When I was a wee lad there was a brief time I thought the past was black and white because, well, old movies were black and white. I later found out I wasn't the only naive wee one to think this, but when I realized this wasn't true I couldn't help feeling a little silly. What kind of world suddenly goes from black and white to full of color after all? So, I ask of ye Escapisters, what beliefs did you have as a young one that you find rather silly in retrospect? Bonus points if you think it's irrational for even a kid to believe such things and even more bonus points if even other kids thought you were silly for thinking such things. [footnote]Don't ask me what these points will get you. I haven't worked that out yet. [/footnote]
Oh I've got a ton of these! I'll edit them in as I think of them.I reminisce about things with my parents sometimes and they're shocked that I remember things from when I was 3 (maybe their memory is wrong and I was actually 4 or 5, I dunno). These were all things I thought between the ages of 3 and 7, I was a very special child : \
-I believed that dragonflies were actually somehow related to dragons and were extremely dangerous
-I believed I could sustain myself by swallowing air and making myself feel full
-I believed that the meat that came from animals grew back
-I believed that capes could actually make you fly
-I believed that hospital nurseries were like baby stores and that people visited them after getting married
-I believed that the place I saw in some national geographic documentary (somwhere in Africa) was that hell place they kept talking about in church; the part I remember was of a group of tribesman gutting an antelope and processing it's skin and body parts (it was kind of graphic for a 4 year old).
-I believed that I could actually become a power ranger
-I believed that it was unsafe to leave any part of my body exposed at night, so I always hid under my blankets away from the monsters and such (That demon scene in Fantasia fucking traumatized me)
It still gives me the shivers almost 2 decades later
-I believed that when I heard laughing in the distance that it was "bad guys" and it terrified me
-I believed that bears mercilessly hunted people down for no reason
-so did foxes
-so did wolves (I lived kind of lived in the middle of nowhere and my mother often expressed her fear of wild animals)
-I believed that the characters in video games actually needed my help, and that motivated me to eventually beat Kirby's Dreamland when I was 5
-I believed that TV dramas were recordings of actual events
-I thought I could get a pet cat by digging a "pit trap" and waiting long enough
-I believed that store clerks lived at their workplace
Shit now that I'm writing some of these, I really feel like a therapist should see it : S
lol
I thought the Napoleonic wars happened far further in the past then they actually did (blame it on elementary history class, 1500-1820 where all covered at around the same time).
I also thought that everyone spoke English and French (since, in my defence, everyone I knew did) so I was always confused when we went over to my English relatives in Ontario and the older ones who where in their 70s or older had no idea what I was saying.
Oh, and for a while I thought my home city (Montreal) was New York because everything was always set in New York at the time and of course there isn't any other city as big as mine out there (4 year old's logic is a cruel mistress)
My uncle told his first kid that it was the Easter Pig not the Easter bunny. He even had a song. "Hear comes Perter curly tail oinking don't the piggy trail." So yeah that's the best I got.
*laughs* I did that too but I did it as a joke. Back in the old Geocities days I had a website that said more or less this:
"When I was born, color was created. Now I've seen pictures and movies that are trying to prove me wrong but I know those are colorized images trying to show me that I'm wrong."
"And I'm not wrong."
Overall I was apparently born with the Monty Python/Douglas Adams sense of humor. A humor in satire that I didn't even realize.
It only gets morbid if you let it get morbid. I personally intended nostalgia and humor to come out of this.
I see no shame in that, but I have to ask...when did you think WW2 happened and how did you think we recovered so quickly after 2 world wars in quick succession not so long ago?
This post is wonderful. You have led quite the rich childhood. You win ALL the points. Refer to footnote of original post to see prize details. Restrictions may apply.
Z of the Na said:
Instead of the normal female plumbing, I believed newborn babies came from the other orifice located in that area.
*laughs* I did that too but I did it as a joke. Back in the old Geocities days I had a website that said more or less this:
"When I was born, color was created. Now I've seen pictures and movies that are trying to prove me wrong but I know those are colorized images trying to show me that I'm wrong."
"And I'm not wrong."
Overall I was apparently born with the Monty Python/Douglas Adams sense of humor. A humor in satire that I didn't even realize.
I see no shame in that, but I have to ask...when did you think WW2 happened and how did you think we recovered so quickly after 2 world wars in quick succession not so long ago?
a few years after that...it was all kind of a blur, all I know was we were learning about a war (in this case WW1/galipoli) and I had no context for history so It could have happened a decade ago for all I knew
Ok, but only because your feelings asked for it:
-When I was cute lil button, for the longest time I believed 9/11 was National Police Appreciation Day.
-I believed I was a genius when I told people that it's not called America, it's called Usa. I blame the horrendous amount of globes in my early grade school classes.
-I believed that every brother had to marry their sister. Yes... I actually believed that my mom was my dad's sister.
-I believed that all dogs would grow up to become a horses. It's how I thought horses came to be.
-I believed that mayo was called ranch. You could imagine how weirded out I was when the sitter's sandwich tasted like crap in comparison to what my mom made for me.
-And my favorite, I believed that babies were birthed from the mouth. Like... when the mom gets too fat they throw up the baby.
In retrospect.... i'm surprised I turned out well.
When I was a wee lad there was a brief time I thought the past was black and white because, well, old movies were black and white. I later found out I wasn't the only naive wee one to think this,
My dad actually told me this. He said the past was all black and white before "the great nuclear disaster" where everything suddenly turned into color. I always thought that was amazingly outrageous and I didn't really believe it. When I got a bit older and had the balls to call him out on it, I felt more mad than silly.
- When I was a kid, I thought rain was a simultaneous global phenomenon.
- When I was a kid, I thought my toys had feelings and felt lonely when I didn't play with them enough.
- When I was a kid, I thought for certain that we knew about all the 9 planets because we sent people to explore every one of them.
- When I was a kid, I thought parents yelling at each-other all the time was normal.
I had a longstanding desire to become a digidestinted. This was worsened by the fact that I was gullible and my friend told me that he got a Digimon from his computer.
It culminated in me sending Santa drawings of my Digimon and asking for one for Christmas. I fully believed that I would be getting one.
I used to think that stoplights were run by tiny, super-intelligent mice working switchboards. No, really.
I wondered how they could possibly get such a small machine to operate - obviously someone had to be watching the road, to make sure it was safe to give the green light. The idea that they were ran by timers - or even some guy watching a camera feed somewhere - didn't occur to me. I thought for sure that whatever decided the light would change had to be in the stoplight, and had to be a living thing. Naturally, only tiny creatures like mice are small enough to fit in a stoplight, and they'd have to be really smart to know when to turn the light. They'd also have to have some way of turning the light, and five-year-old me imagined this device as a series of levers that would be switched as needed. By tiny, super-intelligent mice.
Then I found out that they just run on timers. Frankly, I like five-year-old me's version better.
When my brother was really young (About 2-3 years old), he believed that giraffes lived in the church. Of course it makes sense to a small child; What other animal, or living creature for that matter, would need a ceiling that high?
Then my mom took him there. He was severly disappointed at the lack of giraffes.
As for me? When I was 3 - 4 years old, I sometimes thought that I had kittens in my stomach who were being rambunctious and biting me.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the reason for my theory was an upset and aching stomach, which turned out to be caused by me not being able to digest lactose very well. (I'm not completely lactose intolerant, but eating too much of a dairy product seriously upsets the "inner balance", so to speak.)
EDIT: I just remembered another one. For a brief period of time, my brother and I had rabbits. When I thought about the shop where my parents bought them, I thought that some rabbits hung by their ears on hooks in the store. I even drew a picture of it and everything...
...Now that I think about it, what the fucking hell was wrong with me?! (well, I guess to be fair, I thought that rabbits didn't feel anything in their ears...)
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