Dumb things you used to believe as a kid

I thought that Roman Numerals were pronounced like the letters making up the numeral rather than like the number. For one birthday (I think I was about 8 or 9) I got the game Mega Man IV and would keep referring to it as "Mega Man I.V" (pronounced just like the abbreviation for "intravenous") even though my parents corrected me. I'm not sure how long it took for me to say it right.

@Sifsand I thought the same thing about bullet wounds. Maybe not instantly fatal but I thought if you got shot you died, period. I first learned better when I was watching some movie with my mom where someone got shot in the leg and lived and I was like "how is that possible"?

We were watching the fountains at the Bellagio when I was a kid and when the show ended, I thought the water had disappeared into the sky.

That's cute.

-That it's possible to drive a spaceship through gas planets

-Con artists are people who make art in conventions

-A hour lasts 16 minutes

-Infinity, zillion and fantastrillion are actual numbers

-Ten thousand and hundred thousand aren't real numbers, after thousands it goes straight to million

-The only penalty for any crime is in jail for life, except a fine for driving too fast

-If I step on an ant in a nature preservation area, I go to jail

-It's illegal to say you don't love your parents

-When I grow up I'm gonna marry my cousin and move with him to a trash dump, and eat trash for the rest of our lives

-Alternatively, when I grow up I'm gonna give my sister all my money and she buys a houseboat and we're gonna live in it for the rest of our lives

-Cucumbers are sentient

-Sprinkles are flavoured snail poison (my grandma had snail poison that looked like sprinkles)

-Hippie is a nickname for hipster

-If I meditate long enough, I will float

-Granite is petrified salmon

-All poison is deadly

-If I eat a fruit without washing it first, I die

-If I touch the bottom of my shoe after stepping on a poisonous mushroom several months ago, I die

-Weekend is the last day of the week

-brown hens lay brown eggs and white hens lay white eggs

Edited by Hqami on Jul 24th 2020 at 3:58:37 PM

I thought a zillion was a real number as well (somewhere between a billion and a trillion. I think my dad even told me this, though he was probably just F-ing with me.) I was also convinced I could count to a billion (for the record a billion seconds is 32 years) my dad even seemed to believe me when I said so, though he was probably just agreeing so I'd shut up about it.

Edited by Bootlebat on Jun 9th 2019 at 12:17:06 PM

I thought weather forecasters were psychic and that's how they knew what the weather would be. I wasn't sure why their psychic powers sometimes didn't work though.

- Misheard a lot of things. I always thought "canonball" was "candyball", "no way jose" was "no way hosay" etc.

- I think I've already said this before on here but not sure so I'll put it again: I thought "why" was an actual swear word because of that "I'm telling on you. Why? Because you said why" joke. Because I'm extremely Literal-Minded.

- I also thought "stupid" was a really bad swear word on the same level as the f-word and stuff like that (not writing the actual word because I've never been a big fan of swear words.). In 3rd grade we were reading this book out and I skipped over the word "stupid" because I thought it was a REALLY bad swear word.

- I thought buffalos had actual wings because "buffalo wings".

- In 3rd grade I did this sport event, everyone got these numbers written on their arm in black Sharpie, and the next day I went to school, still with the number on my arm. A few kids in my class also had it, and the teachers were all cool with it. That's not the weird part, the weird part is this: At lunch, some girl came up to me and asked why I had numbers on my arm. Instead of answering her like a normal human, I simply got up and ran away from her. At the time I thought "When I run away it means I'm too shy to answer"... my social skills have improved just a tiny bit but still, that's how bad they were/are at one point.

Edited by Lunala on Jun 22nd 2019 at 11:56:31 AM

In my family, we treat "stupid" like an actual swear word, so I very rarely say it nowadays.

I thought that Americans don't have accents and that American was just the normal, default way of talking.

I thought that those signs on elevators that said "in case of fire, use stairs" meant you should never use the elevator, just in case there's a fire, and wondered why they had the elevator at all if you're never supposed to use it.

I thought the Mickey Mouse version of The Prince and the Pauper was a feature-length movie rather than a half-hour special.

I wish it had been.

I thought that baby animals evolved to be cute so predators would feel bad for trying to eat them. It's the other way around; we evolved to find the features that baby animals are born with cute.

One similar to the previous one: I thought that the "rec" (for record) button on the tape recorder said "wreck" (as I couldn't spell very well) and wondered they would make a button to wreck your tape in the first place (the button having a red dot next to it certainly didn't help.)

• People came into existence as either children or adults and stayed that way for their entire lives.
• People could only die of natural causes on their birthday (since I thought that every human had the same, fixed lifespan).
• "Sex" was a naughtier word for kissing (in the same way that "piss" is a naughtier word for urine) and people who got naked during sex were just sickos.

Edited by ArgonianLorekeeper on Aug 12th 2019 at 1:11:22 PM

I thought child actors didn't need to go to school because they already had jobs.

I thought all commercials were live. As in, they re-recorded them every time shows went on break. And I was consistently impressed at how they got the commercials to look the same every time.

My big brother is born on July 4th and he convinced me that all the parades and fireworks were for him. He also convinced me that the elevator in our apartment went straight to hell every 666 time someone used it so I was always terrified when people made me use it and went for the stairs every time I was by myself.

Thanks to that episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, I really did think that Earthquakes Cause Fissures.

Same, but thanks to The Land Before Time.

You mean they don't?

They don't directly

I thought that:

-Hong Kong is the capital of China

-The Sun is the biggest star in the universe

-It's possible to tell a ladybird's age by counting its spots

-All bars are ice cream bars

-Animals are more dangerous than they are, for example all snakes and spiders are venomous, bees and wasps always sting if I get too close and it always kills me, my cousins' dog will bite my hand off if I try to feed her anything

-My grandma told me that a flower she had in her garden has acid in its stem and if I cut it it will burn my skin

-Dogs eat cats, cows eat dogs and horses eat cows, because of the story about the old lady who swallowed a fly.

-Heterochromia and heterosexuality are the same thing, and also the same word, i just kept forgetting what it is

-Elephants are almost as big as blue whales, and are also reptiles and have scales

Stuff my brother told me:

-If a person lives to 100 years, they will be killed

-This shirt I often wore that my brother hated for some reason is a prison uniform and if I get caught wearing it I will be sent to jail

-If a flag is in half mast, that means I have been so bad that they let everyone know

-This guy who lived next door to us was a child murderer and if I rang his doorbell he would come kill me. Same goes for a shed we found on the forest, he said that murderers live there.

Edited by VTHU243 on Jan 10th 2020 at 9:51:19 PM

I thought everyone lived to be exactly 100 if they weren't killed by murder, accidents etc, probably because 100 was the biggest number I knew of at the time. On their 100th birthday I assumed everyone just suddenly dropped dead no matter how healthy they were. Later when I learned about life expectancy I thought it meant everyone in that country lived to exactly that age and then died in the same way as before.