I thought Salvatia must be the poorest country in the world if even their army has to go around begging for money.

One of my brothers was friends with a pair of twins named Eric and Ryan, but I thought that they were a single entity that somehow had two bodies known as American Ryan

That hiding candy (or other things people wanted) was a universal property of grandmothers.

English is not my first language, but I had heard the expression "search all nooks and crannies", but thought the last word was grannies - cranny is an unusual word.

Now,my own grandmother was in the habit of hiding candy for us to find. I thought the expression existed because all grannies hid things. Search all nooks and grannies!

I grew up with a family that didn't have a lot of luxuries when I was young. We had three channels on TV, so we didn't spend a lot of time watching TV. So I didn't get to watch a lot of pop culture content for about the first 7 or 8 years of my life.

So one of the first memories I have as a kid is in hearing music on the radio, record player, cassette player or any sound system .... I understood that it was previously recorded and performed by other people somewhere else.

What I thought was that all the sounds were generated by human voices. Guitars? Pianos? Trumpets? Brass sounds? Violins? even Drums or percussion. I thought all of it was people just making sounds with their voices.

I'm Indigenous Canadian so my parents didn't have musical instruments, a couple of uncles played the guitar and fiddle ... but by the time I was young, they no longer played these instruments and had them. I never knew or understood musical instruments really until I was about 8, 9 or ten. Up until then, I just thought all music was just people with amazing and unusual human voices.

That encountering quick sand in real life was a real possibility every day.

Bonus: My kid doesn't believe that Santa is magical, he just has really advanced technology.

My parents didn't specifically tell me if Santa Clause was real or make-believe. They wanted me to come to my own conclusion, I guess. My dad is a rationalist person, and my mom's from a culture that doesn't traditionally celebrate Christmas.

So what I believed was that the appearance of presents on Christmas was an unsolved mystery, and Santa Clause was just a hypothesis to explain it.

I suspected the real explanation probably involved the tree working as an antenna for some kind of cosmic energy that triggered the appearance of presents. Perhaps in ancient and more superstitious times they discovered this phenomenon by accident and continued to put up the tree ever since.

I thought our eyes worked by projecting some kind of energy beam that scanned objects, like how Superman's X-ray vision is sometimes drawn.

That adults had it figured out.

That average people actually care about anything but themselves.

That there is justice in the world.

That a blowjob involved the act of physically blowing air on the penis. When I found out it actually involved sucking, I was like, "Oooh...yeah that sounds much more pleasurable."

That every time people had sex, the woman became pregnant. I thought that every sex scene in a film meant the film had to be stopped for 9 months until the actress could give birth.

That the Empire State Building is a restaurant named Empire Steak Building.

When adults said things like "In this day and age, nobody says please and thankyou any more", I misinterpreted "this day and age" as "The Stayan Age", which was our current age, which obviously followed on from Bronze Age, Iron Age etc.

There’s a highway that formed a loop around the city where I grew up and we used it pretty regularly, but mostly only the western half (since we lived on the west side of town). My parents explained the concept to me that it had “belt” in its name because it circled around the city like a belt goes around a person. This idea intrigued me and I eventually asked my parents if someday we could drive all the way around it. My dad seemed kind of surprised but said we could sometime. I got excited and started planning for things we would need, like a tent and food, since it would obviously take a long time.

The highway’s only about 25 miles/40 kilometers long.

Not me but really funny - when my mom was little she thought white people weren't real. She thought they were made up for tv

That a bon fire was a "bomb" fire and therefore, very loud and very dangerous.

That male orgasm was painful. I got this idea from seeing their o-face somewhere and assuming it indicated pain.

That kissing is how you become pregnant. No, really.

That cats and dogs were the same animal, the cats were the girls and the dogs were the boys

That the world used to be black and white. I once asked how the people making The Wizard of Oz knew when the world was going to change, so they could film the movie correctly.

When I was a young lad I thought milk was cow pee and was super confused by the world.

I used to think that there was a country called Cyclopedia, that was full of all kinds of fascinating things. I had a book all about it called "In Cyclopedia".

When I was little, I thought that "cash back" meant that the clerk literally just handed you money out of the register if you wanted it.

I assumed that most people were honest and only took the cash if they needed it. I didn't know that it came out of your checking account lol.

I ran up to my mom once, completely serious and said, "Mom! I know why all fat people are short. They use up all their skin!"

I felt like a genius until she laughed so hard she fell on the floor and peed a little.

I thought propeller planes worked by spinning so fast that they temporarily moved the gravity out of the way so the plane could fly.

There was a park near my house where often cops would sit to catch speeders. Driving past one day, I didn't see a cop and I told my parents I was surprised by this. My folks told me that they were there, just undercover. I asked where, and they pointed to a woman walking a dog and they told me it was an undercover speed dog. For years I'd point out suspected speed dogs when we'd drive places. I am not a smart man.

that my grandparents remembered middle ages or even the dinosaurs

I scraped my knee and thought that putting skin-coloured paint on it would heal it

I used to think those coins in the fountain at the mall were just money people wanted to get rid of. One day, little me tried getting away with a skirt full of coins and got in trouble.

I mean, to be fair, a coin on the ground is fair game, and they don't make these "unspoken rules" clear enough, so I couldn't imagine a coin in a fountain not being free to just pick up.

Wedding rings were there to show who was married and who was available. Once you wanted to get married, you just found a friendly person who didn't have a ring, and then you asked if they'd marry you. I mean, that IS what happens I suppose, but my 8 year old brain played it out like someone asking a nice stranger for the time.

I was always phlegmy and coughing as a kid so I became convinced I had diphtheria and would die soon, and thought it would be terrible to let my parents know this sad fact. Turns out it was because 1980s parenting meant smoking anywhere and everywhere at all times and cigarette smoke makes me ill.

That we have cables instead of veins inside.

That before I was born cars had the exhaust pipe on the front (in fact I used to draw cars that way).

At some point I also believed that we were born as monkeys and we evolved as we grew up.

My grandmother told me England was not part of the European continent. I got an answer wrong on a test because of that. She refused admit she was wrong even after I showed her in my text book.

We live inside the earth. Dogs say barf.

In the 80s when i was a child there were billboards with PSAs saying don't drink and drive. I'd promptly scold my parents if i caught them taking a sip from their soft drink after hitting the McDonald's drive through.

I thought that you would get your grandparents by just going into a train station and picking some random (preferably older person) to be your grandparent.

I was convinced that my parents had done that for me, and that's why I had grandparents.

Premises:

1. My family watches the news for [weather] and [ye local murder].
2. My friend says: his dad says: "the news lies."
3. Parents are trustworthy, and cops can't lie to the news.

Conclusion:

They lie about the WEATHER!?

There's a park in Brasilia that has a "little rocket". I refused to enter it when I was something like 4yo, because "What if it launches while I'm inside?"

That bonzai was Japanese for "fire", and therefore you should never shout "Bonzai!" in a theater.

...Yeah, I'm not sure what I was smoking either.

Not sure what age I was, maybe 4. I thought the music on the radio was live, that the musicians went to the radio station to sing and it was broadcast from there.

The semaphore homunculus lived in the stop lights at intersections.

In my Superman onesie (w/ cape), I could fly, but was never brave enough to launch from a high enough step on the stairs. I knew I was flying, but...

That there were little gnomes inside the doors of the cars and that they were in charge of raising and lowering the windows, especially in the automatic cars.

Most humans have good ethics and beliefs. The more I grow, the more I'm disappointed in our society.

I thought those crosses or flowers on the side of the road were where they buried the person who died in an accident.

I remember knowing that knives will cut you and make you bleed, and that when people were shot in movies they would bleed, therefore bullets must be shaped like little blades.

I thought that I'd die of cancer because that's my zodiac sign and nobody could convince me otherwise.

New York city was the size of the whole state. Like the entire thing looked like manhattan.

Tigers are female lions.

The USA was the moral leader the world. But I watched CNN as a kid so...

That God exists

Pretty common belief among stupid 7-year-olds, I think; humans couldn't see colour up to the mid-60s.

I believed I was an adopted alien from outer space before I realised my face is like my father's but prettier.

I believed a kid who told me that every 4th of July, former US presidents who were still alive - which I somehow imagined was a large group - stood in a circle around the statue of liberty and held hands singing, "He's got the whole world in his hands."

I thought the "Gulf War" was in fact the "GOLF War" and was happening at a golf course near our home.. like … halfway to see uncle Peter!! 😅

Actors are dying... for real.

I had to go to a private Christian school in third grade - not because we were religious, we were not, but because gang violence was getting serious in my town and the private school was seen as the safe option my mom decided on for a year even though we couldn't afford it.

Again, not religious, but Christian school meant we had to go to "Chapel" every day - Sing bible songs and get the typical religious indoctrination. Anywho... In the chapel, there was a giant rectangular speaker box suspended up at the center of the ceiling. Not sure how but with all the talk of Jesus dying for your sins and everything, I became convinced that that speaker box was his coffin. I thought he was there, suspended above us, every day at Chapel in our little school

That tv programming would pause when I turned the TV off.

I thought space rockets had to wait for. Ight to go into space. If they took off during the day whey would just go into the blue sky like planes do.

that if we break tv's screen , tv charecters can get out of it and we can enter tv

That all television, even live action, was just made by someone who could draw really fast.

Freddy Krueger was two people. I thought it was like Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. I thought it was Dr. Krueger and Freddy was the monster he created. When I saw the movie I was like where's his creator, the one that brought him to life?

Not me, but I have heard that kids used to think 'olden times' were black & white, because all old films were before the introduction of colour. Like, it's only in the last 80? years that people see in colour...

It makes me giggle when modern movies use b&w to depict pre 21st century, or even 'flashbacks' are b&w

rice turned water into soil

That life would be better as an adult.

That all adults are smokers.

I used to greet clothing store mannequins and thought that people who didn't were very rude.

Cthulhu is a Hindu god

That we would live in peace

My dad has this long running bit, that if I needed his help on something, he needed to go to the shop to get a "round tuit". I remember asking what store he had to go to, and how much it cost, and being annoyed at how he hadn't gotten a round tuit yet.

He must have thought I was really committed to the bit.

I thought babyback ribs were from ACTUAL Babies

I thought the glyph for "heated seat" in cars depicted a raised fist with the pinkie finger extended rather than a chair with heat waves eminating from it.

The Tea at the Treedome episode of SpongeBob SquarePants further convinced me I was seeing it correctly, and I since knew it as "the fancy button". In some regard, I wasn't entirely wrong.

"When in doubt, pinkie out!"

I used to think a car direction indicator was a GPS guiding system, and not manually operated.

That we had to pay our employer to get a job.

that you're supposed to show a middle finger as if you were showing it to yourself

I thought 'tomorrow' was a day of the week. So when my mom would say we'd go somewhere 'tomorrow' I'd ask her every day if it was tomorrow yet, and she'd say no, and I'd keep waiting.

I hadn't had "the talk" and assembled my own understanding about marriage = "the ability to touch each other's private parts."

I remember thinking, at the age of probably 8 or 10ish, that a bride and a groom, after they were married, in their fancy full wedding outfits would stand on either side of the sink (specifically in my house's upstairs crappy bathroom with mildewy tile) and expose themselves to each other, and then the bride would reach across the sink and "tag" touch the groom's crotch and then pull her dress up, and... at that point I didn't really understand what she would "have" under her wedding dress, but I did assume the groom would reach over and basically "tag you're it" style touch her, at which point the act would conclude.

I didn't have a name for this act, but I was pretty sure this is what adults all did immediately after marriage, one time only. I didn't associate it with babies or anything, more a rite of passage.

In kindergarden, when one kid was about to hit another, the other kid would say "if you hit me, you have to pay the health insurance!". None of us had any idea what that could mean, and I have no idea where that idea came from, but it worked, because to us, that sounded bad.

Some of my class mates thought that wrestling was real, and a few of them thought there was a place in the US where it was legally possible to kill a man during a wrestling match. They were quite offended when I told them how ridiculous that notion sounded to me.

I believed that for very small creatures (like ants) time was faster.

For a while, I thought kissing was how women got pregnant.

It MIGHT have had something to do with getting a half sibling in spite of my father saying he hadn't had sex with the mother. Religion makes people weird, is it really that big a deal to admit you had sex out of wedlock, when everybody already knows you got someone pregnant?

I believed my hair would blow away with sufficient wind. And it basically did, it just took 30 more years