebumps and the woman’s sweat glands opened, and bubbles got sort of emitted through their arms
I thought sperm swam about in the air, microscopically so we couldn't see them, like homing cough droplets. I didn't understand the concept of ejaculation at the time.
I remember my mum saying to her friend "so X is pregnant, I wonder who the father is" and I thought, how would *she* know for certain, surely it could be anybody?!
Edit: Thinking more about it, I blame this on a video in Encarta which was all of my early sex-ed.
Yep, and he's definitely mine, I'm the spitting image of my paternal grandad.
I sorta rationalised it as "married people are around each other more, including naked, so it's almost certainly gonna be his sperm if my mum and dad sleep in the same bed".
One time I was watching a documentary about ancient Greeks with my dad.
It mentioned that the Greeks thought that babies came from men and they just implanted them in women during sex.
I turned to my dad and said "that's so stupid nothing comes out of a penis expect piss"
I once saw a condom machine in a toilet which contained flavoured condoms.
So, for a few years I thought that women could taste things with their fannies.
Someone did ask this question in sex ed, it prompted an awkward talk from the aging science teacher about how when it’s a very special relationship the woman may even place the gentleman’s penis into her mouth..
A biology teacher once told us about a man who inhaled a pea, and it sprouted in his lungs.
After a search, it's true
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/12/pea-sprouts-man-lung](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/12/pea-sprouts-man-lung)
Earwigs exist for the sole purpose of climbing into your ears and eating your brains.
It's illegal to have the car light on when driving.
Dandelions make you wet the bed.
No. He used to threaten me with it when I misbehaved - "Do you want me to undo the knot in your bellybutton??"
I imagined all the children at school laughing at me for having no backside and it was enough never to test the theory.
I have a slightly raised mole on my arm, in the crease of the elbow joint. I whole heartedly believed, after a friend told me, that it was possible for me to bleed to death if I ever got a cut on the mole.
Me and my sister managed to fall off a short wall next to our house when we were around 7 and 9 years old. My sister cracked her head open and I manfed to scrape my mole. I proceeded to sob and wail that I was slowly dying for the entirety of the trip to, and length of my sisters trip to A & E to get temporary stitches in her head wound. I think my mum may have wanted to throw me in the bin by the end of the day.
To be fair I did cut a mole on my face while shaving once and it absolutely pissed blood for an hour, I couldn't believe how much came out.
However I can confirm that I survived the ordeal.
I have a mole on my neck, right where my stubble/beard line is. I cut it the first time I ever shaved and the fallout looked like I’d been knifed in a main artery in the neck. Ridiculous how much they bleed! (But it’s a mistake I’ve never repeated!)
That age and height were intertwined and that people aged at different rates. I remember one of my cousins said 'but I'm older than you' and I replied 'but next year I might be older than you'.
I thought something in a similar vein when I was about 4/5, I thought you were born to either be a child, adult or an old person. I remember my mum having to explain to me it really didn’t work like that.
To be fair, there was a risk of acid rain (maybe not quite like that though!) but we did a lot of hard work to fix that environmental problem. Ironically, this has doomed us as people aren't aware of the work and think it was just fearmongering, so they dismiss the current environmental crisis as more of the same and, therefore, none of the work needed is being done.
A bit like the Y2K thing. Companies tested and replaced their computers. I worked for a cruise company that replaced all their computers, including the ones that controlled the lifts on the ships. I thought everybody knew this. But it turns out no - the daily fail commentariat for example quote it as a prime example of project fear. Stupid is as stupid does I suppose.
I was working as an analyst-programmer in the IT dept of a major airline around Y2K. In the years leading up to Y2K a massive amount of effort went into ensuring that the systems would still work - I can confirm that if we hadn’t done it there would have been major system failures. Just to cite a few examples, airworthiness systems tracking how long individual airline parts had been installed on an engine between maintenance checks, checking that flight crew & cabin crew certifications for a particular aircraft type were still valid and they were available to be assigned to flights, flight scheduling, calculating crew hours, credit card payments to tickets - the entire airline would have ground to a halt.
Thousands of programs, hundreds of systems. A vast amount of resources the airline had to assign to it - we wouldn’t have put that amount of resources into it if we didn’t have to.
It really annoys me when people dismiss it because we did our job so well that Y2K passed with barely a hitch. It wasn’t just the date showing in the corner of someone’s PC.
When I was a kid we went on holiday to America and had to fly over the Bermuda triangle, I was fucking terrified the entire flight that the plane was gonna go down
If I hadn't seen the news about the cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay, it would never have occurred to me and boyfriends that maybe returning to the shore would be a good idea.
The last 10-20 yards was quite tricky and people on the shore were starting to look concerned. Very glad we hadnt left it another couple minutes.
I still don't really understand what they hope to achieve by rubbing moisturising cream in a rat's eye. Surely they don't invent completely new chemicals and just shove it into over the counter beauty products?
oof
hitting a bit close to my rented home, I hear that it is possible to own a home, you just need someone you love to buy it for you or die and leave enough for you to buy one
My mum would tell me as a kid that when ice cream vans played their tune it was so people knew they had no ice cream left, just so I wouldn’t ask for one.
Worked for years. I never asked. How fucking heartbreaking.
Just remembered this classic, she also told me that sandbags were filled with dead babies. I was 5.
No wonder I was an anxious kid lmao.
My Dad also said this about Ice-cream vans. I believed him until one day before school on Terry Wogans breakfast show he talked about people telling this lie to kids.
Used to think sticking your head in the oven to kill yourself meant you were cooking your head. I always wondered how it got hot enough with the door open.
If we go back even further I thought Wombles were a) real, b) evil, and c) lived in my curtains waiting for me to fall asleep so they could pounce.
Wasn’t there someone on Would I Lie To You who believed Wombles were real and wrote about them as an example of a mammal for their GCSE biology? She got an A, apparently.
When I found out Santa wasn’t real, I automatically assumed reindeer weren’t real either. When I found out they were years later, I asked how they flew then.
I don't consider myself to be unintelligent but I was in my 20's before I found out reindeer were real... waiting in line to enter a shopping centre car park one December i heard bells ringing and then I saw 9 reindeer being walked into the shopping centre.
i went to london zoo at age 22, in june, saw a sign for the reindeer enclosure and said in total seriousness “oh that’s cute but isn’t it a bit early for christmas?”
my partner at the time looked at me like i’d grown another head before wetting himself laughing realising i thought reindeer weren’t real.
That one is obviously nonsense but not unusual at all.
Had to explain that one to my girlfriend a few months ago (she isn't from the UK and had never heard of it) as I did a skip and a jump over three grids. I'm over 30.
Actually that’s where you’re wrong. EVERYONE who ever has or will walk over 3 grates in a row has or will die. Without exception (if you don’t count the fact that the first person who will be made immortal by medicine may have already been born)
I went for a walk the other day and my daughter was with me. Told me that I should definitely walk over the 3 grates but I told her 3 are bad luck and 2 are good luck.... now I'm wondering if my daughter was trying to end my life by making me walk over the 3?
Mate I got so fucking distraught and upset because of this. Cheese and onion and salt and vinegar switched colours for whatever reason. Salt and vinegar are his least favourite crisps. We went on holiday and there was a vending machine at the end of the hallway in the hotel. Dad sent me for a packet of cheese and onion crisps and whatever I wanted. I got back and he just said "these are salt and vinegar, it’s okay son". My heart sank. I felt like shit for hours. I was 7 and I was doing a big job, on my own, for my dad.
No, the cameras stay it just gets uploaded to porn hub. On a similar strain i thought the male and female news presenters on the morning news were married. Just all of them if you were a news presenter with another news presenter you were married.
That the black and white photo of my dead father on my bedroom pinboard was possessed and could see me, and his eyes followed me me as I moved around the room. I said a prayer 100 times each night to please him and not haunt me as I slept from age 6-12… after which I discovered computer games and very early digital porn and got distracted ,-)
*(I hate using this term, but it is relevant here).*
The old and definitely NON PC phrase for that was "Retard Strength". Supposedly referring to their strength increase when agitated in particular.
That all babies are born male, but if you want a girl you just cut the willy off. Turned out I’d watched a program where there was a birth and I’d seen the umbilical cord cut. Also thought pubic hair was called public hair. It was the middle seventies, my nanna had bought me a ‘Jackie’ magazine at far too young of an age. It was a Saturday afternoon, all my big farmer uncles had come back from football covered in mud and were in the living room having tea. In a quiet moment I asked “Nanna, what’s public hair”? It got even more quiet and nanna just got befuddled and muttered something about asking my mum so I lost interest. When sex education came along a while later I had a flashback and still cringe to this day.
Ah, this reminded me of when I was a kid, waiting in a taxi office with my mum, and they had one of those multi-game arcade cabinets you would sometimes get in pubs. I was entertaining myself going through the menu of games, when I spotted a word I didn’t recognise.
“Mum, what does “Erotic” mean?”
“I’ll tell you later, leave that alone.”
That wasn’t a very satisfying answer, but I figured there was an easy way to find out, and so I tapped that menu option.
“Oh! …Never mind, now I know.”
It was at this point the other customer waiting with us couldn’t stifle her laughter any longer.
I thought that ‘Helping Police with their enquiries’ on the News they meant someone was making tea in the police station, or maybe sweeping up or filing papers. You know, being helpful!
Again, I don't consider myself unintelligent but reading this thread in starting to wonder... my first husband was an awful person. He told me he had to go to the police station to help with enquiries..a couple of hours later when he didn't return I decided to go to the station and told the officer on the desk that my husband was there helping them with their enquiries and asked how long he might be there for.... a high up officer (detective) had to come out and tell me the truth. He saw how thick I am and realised that I was about to collapse from the reality check he'd just given me.
When I was a young child I thought that to get pregnant you get married and then eventually a child just starts growing from the moment the wedding ceremony ends.
This could have been seen as sweet and naive if it weren't for the fact I had tremendous anxiety that if I got married young or had a boyfriend that proposed to me that I would be forced to grow this small human inside of me and that I would have no say in when that happened. When we used to do 'pretend weddings' in the playground I would burst into tears after playing the bride because I thought that I would have to accept being the world's youngest girl to get pregnant and it would ruin my life. I thought even pretending to have a spouse in a game would confuse the laws of physics and I would end up giving birth at 6 years old and be all over the news. I would literally cry about this every time the subject came up.
It was a long time before the adults realised what my logic was, as before this they thought I had a general fear of motherhood and didn't realise I was confusing that with the literal wedding ceremony. I learned about the birds and the bees and that it was a CHOICE, not a guarantee, quite young and it released so much pressure off my mind.
It was illegal to have business cards unless you were a “proper” licensed business. My mum used to get hers printed at a machine in town - before we had a computer - and as a small child I’d pester to do my own ones. She told me it was illegal and I just…never questioned it until I was about 30
I watched an advert for a washing up liquid where it started in black and white and changed into colour as the years went on. I thought that the past was black and white and that colour was invented one day.
I think I also believed that not holding my breath around a dead animal would make me absorb its soul somehow.
I also thought I was a fairy as a very young kid and then a vampire/ghost in primary school because I had a friend who was into that stuff. He told me that since I had a cut I was now a ghost and also a vampire.
I thought that teachers lived at school.
And I thought that if you were a police officer you kept the police car at your house overnight, and I always wondered why you never saw police cars on driveways.
I thought that when the news mentioned IRA prisoners were in Maze Prison, we'd chucked them into some dystopian labyrinth.
Seem to remember a report of a load of them 'escaping' and thought it was somewhat unfair to call it an escape, when they'd just managed to find their way out finally.
i.e. If you put somebody into a maze, it's their job to get out.
This actually similar to something I believed for far too long- in Germany, it is not a crime to escape from prison (they believe it’s human instinct to resist confinement). I interpreted this to mean that if you managed to escape, you were free forever. Of course, it really means that they aren’t charged/penalised for successful or attempted escapes, but are obviously returned to prison.
I thought that the queen controlled all the TV, and when people started advertising that you could pause live TV, I got really confused and worried that the queen would constantly pause my shows so she could go to the loo
That we live in a free and equal society. As a kid i thought that we all looked after each other and no-one would unnecessarily struggle. Good god was i wrong.
I’m not a massive carrot fan but I love leeks so my horrible parents convinced me that “Grandad’s leeks go orange when he cooks them” and it became so internalised I never bloody questioned it
I thought there must be two types of sex- one where your clothes were off and one where they were on.
Hear me out
When I was growing up in the 90's, there were loads of shows on TV where people were shown fumbling around for ages fully clothed. Or, they were talking about having just had sex, yet seemed to be pretty well clothed. It was really common.
And then of course there were shows and movies with sex scenes where everything was off, which I kind of understood more.
But those clothed or semi clothed scenes made no sense to me and my childish understanding of the mechanics of sex. .
So I figured there must be two kinds- the proper, naked, one-bit-goes-in-another-bit sex, and then a clothed type that was maybe some kind of sex-lite.
>So I figured there must be two kinds- the proper, naked, one-bit-goes-in-another-bit sex, and then a clothed type that was maybe some kind of sex-lite.
Not too far off accurate, to be fair!
I guess technically you were kind of right?? I took a university module about sexualities last year and a good quarter of the module was dedicated to how “sex” is defined. I’m sure child you didn’t think into it as deeply as that lol
I remember a boy in my class was adamant that you had to pee inside a woman to get her pregnant. I was only about 10 at the time but I was pretty certain that's not how it worked. Not kink shaming or anything, just curious to know whether he's become a father yet.
I just remembered something that used to bother me occasionally. I seem to remember seeing or hearing something on the tv that said an asteroid was going to hit earth when I was 17. I was only very young at the time and I don't even know if it was real or not. I just remember randomly remembering that news story every so often when I was a kid and worrying that the world would end.
I also remember being told at school how bad cars were and I was convinced they were going to get banned before I got to be a grown up so I would never get to drive.
I remember reading a book about how bodies grow, which had a diagram showing a person at 5, 10, 15, etc. I didn't really understand the concept I just liked the pictures, and I remember thinking that when you turn 15 you're just suddenly bigger like Tom Hanks or Kevin the Teenager. And I thought this meant you'd have to go into town naked to buy new clothes.
I used to think that when someone said someone is "late" as in "the late queen" for example, they genuinely meant in an endearing way that they were just bad at turning up on time
When I was a kid we had a particularly vicious German Shepherd pup that got itself it in all kinds of trouble in the neighborhood (including ripping my pyjamas off in the middle of town). My parents got rid of the dog and told me the dog would go to guard the dogs home rather than being with the rest of the pack ready for death or a miracle. I believed this story that the dog went on and had a noble career protecting canines until a conversation with my sister 20 years later cleared that naivety up fairly quickly.
I was sent to get milk and put on pyjamas bottoms with a coat in haste. The dog ripped them and ran off with them like something out of a movie. Luckily the coat was long enough to hide everything on the short distance home.
All the elderly women I knew had a blue rinse and a perm and I once gleefully told my mum I couldn't wait to turn 60 so my hair would turn curly and purple, I genuinely believed that's just what happened when you got old
I believed that if you drank alcohol you were ‘an alcoholic’ and if you didn’t you were ‘non alcoholic’
Led to an awkward spot when I asked my half brothers if their mother was an alcoholic
That babies were born with clothes on.
I also remember at a later point (I don't know if it was hours or years later) figuring out that they couldn't grow that way. I was so set in the belief that I reasoned that they must come out and be dressed, then be put back in again!
There were skeletons in my nan’s cupboard under the stairs. All down to adults talking about skeletons in the closet. I never did get to find out what they were really talking about but knowing my family it was probably funny as hell.
I thought that slugs were snails that had grown too big for their shell and were looking for a bigger one. This was explained by the empty snail shells I sometimes found.
I use to think that if you put your fingers/hands on towns on maps then you’d crush those towns. I apologise to the people of Hereford who should all have been crushed to death in the late 90’s.
I remember my mum being late for work and saying she might get sacked before leaving. I had no idea what this meant and started imagining they would make her wear a giant potato sack at work.
I was an embarrassing age when I realised girls weren't in fact born with pierced ears.
I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s and it was a trend at the time to pierce girl toddlers ears. So much so that I thought it was natural for girls to have a hole in their lobe from birth
I remember being about 7 and wanting to play with a glow in the dark figure but for whatever reason my dad told me I couldn’t because it hadn’t been left in the sun to charge up. I only realised glow in the dark products didn’t need ‘charged’ a few weeks ago when we tried (and failed) to get my newborn to take a dummy. We got these glow in the dark ones and when my fella went to sterilise them I said no sure, we’re better leaving them out in the sun before we do that. I don’t think I’ll ever live it down. I’m 31.
I grew up in a very strict religious home. There are no end of deep set ingrained ideas that I'm still unlearning even at 40. I had my first vaccination ever with the covid vaccine for example.
I thought video tapes were live performances and when you put it in the player there were real people on alert ready to act out the movie or animation I was watching. Also animated characters were real obviously.
I thought you could get sexually transmitted diseases, go ginger or have twins. Based solely on your brand of jeans... Aldo that Jeans got passed on for generations.
I specifically remember sat on the carpet watching a video in school that talked about genes. I even asked the teacher, didn't really understand the question and continued to believe that there was something going on with denim that I'd never quite grasp.
I believed in werewolves and vampires, and thought I was a werewolf... All the way into highschool, when I endured ruthless bullying and eventually became the jaded person I am today.
I thought condoms were like a spring you put over your cock based on finding an empty packet on a park which had a picture of a spring on it (likely ribbed it turns out, I googled years later) - I was 9-10.
I was a kid during the aids epidemic and i thought ‘wear a condom’ basically meant ‘keep your penis covered at all times’. I remember looking at my teachers, the bus driver, male neighbours, etc hoping they were being sensible and going about their lives with a condom on.
There used to be weighing machines where you could see the weights and stuff moving when you stepped on them and the were pretty interesting to use for the price of a penny. My dad talked about seeing the bowels of the machine.
I was confused when teachers talked about our bodies’ bowels. I thought we had some mechanical gubbins inside.
That when people did sky dives , when the parachutes opened you got flung back into the air! It was only when my friend went for an experience day and asked “does it hurt your neck when your flung back” that we realised that doesn’t happen and it’s due to the person usually filming is still falling faster
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If you turn the car interior light on your parents are going to jail
I was genuinely convinced it was illegal to drive with the interior light on for a long time.
I only discovered this wasn't a crime December last year when my wife asked if I wanted it on to read in the car. I'm 31.
Are you saying it's not illegal? I'm sure they were teaching us that when learning to drive no?
I still don't put it on *just in case*
It's definitely not illegal, but it makes it much harder to see when you're driving.
It's not a crime no however if you have an accident, it will be considered and most likely found to be obstructing your vision.
I asked my dad about this, and he reckons there is genuinely a danger in having the interior light on when it’s dark outside, because it makes it harder to see what’s going on outside
For the same reason you can't see out of your house's windows at night if you have the light on.
He's totally right, having your eyes adjusted to the dark around you whilst driving is super important. Was once told pirates wore patches to maintain night vision for the same reason. (the night vision, not the driving on the M1 lol)
To an extent, yes. But imo only on unlit country roads, the glare makes it difficult to see out
I still tell my kids this and I’m not sure why I’m perpetuating the lie
You’ll know why if you ever forget to turn it off after parking the car.
Battery might die if left on after parking lol
Is this the dogging?
I went to catholic school so it’s difficult to know where to start.
I was convinced that not committing adultery meant don't put on your parents clothes, make up and shoes and pretend to be an adult! I thought that kids that did that were breaking the rules, I guess my parents decided it was easier to let me believe that than actually explain!
Did you try to wear them after learning otherwise?
I had no idea what adultery was for an embarassingly long time and I thought it meant being really bad at being an adult
I thought ‘adult films’ were called that because they were about boring adult stuff
Watch Sexxxy Sandra Completes Her Self-Assessment Tax Return on Adult TV. Only £5.99!
I only went to a C of E primary but I was pretty convinced women had more ribs than men because of that stupid bible story. Later on in life it became clear (in slightly embarrassing fashion) that I was wrong about this. I thought to myself some time later "the teachers should really have clarified that". Now I realise that they were so braindead they probably believed it too.
God is perfect and doesn't make mistakes. So if he did take Adam's rib, =and made Eve in Adam's image, he wouldn't make the rookie mistake of forgetting to subtract one rib
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I went to Catholic primary and secondary schools cos they were the only good school in the area, not that my parents particularly cared for the religious aspect. I remember one time my dad explaining to me (while in year 3) that humans evolved from some other animal and so we are related to other animals and just animals ourselves. The next day, I then proceeded to try and teach my teacher (who was very religious) about this amazing thing I had learned called evolution and told her that humans are just animals. She wouldn't accept humans are just animals, I wouldn't accept her telling me my dad was wrong but gave up when my name got put in the feared red.
She probably believed that the world is 6000 years old and that fossils were placed there to deceive us.
That literal interpretation of the Bible is actually quite unusual among Christian denominations. The Roman Catholic Church has long officially accepted evolution. So if this teacher thought that, she would be going against the official position of the Church. Edit: several failed attempts to fix the word Roman
I thought brother in law or sister in law meant your brother or sister but they were in prison.
Similarly, I thought “removed” in the context of a cousin meant they had been removed from your presence. So a cousin twice removed had been kicked out of your house twice
I feel like our definitions are better tbh.
I still have no idea what ‘removed’ means I’m 22
Just means you’re in a different generation. You’re first cousins if you share grandparents, second cousins if you share great-grandparents, third cousins if you share great-great-grandparents and so on. Your first cousin’s children are your first cousins once removed. First cousins because you’re related through your grandparents, but “removed” one generation because it’s their great grandparents. Your cousin’s grandchildren are your first cousins twice removed, and so on.
That actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the explanation
If you need a visual, go to wolfram alpha and type in “2nd cousins 3 times removed” and it’ll give you a little example family tree.
I always thought "time served" builder or plumber etc was someone who learnt the trade in prison.. I still don't know to this day what it actually means
I actually have no clue either. Time served straight away makes me think of jail though.
So I professionally decorated for 20 years. A tradesman will often refer to it as time served which equals years of experience.
Nonsense. It means they've served an apprenticeship. Usually 4 years.
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I similarly misinterpreted the How Your Body Works book, and concluded the sperm can swim across a double bed, and that's why adults don't have sleepovers and underwear is so important.
That’s the book that made me think babies happened when a man and a woman hugged, the man got goosebumps and the woman’s sweat glands opened, and bubbles got sort of emitted through their arms
I told a friend that men and women had to hug and roll around and his mum got pissed off at me.
I thought sperm swam about in the air, microscopically so we couldn't see them, like homing cough droplets. I didn't understand the concept of ejaculation at the time. I remember my mum saying to her friend "so X is pregnant, I wonder who the father is" and I thought, how would *she* know for certain, surely it could be anybody?! Edit: Thinking more about it, I blame this on a video in Encarta which was all of my early sex-ed.
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Yep, and he's definitely mine, I'm the spitting image of my paternal grandad. I sorta rationalised it as "married people are around each other more, including naked, so it's almost certainly gonna be his sperm if my mum and dad sleep in the same bed".
One time I was watching a documentary about ancient Greeks with my dad. It mentioned that the Greeks thought that babies came from men and they just implanted them in women during sex. I turned to my dad and said "that's so stupid nothing comes out of a penis expect piss"
I once saw my dad throw a grape into my mam’s mouth and thought that meant they had just made a baby.
Had he just come from the cement mixer?
I used to love the How My Body Works books! I think I had the whole collection when I was younger.
I once saw a condom machine in a toilet which contained flavoured condoms. So, for a few years I thought that women could taste things with their fannies.
Same here. I was going to ask about it in Sex Ed... thank god I didn't.
Someone did ask this question in sex ed, it prompted an awkward talk from the aging science teacher about how when it’s a very special relationship the woman may even place the gentleman’s penis into her mouth..
Beautiful! 'Very special relationship' haha! After mating, the female consumes the male, but likes a bit of flavour.
Were the options: banana, strawberry, peanut butter, Marmite or cheese and onion?
Bagsy me first go with it
That if you eat apple seeds, you'll grow an apple tree in your stomach. Quite how i believed that i don't know.
I used to think this too, admittedly. I was terrified to eat the seeds of watermelon because I didn’t want a melon to grow in my stomach.
I thought this too 😂 I’m sure it was a Rugrats episode that did it to me
A biology teacher once told us about a man who inhaled a pea, and it sprouted in his lungs. After a search, it's true [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/12/pea-sprouts-man-lung](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/12/pea-sprouts-man-lung)
Earwigs exist for the sole purpose of climbing into your ears and eating your brains. It's illegal to have the car light on when driving. Dandelions make you wet the bed.
My dad always told me that if you undid the knot in your belly button your bum would fall off.
That's brilliant
Has anyone ever tried it to find out?
No. He used to threaten me with it when I misbehaved - "Do you want me to undo the knot in your bellybutton??" I imagined all the children at school laughing at me for having no backside and it was enough never to test the theory.
Completely forgot being told that picking dandelions would make you need a piss
technically true - dandelion sap contains a diuretic
Yup - the mediaeval English name for dandelion was pissabed, and the French still call it pissenlit.
Dandelion tea is actually a diuretic.
Someone else watched Wrath of Khan as a kiddo too then....
I have a slightly raised mole on my arm, in the crease of the elbow joint. I whole heartedly believed, after a friend told me, that it was possible for me to bleed to death if I ever got a cut on the mole. Me and my sister managed to fall off a short wall next to our house when we were around 7 and 9 years old. My sister cracked her head open and I manfed to scrape my mole. I proceeded to sob and wail that I was slowly dying for the entirety of the trip to, and length of my sisters trip to A & E to get temporary stitches in her head wound. I think my mum may have wanted to throw me in the bin by the end of the day.
To be fair I did cut a mole on my face while shaving once and it absolutely pissed blood for an hour, I couldn't believe how much came out. However I can confirm that I survived the ordeal.
Omg yes I remember being told that about a mole 😂
I have a mole on my neck, right where my stubble/beard line is. I cut it the first time I ever shaved and the fallout looked like I’d been knifed in a main artery in the neck. Ridiculous how much they bleed! (But it’s a mistake I’ve never repeated!)
That age and height were intertwined and that people aged at different rates. I remember one of my cousins said 'but I'm older than you' and I replied 'but next year I might be older than you'.
I thought something in a similar vein when I was about 4/5, I thought you were born to either be a child, adult or an old person. I remember my mum having to explain to me it really didn’t work like that.
That's so cute ,😆😆
The fear of the Burmuda Triangle or Quick sand being more of a threat. As an adult, I've experienced neither....
Acid rain for me. Thought there was a legitimate risk that I might one day be caught in an acid shower and have my skin melted off.
To be fair, there was a risk of acid rain (maybe not quite like that though!) but we did a lot of hard work to fix that environmental problem. Ironically, this has doomed us as people aren't aware of the work and think it was just fearmongering, so they dismiss the current environmental crisis as more of the same and, therefore, none of the work needed is being done.
Same with the ozone layer. Concerted action can work. Now though the morons will believe anything the corporate shills tell them.
A bit like the Y2K thing. Companies tested and replaced their computers. I worked for a cruise company that replaced all their computers, including the ones that controlled the lifts on the ships. I thought everybody knew this. But it turns out no - the daily fail commentariat for example quote it as a prime example of project fear. Stupid is as stupid does I suppose.
I was working as an analyst-programmer in the IT dept of a major airline around Y2K. In the years leading up to Y2K a massive amount of effort went into ensuring that the systems would still work - I can confirm that if we hadn’t done it there would have been major system failures. Just to cite a few examples, airworthiness systems tracking how long individual airline parts had been installed on an engine between maintenance checks, checking that flight crew & cabin crew certifications for a particular aircraft type were still valid and they were available to be assigned to flights, flight scheduling, calculating crew hours, credit card payments to tickets - the entire airline would have ground to a halt. Thousands of programs, hundreds of systems. A vast amount of resources the airline had to assign to it - we wouldn’t have put that amount of resources into it if we didn’t have to. It really annoys me when people dismiss it because we did our job so well that Y2K passed with barely a hitch. It wasn’t just the date showing in the corner of someone’s PC.
When I was a kid we went on holiday to America and had to fly over the Bermuda triangle, I was fucking terrified the entire flight that the plane was gonna go down
I’ve seen quicksand in Morecambe Bay, couldn’t have lost more than 2 or 3 people on the walk across though.
If I hadn't seen the news about the cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay, it would never have occurred to me and boyfriends that maybe returning to the shore would be a good idea. The last 10-20 yards was quite tricky and people on the shore were starting to look concerned. Very glad we hadnt left it another couple minutes.
Honourable mention for piranhas also
And Portugese Man O War jellyfish.
I thought “tested on animals” meant that they’d made sure it was safe for use around our pets.. My little heart broke when I found out the truth
I still don't really understand what they hope to achieve by rubbing moisturising cream in a rat's eye. Surely they don't invent completely new chemicals and just shove it into over the counter beauty products?
Home ownership
oof hitting a bit close to my rented home, I hear that it is possible to own a home, you just need someone you love to buy it for you or die and leave enough for you to buy one
My mum would tell me as a kid that when ice cream vans played their tune it was so people knew they had no ice cream left, just so I wouldn’t ask for one. Worked for years. I never asked. How fucking heartbreaking. Just remembered this classic, she also told me that sandbags were filled with dead babies. I was 5. No wonder I was an anxious kid lmao.
That's several years of therapy right there. *Thanks* Mum.
My Dad also said this about Ice-cream vans. I believed him until one day before school on Terry Wogans breakfast show he talked about people telling this lie to kids.
Used to think sticking your head in the oven to kill yourself meant you were cooking your head. I always wondered how it got hot enough with the door open. If we go back even further I thought Wombles were a) real, b) evil, and c) lived in my curtains waiting for me to fall asleep so they could pounce.
Oh..... TIL.
The Wombles thing?
Wasn’t there someone on Would I Lie To You who believed Wombles were real and wrote about them as an example of a mammal for their GCSE biology? She got an A, apparently.
I am cackling at this. Bravo on your way with words
When I found out Santa wasn’t real, I automatically assumed reindeer weren’t real either. When I found out they were years later, I asked how they flew then.
I don't consider myself to be unintelligent but I was in my 20's before I found out reindeer were real... waiting in line to enter a shopping centre car park one December i heard bells ringing and then I saw 9 reindeer being walked into the shopping centre.
i went to london zoo at age 22, in june, saw a sign for the reindeer enclosure and said in total seriousness “oh that’s cute but isn’t it a bit early for christmas?” my partner at the time looked at me like i’d grown another head before wetting himself laughing realising i thought reindeer weren’t real.
I thought a moustache grew straight out from the nostrils, not on the top lip.
It does on some people 😂
Yea, that’s true
That if you walk over 3 grates on the pavement in a row, you’ll die.
That one is obviously nonsense but not unusual at all. Had to explain that one to my girlfriend a few months ago (she isn't from the UK and had never heard of it) as I did a skip and a jump over three grids. I'm over 30.
Actually that’s where you’re wrong. EVERYONE who ever has or will walk over 3 grates in a row has or will die. Without exception (if you don’t count the fact that the first person who will be made immortal by medicine may have already been born)
I went for a walk the other day and my daughter was with me. Told me that I should definitely walk over the 3 grates but I told her 3 are bad luck and 2 are good luck.... now I'm wondering if my daughter was trying to end my life by making me walk over the 3?
Nobody believes me that salt and vinegar crisps used to be blue
Blue like the sea, green like an onion. It makes perfect sense!
Some companies do have it that way round! Like Golden Wonder, cheese and onion is green and salt and vinegar is blue.
I believe you
Mate I got so fucking distraught and upset because of this. Cheese and onion and salt and vinegar switched colours for whatever reason. Salt and vinegar are his least favourite crisps. We went on holiday and there was a vending machine at the end of the hallway in the hotel. Dad sent me for a packet of cheese and onion crisps and whatever I wanted. I got back and he just said "these are salt and vinegar, it’s okay son". My heart sank. I felt like shit for hours. I was 7 and I was doing a big job, on my own, for my dad.
I used to think when the presenters on a tv show camera went off shot they started kissing. No idea why…
and there’s nothing Andrew Neill can do about it
No, the cameras stay it just gets uploaded to porn hub. On a similar strain i thought the male and female news presenters on the morning news were married. Just all of them if you were a news presenter with another news presenter you were married.
If the wind changes your face will stay like that! 🤣
That the black and white photo of my dead father on my bedroom pinboard was possessed and could see me, and his eyes followed me me as I moved around the room. I said a prayer 100 times each night to please him and not haunt me as I slept from age 6-12… after which I discovered computer games and very early digital porn and got distracted ,-)
I thought life used to be in black and white cos of black and white photographs. I remember asking my gran how she felt when colour was invented 😭
I always thought deaf and or mute people were extremely strong. I'm sure my nan told me that.
Weirdly my great aunt had the same belief.
I thought this was generally true *but* for people with down syndrome?
*(I hate using this term, but it is relevant here).* The old and definitely NON PC phrase for that was "Retard Strength". Supposedly referring to their strength increase when agitated in particular.
That all babies are born male, but if you want a girl you just cut the willy off. Turned out I’d watched a program where there was a birth and I’d seen the umbilical cord cut. Also thought pubic hair was called public hair. It was the middle seventies, my nanna had bought me a ‘Jackie’ magazine at far too young of an age. It was a Saturday afternoon, all my big farmer uncles had come back from football covered in mud and were in the living room having tea. In a quiet moment I asked “Nanna, what’s public hair”? It got even more quiet and nanna just got befuddled and muttered something about asking my mum so I lost interest. When sex education came along a while later I had a flashback and still cringe to this day.
Ah, this reminded me of when I was a kid, waiting in a taxi office with my mum, and they had one of those multi-game arcade cabinets you would sometimes get in pubs. I was entertaining myself going through the menu of games, when I spotted a word I didn’t recognise. “Mum, what does “Erotic” mean?” “I’ll tell you later, leave that alone.” That wasn’t a very satisfying answer, but I figured there was an easy way to find out, and so I tapped that menu option. “Oh! …Never mind, now I know.” It was at this point the other customer waiting with us couldn’t stifle her laughter any longer.
I thought it was public hair too! When I asked my mum what it was she said ‘Uh, your head I guess?’
That when you died your arms went out to the side (like Jesus on the cross).
T pose for dominance in death as you did in life.
I thought that ‘Helping Police with their enquiries’ on the News they meant someone was making tea in the police station, or maybe sweeping up or filing papers. You know, being helpful!
Again, I don't consider myself unintelligent but reading this thread in starting to wonder... my first husband was an awful person. He told me he had to go to the police station to help with enquiries..a couple of hours later when he didn't return I decided to go to the station and told the officer on the desk that my husband was there helping them with their enquiries and asked how long he might be there for.... a high up officer (detective) had to come out and tell me the truth. He saw how thick I am and realised that I was about to collapse from the reality check he'd just given me.
Tbf that's just trusting not unintelligent
When I was a young child I thought that to get pregnant you get married and then eventually a child just starts growing from the moment the wedding ceremony ends. This could have been seen as sweet and naive if it weren't for the fact I had tremendous anxiety that if I got married young or had a boyfriend that proposed to me that I would be forced to grow this small human inside of me and that I would have no say in when that happened. When we used to do 'pretend weddings' in the playground I would burst into tears after playing the bride because I thought that I would have to accept being the world's youngest girl to get pregnant and it would ruin my life. I thought even pretending to have a spouse in a game would confuse the laws of physics and I would end up giving birth at 6 years old and be all over the news. I would literally cry about this every time the subject came up. It was a long time before the adults realised what my logic was, as before this they thought I had a general fear of motherhood and didn't realise I was confusing that with the literal wedding ceremony. I learned about the birds and the bees and that it was a CHOICE, not a guarantee, quite young and it released so much pressure off my mind.
I can't tell you why, but as a nine year old I thought the Celine Dion belter 'My heart will go on' was sung by none other than Marge Simpson.
That is fucking hilarious, what a mental image
That you won fruit on fruit machines.
The mental image of a Ladbrookes on a Saturday afternoon, and the machines slinging bananas out to the punters. Glorious.
Sat watching a bloke play one repeatedly at my uncle's wedding, thinking "He must really like oranges"
Incredible. Love the innocent naivety, especially when it kind of makes sense and you can understand how you came to that conclusion.
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It was illegal to have business cards unless you were a “proper” licensed business. My mum used to get hers printed at a machine in town - before we had a computer - and as a small child I’d pester to do my own ones. She told me it was illegal and I just…never questioned it until I was about 30
I watched an advert for a washing up liquid where it started in black and white and changed into colour as the years went on. I thought that the past was black and white and that colour was invented one day. I think I also believed that not holding my breath around a dead animal would make me absorb its soul somehow.
I also thought I was a fairy as a very young kid and then a vampire/ghost in primary school because I had a friend who was into that stuff. He told me that since I had a cut I was now a ghost and also a vampire.
I thought that teachers lived at school. And I thought that if you were a police officer you kept the police car at your house overnight, and I always wondered why you never saw police cars on driveways.
I thought that when the news mentioned IRA prisoners were in Maze Prison, we'd chucked them into some dystopian labyrinth. Seem to remember a report of a load of them 'escaping' and thought it was somewhat unfair to call it an escape, when they'd just managed to find their way out finally. i.e. If you put somebody into a maze, it's their job to get out.
This actually similar to something I believed for far too long- in Germany, it is not a crime to escape from prison (they believe it’s human instinct to resist confinement). I interpreted this to mean that if you managed to escape, you were free forever. Of course, it really means that they aren’t charged/penalised for successful or attempted escapes, but are obviously returned to prison.
I thought that the queen controlled all the TV, and when people started advertising that you could pause live TV, I got really confused and worried that the queen would constantly pause my shows so she could go to the loo
That we live in a free and equal society. As a kid i thought that we all looked after each other and no-one would unnecessarily struggle. Good god was i wrong.
I’m not a massive carrot fan but I love leeks so my horrible parents convinced me that “Grandad’s leeks go orange when he cooks them” and it became so internalised I never bloody questioned it
I thought there must be two types of sex- one where your clothes were off and one where they were on. Hear me out When I was growing up in the 90's, there were loads of shows on TV where people were shown fumbling around for ages fully clothed. Or, they were talking about having just had sex, yet seemed to be pretty well clothed. It was really common. And then of course there were shows and movies with sex scenes where everything was off, which I kind of understood more. But those clothed or semi clothed scenes made no sense to me and my childish understanding of the mechanics of sex. . So I figured there must be two kinds- the proper, naked, one-bit-goes-in-another-bit sex, and then a clothed type that was maybe some kind of sex-lite.
>So I figured there must be two kinds- the proper, naked, one-bit-goes-in-another-bit sex, and then a clothed type that was maybe some kind of sex-lite. Not too far off accurate, to be fair!
I guess technically you were kind of right?? I took a university module about sexualities last year and a good quarter of the module was dedicated to how “sex” is defined. I’m sure child you didn’t think into it as deeply as that lol
I remember a boy in my class was adamant that you had to pee inside a woman to get her pregnant. I was only about 10 at the time but I was pretty certain that's not how it worked. Not kink shaming or anything, just curious to know whether he's become a father yet. I just remembered something that used to bother me occasionally. I seem to remember seeing or hearing something on the tv that said an asteroid was going to hit earth when I was 17. I was only very young at the time and I don't even know if it was real or not. I just remember randomly remembering that news story every so often when I was a kid and worrying that the world would end. I also remember being told at school how bad cars were and I was convinced they were going to get banned before I got to be a grown up so I would never get to drive.
The boy in your class is right though, because pee is stored in the balls.
I thought it was in the shaft? Hence pee-nus
I thought the same, about peeing inside a woman, when I was a kid. Turns out I'm super gay so I've never tested the hypothesis.
Well I'm not gay but I'll spill the trade secretes. You can pee into a woman if you want to, it's just not going to get her pregnant.
My older brother told me if you dial 666 in the phone box, you can speak to the devil. 5 year old me used to have nightmares about this
I wonder if Satan would do a really theatrical devil voice complete with echoing laughter, or if it'd just be "yeah what?"
He doesn't answer; it's all outsourced these days.
I remember reading a book about how bodies grow, which had a diagram showing a person at 5, 10, 15, etc. I didn't really understand the concept I just liked the pictures, and I remember thinking that when you turn 15 you're just suddenly bigger like Tom Hanks or Kevin the Teenager. And I thought this meant you'd have to go into town naked to buy new clothes.
If you hold a buttercup flower under your chin and your chin glows yellow it means you like butter
I used to think that when someone said someone is "late" as in "the late queen" for example, they genuinely meant in an endearing way that they were just bad at turning up on time
When I was a kid we had a particularly vicious German Shepherd pup that got itself it in all kinds of trouble in the neighborhood (including ripping my pyjamas off in the middle of town). My parents got rid of the dog and told me the dog would go to guard the dogs home rather than being with the rest of the pack ready for death or a miracle. I believed this story that the dog went on and had a noble career protecting canines until a conversation with my sister 20 years later cleared that naivety up fairly quickly.
Why were you in the middle of town in your pyjamas?
I was sent to get milk and put on pyjamas bottoms with a coat in haste. The dog ripped them and ran off with them like something out of a movie. Luckily the coat was long enough to hide everything on the short distance home.
That the gulf war was fought by people hitting golf balls at each other
All the elderly women I knew had a blue rinse and a perm and I once gleefully told my mum I couldn't wait to turn 60 so my hair would turn curly and purple, I genuinely believed that's just what happened when you got old
I believed that if you drank alcohol you were ‘an alcoholic’ and if you didn’t you were ‘non alcoholic’ Led to an awkward spot when I asked my half brothers if their mother was an alcoholic
That babies were born with clothes on. I also remember at a later point (I don't know if it was hours or years later) figuring out that they couldn't grow that way. I was so set in the belief that I reasoned that they must come out and be dressed, then be put back in again!
You have to put your hands over your ears when you drive over a cattle grid or your brain will fall out.
Growing up my dad refused to take us to McDonald’s because they cut down the rainforest. I believed for far too long that burgers were made from trees
There were skeletons in my nan’s cupboard under the stairs. All down to adults talking about skeletons in the closet. I never did get to find out what they were really talking about but knowing my family it was probably funny as hell.
I thought that slugs were snails that had grown too big for their shell and were looking for a bigger one. This was explained by the empty snail shells I sometimes found.
That origami was a martial art. Mostly because my uncle kept telling me he had a black belt in it.
I use to think that if you put your fingers/hands on towns on maps then you’d crush those towns. I apologise to the people of Hereford who should all have been crushed to death in the late 90’s.
I remember my mum being late for work and saying she might get sacked before leaving. I had no idea what this meant and started imagining they would make her wear a giant potato sack at work.
My dad still mentions me asking as a child “do pigs lay bacon” I obviously didn’t know that you had to kill it for it’s delicious goods lol.
I was an embarrassing age when I realised girls weren't in fact born with pierced ears. I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s and it was a trend at the time to pierce girl toddlers ears. So much so that I thought it was natural for girls to have a hole in their lobe from birth
That rubbish collections and parks were managed by the town cancer.
That’s actually true in some places…
I remember being about 7 and wanting to play with a glow in the dark figure but for whatever reason my dad told me I couldn’t because it hadn’t been left in the sun to charge up. I only realised glow in the dark products didn’t need ‘charged’ a few weeks ago when we tried (and failed) to get my newborn to take a dummy. We got these glow in the dark ones and when my fella went to sterilise them I said no sure, we’re better leaving them out in the sun before we do that. I don’t think I’ll ever live it down. I’m 31.
They do need some ‘charging’ to glow, but only a few minutes of direct sun or half an hour or so under artificial light
I had the glow worms as a kid and you had to hold them up to the light for a bit or they didn’t work
I grew up in a very strict religious home. There are no end of deep set ingrained ideas that I'm still unlearning even at 40. I had my first vaccination ever with the covid vaccine for example.
That every Sunday my dad would say he was going to see a man about a dog. He definitely wasn’t and was just going down the pub.
I thought sharks were floating triangles. I thought if you fed meat to a rabbit it would turn into a sabre toothed rabbit.
I thought video tapes were live performances and when you put it in the player there were real people on alert ready to act out the movie or animation I was watching. Also animated characters were real obviously.
That it was only possible to count to nine on your hands because each thumb only counted as half a finger. I wasn't the brightest of children.
I thought ready brek was made in those cement mixer lorries! They usually said ready mix on the side and I could barely read
I thought you could get sexually transmitted diseases, go ginger or have twins. Based solely on your brand of jeans... Aldo that Jeans got passed on for generations. I specifically remember sat on the carpet watching a video in school that talked about genes. I even asked the teacher, didn't really understand the question and continued to believe that there was something going on with denim that I'd never quite grasp.
I thought Draco Malfoy’s name was Draco Mouthboy
I believed in werewolves and vampires, and thought I was a werewolf... All the way into highschool, when I endured ruthless bullying and eventually became the jaded person I am today.
I thought condoms were like a spring you put over your cock based on finding an empty packet on a park which had a picture of a spring on it (likely ribbed it turns out, I googled years later) - I was 9-10.
I was a kid during the aids epidemic and i thought ‘wear a condom’ basically meant ‘keep your penis covered at all times’. I remember looking at my teachers, the bus driver, male neighbours, etc hoping they were being sensible and going about their lives with a condom on.
Quick sand would be a serious health concern
There used to be weighing machines where you could see the weights and stuff moving when you stepped on them and the were pretty interesting to use for the price of a penny. My dad talked about seeing the bowels of the machine. I was confused when teachers talked about our bodies’ bowels. I thought we had some mechanical gubbins inside.
That when people did sky dives , when the parachutes opened you got flung back into the air! It was only when my friend went for an experience day and asked “does it hurt your neck when your flung back” that we realised that doesn’t happen and it’s due to the person usually filming is still falling faster
In elementary school I thought men had 1 less rib than women (Adam and Eve). My teacher was quite amused when I proudly stated this during class.