Kids believe the darndest things

[Severen13]

What were some of the weird and off-the-wall things you believed as a kid?


I used to believe my grandparents lived in castles way up in the sky.

The only presidents the USA ever had were Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy and Reagan.

I believed superheroes got their powers by taking special pills, and if I asked Santa for those pills he would give them to me, too. Don't know where that one came from.

When I first started reading, I came across Mr. and Mrs. But my little mind didn't fully understand the concept of abbreviations and thought they were pronounced Mer and Mers.

I used to think that if your eyes and ears were covered with a flimsy cloth, you were utterly and completely blind and deaf.

When I saw the original "Amityville Horror" film, it was the first time I had heard the name "Jodie"--the name the daughter gives the evil demonic pig. For years after that I believed anyone named "Jodie" was evil.

What can I say? I was a weird kid.

[TTAZ]

My grandmother would say "pardon my French" whenever she swore, so for years and years I thought that "Bullshit" was a French word.

I thought thunder was God bowling, and lightning was when He made a strike.

I thought freckles came from angel kisses.

I asked my cousin what "the finger" meant and she kept whispering "fuck you" in my ear but she was whispering so quietly that I thought she said something about fog. I thought the finger was a weather warning.


That's all I can think of right now.

[AdminAssistant]

My Dad convinced me that chocolate milk came from brown cows.

My sister had an ear infection. When I asked her why she had cotton in her ears, she said her brain was too big and it was leaking out of her head. I totally believed her.

[LibraryLady]

As a child I was convinced of many weird things. I thought that:

1) Wearing galoshes in the house would damage my eyesight.

2) Opening an umbrella in the house was bad luck.

3) I'd get even sicker if I washed my hair while I had a cold. (Given the temperature of our house in the winter, that might have been a prudent thing to believe).

4) If I stuck my hand on a pencil point I was sure I'd get lead poisoning.

5) Bananas were 'Golden in the morning, Silver at Noon and Leaden at Night."

6) Stirring a batter counter-clockwise would unmix the batter.

[BarbieGirl]

We got my little brother to believe he had an older brother named Pete that got abducted by aliens and died some strange and horrible deaths (yes more than one death).

[Toujin]

I used to believe...

That if you left your car idling with the keys in the ignition for too long, the car would drive off by itself.

That no one had a birthday in January.

That Pat Sajak and Vanna White were married (why else would they be together all the time?)

That the host of 'Jeopardy' was named 'Jeopardy Alex Trebek'

That 'lightning bugs' and 'fireflies' were two different insects, and that 'lightning bugs' made lightning strike.

[HorrorFrogPrincess]

Eating the crust made your hair curly.

We still use that as an inside joke. XD

[Trayol]

I used to believe:

-Illinois never got tornadoes.
-TV shows were taped the day before they were shown; a week for cartoons.
-My dad's many, many lengthy tales (ex. wild west sheriff and astronaut)
-That my blanket was the impenetrable barrier between me and monsters.

[Shpepper]

Not my beliefs, but I did have my kids convinced for years that the car would not go if they didn't have their seatbelts on. I could make the car we had at the time turn over but not start. Then once they were buckled in, I would actually start the car. My son even tried to test it once and took his beatbelt off while I was driving. I saw what he was doing, turned the key and coasted to the side of the road. Yes, it was safe to do it at the time. He never tried that one again.

[flybye023]

I used to believe that if I took a nap I would get sick.

My dad had us kids convinced that if we could "catch" the afterimage of a camera flash we would end up with a copy of the picture.

That Arkansas was up in the sky kinda like the city in Empire Strikes Back.

[tropicsgoddess]

I used to believe that you could travel through time as a kid

My little sister L used to believe that Chicago was a state

Me and L used to make our youngest sister D believe she was adopted...yeah, pretty huh. That's being a kid for ya.

[Jester]

I don't remember being that gullible of a kid, but it might have had something to do with our parents.

And not that we believed him (we didn't), but our father's bedtime stories to us were.....unorthodox.

See, Dad didn't read to us from books. No, Dad made up his own stories. Involving his childhood pet. Herman. Who was a giraffe. A talking giraffe. That Dad's family kept on the fire escape. Because they "was too poor" to keep Herman anywhere else.*

And people wonder where I get it from!

*(No, my father didn't actually speak like that. He was a very well-spoken, educated man. He just did that for effect in the story.)

My little sister L used to believe that Chicago was a state

There are many grown adults that still think that that is true. You might be shocked how often I come across that one.

[hinakiba777]

Funny thing. My brother and I were just talking about that.

When he was little he believed something really cool (hehe) about what night and day meant. While eating ice cream he noticed that the bowl was clear when the ice cream had been eaten. So he thought that at night ice cream was scooped into the sky bowl (now his word just easier to understand this way.) So "they" scooped the ice cream into the bowl and it made night. As they slowly ate it up, the sky would become more clear. Once it was morning the ice cream would be all eaten. That's why morning comes gradually, because the ice cream needs to be all eaten before it's day.

He had many crazy ideas like that, but that one is my favorite.

Also on his sixth birthday the people on Seasame Street were singing about the number 6. He thought it was just for him.

Things I believed=
-Wearing you hat inside made your hair fall out
-If a monster was sleeping behind you, and you flipped over he couldn't get you if you kept your eyes shut.
-Also your dreams were a magic shield. If you just thought "Nothing can get me in my dreams", you'd be safe. This also reminded me that nightmares can't hurt me. Nightmare on Elm St. totally ruined this for me.
-My plush animals could fight nightmares. So I always needed one.
-"Homework" was when you brought home the stuff you made in school. (I was three and in preschool)
-My mom called going to bed "Blanket Harbour". Once when we were driving we went past a sign for "Sheet Harbour". I assumed this is where I went at night.
-Also I thought that everything outside of Cape Breton was not Canada. When we would drive back onto the Island after trips I'd always say "It's good to be back in Canada."


that's all i can think of right now

[Kogarashi]

My uncle (only two years older than me and one grade level ahead in school) convinced my sisters and I that translucent earthworms were leeches and that any plane we saw in the sky was probably Nazis so we should hide under bushes so they wouldn't see us and drop bombs on us. At one point, I also believed that if you stepped on a crack, you really would break your back (or your Mom's back, depending on the rhyme).

I used to believe:

-That my blanket was the impenetrable barrier between me and monsters.

But that one's actually true! ::steals baby blanket back from Daughter::

[hinakiba777]

I have another one from my brother.

So he has a bookshelf attached to his bed. I think he's traumatized by it due to an injury when he was really young. IT was severe.

The book shelf was the headboard of the bed, it was all one piece. And my brother was afraid of the space above the floor, behind the bed, and under the bookshelf. It was like a scary "cave nook"

Anyway when he was older than that, but still quite young he saw an episode of what he thinks was "Young Superman" with a creepy ventrioloquist dummy. He believed that in the nook between his bed and the bookshelf, sat the dummy. The dummy sat there with a fork, knife and dinner plate. My brother was sure that it would eat him if he looked into the nook.