Childhood misconceptions
J. Romano
United States
Denver
Colorado
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Childhood misconceptions... we've all had them.
I've found that many of them are very interesting, humorous, and believe it not, logical, so I've decided to share mine.
Feel free to share your own!
Incidentally, if you like these, you can read more in an "xkcd" forum at:
http://echochamber.me/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14367
and at the following website devoted to childhood misconceptions:
http://www.iusedtobelieve.com/
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Luke Morris
Japan
Nagoya
Aichi
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Teachers have a life outside of the classroom.
I remember seeing a teacher walking home in town one day years ago and nearly had a heart attack. Children and teachers lives just never really cross outside of school.
One day I was drinking in the local pub when back from university and saw a group of my old school teachers drinking and laughing away....
Now I'm a teacher and my brother's a teacher and work is only a small part of my wider life, though I'm sure the kids just think I sleep in the classroom and never leave it.
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Andy Foulke
United States
Florissant
Missouri
Welcome to Friedey's!
You want fries with that?
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When I was young my mother told me about the green flash phenomenon. She told me it was something you had to wake up really early to see. Of course the phenomenon is real, but not what I expected to see as a kid. I would expect to see a bright green flash from the sun that envelopes the whole sky and bathes everything on the ground in bright green light. In retrospect I consider it a cruel thing to tell a kid who is not a morning person. I'd be prying open my gummy eyelids, struggling to stay awake to see something that apparently rarely happens and is hard to see when it does.
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Davido
United States
Mather
California
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For the very longest time, I was convinced that the different colored M&M's actually had different flavors that I could "taste". Even a 'blind taste test' and empirical evidence of 'chocolate-ness' couldn't fully remove that belief
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Peter Millen
United Kingdom
Greyabbey
Northern Ireland
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As a result of reading too many American action comics, I became convinced that in the recent past the US had fought a war against an alien species called 'Gooks'.
Well that was how they were always named and the artwork made it clear that they weren't human...
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J. Romano
United States
Denver
Colorado
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When I was a teenager I volunteered to be a helper at VBS (Vacation Bible School) at church, helping an adult teacher teach little kids (about five years old).
One day the teacher had the little kids draw pictures of things God made that they were thankful for, and then have the kids show the rest of the class what they drew.
One little kid drew drops of blood and said he was thankful for blood. The teacher turned to the rest of the children and said, "Yes, God made blood."
Then one little girl remarked, "No way!"
(I guess at that age some kids have trouble believing God could have created such an "evil" thing as blood.)
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Tim Thorp
United States
Granite Falls
Washington
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I have no idea where this belief came from, or why I got it in the first place, but as a little kid I believed that when you were driving a car, the car didn't move, the ground under it moved. It may have been from a toy I remember seeing where you "steered" a car along the road, but the car was obviously standing still as the road unscrolled under it.
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Bruce Padget
United States
Pomona
California [CA]
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Wow...this list is bringing back memories.
Surprised this one hadn't come up -- TVs and radios, filled with tiny people doing all the things you saw and heard. The neighbor kids and I were sure this was how it worked.
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Bruce Padget
United States
Pomona
California [CA]
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I'm pretty sure I never bought this one, but my closest brother did.
A family tradition was to have mince pie on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Through some vagary of local dialect, my parents were raised calling it "mince meat pie," so we learned it by that name. So a couple days before the holiday, my dad and one of the older brothers would have to go out mince hunting.
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Kasey Relford
United States
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When I was about 5 or 6 years old, some awful neighborhood kids had me convinced that the cracks which had formed in the dirt in our backyard were a definite sign that an earthquake was coming soon which would swallow our house into the ground and destroy all of the things I loved. It took my mother hours to stop my crying. Our backyard was just very dry during the hot Georgia summer and cracks in the dried red-mud were literally everywhere.
I still hate those kids to this day.
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Larry Welborn
United States
Anderson
South Carolina
Way to go, Bubba.
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I was a child during the sixties when we would get nightly updates about the war in Vietnam. When the newscaster spoke of guerilla warfare, I heard it as "gorilla" warfare and imagined that we were fighting an advanced race of gorillas. Sort of a real life Planet of the Apes.
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J. Romano
United States
Denver
Colorado
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My dad said that when he was really young he thought that cars went forward by rapidly turning the wheel back and forth. (Evidently he didn't know about the gas pedal.)
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Eric Hinrichs
United States
St. Louis
Missouri
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As a kid my street address number was 6044 and my zip code was 66044. For years I thought a zip code was just your street number with a 6 in front of it. I told my mother that it was silly to include the zip code when writing an address because anyone can simply add a 6 to the number. I can still remember her puzzled look.
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Alexander E. Stevens
United States
Harrisburg
Pennsylvania
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Beyond any rational explanation, when I was quite little, I had surmised with stubborn certainty that my belly-button was a sort of auxiliary stomach specialized for digesting "junk food."
I like to think about this today in attempts to figure out what spark of genius produces such inanities. I wish to tap into it at will.
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J Fro
United States
North Tonawanda
United States
I just want to say, God, on behalf of all of us thank you for all of the good things we do in your name, like charity and forgiveness. That’s an idea we would never come up with. That’s for sure. You know that better than anybody.
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In elementary school the teacher would yell at children when they left the lights on by saying "What do you think; your father works at the electric company?"
Mine did...
I thought we got power for free.
(not true btw- at all!)
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Davido
United States
Mather
California
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Yep, those elementary school Fire Drills. Our signal made sort of a harsh buzzing sound. You know, kind of like a hand power drill that my Dad had in his home shop. So I thought that the Principal got out his saw horses, put on a 2 x 4 board, and let loose with his "Fire Drill" which is what we heard over the intercom
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Brandon Bernard
United States
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
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When I was very young, after watching episodes of "who's the father?" on Maury, I always asked myself, "why don't they have any 'who's the mother?' episodes?".
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Kendrick Martin
United States
Tigard
OR
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I used to think that if we watched something on TV where they were watching TV, they were actually watching real life. So somewhere there was a TV show where somebody was watching my life.
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Adam Alleman
United States
Denver
Colorado
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I was always told that I was born on a full moon. Because of this I thought everyone was born on the moon and it just happened to be full that night.
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Dale Donovan
United States
Kenosha
Wisconsin
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I grew up in Kenosha, WI in the '70s, and in one part of town, there was a Burger King and a Dairy Queen right next to one another. To my young brain, that displayed a remarkable sense of symmetry.
It wasn't until years later that I realized these two establishments were not ALWAYS arrayed in this manner across the great USA.
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♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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We had a side-by-side refrigerator when I was younger, and I never, ever saw my parents open both doors at the same time. Furthermore, when I saw them move from one side of the fridge to the other, they always seemed to time it so that just as one door closed, they opened the other. For some reason, I got it in my head that a refrigerator would explode if both doors stayed open at the same time. I'm not sure when I outgrew this notion (probably when I was over at a friend's house, and saw both doors open), but to this day, I still wait for one door to close before opening the other.
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46.
Board Game: Bus
[Average Rating:6.69 Overall Rank:1164]
Mike Kollross
Canada
Carvel
Alberta
Pew pew pew!!!
I'm a member of the Game Artisans of Canada
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I was convinced as a small child that my Dad worked on the bus. He worked for a mining company and the bus would come by in the morning and pick him up and later in the day it would drop him off at the same place. I just assyumed he stayed on the bus all day.
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W M Shubert
United States
Portland
Oregon
KGS is the #1 web site for playing go over the internet. Visit now!
Yes, I really am that awesome.
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When I was little I asked my dad what he did for a job. He said he was an engineer. I thought that was the coolest thing ever, because he got to drive a train all day. Years later I found out he was an electrical engineer.
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W M Shubert
United States
Portland
Oregon
KGS is the #1 web site for playing go over the internet. Visit now!
Yes, I really am that awesome.
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Somehow I got the idea that television signals travelled slowly through neighborhoods, so the show I watch today might not make it to your TV for another day or two (or maybe you already got it).
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Caleb Edwards
United States
New York
New York
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When I was little, I thought that there was a man in a big office under the streets who controlled all the traffic lights. Whenever I was stuck at a red light (or waiting for a walk signal) a bunch of times, I figured he was mad at me. (I also thought he could be visited by going through the manholes).
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David Summers
United States
Moscow
Idaho
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In kindergarten, I once asked to use the restroom. The teacher asked if it was an emergency. Images of ambulances and firetrucks popped into my head, and I responded it was not. To this day, I can hold it for a pretty long time.
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. . . I guess I should have clarified that it was from my youthful American perspective.
