Proof That Kids are Clueless

As kids, we’re pretty much clueless (a state most of us maintain through adulthood, but whatever.) Anyway, I thought you could get pregnant by just kissing someone and that everyone could pretty much use their grandma’s bra as a hammock.

In other words, until we’re told the actual facts–and in the case of the birds and the bees, wishing we never knew–we just operate on assumptions.

Where am I going with this? I have to peruse Reddit for work, and there was a thread about misconceptions people had as kids. It’s funny, so I’m sharing some of the gems below.

Your mission–should you choose to accept it–is to add your own in the comments. Entertain me, people.

I thought new words came about by important people in suits sitting in some kind of board room adding new words to the dictionary everyday, much like people pitching product ideas to a board.

I thought that signs that said “End Construction” were placed there by a group of people who were generally opposed to road construction.

I believed that maps only showed half of the Earth- the “front half”- and that there was an entirely different “back half” that you weren’t taught until you were older. I thought that’s where places like Oz and Neverland were located.

I used to think that “up yours” was a compliment, in much the same way as “upvote” or “thumbs up” is.

I thought that there were gnomes living in every single traffic light that were in charge of controlling it. Logically, one gnome wore a red hat, the other wore a yellow hat, and the last one wore a green hat. They had a little stepladder for the red gnome because he wasn’t tall enough to reach.

I didn’t discover that Alaska was not adjacent to Hawaii until I was twenty four. I thought you could practically swim from one to the other, and I couldn’t understand why their temperatures were so different.

I thought dogs and cats were the same species, just that dogs were male and cats were female.

I use to think my mom could “stop the rain”. When she was driving and it was raining, she would say “Rain, stop in 3..2..1.. NOW.” (Now would be right when we would go under a bridge in the freeway) and then say “GO!” when we were coming out from under the bridge.

Milk came from the white cows and chocolate milk came from the brown/darker cows.

I thought the signs that said “Do Not Pass” meant that you can’t go any further. I always got scared that we’d get pulled over whenever we went past one of those.

I was told moths ate clothing. I took this at its most literal meaning—that if a moth landed on me it would eat the clothes right off of my back. For years, I would run out of the room in fear if I saw a moth anywhere near me.

Thanks to the Alphabet Song, I thought “elemeno” was a letter.

The advertisements for pads and tampons confused me till I was 13. I thought they made you better at sports or helped woman be better at sports.

I was convinced because of black and white films that the “olden days” had no color in them and it was a 20th century thing. I often wondered who the first person was to make colored clothes.

I thought a mustache was created by growing long nose hairs and carefully combing them outward, away from the nose and above the lips.

I thought there was a black Michael Jackson and a white Michael Jackson.

When I heard people say, “I don’t drink,” I thought they meant they literally didn’t drink anything. When I saw a special on koalas and heard they rarely needed to drink because they ate leaves, I also just figured these people must eat lots of leaves and that’s how they never got thirsty.

I thought that each person only had a certain number of words they got to say in a life time and that if you talked a lot you’d use up all your words and run out.

I thought the “Don’t Drink and Drive” campaign incorporated all drinking, so I would spaz out when my dad drank water during long road trips.

In movies where they show a kid, and then flashed forward to him as an adult, I thought they waited all those years for the kid to grow up to film the rest of the movie.

I thought that prostitute was another word for businesswoman. My parents got called in after career day.

Because I heard, “Elvis is the king” so often I thought he was king of the world. I was just like, “Yeah, sure. Someone has got to be, right?”

I thought ‘potty training’ was an actual train.

I thought that you could only have one child per state. I was born in Illinois, my first sister in Ohio, and my next sister in Michigan. I wanted a brother so I started bugging my parents to move again. I just kept bringing up other states and it took my months to figure out why I wanted to move.

I used to think that a doctor determined whether a baby was a boy or girl by whether or not he cut the umbilical cord all the way off.

That the bank allowed adults access to unlimited amounts of money. So when my mom would say she couldn’t afford something, I’d chime in and tell her to just go to bank.

I thought clowns were a race of people just like any other.

I thought that going to a baby shower meant going to a literal shower and just washing babies. I was always very confused why other women would go to watch a baby take a shower.

I thought God had a wife named Gosh.

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33 responses to “Proof That Kids are Clueless

  1. These are great! (My own biggest childhood misconception was I thought Judge Reinhold and James Spader were the same person.)

  2. These are great! Here’s another: sometime when I was very little I overheard my mother gossiping on the phone. She was talking about someone who got pregnant “by accident.” For years after that I was scared of getting pregnant. The books I looked at in the library talked about sperm from the man meeting the egg from the woman, but never explained how it got there. I was terrified because I thought it just floated through the air invisibly, so any female could get pregnant by accident! I was especially scared to go to sleep at night because then I’d have to let down my guard!

  3. I thought SOS scrubbing pads were poisonous (actually still do), so after washing a dish with one, I have to wash it really good again, with regular dish soap…to get the poison off 🙂

  4. My family would talk in hushed tones of my cousin as having “piano legs”, so when they said I had “piano fingers”, I thought it was a bad thing and kept my hands balled up.

  5. If you think these are funny, you should hear the things my cats say to me. 🙂

  6. When my friends told me where babies came from, I told them they must be wrong because my mother was too much of a lady to ever lie down, open her legs and have a baby come out of THERE. I was eleven! Talk about being naive.

  7. Maggie Dufau-Hamberger

    When I was very young my cousins would convince me to let them watch what they wanted to watch on TV and that I would be able to watch my program when theirs was over. Further, they told me that my program would pick up right where it left off. Today we call that “flat screen TV with built-in DVR technology”. Too bad they weren’t the ones who created the technology. Who’s the idiot now? I bring it up frequently during family holiday get-togethers.

  8. I thought Kingdom Come was in Africa. Because my parents would threaten to send us to Timbuktu and Kingdom Come, so I thought they were in the same region.

    I remember thinking babies just spontaneously grew in women’s tummies once they got married. Being from a Catholic family and that whole Virgin Birth thing, it made the most sense to me. Imagine my shock when I found out the real story.

  9. Too funny. Your “up yours” misuse reminded me of a comedy bit George Carlin did on “F*** you.” He said since we like to do it , it really should be used as well wishes rather than as an insult. Hey mom, f*** you. Thanks son. F*** you as well.

  10. I had a lot of the same misconceptions! I was afraid of the toilet as a kid so I would hold it until the last minute and as a consequence got bladder infections frequently. My grandma told me that holding my pee would make me grow a weiner. I was obsessed with make sure I peed after the slightest tingle after that and was constantly checking to make sure I wasn’t developing a wang. I still check every now and then cause you never know right?

    • Why in the world would your grandma say that?!? I had the opposite thing, actually. I peed all the time (and still do.)

      • She said she didnt want me to get any more bladder infections. So I asked her “Well what if I WANTED a penis and held it longer purposely?” she replied “Then bladder issues would be the least of our worries” Nice….

  11. So funny. I think I must not have been a very smart kid because I can’t remember any awesome misconceptions such as these. How boring of me.

  12. I used to get confused when I saw actors in one movie, and then see them in another. I’d be like “What? That’s not right. That’s Jack and Rose, though….” I was completely thrown off when I found out their real names.

  13. so truee

  14. I thought that bands/singers actually sat in a little booth and played their song live when it was on the radio.

  15. I used to think we didn’t breath while we slept. I didn’t realize that the brain would take over. So I would take a ton of huge breaths before I fell asleep to make sure I didn’t run out of air by morning.

  16. THIS is amazing. OMG…I love this. And Yes…I believed some of these same things.

  17. I was such a weird kids that I had many weird beliefs but two come to mind. When ever we had a long road trip my mother had my sister and I convinced that if we fell asleep she and my dad would take a magic way that made the trip much shorter. I totally believed that for way to many years. I also thought that if a politician died in office than the next person elected would not only get the job but also get the wife and kids of the person who died. I have no explanation for that one.a

  18. Love this! I thought every fridge had a built-in chocolate chip maker in the freezer. I was so disappointed to discover years later that our ice-maker had been broken all along. It was just where my mom stored our chocolate chips!

  19. When my son lost his first tooth I told him to put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy. He said “Why can’t I just give it to her the next time she cleans my teeth?” He thought the dental hygienist was the tooth fairy!

  20. Ha ha very amusing and witty. I have loads of similar beliefs, some of which at 54 yrs of age I am only now discovering were wrong all along!

  21. Hahaha. Loved this post!

  22. I have to think hard here but… speaking of where babies come from, I knew that mothers went to the hospital to have babies, and I’d been told that babies came out of the mother’s vagina. So I reasoned, as a small child, that the mother went into the bathroom at the hospital and sat on the toilet, and that the doctor went in there with her to fish the baby out of the toilet water.
    Also, when we lived in the city, if we ran out of regular milk my mom would give us powdered milk. It tasted funny, so she told us that there was a cow in the kitchen pantry and that the milk tasted different because it was straight from the cow. I completely believed her and was always begging her to let me see the cow!
    When we first moved into our house, for some reason I saw the front door (from the inside) and I would beg people to open it. I thought it led to a room where a lady was playing a piano. I have no idea why.

  23. What a collection. So that’s why I hit all the red lights going to work….gnomes in the stop lights wanting tolls…or was that trolls? Makes as much sense as the stupid computer orchestrating all the lights to make traffic run more smoothly.

  24. “I thought there was a black Michael Jackson and a white Michael Jackson.” BAHAHAHA!!!!

  25. I thought that flea markets were loaded with dogs, and that merchants would sell fleas to people, right off the dogs’ backs.

  26. When I heard squeaks, I thought they were mice.

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