People Share The Hilarious Misconception They Had As A Child

These people share the most ridiculous things their young minds believed to be true.

Kids Think The Darndest Things

1) “Dogs can’t have chocolate, so obviously, cats mustn’t be able to have vanilla.”–

2) “That Japanese was not a different language, they just spoke English much faster. Thank my dad for that one. It was embarrassing how much I tried to just listen in and pick out the words.”–

3) “I thought that you could just buy jobs like at a store or something. I was under the assumption you could just pay like 1000 bucks to some job seller and be like ‘one job please.'”–

4) “I remember people referring to EMTs as the ‘rescue squad’ but I had never heard the word ‘squad’ before. It sounded like squid so I kept picturing a human-sized squid driving an ambulance and saving people.”–

5) “I used to think ‘Don’t drink and drive’ meant you couldn’t drink anything while driving. My mom used to drink her coffee in the car and I was so worried she would get arrested.”–

6) “My dad is a plumber. I thought that my dad picked plums for a living and I could never understand why he didn’t bring any home to share.”–

7) “One of my earliest memories is when I made my dad check the hallway outside my bedroom door for monsters because I was sure I’d seen them there when he turned off the lights. He checked and said, ‘No monsters here, it was just your imagination.’ So I asked him to unplug my imagination. I thought it was a literal projector hidden somewhere putting holographic monsters in the hallway.”

8) “My parents always told me to eat my food because ‘other people might want it,’ but they never elaborated any further than that. I didn’t know that there were people in the world who were starving, so I assumed that they were talking about food thieves and that if I didn’t eat my food that someone would break into the house and take it. Not sure why, but that put enough worry in me to get me to clean my plate.”

“My Theory Was Challenged When…”

9) “I come from a long line of big women, and most of my aunts had multiple kids (I was an only child for a long time). Somehow I got the impression that 1) women are born with a set amount of already-conceived fetuses just ready to go, 2) larger women just haven’t had all their kids yet, and 3) based on my mother’s size, I was owed at least one little sibling.”–

10) “When I was little I used to think the people inside the TV could see me like I could see them. I would make sure and put on my prettiest dress when I watched a show with a guy I liked.”–

11) “Used to think that guys didn’t get to choose what facial hair they got and you just had to hope you got what you wanted. Used to always hope I wouldn’t end up with a goatee.”–

12) “I used to think that the weather presenter decided on the weather. I was very concerned when the news told us about typhoons and torrential rains killing people, and wondered how they kept their job.”–

13) “I thought that when the priest says, ‘You may now kiss the bride,’ the guy does a special kiss that can only be done at weddings to transfer the baby to the woman through the mouth. The woman then swallows the baby so that it can grow in her stomach. My theory was challenged when my mom got pregnant with my younger sibling without having a second wedding.”–

14) “I thought prayer was how you talked to any supernatural being (Catholic school) so naturally I prayed to Santa.”–

15) “Ah, so as a young child I always loved to read the newspaper. Particularly the classifieds, where all the job listings, for sale notices and life events are listed. As you know, there’s also a column for adult services, but little naive me didn’t think too much of them. They generally seemed to be women and described as being nice/friendly/otherwise feminine, so I came to the conclusion it was a ‘mom’ service. Like you call this woman if you want someone to come with you to the dentist, or shopping or something. Someone nice and comforting to hold your hand. I used to think it was so cool that it existed. Oh, how things changed when I realized what they were actually advertising. I don’t think my friends will ever let me live that down.”

It’s Hilarious What They Think

16) “That adults had this magical thing happen to them at the moment of adulthood which bestowed upon them all the necessary knowledge in order to function to the best of their ability. Turns out we are all just kids just winging it.”–

17) “I almost stepped in dog poop with my bare feet one time and my dad said, ‘Don’t step in that poop with your bare feet!’ I asked why. He said, ‘Because it has glass in it and it will cut your feet.’ I basically believed that dogs pooped glass until I was in my 30s…”–

18) “I thought that every year at Christmas Jesus was born, grew into an adult in a few months, and was executed at Easter. He was resurrected and rose to Heaven only to be born again the following Christmas, over and over EVERY YEAR.”–

19) “I thought that actors on screen simulated a kiss when they were both standing about 30cm apart. Then through magic camera jiggery pokery they would merge them together so it looked like a real kiss. I was horrified when my dad told me they actually had to kiss each other.”–

20) “I used to think that when songs were on the radio, the band was actually in the studio singing it live. That band would leave and the next band would come in. I used to think that my small-town radio station was AWESOME because some days Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and The Beatles would visit. I wondered why I never saw them around town. I assumed that they just played their song and headed to the airport I guess.”–

21) “When I was little I thought that everyone’s parents worked at the same place because I had only ever heard my mom’s workplace referred to as ‘work.’ I imagined a huge grey building with WORK on the side in big letters.”–

22) “I was convinced that Cash Back from the grocery store or convenience store was literally just free money. I would always mentally have an anxiety attack every time my mom would decline it.”

No Kidding – These Children Believed This

23) “When I really had to pee while on a long car ride, I would ask my parents for bread or crackers because I thought it would act like a sponge and absorb the urine inside me and I wouldn’t have to go anymore…”–

24) “I thought grocery store clerks got to keep the money in the register at the end of the day. Figured that was a really sweet job.”–

25) “Until I was forced to participate in one, I always assumed a fire drill was some kind of tool that they used to, I don’t know, burrow deeper into the fire?”–

26) “That when we swallowed food it started filling up our bodies starting at the feet. I was sometimes afraid to eat because when I got the sensation of being ‘full,’ I thought it meant the food was getting too high in my body and I was going to suffocate or something.”–

27) “That spitting in someone’s mouth made them pregnant.”–

28) “I thought it was inevitable that most people ended up in a police lineup.”–

29) “I thought trees made wind. I was so confused when someone mentioned using a line of trees as a wind-break. Wouldn’t that just make it worse?”–

30) “My sister thought I was Chinese because all people with dark hair, in her mind, were Chinese. Our parents are both of European descent. She and her friends referred to me as ‘the Chinese one.'”

Child’s Play

31) “I thought female pad commercials were just for really fancy band-aids, and I couldn’t figure out why I never got one whenever I got a scratch or something.”–

32) “I used to think that ‘the black market’ was a warehouse where terrorists would set up little stalls and sell guns and explosives like a bake sale.”–

33) “I thought everything was literally black and white back in the day.”–

34) “I always thought that at some point in your life everyone would encounter quicksand at least once.”–

35) “My uncle was colorblind, and I thought that meant that he saw everything like a white sheet of paper with black outlines, like a super basic cartoon.”–

36) “I thought that everyone got to be what they wanted to be growing up. So I assumed that cashiers, gas station attendants, and servers wanted to be those things.”–

37) “I thought that since you could cut your hair short, you can also cut it long. I’ve begged my mom to cut my hair long.”–

38) “I have very bad eyesight, I’m super nearsighted in one and incredibly farsighted in the other. I used to think this was by design so that we could see things far and close (like each eye had different purposes and that’s why we have two of them). I only found out due to someone making a comment in my class watching me take notes with one eye, and looking up at the board with the other.”

Their Little Brains Are Just Trying To Make Sense Of The World

39) “We sang a song at primary school about animals and their babies that had lines like ‘rabbits have bunnies’ and ‘kittens turn to cats.’ The line that stuck with me most was ‘and pups can become seals or dogs’ which, to my tiny mind, made me panic that people could go out and buy a puppy and just had to hope it didn’t turn into a seal randomly one day, like it was some kind of pet lottery!”–

40) “I used to believe that if I sang along to a song on the radio in the car when people drove by, they’d see me singing along and assume I was the famous person who wrote/sings the song. No one ever thought I was Christina Aguilera.”–

41) “I thought everyone lived to be a hundred and died on their hundredth birthday unless they were knocked down by a car, which of course meant instant death.”–

42) “When I was in middle school, I didn’t know the difference between the words ‘erratic’ and ‘erotic.’ I saw a bus with a bumper sticker that said ‘Report erratic driving!,’ and I thought it meant driving in a provocative manner. I asked my mom what ‘erotic driving’ was, and she almost died laughing.”–

43) “When I was in pre-K, I misheard the word ‘potty’ as ‘party,’ and I noticed that whenever one of my classmates said ‘I have to go potty,’ the teacher would let them leave the classroom. I wanted to go check out this ‘party’ as well, so I followed a kid once and, needless to say, I was very disappointed when I realized we were going to the bathroom.”–

44) “After seeing CCTV of wasted people on the news with their faces blurred, I thought being wasted made all your features get blurred together. It really was horrifying.”–

45) “I thought that shoes shrunk if you didn’t wear them regularly. Come winter, I’d put my sandals in the back of the closet, and then when spring rolled around again, I’d go to put them on and they wouldn’t fit. Same thing with boots!”

Why Can’t We All Be This Innocent?

46) “That everything had some level of sentience to it. If I kicked one rock down the street for a particularly long time, I’d feel bad leaving it behind because it’d be alone. That all toys required some attention every now and then. I was a nicer person back then I guess!”–

47) “I thought angels and angles were the same thing (winged people) and drew them for math homework in elementary school when asked to draw several angles.”–

48) “I thought Jesus was buried in my town because there was a cross.”–

49) “I always thought when someone said ‘internal bleeding’ they were saying ‘eternal bleeding.’ I was like ‘dang these dudes are gonna bleed forever? That’s a lot of money on band-aids.'”–

50) “I used to think that Santa would bring you whatever you wanted. I mean, his elves make that stuff from scratch right? So I would always come up with these custom toys, action figures from shows that didn’t exist, all sorts of stuff. I was every mall Santa’s worst nightmare.”–

51) “I thought that I could make my very own Powerpuff Girls like Professor Utonium does in the intro. I could get my hands on some ‘sugar, spice, and everything nice.’ The real kicker was figuring out how to procure some Chemical X.”–

52) “Those tall radio towers that have lights on them. I asked once why the lights were there and was told it was to keep planes from flying into them. I spent an embarrassingly large amount of my childhood and early teenage years trying to figure out why they would build the towers if they were just going to get in the way of planes. If you don’t build the tower then they don’t need lights to keep planes safe – Boom.”–

53) “I thought that pupils were nail heads that were still visible after God finished hammering your eyeballs into their sockets.”

“6-Year-Old Me Thought That Reasoning Was Sound”

54) “I thought that if you were fired from work two times that you could never work again. My teenage sister was fired from a job and I was very concerned that she already used her one firing so early in her working life.”–

55) “I thought Coke and Pepsi vendors would fight each other if they met in a grocery store.”–

56) “When a movie or TV show would say ‘ten years later,’ I thought they waited and used the same actors.”–

57) “Every elderly woman takes the name ‘Essie’ when retired or having grandkids. Both of my grandmothers were retired, north of 70, and named ‘Essie.’ So were other old women at church. 6-year-old me thought that reasoning was sound.”–

58) “We have a saying in Norway: ‘Norwegians are born with skis on their feet,’ because skiing is such a huge deal here. It made me think all sorts of weird thoughts like, where did my baby skis go? Are the skis attached to you or just like normal skis that you take off? If they are attached do they fall off like baby teeth? And if so, why don’t new skis grow out? Or do the doctors cut off the skis because you can’t use them during the summer?”–

59) “When I was told I could have something ‘later,’ I thought it was a day of the week, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Later, Thursday…”–

60) “I thought Shrek was what God looked like.”–

61). “I was outside one summer day with my dad. I heard an airplane overhead and looked up to find it. For some reason, he assumed I was looking at the sun, and the exact words out of his mouth were, ‘Don’t look at that, it will make you go blind.’ I had no idea why or how an airplane could make me go blind, but I was terrified of them for a couple months and I would run inside anytime I heard one of them.”

62) “I used to wonder if people who died in movies actually died.”–

63) “I thought Russians used small dark-red gems as currency. You know, like rubies, but less shiny.”–