skier

There were a lot of "facts" that I thought were true when I was a kid that turned out a little differently than I imagined. What were yours?

I used to think my town's water tower held water for "just in case"

I thought that since there were 4 oceans, they were completely seperate and surrounded by land.

I saw teenagers outside of school smoking once. Two adults were talking about them standing out there without their jackets. "I wonder how they stay out there so long in the cold" "They can probably change their body tempurature." THen they laughed.

For the next three years I thought you gained the ability to change your body tempurature and not be cold when you reached puberty.

__________________
"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

Fly

i always thought everything sucked back then.......


now it all fuckin' rocks baby........

__________________
BASTARD

SterlingStudios

barenakedladies

I used to think that my dad was jesus... and i was the son of jesus.

i was only because my mom used to always say" JESUS CHRIST!"

and my dad would go... "wHAAAAAAAAAAT"

Redlemon

Great thread idea.

I thought that time "zones" were continuous, not discrete. If you traveled a couple of towns over, they might be 5 minutes ahead of you. This is why the clocks on buildings showed different times compared to my wristwatch.

I thought that I had traveled to Denmark. The trip was to Cape Cod, and we lived in eastern Massachusetts at the time, but for the longest time, that vacation was identified as "Denmark".

__________________
I can't read your signature. Sorry.

Coppertop

I used to think that if any part of my clothing touched the toilet water when it was flushed, I'd be sucked down into the toilet and lost forever.

I believed that my name had five parts: First Middle Barney Harrah's Last. Barney was my grandfather and Harrah's is a casino in Reno my parents frequented. I insisted that people call me by my full name. In retrospect, I think I assumed my grandfather's name after he died.

maleficent

you ate watermelon seeds, or any kind of seed (except cucumbers or tomatoes) you'd have vines growing in your tummy.

__________________

ShaniFaye

I thought that the people playing music that come thru the radio were in the heater/ac vents inside your car

dont ask why hehehe I just remember being about 4-5 and thinking all musicians were like thumbilina and fit inside your dash

__________________
I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

ngdawg

Grandma told me that chewing and swallowing my fingernails would have them accumulate in my appendix and it would burst. Didn't stop me from chewing-but I tried not to swallow the slivers.

__________________
Don't blame me. I didn't vote for either of'em.

Furry

I used to believe that too.

I also used to believe that the world was destroyed and re-created each night, and that when I got up to go and pee God made sure the toilet was there... or something...

__________________
Furry is the leader of his own cult, the "Furballs of Doom". They sit about chanting "Doom, Doom, Doom".
(From a random shot in the dark by SirLance)

BigBen

I thought that there was a super big spider in my basement, and all of the spiders that I saw were just little tiny "Scouts" to make the path clear for the big one.

I thought that farm cats were lightning fast and could live forever, when in fact it was about a dozen cats that all looked the same.

I thought that Coke's name was "Mix" and could never understand why the word Coke was on the bottle. When I asked my buddies mom for a glass of "Mix", she looked at me really funny.

I thought that I could breathe underwater, but I chose not to for convenience sake.

__________________
3.141592654
Hey, if you are impressed with my memorizing pi to 10 digits, you should see the size of my penis.

uncle phil

when i was young, my grandfather used to tell me we were going to hell in a handbasket...(he was a world war I veteran who had lost his left leg at chateau thierry, and i hope i spelled that correctly)...just before i went to viet nam, he told me to beware of politicians and their ties with industrialists...he died the day i came back from viet nam, after he had heard i was "home..."

__________________
"We were wrong, terribly wrong. (We) should not have tried to fight a guerrilla war with conventional military tactics against a foe willing to absorb enormous casualties...in a country lacking the fundamental political stability necessary to conduct effective military and pacification operations. It could not be done and it was not done."
- Robert S. McNamara
-----------------------------------------
"We will take our napalm and flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches...
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles."
- Eugene McCarthy in "Vietnam Message"
-----------------------------------------
never wrestle with a pig.
you both get dirty;
the pig likes it.

Poppinjay

I used to think Liza Minelli was the world's greatest singer, and somehow I still ended up straight. We lived in San Francisco at the time.

I used to think you only had so many things you were allowed to say before you used your voice up, that was how I thought mute people ended up mute.

I used to think people died of old age because their varicose veins eventually got so severe they went to the outside of the body and they bled to death.

The restaurant I called "The Straw Hat" was actuallly "Picadillies" and the restaurant I called "The Red Baron" was actually "The 69th Flight Squadron". Again, we lived in San Francisco at the time.

I used to believe the USA was the entire world. My dad is at fault in this one, I asked him, and in an apparent fit of patriotic ferver (or he was pitching a drunk) he told me it was.

I used to think every president was a great American.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

katie_ann1031

When I was little my mom told me that when you hear thunder during a thunderstorm it was God bowling up in heaven. The lightning was some kind of celebration going on every time He got a strike. Sometimes, if a storm gets too bad, I miraculously still believe in this.

__________________
Newbie, but still I believe I am TFP's residentCheerleader!

doomdoom

I thought that my family's Suburban was a stolen vehicle.

noodle

My grandfather told me that if I ate the crusts on my sandwiches, I'd be able to whistle.

And that orange trees would grow out of my ears if I ate the seeds.

My mom convinced me that every thing I did outside could really "put someone's eye out like that".

__________________

maleficent

My grandmother told me that if I ate the crusts on my sandwiches I would get curly hair... Hmmm... maybe she was right...

Can you whistle and did you eat crusts?

__________________

cellophanedeity

I believed this too... sometimes I would sit beside the speakers in my basement and talk to the people in there.

I also believed that fairies were born out of bubbles. My grandma told me this, and so I spent many a summer day blowing as many bubbles as I could.

Bill O'Rights

That's just adorable.

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

maleficent

you mean they aren't?

__________________

ratbastid

There's a funeral home in the town where I grew up that has a big wrought-iron gate in front of its parking lot. For some reason I thought that the funeral home was Disneyland, and that those gates were, you know, the famous Gates to Disneyland. You know, those really famous... gates.

My grandmother's funeral was at this particular funeral home a couple weeks ago, and I told my family about this. Turns out my brother thought that too! He actually remembers driving by there, and somebody mentioning that Disneyland was "that way", with a thumb jerked toward the West, right at that funeral home. I have no memory of that, what I remember is thinking that those were big important and famous gates.

raincity

I used to think that when people said "to make ends meet" they were actually saying "to make endsmeat". I couldn't figure out what endsmeat was exactly, and why people would do such desperate things to make it. I still think about that in the back of my mind when I hear someone say it.

__________________
I panic at the quiet times.

Bill O'Rights

I used to believe, with all of my being, that a portal to Hell existed in the basement of my parent's house. I "knew" that demons would pass though this portal, and come into our basement, just as I "knew" that, for some reason, they couldn't pass the basement door, and get into the upstairs. This was after I'd watched some strange, gothicy, mid-60's horror film. For years, I was scared out of my mind to go into that basement. I can still vaguely recall what they "looked" like.

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

maleficent

Hmmm - the Hellmouth... maybe that's where your infatuation with a certain red headed young lady comes from

__________________

Lucifer

I remember watching my cousin doodling on a piece of graph paper, and when I asked what she was going to do with it, she said, "Send it to Playboy." I realize now that she really meant, "Piss off and get out of my room", but for years after that, I regularily checked Playboys (smuggled out of my dad's closet) for my cousin's name!

__________________
I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
- Job 30:29

1123, 6536, 5321

hambone

You know that thing in the Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi rubs his hands together and makes the kid's injuries feel better? I thought that worked.

Once I figured out it really did nothing, I got my sister to believe it and would do that whenever I accidently hurt her, so I wouldn't get in trouble

__________________
"Like liquid white from fallen glass,
Nothing to cry over"

vermin

In third grade (just after moving to Anchorage, Alaska; a strange place, and I knew there were bears in Alaska) I thought werewolves were real. See, there was this paperback book in the school's library about supernatural mysteries of the world. On the back of the book it said that all the stories inside were "100% true!". So after reading the story about the guy in Poland who was attacked by a half-man half beast while taking the garbage out, I was terrified every time I had to take the garbage out. The dumpster was on the edge of the trailer court at the edge of a dark, scary woods.

I also thought my dad's '76 AMC Pacer was the coolest car ever.

__________________
If puns were sausages, this would be the wurst.

bernadette

Lots less creative here...
Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, monsters under the bed & in the closet.
i got over all of that & became a pessimist about everything around age 6 i guess.

__________________
.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.

ring

I had this picture in my head when adults would say,
'stop putting up such a fuss' like it was a sign on the lawn that
read 'fuss'.

BadNick

Up until I was about 12yo when I discoverd the more realistic facts as I think I know them today, I clearly remember "figuring" out the whole mechanism for child birth ...how the male and female adults would transmit mystical energy to each other by simply being "close" to each other and then the baby would grow in the mom's stomach and she'd "poop" it out when it was done.

jewels

I thought that we were rich because we had a clothes dryer and my best friend's family didn't.

I thought my dad was God because everyone said he looked like Sean Connery.

I believed I would grow a gum tree in my belly if I swallowed my bubble gum and that if my brother kept turning his eyelids inside out they would stay like that forever.

I thought all kids had their mouths washed out with soap.

I believed that God was bowling when it thundered.

__________________
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

forgotten_dream

When I was a kid I saw the "Don't drink and drive" slogans, I didn't realize at first that they meant don't drink alcohol and drive. It finally was explained to me after my family went out to dinner and I was thoroughly convinced my mom had to drive us home, because she didn't drink anything and my dad had a glass of tea or something.

__________________
"A ouija board just works better if you've made it yourself. It's sortof like how 'Clue' is more interesting when one of you has actually killed someone."

ring

My kindergarten teacher told us if we wished hard enough for something
it would happen...I was so looking forward to giving birth to a litter
of kittens.

Hain

(Age 4ish, after learning the Earth was round) I used to believe that Illinois was at the top of the Earth, and that if you went too far away without proper equipment, you'd roll off the planet. Also meant people on the other side of the planet had to climb around with monkey-bar side walks. Later this turned into they built their buildings to accommodate for the "downward" pull the of gravity. Their ceilings were just respectively our grounds, and that is why pictures of people from China seemed upright. Wasn't too long before I figured it didn't work like that... and I was so hoping to to one day walk on the ceilings in China.

__________________

////\\// IRONSKY.NET \\//\\\\

Redlemon

I often thought that I was the only real person on the earth, everyone else were either robots or were part of the experiment that was observing me. I further believed that they only constructed the areas of the earth that I would travel to; all the other areas were just empty. I couldn't figure out a way to disprove it. I thought that it would be cool if I could just sneak down a side alley quickly before they realized what I was doing and could find the "end of the world" and escape the experiment.

Very "Truman Show", I know, but this was 20 years before the movie was released.

__________________
I can't read your signature. Sorry.

m0rpheus

I really did try to dig to China. Granted I was like five and thought that a hole that was about half a foot deep was a good start.

__________________
"it never got weird enough for me." - Hunter S. Thompson

killeena

I used to think that when I wasn't looking, inanimate objects would turn into monsters and watch me. Sometimes if I turned fast enough, I could catch them in their monster state.

I also used to think that if you didn't step at the end of an escalator, you would get sucked under. But it wasn't all bad, because there was a secret society of people that lived under the escalator. I tried many times to get sucked under, but to no avail.

__________________
Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. - Theodor Adorno

uncle phil

__________________
"We were wrong, terribly wrong. (We) should not have tried to fight a guerrilla war with conventional military tactics against a foe willing to absorb enormous casualties...in a country lacking the fundamental political stability necessary to conduct effective military and pacification operations. It could not be done and it was not done."
- Robert S. McNamara
-----------------------------------------
"We will take our napalm and flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches...
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles."
- Eugene McCarthy in "Vietnam Message"
-----------------------------------------
never wrestle with a pig.
you both get dirty;
the pig likes it.

blue_eyes

When I think of the words "when I was a kid" it brings me back to when I was 5...coz after that I had to grow up fast. At that age, I truly believed my parents were indestructible, not even Santa etc... compared.

__________________
Be creative, invent a perversion

ametc

Ever since I can remember my parents have called me their "little hole in the rubber". I also grew up knowing that sex made babies and involved a man's penis being put into a woman's vagina and something about 9 months and that you could make sex better through different positions and stuff. But, I never knew what "the rubber" was... so I assumed guys' wieners either must be made of rubber or feel like it.

I also thought penises looked like round versions of wavy fries. I think I saw it in a movie or something.

I also thought that San Diego was a state, California was a country, and the USA was the world.

I thought our brains had computers in them.

My mom was a strict and religious Christian and whenever my sisters and I did something bad she'd always say, "Satan's behind you!". I used to think he really was and that everybody else could see him but me.

I used to think Satan was a pink elephant., and his throne was a wicker chair. I thought he manifested himself into a red humanoid figure with horns and such when he stepped foot on Earth.

ring

My father had a talk with me when I was 9 and explained
that adults didn't always get 'summer vacation.'

I was so sad for him.

On a lighter note..I really believed my sister when she told me about
her dream buddie that was real to her, 'Friend Marching Bug'
lived in her closet and would come out to talk to her at night,

Later in life I made some cartoon drawings of him she liked.