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I used to think cicada bugs were the power lines buzzing because it was too hot outside.

 

[Like the hat?]

as a kid i used to masturbate like all kids do, and of course nothing ever came out.

well the first time it did, it was at night and i was in the dark, and all of a sudden it was all over and i remember freaking the hell out, "ohshitohshitohshit" thinking I was bleeding

 

[permutated]

My brother thought cartoons were just people in costumes. :lol

 

[peppermints]

-The turn signal in my grandpa's car sounded like (in my head, at least) it was clicking to the tune of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon theme song. I was convinced that he had set it this way because he knew I loved the show. When I turned 16, I got that car as my first car and still had it stuck in my head when the turn signal was on. :lol

-Around 1995 or 1996 we got AOL. I overheard my parents talking about how they set up email accounts. Being the imaginative young lad I was, for the longest time I thought that email was just a way to electronically view what was in your physical mailbox at the end of the driveway. I had it pictured that there were tubes running from our mailbox to the computer, sending the images to the computer. It made sense because that way you didn't have to go all the way out there to check the mail.

-I also was convinced that God originally had planned every boy to be a girl and every girl to be a boy. I honestly have no idea why I thought this, but I remember having a long conversation with my grandpa about it, explaining my theory.

 

[abstract alien]

My mom told me I would get AIDS if I bit my toenails :^/

 

[DCharlie]

I thought that the world was black and white only 40-50 years ago, from the images on tv.

though i was very young... honest.

 

[dr3upmushroom]

My mom told me I would get AIDS if I bit my toenails :^/

I remember my dad telling me his athlete's foot was aids. Someone had told me that an uncle of mine had AIDS, I refused to share anything with him for a long time. Fucked up things to tell a kid.

 

[abstract alien]

I remember my dad telling me his athlete's foot was aids. Someone had told me that an uncle of mine had AIDS, I refused to share anything with him for a long time. Fucked up things to tell a kid.

If only we could use medical spray on AIDS and have it go away like athlete's foot lol

 

[industrian]

My mother once told me if I picked dandelions I would piss my pants at bed time

I was told something similar.

 

[X26]

I thought if you left the wink on too long you could flood the entire house and drown

Thought at one point babies came out of girls asses

 

[industrian]

My mom told me I would get AIDS if I bit my toenails :^/

When I was 9-10 years old I had a bit of "show me yours and I'll show you mine" with a girl in my year at school. The next day everyone told us we both had AIDS and avoided us until the teachers (and our parents) found out and explained AIDS to everyone in our class.

Funnily enough my parents mentioned this to me a few years ago. They basically said: "after that we knew for sure that you weren't gay."

:|

 

[MorisUkunRasik]

As a child, I lived in fear of a vengeful God who would punish me for any "sins"

.

 

[thetechkid]

i had this. and you would NEVER know, because as far as they knew, Blue was Blue, even if their "blue" was your "green"

I still think about that.

 

[wRATH2x]

The first time I had a boner I thought I had a disease or something, I was trying my best to get it down by fucking pushing it down. :lol

 

[abstract alien]

When I was 9-10 years old I had a bit of "show me yours and I'll show you mine" with a girl in my year at school. The next day everyone told us we both had AIDS and avoided us until the teachers (and our parents) found out and explained AIDS to everyone in our class.

Funnily enough my parents mentioned this to me a few years ago. They basically said: "after that we knew for sure that you weren't gay."

:|

Oh my damn :^s

 

[Mr. Sam]

So many kids telling their kids they're gonna get AIDS. It's disconcerting.

 

[masud]

In my mothers old car I couldn't see the turn signal switch from the back seat but I could see the lights on the dash, I used to think that cars could sense which direction you wanted to go.

I also thought that if you used too much lotion it would seep into your skin and cause 'lotion bumps' but I swear some jackass adult told me that.

 

[Bo130]

I also thought that the world was black and white back in the day because of photos.

I think I had a lot of these, the 'best' one has to be that I thought that there was a person working in every traffic light (not in every road-crossing, but literally in every box of red-yellow-green). I couldn't for the heck of it get why we had a lack of available jobs in our country.

 

[cntr]

I have always been, and still am to this day, confused about this. I thought blood was blue until the second it touches air. Also you can see the blue vien through lighter skinned people. But then there are red blood cells and white blood cells. I need some splaining.

You know why the sky appears blue in the day and red at sunrise/sunset? The same thing happens with veins, because they're closer to surface than arteries. (This is because you lose extra heat from your veins)

 

[subrock]

Errrr. Some vessels are blue because the blood they carry is returning to the heart/lungs to be reoxygenated, not because of it's proximity the the surface of your skin. Oxygenated blood is red because hemoglobin uses iron to bind to oxygen as is passes the lungs. Iron oxide is commonly known as rust, hence the similarity of color.

 

[Tubobutts]

I thought that making something from scratch meant scratching at a some sort of food preparation surface until the food magically appeared.

 

[Android18a]

The first time I had a boner I thought I had a disease or something, I was trying my best to get it down by fucking pushing it down. :lol

I thought it just meant you needed a wee. Boy was I surprised.

 

[ZiZ]

- that cartoon characters actually lived inside the TV and were very tiny. this is mostly because the circuit board inside the TV looked like a tiny city to me, with the transistors looking like buildings, lines looking like streets and the green board was grass.

- until my sister was born (I was 4 at the time) I thought girls had dicks too.

- I remember the first time my leg fell asleep. I thought it was cancer and that they were gonna have to chop it off.

- my cousin, when playing mortal combat thought that all the characters were brothers and sisters. He couldn't understand english so when he heard "Liu Kang wins" or "Raiden wins" he thought that "wins" is their family name.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

Awesome thread lol.

I used to watch nothing but cartoons, and when I'd see real people on tv I thought someone had to painstakingly draw them for tv.

 

[Dabookerman]

I used to pronounce "Machines" as "Ma-chins"

 

[Ploid 3.0]

I also thought that the world was black and white back in the day because of photos.

I think I had a lot of these, the 'best' one has to be that I thought that there was a person working in every traffic light (not in every road-crossing, but literally in every box of red-yellow-green). I couldn't for the heck of it get why we had a lack of available jobs in our country.

Oh man, I thought the same thing hah. Kids think the darndest things.

 

[migulic]

I thought that ATMs just give you money in exchange for nothing, and that if you need to buy something, you just have to go to an ATM and take some money out.

I also thought that you could earn money by buying stuff... I thought that the change that the cashier always gave to my parents was the money they earned. :lol

 

[Mike M]

At first I didn't have anything to contribute, but the more I thought about it, the more stupid shit I came up with.

- I thought colors had flavors. I subsequently tried to take a bite out of my window sill to see what blue tasted like.

- I thought eggs just came in their hard boiled state. This misapprehension was dispelled one day when I decided that I wanted an egg. I opened up the fridge, climbed up on a chair to the egg tray, and promptly dropped an egg and watched it splatter. Learning experience.

- My favorite things to rent from the video store were a couple Unico movies (1980's anime about a unicorn). I thought that when people were saying "unicorn" they were saying "younicorn" so consequently I called it a "menicorn."

- My younger female cousin was running around naked at a family gathering (We were all pretty young), and her older brother (Who was about my age) said to look at her vagina. Not knowing what a vagina was (I knew girls had them, that was it), I had no idea what I was looking for.

- I never understood why it was such a big deal that parents would never want to talk about where babies came from, and thought the whole stork thing was stupid. Babies came from the mom's stomach. I just never gave any consideration to how they got in there or out.

- I remember stealing a glimpse inside a porno mag once at a liquor store, and seeing a couple doing it on a pool side beach chair. That was my first exposure to anything pornographic, and the only knowledge of sex I had was "The penis goes into the vagina" and so for years assumed that this picture of two people going at it doggy style was representative of how all sex should be performed.

- When I was in third grade or so, my friends and I all thought that jets flying overhead leaving contrails were rockets being launched into space (Someone else mentioned that too). We also all assumed that it was the Russians for some reason.

- Me and every kid I knew thought your NES would explode if you left it on pause too long.

I never thought people in movies were actually people getting killed, to the best of my recollection.

 

[dgenx]

I for two long years confused the world erotic with exotic, you can imagines the troubles I had

 

[Mike M]

I thought that ATMs just give you money in exchange for nothing, and that if you need to buy something, you just have to go to an ATM and take some money out.

I also thought that you could earn money by buying stuff... I thought that the change that the cashier always gave to my parents was the money they earned. :lol

Similar to this, I thought that by paying with checks, you weren't actually paying with money. I resolved that when I grew up, I would only pay for things by check so I wouldn't spend any money.

 

[Anasui Kishibe]

-when I read about Hulk and Betty going to have a child, i was like "I don't even want to KNOW.."

 

[optimiss]

I used to think that I was the only human in the world and that everyone else was a robot.
Or that I was the star of a TV show and that there were cameras everywhere and everyone was really an actor. I was shocked when I first saw The Truman Show.

I still think that at times.

 

[optimiss]

I thought pee was stored in the sack

Me too!

 

[optimiss]

Also thought that blood was blue up until I read this thread. I'm in my 30s :lol

Are you sure that isn't true?!?! I'm 31

 

[Sallokin]

Due to a weird translation error (my Mom is Portuguese) I used to think that you would die if you went into a pool/took a shower if you didn't wait at least an hour after eating.

 

[Tirade]

My preschool teachers name was Amanda.
My friends infant sisters name was Amanda.
I thought they were the same person, just in a different form.

 

[optimiss]

The blue color of veins through skin is due to the material of the veins' color, not the color of the blood in them. Venous blood (de-oxygenated blood returning to the heart and lungs) is indeed a darker purplish-red than arterial blood (oxygenated blood leaving the heart and lungs), which is bright red, but mammalian blood is not blue at any point.

If you'd like a simple proof of this, look in a mirror and note what color the capillaries in your eye are. For a more concrete one, next time you have blood drawn note that the blood in the vial is red, despite never having come in contact with outside air.

Ahhhhhhh. Purple-red or blue, the concept is the same!!

 

[dgenx]

I just remember, I thought when you grow up you HAD to change all your name, first and last name... I was thinkin something like "Steve GI JOE Optimus Prime He-man The Third"

 

[Alphahawk]

I just remember, I thought when you grow up you HAD to change all your name, first and last name... I was thinkin something like "Steve GI JOE Optimus Prime He-man The Third"

I remember I thought it was normal to change your first name as an adult, I remember asking my parents what their names were as kids, and being shocked that they had the same first names.

 

[Sibylus]

- I thought that the sole purpose of recess was to start a stampede. We did that a lot in Kindergarten. No reason for it, we'd just snowball into a giant horde and run over the giant tires and other obstacles until recess was over. Definitely a simpler time for us :lol

- I thought turtle was pronounced and spelled "Tuttle". Second grade creative writing took care of that little problem.

- I thought I saw a fire on my Mom's lips when she was talking about Bible stories to me.

- I thought both God and Satan talked to me in my thoughts. I realized this wasn't the case when the "God" and "Satan" voices would occasionally switch places or sound exactly alike.

- I thought Y2K was going to be the end of modern civilization. I blame Mum, she bought a washboard in case the power went out.

- I thought that Iron and the Iron in the nutritional information of my cereal were different substances.
"There's rocks in our food?"

- I thought kissing was how babies were made.

- I later thought that both men and women had penises, and that the two peins had to couple. I shared this knowledge with my friends, telling them (exact words here) "they do it dick to dick!"

- I thought circumcision was some kind of middle age torture thing one did to an enemy.
"Wait, it happened to me?!"

 

[Jaroof]

I thought when people said they had a headache, that they had a "HEAD EGG".
I was horrified.

Mind you i was like 5.

Ha that's kind of like when I was younger, whenever I heard my parents talk about people having heart attacks, I thought they said "Hard Attacks"

- I thought kissing was how babies were made.

Same here

 

[parrotbeak]

When an athlete got hurt and people clapped, I thought it was because he was on the opposing team and they were happy.

 

[Chrono Helix]

I used to think that TV shows wouldn't advance unless I left the TV on. So I'd leave it on waiting for the boring shows would end so that I could get to my cartoons.

 

[raebu]

I just remembered another one.

In 5th grade everyone thought the swastika was just some cool figure, so it was constantly drawn. Eventually, some friend of the teacher came in and started screaming and crying about how it represents evil and that millions had died in the hands of those who wore it. We seriously had no idea what the hell she was talking about.

 

[OnPoint]

Called my dad a 'douchebag' because I thought my friend made it up. That was fun.

 

[midwestern_stylings]

I thought that the world was black and white only 40-50 years ago, from the images on tv.

though i was very young... honest.

OMG haha, I use to think the very same! I actually asked my mum what it was like to live in black and white

 

[painey]

My mother once told me if I picked dandelions I would piss my pants at bed time

Thats a really common one. Thats why Dandelions are often known as wet-the-beds

 

[Magypsy23]

I thought the "y" in

was a φ.

Spoiler

not really

 

[fistfulofmetal]

I thought the "y" in

was a φ.

Spoiler

not really

so at this point we have kids thinking Disney is actually Gisnep.

 

[BothBarsOn]

Never mind "kid" - I was about 25 when I first saw the word "comeuppance" in print. Up until then I used to say that, one day, so and so would get his cumuffins.