TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Dumb things you used to believe as a kid

Go To

Mara999 International Man of Mystery from Grim Up North Since: Sep, 2020 Relationship Status: Crazy Cat Lady
International Man of Mystery
#3101: Jan 23rd 2022 at 7:42:50 AM

Not so much something that I believed, but as a child I was very confused by the words used to describe different skin-colours. I thought of the colours as literal, so I couldn't understand why dark-skinned people of African descent would be described as "black", when they were closer to some shade of brown. Things got muddled for me when some South Asian people would be described as "brown", even when many of them were even darker than those labeled as "black". The same confusion applied to myself being labeled as "white", when I was actually closer to a shade of pink. Anyway, child-me got confused by these colour-related labels, and even more so when told that some colours were supposedly better than others, without any adequate explanation for why.

Demetrios Lucky Seven from Des Plaines, Illinois (unfortunately) Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Lucky Seven
#3102: Feb 3rd 2022 at 7:32:26 PM

Thanks to 3D Dinosaur Adventure, I thought that the therapod dinosaurs had bony plates on the fronts of their lower legs.

The Obsidian Destroyer is the best non-hero unit in WarCraft III.
Bootlebat Since: Dec, 2012
#3103: Feb 4th 2022 at 7:10:46 PM

The first time I played a game with "specular lighting" I misread it as "'spectacular lighting", and thought it made the lights look more spectacular if you turned in on (which I didn't, because the game already crashed a lot.)

PhantomDusclops92 Nitpicky Nitwit from Italy Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Faithful to 2D
Nitpicky Nitwit
#3104: Feb 6th 2022 at 11:10:40 AM

I heard about Lilo And Stitch for the first time in a videogame magazine mentioning in a handwave way that there were going to be videogames based on it. There were no pictures of it, so based entirely on the name I imagined the movie was about the unlikely friendship between a nerdy ant and a rude cockroach.

Unicorndance Logic Girl from Thames, N.Z. Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Logic Girl
#3105: Feb 6th 2022 at 1:05:16 PM

I thought Lock, Stock, and Barrel were three guys.

For every low there is a high.
DrNoPuma Bud and Lou(ise) from the land of Humorous Hyenas (Ten years in the joint) Relationship Status: Married to the music
Bud and Lou(ise)
#3106: Feb 6th 2022 at 8:14:05 PM

[up]Well, they could be, if you changed the T in "stock" to an H, and used "guys" as a gender-neutral term. tongue

Please make this canon, DC. I love the idea of the Joker and Harley's hyenas acting like them.
ChicoTheParakeet Since: Oct, 2019 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#3107: Feb 6th 2022 at 10:03:15 PM

[up][up]I'm sure that's been used to name a trio of characters but I don't know any examples.

BackSet1 I <3 Zinnia from I'm sure you'd love to know that, wouldn't you? (Experienced, Not Yet Jaded) Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
I <3 Zinnia
#3108: Feb 7th 2022 at 3:54:13 AM

Lock, Stock, and Barrel Attorneys at Law.

Read Pokemon Ultimate Emerald
Farsidefan Since: Dec, 2021
#3109: Feb 13th 2022 at 1:13:50 PM

That sounds like a band name

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#3110: Feb 16th 2022 at 11:08:51 PM

I used to think that Helena Bonham-Carter and Bernadette Peters were the same person. This only mattered to me because it meant that I thought she played both Bellatrix in Harry Potter AND Cinderella's Stepmother in the 1997 version, and for some reason I always thought that was cool. [lol]

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
RacattackForce (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#3111: Feb 28th 2022 at 1:37:49 AM

I misunderstood the idea of a food coma when I was in... I wanna say 1st grade. I took it very literally when a teacher told me about how there's a chemical in turkey that makes you fall asleep (i.e., tryptophan), and ended up avoiding turkey that Thanksgiving because I thought if I ate too much, I'd never wake up. Took me a few days before I realized I might be overreacting.

Demetrios Lucky Seven from Des Plaines, Illinois (unfortunately) Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Lucky Seven
#3112: Mar 1st 2022 at 4:13:33 PM

I used to think that “avalanche” and “rockslide” could be used interchangeably.

The Obsidian Destroyer is the best non-hero unit in WarCraft III.
MisterToodleoo Since: Jul, 2018 Relationship Status: Waiting for you *wink*
#3113: Mar 1st 2022 at 5:37:35 PM

[up] I remember writing or saying the following silly comment (I think it was when my Grami was at my house while my parents weren’t):

“Beware of blizzards in July and avalanches in August.”

All I knew correctly was that avalanches involve snow.

ARandomPage Local Egregious Plant from Earth, Solar System Since: Sep, 2021 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
Local Egregious Plant
#3114: Mar 4th 2022 at 5:52:43 AM

I thought consequences and punishments were synonyms due to what my parents used the former word for. It wasn't until the late 2010s that I found out.

Troper Wall, sandbox, and I'm trying to kill typos.
ThatAsianInTheCorner the biggest hair of all from the corner. read the username, dummy. (Y2: Electric Boogaloo) Relationship Status: Tweaking my holographic boyfriend
the biggest hair of all
#3115: Mar 5th 2022 at 12:06:50 AM

I remember when I was a kid I dipped my Dark Chocolate into Glasses of Milk because if I did I thought it would turn it from the bitter dark chocolate to milk chocolate

Look, I thought I was smart. Big keyword there being the "I thought" part.

Edited by ThatAsianInTheCorner on Mar 6th 2022 at 3:12:28 AM

"...This is too much information for a brain that just wants to visit Planet Tensuns..."
BackSet1 I <3 Zinnia from I'm sure you'd love to know that, wouldn't you? (Experienced, Not Yet Jaded) Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
I <3 Zinnia
#3116: Mar 13th 2022 at 8:52:28 AM

Because of Take Back the Night I thought lava giants were a real thing in Minecraft. I kind of want that now, if I'm being honest.

Read Pokemon Ultimate Emerald
Bootlebat Since: Dec, 2012
#3117: Mar 16th 2022 at 4:55:31 PM

I thought that The Great Depression was called that because everyone got really depressed then, which was undoubtedly true, even if that wasn't why it's called that.

Edited by Bootlebat on Mar 16th 2022 at 4:59:04 AM

lalalei2001 Since: Oct, 2009
#3118: Mar 19th 2022 at 1:12:27 AM

[up] I thought that too!

The Protomen enhanced my life.
callmeamuffin Just getting into Utena... (he/they) from the kitchen (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Thinkin' about you, muffin
Just getting into Utena... (he/they)
#3119: Mar 19th 2022 at 4:46:39 AM

[up]x9 Now that's Hilarious in Hindsight, considering that Bonham-Carter starred in Cinderella (2015), albeit as the fairy godmother.

When I was a child, I always heard the TV outside my room make a somewhat loud noise every night that sounded like the TV was being set ON. I knew the TV was not being set ON, and no one was using the TV, but for some strange reason, I thought the noise was from a Pixar logo just being played on the TV.

The noise exactly came from the TV, and no one was using it, but the Pixar logo was not being played. The TV was OFF.

I eventually found out that it was just a common noise from such an old LED Flatscreen TV at night, that just happened to be similar to the ON noise.

Edited by callmeamuffin on Mar 19th 2022 at 10:41:02 PM

Working on Sandbox.The Amazing Race TV Tropes Edition.
Bootlebat Since: Dec, 2012
#3120: Mar 20th 2022 at 8:42:26 AM

When I was really little, I thought if you had a clock you could control time. I learned the truth when I got a clock as a birthday present and asked how you do it.

Unicorndance Logic Girl from Thames, N.Z. Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Logic Girl
#3121: Mar 20th 2022 at 12:41:06 PM

The first time I heard the expression "Go right to your thighs" was at age eight, seeing the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Just One Bite".

I thought it meant that some foods don't even go into your stomach or intestine, and you end up with chewed-up food under your skin in your thighs. Blech!

For every low there is a high.
DeepFiemott Since: Mar, 2017
#3122: Mar 20th 2022 at 2:55:38 PM

"The Phantom Menace" was an alien language proper noun describing the alliance of the Sith and the Trade Federation, not a fancy way of saying "the mysterious threat". I finally realized the actual meaning around the time Disney bought Star Wars, though it was my least favorite Star Wars and I didn't really watch it at any point where I was old enough to know what those words mean.

"Time is the 4th dimension" meant time and R^4 are somehow the exact same concept, and the number of people alive who understand the proof of that is about a couple dozen, and I would never be one of them. Finding out it meant the intuitively obvious (x, y, z, t) all along left me utterly baffled.

I was a biology nerd who could name all the geological periods and the rough state of life in each one when I was 10 but, thanks to confusions like the above, I didn't look much into physics/astronomy since that was for geniuses. Until I was 15 I thought the age ratios of Person > Planet, Planet > Star, Star > Galaxy, Galaxy > Universe are all about the same order of magnitude. Knowing the age of the Earth as about 4 billion from biology, you'd get a universe around ~10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years old. Might be one of the few people to ever think ~13,000,000,000 sounded creationist.

Edited by DeepFiemott on Mar 20th 2022 at 2:55:53 AM

Bootlebat Since: Dec, 2012
#3123: Mar 20th 2022 at 6:52:53 PM

2 similar ones I'll put in the same post.

  • I thought that "making out" meant trying to see or hear something, due to how people say "I can't make that out".
  • I thought that "making love" meant making someone fall in love with you (like with a magic spell or something).

[up] That makes me think of on the Doom Eternal Ancient gods DLC, where the intern says the Dark Lord hasn't manifested in "like a decillion years."

Edited by Bootlebat on Mar 20th 2022 at 7:49:03 AM

DeepFiemott Since: Mar, 2017
#3124: Mar 21st 2022 at 9:07:25 AM

Also, I made the same prostitute/prosecutor mistake from the first post as a kid, along with thinking the term “Muslim” was a historical term for the Israelites specifically during the Exodus (loose fusion of “Moses” and “Pilgrim”), as I had only overheard it said by adults in vaguely religious contexts that I couldn’t understand the rest of. I got a blank stare once when I called a prosecutor a prostitute, but luckily I found out Muslims were followers of a separate religion existing in modern day before ever making a public mistake.

BackSet1 I <3 Zinnia from I'm sure you'd love to know that, wouldn't you? (Experienced, Not Yet Jaded) Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
I <3 Zinnia
#3125: Mar 21st 2022 at 9:48:26 AM

I used to think that Israel was called Islam and then after that I believed that Islam was a city in Israel (usually when I was really thinking of Jerusalem) until I was told otherwise.

Edited by BackSet1 on Mar 21st 2022 at 12:48:38 PM

Read Pokemon Ultimate Emerald

Total posts: 3,975
Top