I believe there was a thread like this on RMMB which I found hilarious. As a kid I heard a lot about Michael Jackson on the radio, but nothing about pedophilia, I just thought everyone hated him because he used to be black but turned white, that's all I seemed to hear them saying (people kept talking about it). I didn't know about surgery or anything all I thought I heard was the change had made everybody kind of hate him for some reason. This was the first time I really noticed a birthmark I had on one of my fingers (birth mark? Beauty mark? Whatever, a tiny brownish dot). I then proceeded to cry because I thought I was turning black, a reverse Michael Jackson if you will, and everyone was going to hate me because I had changed colours too. And people would mock me on the radio like Michael Jackson. Focus: Kids are said to be innocent and creative, but a lot of the time it's just misunderstanding how the world works. What are some of the sillier things you believed as a kid? What didn't you understand? Alt-focus: What are some things you've been surprised adults believe, didn't know, or were never corrected on. (First person to say something about religion kindly refer yourself here: <a class="postlink" href="http://instantrimshot.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://instantrimshot.com/</a>)
I thought that the leaves in the trees moving caused the wind to blow, like a fan. I also thought there was a real place called the Hidden Valley Ranch where the dressing came from. Then my parents told me there was no such place. Later I found out that there is such a place and it is where the dressing comes from.
So this is probably fucked up, but here goes: For some reason I don't think can ever be explained, when I was a kid I thought the word rape meant to skin someone alive. I have no idea how I came to that belief, but I remember thinking that's what it was.
I wonder how long it will take someone to make a joke about God..... On focus, when I was a kid I believed if I worked hard then things would work out for me. Two degrees later and 18 months of unemployment have killed that belief.
This. And I believed it when people said "You can achieve anything you put your mind to." Up until the age of seven, I thought that when people were killed in movies, it was because they were criminals in real life, and they were actually being killed. I also used to think that sex from behind was invariably anal sex. Then I downloaded Morpheus (remember Morpheus? That was pre-Kazaa shit!) and learned otherwise from Jenna Jameson.
I know Adam Carolla mentions it frequently but when I was young I too thought every grown up was somehow a genius and was fully capable of doing what ever their jobs or lives' required. My immediate family was by all circumstances the prototypical American family that is strived for in the American "dream." My grandpa owned his own business that did really well and through the years made great investments that gave them a comfortable life. My dad went to a tech school then worked his way up at GE and went to night school to get his degree and my mom worked her way up at her company without a degree. This is basically how most of my other relatives raised their families. It was all I really knew. I thought all people just inherently knew what the best route was in life and always took it. Two things, one I didn't realize it until I hit middle school when I met some friends that didn't have similar upbringings. Two, as I got older and found out more about the history of my extended family, we were FAR from being the perfect. Shit the signs were everywhere I was just young and naive to the world. The first best friend I made in 1st grade(a best friend to this day) was actually adopted by his Aunt and Uncle because his dad was bi-polar and his mom was a drug addict. But since his "parents" as I knew them were upper middle class types I never made the connection to how fucked up the world was. I didn't even put 2 and 2 together when they moved into a new house and his parents slept in different rooms. He was the first person I knew that had parents that went through a divorce (that is his Aunt and Uncle did). I started noticing that some of my dads friends from his childhood/teenage years were fucking bumpkins. A couple of them had been divorced multiple times and skipped job to job. It wasn't until I reached college that I started learning about family secrets and how unperfect my family was. Growing up I had absolutely loved going to my Aunt and Uncles. I had idolized my cousin so I always wanted to play with him (he taught me how to make bomb ass couch forts from their multi sectional) and they had a pool table. I thought my Uncle must have been the coolest guy ever as he had all this nice stuff and worked as a vice president of a large paper manufacturer. I figured he had to be some sort of genius to do what he did. Turns out he was just an alcoholic asshole that belittled his family at every turn. Though he was a savvy businessman he was almost intolerable to be around for long periods of time. He eventually started his own business that was doing pretty well until his partner backed out after my uncle had a stroke. He tried skipping out on rent payments to his offices and he went under. He and my aunt shortly divorced after this as she was fed up with his shit too. Ahh how it great it was to be young and naive....
At a young age I used to think that cars moved along by wind power through pushing exhaust out their tail pipe, like a very tiny jet engine. I also knew that girls didn't have penises, and thought that they must piss out their butt holes.
When I was much younger I wasn't exactly sure what homicide meant. I thought, using my advanced linguistic skills, that it meant gay men fighting. You know, homo as in gay men and cide... Anyways, I was in class back in elementary school one day and this one kid is telling us about a guy he knew who was involved in a homicide. Everyone goes quiet while I was laughing my ass off. It was after I explained to the class that two gays slapping each other over nothing is hilarious, that I was informed that I was in fact a moron.
When I was pretty young I was watching Jeopardy. For one of the questions the woman answered "Mexico", however she pronounced it "Mehico." And til I was about 10 or 11, I thought that Mexico and Mehico were two different distinct places.
#1 I had no idea what a blowjob was until I got one (7th grade) while wearing rollerskates (the skates play into the story). Friends and classmates had probably been referring to them since the middle years of grade school but the concept of how it worked and how blowing air on my dick would be enjoyable was beyond me. If there's a little Fawkes out there today with the same question he just needs to Google it and be AMAZED (and probably overwhelmed). #2 The funniest misunderstanding that lasted a LONG ass time was the "elephant toilet paper" factory we drove by on our way to visit my grand parents. Along the way there's a paper mill next to the highway that produces large roll stock used for newspapers. On nice day's they'd park stacks of these outside. When I was a tot my father told my sister and I it was toilet paper for the large animals at zoos. Made perfect sense. My childhood friend Chris was also told the elephant toilet paper story and bought it as well. Fast forward 10+ years and my father, Chris and I are all driving to Western MA. My father says something about the elephant toilet paper factory and Chris chimes in that he can't believe it's still open. After a little back and forth we both realize that Chris isn't joking which made for the best joke of all.
This. After I got a little older and wiser I realized this was ridiculous, however I always heard people use the phrase "sleep together" in reference to sex. So for a while longer, until I learned the truth in sex ed or whatever, I thought getting a girl pregnant involved putting your penis inside of her and then falling asleep with it still in there.
I had a pretty good conceptual idea of what sex was at a pretty young age. However growing up I always only ever heard of babies being made as the result of marriage, and never in any other context. So putting these two concepts together, kid me thought that when you got married the bride and groom walked up the isle with holes in the crotches of their tux & dress so when they were up on the alter taking their vows they would then have sex right then and there.
With a similar image in mind, I grew up in Upstate New York, where farms would often have a bunch of huge bales of hay wrapped in white plastic dotting the fields, and my dad told me that they were all giant marshmallow farms. Of course, I went nuts at the idea and begged him to take me there so I could eat a giant fucking marshmallow, but he never did. Finally one of my friends told me I was an idiot when we passed by one and I started yelling about the marshmallows. Also, I was watching a movie with my dad and in the span of one movie I asked him what being gay was and what "whore" meant. He told me that being gay was only when two men kissed each other, and that a whore married a man for his money. I figured out there was a bit more to being gay on my own, but I clung on to that definition of "whore" for an embarrassingly long time. I remember I was old enough where kids were casually calling someone a whore, and I tried to stick up for the person they were ridiculing and said "She can't be a whore! She's not even married!"
When I was younger I thought pro baseball players wore their uniforms everywhere (grocery store, mowing the grass, dinner, etc). Then I saw Barry Larkin (Reds Short stop 1986-2004) at a gas station once. I refused to believe it was him because he didn't have his uniform on.
Back in elementary school the idea of sex confused the shit out of me. I understood on some objective level that you put your penis in a girl's vagina, but shit just didn't add up. Girls have THREE (3) holes down there?!?! What the fuck, not possible dude. Even after watching porn at the ripe age of 11 this still confused me. All the weird angles and stuff seemed like they would rip off the dude's dick. It took losing my virginity at 15 for sex to actually make sense.
For years I thought Snipes were real thanks to my Dad. I also thought boys were yuckie. Actually I kinda still do (pigs) but manage to overlook it for obvious reasons.
Snipes are real. Snipe hunting on the other hand, with a paper bag or banging rocks together to catch them, is the joke. (I got it played on me when I was 5 or 6) *Snipes are apparently very hard to kill/catch, thus where the word 'sniper' comes from. (That's according to wiki, that could possibly be bullshit.) As a child, I was terrified of policemen and firefighters because I thought they were 'the bad guys'. I can see where I got the cop thing, if you got pulled over and got a ticket, the cop had to be a bad guy right? The fireman thing, well... I have no idea. I also thought that it costs money to listen to the radio in the car.
Anytime I would go to the store with my mom until the age of like 10 I would ask her if she was using her credit card to pay for the groceries. Somehow I got it in my head that using a credit card meant that you didn't have to pay for anything seeing as no cash was ever exchanged. If she would say yes then I would go around the store and just shove my pockets with candy and shit, legitimately not thinking that I was stealing. It took until I finally got caught by a store owner walking out with my pockets stuffed with 10 Butterfingers and the cops being called for it to finally be explained that in fact, I am incorrect.
It does if you want anything decent to listen to. When I was a little shit, I thought snow drifts were hollow. Not sure where I got this idea, but I thought that as long as you could dig into the snow you could venture about underneath. Imagine my disappointment when I dug all afternoon and found nothing but more snow.