Aren’t kids precious? Like sponges, they absorb anything they’re given—for better or worse. These Redditors swallowed their pride to share the wackiest and most downright foolish beliefs they held into childhood (and sometimes long after that…). How many “Birds and the Bees” stories are there, exactly? When does inventive discipline lead to undisciplined imagination? Grow up with these adorably shocking stories of the stupidest things we believed as children.
1. Ah, The Old Toy Story Method of Crime Prevention
I thought burglary was a profession, and that criminals’ shifts started when the sun set. They'd be on all night robbing houses. To calm my fears, I would put my blinds up a little, lay down in a pile of stuffed animals and freeze, staring out the window. My thought was I'd look like a doll and if a burglar saw me through the window, they wouldn't realize I was a human and then I could get up and call 9-1-1 when they looked away. I fell asleep in that stuffed animal pile every night for two years.
2. A Balanced Part of a Cold Breakfast
When I was a kid, I thought ice cream sandwiches were literally two pieces of bread with ice cream in the middle. I really wanted one. I went to ask my mom if I could have one while she was napping and she half-consciously said we didn't have any. I said, that's okay! I'll make one! She said nothing. I quickly learned ice cream sandwiches were not, in fact, two pieces of white bread with a spoonful of vanilla ice cream in the middle.
Wikimedia Commons, Mr. Granger
3. The Birds and The Balls
When I was about six, I used to think sex was just a hug because my parents called it a “special cuddle,” and I knew it had something to do with the balls. S0, I thought when a man and women hugged the balls went through the man’s skin and into the woman’s body, then either came back or regrew? I’m a little fuzzy on that detail, but I concluded that if two men hugged, they would just swap balls, so I punched myself in the balls, went and hugged my brother for the ultimate prank. I asked him, “Do your balls hurt?” He was like “No?” So realized I had just punched myself in the balls for no reason.
4. A Trunk in My Junk (My Belly)
The dumbest thing I believed was that if I ate any kind of seed a tree would grow out of my stomach. For example, I have the weird childhood fear of apples because I was afraid if I ate the seed, I’d have an apple tree growing inside me. I remember this one time I ate a sunflower seed when I was with a group of friends. The older guy in the group—I was about 5, he was about 8 or 9—told me I was going to die in three days because of it. Scariest three days of my life, and as a child, I didn’t tell anyone.
5. What Goes Up Must Come Down
I noticed that I was able to jump off of the playground and land on my feet and be perfectly fine, so my child mind immediately decided I was a superhero and could land from any height and be perfectly fine. I went to my friend's house, jumped off his roof, and the next thing I remember is crying until my mom picked me up.
6. When a Mommy Loves Spit Very Much…
The whole concept of how babies were made. I thought I was freaking Sherlock Holmes having cracked this huge case that the adults didn’t want kids to know. Here’s what my young, young self-deduced about reproduction. I thought kissing makes babies—when the woman eats the man's saliva and it grows into a baby in her stomach.
This only occurs under very specific circumstances though, as follows: the woman has to be extremely pampered and happy for this to happen, which is the purpose of the wedding. I thought only married women had babies. The wedding is a big party for the woman’s pleasure and to get her happy enough to grow a baby from spit.
That’s why the kiss is a big deal in the wedding. The baby will continue to grow so long as the woman remains happy enough over a certain threshold. This is why you have to be nice to pregnant women. Because 6/7-year-old me thought that if the woman becomes too sad, she will digest the baby. This was my explanation for why women were sad about miscarriages.
The woman cannot become too hungry or she will also digest the baby. This is why pregnant women eat so much to make sure they never become hungry. She also has to eat special foods that the baby can have so it can grow—eating for two. During pregnancy, the woman cannot poop, only pee. This is to prevent the woman from prematurely pooping out the baby.
The woman’s stomach gets progressively larger because so much food is stopped up in there like a stockpile for the baby. Once the baby is strong enough from growing it will kick open the blockage in the woman’s stomach (why the baby kicks/practices kicking) and all of the blocked up food and waste fluids and stuff will all fall out (water breaking) and then the baby will crawl out of the woman’s ass and then a baby is born. That’s the miracle of childbirth, according to me in elementary school.
7. Sorry, But Those Are Sold Separately
Sometime around age 11, I heard about intimate toys, but I never saw a photo and was confused as to what they were or how they worked. My assumption was that it was an erotic toy, but instead of going outward I thought it went "in.” I thought women were walking around with an intimate toy inside of them while just shopping or whatever. For a few years whenever I saw a woman in public smiling, I thought that maybe they had one strapped "in" them.
8. It’s Not Easy Being Green
Well, for years, I thought the Smurfs were green. We lived in communist Poland and our once-color TV had turned into a mostly green/white TV over time. I was shocked, and a teenager, when I realized the little freaks were a different color.
9. Movies Take Time…But Not Take Much Time
You know in movies when they use a child actor to portray an adult actor in a flashback or as a kid? I thought that they started making the movie when the main actor for the role was a kid and just waited a super long time for them to age and then continued making the movie. I simply didn't conceive of the idea that they might cast a different person to play the same character at a different age.
I most vividly remember this when the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out. I was amazed they waited the 10 years or something for the actors for Will and Elizabeth to age to make the rest of the movie. My mom was so confused about what I was even talking about when I mentioned it. I think I was 7 at the time. Kids are pretty stupid.
10. I’m Seeing Double!
I thought Santa hated me because he didn't give me presents on Christmas. I'm Jewish and my parents didn't want me to be that kid who told his classmates that Santa doesn't exist, so I ended up believing in Santa until I was about 8, when I saw two mall Santas get into a fight in the parking lot of the mall.
11. Tick Tock, Get off the Pot
So back in the 60s, there was a period where people were buying baby alligators as pets. Seemed like every store everywhere had baby alligators. Well, people quickly tired of them, and started flushing them down the toilets. In big cities, news stories about alligators living in the sewers proliferated. We lived close to NYC and frequently went there to visit family.
My two older brothers convinced me (I was about 7 years old) that the alligators in the sewers would get me if I wasn't careful. Having seen the news stories already, I totally believed this. So, every time we went to NYC, I would circle around every sewer grate. I can only imagine what my parents thought of this. Good times...
12. My Grandpa, My Hero, My Fraud
My granddad was in the merchant navy when he was younger. He had a massive scar from his shoulder onto his chest. When I was little, he told me that he got that scar after Geronimo shot him with a bow and arrow. He used to wait for him in the bushes when he got off the ships. He told me all about the adventures he had, having been rivals with Geronimo.
I honestly thought every bush I walked past Geronimo was waiting to jump out. I didn't find out until after he died that he got the scar when a bicycle spoke went through his shoulder. I've never been so disappointed in all my life. For years I genuinely thought my granddad traveled the world fighting his arch nemesis, Indiana Jones style.
13. Hear Me Roar
My dad was into UFOs. So naturally, he got me into that stuff too. There were many things I just independently came to believe. For example, UFOs never appear when it's raining at night. This may have been the trigger for my love of rainy nights. Also, alien abductions stop after 4 AM. How convenient for them. Certain environmental factors can precipitate a UFO sighting, like oddly colored clouds or sudden temperature changes.
Playing loud noises outside or being alone increases the chances of being abducted. I wondered if people who drove around at night with their car radios blasting were abducted multiple times. Having lights on in your house during a UFO sighting makes them more likely to abduct you.
14. From Daisy to Toadette
Our neighbors had little rings of mushrooms that grew frequently in their front yard, probably b/c the mom who lived there gardened a lot. My brother told me, when I was about 3 years old, that if I touched a toadstool, I’d shrink. He claims he got the idea from Super Mario, even though the inverse is true when you come in contact with a mushroom in any of those games...
Fast forward a week or so, and one day in my ballet class, one of my teachers is gone. I remember her because she had bright red hair, and I thought she was the coolest chick ever. A day or two after she had left, we got a new girl in the class...she also had bright red hair, but was my size. I thought FOR SURE, "Oh my god, she touched a toadstool and she SHRANK and now she has to RETAKE THIS CLASS..."
My brother also told me Pepsi was beer, so I wouldn't drink it, since I knew beer was "bad." He was a clever boy, and I was pretty slow on the uptake.
15. Must See (or Else) Television
I remember watching the series finale of Friends when I was 10 years old. My parents kept saying it was the last episode ever, and I watched it with them. After it was over, I went to bed and cried. I thought that once a TV show was over, it would never be shown again. I thought that I had just witnessed a part of history that would never be seen again in the future.
My mom had to come into my bedroom and console me, telling me that it would play again in reruns. I have told this story a few times before, and always said I was about 6 years old. After looking up the air date of the final episode, it turns out I was actually 10 and a half, and I'm pretty embarrassed by that fact.
16. The DeLorean This is Not
I grew up poor in Colombia. One of my uncles bought a car and gave every single family member a ride around the block. When I finally got to see the inside of that car, I thought I was in a spaceship. Anyways I remember noticing the blinker arrows by the odometer. I could see them come on and off randomly, left, right, right etc. What I couldn't see? My uncle turning ‘em on and off. I was 7 when this happened. I learned that the car is in fact NOT telling you where to turn at age 15.
17. Colonialism is Confusing to Everyone
For the longest time, I was confused about the whole Native American Indians and Indians from India. The child version of me presumed that they just really hated cowboys and went to America to put an end to those poor Western renegades. I received quite the shock when I was 11 and learned the truth…but, to be fair, I am not from America. What a day that was!
18. The Body Wastes No Space
I believed that when a woman was pregnant with anything more than twins, the babies weren't all in her stomach area because there was no way they would fit. At the time, there was a news story about someone who had sextuplets and I thought the setup was two in the stomach, one in each calf, and one in the underside of each arm.
19. Get Energized Responsibly
That there was a legal age (13) for caffeine, like the way there is one for alcohol. When I was in high school, I saw some small kid buy a coffee from McDonald’s and remarked that it was illegal. My friends still make fun of me for it.
20. Bad Kids End up Doing the Time Warp (and Triggering Amber Alert)
This is somewhat embarrassing, but hey, I was only a kid at the time. When I was around 6, my uncle told me that for kids who misbehave, weekends (especially Saturdays for me, since I loved Saturday morning cartoons) would not come around. Instead, apparently, the week would restart, and the weekend would be skipped over, for Monday.
It turns out that my parents had found out, since they wanted to figure out why I (out of my other siblings) changed all of the sudden, from my uncle. They decided to go with it. I only found out the truth when one day, I accidentally dropped food all over my dad’s car when he was picking us up from school. I felt so bad, trying to clean up the mess, but my mom saw and told my dad.
When we got home, he told me that, unfortunately, I lost my weekend. Thinking it was Monday, I ended up waking up early, getting dressed and walking to school. I don’t remember how long I waited, looking back it makes sense that I was gullible, as the school was completely empty. My parents ended up searching for me, calling relatives, and luckily, finding me outside the school gate. I had never seen my mom so mad, she ended up chewing out my uncle.
21. Before Download Culture, It was Simply That Easy
I was fortunate enough to have a computer when I was growing up back in the early 90s. We had a few games on floppy disc that I played all the time, but I always wanted more and couldn't convince my parents to buy them for me. One day, my dumb ass thought "If I just scribble out the name of the game on the disc and write the name of the game I want...that should do the trick!"
I told my dad about my idea and he just shook his head. He was probably ashamed of the idiot he was raising. I wasn't discouraged though. I grabbed a pen and scribbled "Ghostbusters" on a copy of some flight simulator game, popped it in and fired it up. I was disappointed. I'm also still not a smart man.
22. A, B, C, D for Disappointment
My brother is four years older than me. I remember a moment where I had been practicing writing letters of the alphabet for weeks and my older brother comes home, shows my parents a piece of paper and they exclaim "You got straight As!" and celebrated with him. I just sat there staring at my piece of paper wondering why they weren't as excited about my penmanship.
23. “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!” –Charles Darwin
I knew about evolution, but when I was really little, I thought Pokevolution applied to real animals, between species. For example, turtles evolved into tortoises, hedgehogs evolved into porcupines, foxes into wolves, seals into sea lions into walruses, etc. Probably my dumbest idea was that llamas turn into camels.
24. That Would Make Hygiene Much Easier
This is about 2010 or so, when I was in middle school. As a girl, I heard some guys talking about “jerking off” and I misinterpreted the words in the worst way possible since I didn’t know what they meant. I put my keen and penetrating mind to the task and thought about it. Finally, I figured it out and I was so proud of myself.
There was only one logical conclusion. Wait for it...It was obviously how a guy removed their private parts via a jerk-like motion. Simple! I didn’t know why they would take it off and thought they could just casually carry it around in their backpack or something. I have since learned that this particular private part is not, in fact, detachable. I guess I thought they were like erotic toys, before I learned what those were and what they were actually used for.
25. Cuteness Comes at a Mortal Cost
Finally, my time has come. I believed polyester was made from polyester animals, small chinchilla-like creatures. I was always very fond of animals and at some point, I started checking what my clothes were made of. So just to be sure I asked my mum if polyester really doesn't contain anything from animals. So, she decided to troll me! And for confirmation, I asked my sister and she joined in! I was so upset thinking cute little animals had to die for my shorts. They eventually had mercy and told me the truth. But they still laugh about it.
26. The Taste of Little Black Lies
I don’t know if this is something specific to where I’m from, but if my folks tried to see if I was lying, they would tell me to stick out my tongue after saying something. They would usually say your tongue is black or has black spots to bluff me into confessing that I lied. Still can’t believe that I fell for that stuff.
27. The Truth is Out There and It Lives in the Trash
Back when I was a kid, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street were broadcast one after the other on PBS. The former show, in case you don't remember, would always start off with Mister Rogers speaking (and singing) to the camera, after which a toy trolley would go through a little hole in the wall, into The Neighborhood of Make Believe.
This was not—as I eventually came to understand—a physical place that happened to be located in Mister Rogers' back yard, but rather a magical realm that could only be reached via that aforementioned tunnel. Now, let's pause there for a moment, and turn our attention to Sesame Street. One of the mainstay characters in residence on Sesame Street–which was a physical location in the real world, at least as far as I was able to tell–was Oscar the Grouch, who lived in a metal garbage can just outside of an apartment building.
While that choice of dwelling always seemed questionable to me, the thing that really left me scratching my head was the fact that the green-furred Muppet apparently had a herd of elephants living in there with him. These pachyderms were never seen (save for on rare occasions when they'd reach their trunks out of the garbage can and trumpet about one thing or another), but they nonetheless had every appearance of being quite content to stay in what should have been far too small a space for them.
On their own, these two details–the existence of a magical realm in Mister Rogers' wall and the fact that Oscar the Grouch somehow kept enormous pets in his home–really shouldn't have been the grounds for any kind of ridiculous theories, but I managed to combine them after a particularly memorable episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, during which Big Bird paid a visit to The Neighborhood of Make Believe.
It suggested that the two shows took place in the same universe, which suggested in turn that the real world (in which Sesame Street was located, remember) was connected to the magical one via other passageways than the one through which Mister Rogers' trolley would travel. After all, I couldn't imagine an eight-foot-tall fowl crawling through that tiny tunnel.
As you can imagine, this realization prompted me to start questioning where the other portals might be located...and that was when it dawned on me: There was no possible way that Oscar the Grouch could keep elephants in his garbage can unless that same garbage can was secretly a portal to a much larger space. That space, as became obvious, was actually The Neighborhood of Make-Believe, and Big Bird had somehow bribed Sesame Street's most cantankerous resident for the privilege of traveling between the two realms.
This was how I became convinced, if only for a brief period, that there were adventures waiting to be had just beneath the lids of any refuse containers that I might encounter in the real world. Sadly, after the first time that they found their four-year-old trying to burrow into a trash can, my parents told me that I wasn't allowed to embark on those journeys until I was an adult. Still...maybe those are my summer vacation plans sorted out.
28. The United States of Jose
I was homeschooled, so my mom taught me through a program. One day, we were going over the origin of “the star-spangled banner,” and she jokingly said the lyrics are “Jose can you see” and said the song was written for a Jose, who was close to the author. I didn’t realize she was joking at the time and believed it for a good couple of years after that.
29. Welcome to the Doll-Hell
Asked my mom if voodoo dolls were real. She gave me this throwaway answer along the lines of, "for those people who believe in it." So, I was so afraid to even think about it because that would mean I believe in it and someone could get me with a doll. You know when you lay your head on your pillow and there's a very slight rustling in your ear? Yeah, I was convinced that was a needle coming for me. Slept with my hand in the way for a long time.
30. Clear as Day? Not If You’re This Kid
I was convinced the sky wasn't blue. I was always so confused whenever anyone said anything about the sky being blue—I actually thought maybe it was just a fairy tale or saying. I have never been colorblind or had any issues with sight, but I was absolutely convinced the sky only ranged from grey to white. I assume that my little elementary school eyes could indeed see the blue sky, but my mind was made up so much that it was grey, that I can remember not being able to see the blue. I remember being so frustrated that people called it blue, but I couldn't see it.
31. Could I Be Anymore Geographically Accurate?
I thought Yemen didn't exist. You know, the episode of Friends, where Chandler tells Janice that his work is sending him to Yemen just so she'd leave him alone? Yeah, the scene where he suddenly comes up with Yemen sounded to me like he'd just made up a name on the spot, and I never questioned it. Took me a good few years to realize that Yemen was actually a thing because I kept hearing people talk about it on TV.
32. Be Proud of Your Love Pits
I'm not sure if this is some sort of common cute little story kids are told in other parts of the world, but I always had a ton of freckles as a kid and was told that freckles were angel kisses. This is innocent enough until one day while exploring my body I noticed I had one freckle on my private parts. I became horrified as a young boy wondering why angels were kissing me down there.
33. The Littlest Relic Hunter
I have always been a big medieval/fantasy nerd, even when I was a little kid. When I was only, I guess, 5 or 6 years old, I went to my grandmother's house for a summer vacation and while I was there, one of my aunts told me she had found this treasure map buried in the yard when she was working in her garden. We looked it over, started deciphering clues and things and eventually figured out where the treasure was.
It was in this circle of trees about a half mile from the house. We went out there and started looking around, and I found a sword sticking out of one of the trees. Boy, I felt like I was the world's greatest treasure hunter. I got that sword out, played with it for a few hours as I was riding my high on the discovery. After I got tired and it started to get late, I began to question things.
Why wasn't this sword rusted if it had been outside for so many years? Why wasn't this sword sharp? I had also grown suspicious of the scabbard because it looked like it was made of plastic. I finally realized it was all a big lie and I totally bought into it and believed it all. I still enjoyed the experience, and I liked playing with that sword.
It was a genuine metal sword; it was just extremely dull and smaller, so it was easier for a little kid to wield. But I felt very foolish afterward, I still feel foolish to this day, for actually believing it was some old-ass sword that I had discovered by following some treasure map.
34. Which Door Will Your Lunch Choose?
I always heard people say “it went down the wrong way” when they choked on something. Little me automatically assumed that humans had separate “holes” for food and drink and when we swallow, it just automatically sorts out. Believed that until I was like 12 years old, when I swallowed a French fry wrong in the car with my mom.
I said that it must of went down my drink hole and my mom was super confused and had to explain to me how swallowing food actually works.
35. The Final Destination
It was the 80s, and my family was at some shopping mall. The mall they had this group ride that looked like a space shuttle or something, where you’d presumably get inside, close the door something would project on the screen while hydraulics shifted and banked the ride to make it feel real. I must’ve been five or six and watched people enter but never leave, more people would get in and the ride would start again.
I didn’t realize that there was an exit door to the other side—hell, I’m just guessing now even—but I presumed that it took people... somewhere. I freaked out when my dad said, “Let’s go on the ride” and even after he decided to leave me with my mother and go without me I begged and dragged him away from going on the ride and being taken away from me to some other universe or whatever. I’m curious to know what the ride was, now.
36. You Can’t Spell “Human” Without “Hum(p)”
When I was a kid, my teacher said humans were mammals. I wasn’t paying much attention and believed that she said humans were actually camels. So, being the lover of fun facts that I am, I told everyone I knew that humans were actually camels. No one ever corrected me. This went on for years until one day I heard that humans were mammals again and it all clicked.
37. Manners Don’t Stop Applying When We Go Underground
I felt the need to personally thank the driver of the subway train every single time we took it. I thought it would be rude and impolite to not do so. It must have been so time-consuming and embarrassing for my mom. The driver cabin had tinted windows and I demanded the driver lowered them so I could thank him. I was like 5 or 6.
Similarly, I was taught to give my seat to the elderly or pregnant women. One time, as soon as the door opened and an old looking man entered the wagon, I bolted from my seat and ran to him, grabbed him by the hand and brought him to the empty seat. Thank god I didn't do that to a fat lady, or my mom could have died from embarrassment.
38. If You Play the Game of Thrones, You Win or You Get a Tummy Ache
The Dairy Queen and Burger King were married and ruled over a faraway kingdom of fast food. There's a lot of expansion material here, folks. Keep it up and I'll give you the complete updated lore of my innocent childhood fantasy about fast food mascots. In the faraway land of Inanoute, The Dairy Queen and Burger King rule from the White Castle.
Their decrees tempered by the wisdom of their court magician and vizier, Jack of the Bockse, they hold sovereignty over the Fry Folk. Their daughter, Princess Wendy, is as beautiful as the Inanoute itself. She is betrothed to the brave knight, Carl II, of Hardee. The kingdom is protected by the great hero, Whataguy, and his cohort, Attaboy, while the noble Colonel Sanders commands the Royal Guard, composed of the five finest soldiers in the King's army.
But all is not well; dark forces gather in the White Castle's evil counterpart, the Krystal, where the wizard McDonald plots to kidnap the Princess, force her to marry him, and usurp the throne of Inanoute.
39. My Dad Was a Build-a-Fear Workshop
My birth parents split when I was four. My mom soon remarried a guy who, while an amazing stepdad, was profoundly the polar opposite of my old man, and it made dad freaking utterly crazy. So, any chance he got, my father would lay something outrageous on me that he knew would make me look askance at my sweet-natured stepdad.
My favorite is the time—I must have been 6 or 7 by then—that, out of the blue, Dad asked: "Hey, what kind of beer does Bob drink?" I told him that he drank Rolling Rock and my brilliant jerk father instantly replied. "Oh, Rolling Rock! I'll tell you something amazing about Rolling Rock...Have you ever looked at the can? It has polar bears frolicking under a waterfall, right? Well, here's why that is. In Pennsylvania, where they bottle Rolling Rock, they maintain a nature preserve that is full of nothing BUT polar bears. Well, once a month, they send a bunch of mean men inside the area with the bears and they chase them around in Jeeps and trucks, scaring all the bears. Then, once they're certain that they all have upset tummies, they herd them all into this big pool of water at the top of the waterfall, right? Well, Boo, the moment those bears get in that water, they start peeing and vomiting and defecating everywhere... Then, all the fluids water flowers over the waterfall and they have men at the bottom with barrels and they collect that water. And THAT is how they make Rolling Rock beer."
And then he just went on with the rest of his day. Look, in the back of my mind, I knew that had to be a tall tale, right? But, dang it, as an elementary-aged kid, there was always just a tiny part of me that thought my stepdad was unknowingly drinking foul polar bear excrement.
40. Never Too Young to Build Her Confidence
When I was a kid, my two cousins from India were staying with our family as they were trying to settle in the country and become US citizens. My cousins were in their mid-20s, fully grown men. One night I challenged them to an arm-wrestling match. They acted like the couldn't keep their arm up and they were breathing hard and stuff.
And I beat both of them and they told me how strong I was as a 7-year-old girl. I thought I was hot stuff until I got to college and randomly challenged a guy to an arm-wrestling match and lost pretty quickly. I literally sat there dumbfounded and was like "wait, how can this be...." And then it hit me.
41. A Spoon of BS Helps the Story Go Down
My grandfather used to have three serving spoons with the German Luftwaffe emblem stamped on them. During World War II, he was stationed out in the Middle East, and throughout my childhood, he used to tell me a story of how he and a small group of fellow soldiers came across a German tank. For two whole days, they played a game of cat and mouse, battling against the tank until finally, it ran out of ammo and they were able to overthrow it.
Once they captured the crew, they searched the tank and my grandfather found the spoons inside, so he kept them as trophies of the victory. Fast forward years later: my grandfather passed away when I was in my 30s. Shortly after his funeral, I was talking to my grandmother, and I mentioned the spoons and the victory that my grandfather had enjoyed so much. I’ll never forget her words: “German tank? Don’t be bloody stupid. He bought those spoons in an end-of-war sale in Cardiff.”
42. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
My mother convinced, and I mean CONVINCED 6-year-old me that meatballs grew on trees. I got sent to the principal for the tantrum I pulled and there was an emergency parent-teacher meeting over this. My aunt had a tree that grew these brownish textured fruits the size of a small bouncy ball that from a distance to—me near-sighted, doesn't have glasses yet—looked liked meatballs.
This tree was protected by a giant wasp nest. My mother and aunt got drunk and convinced me that the wasps protected and ate the meatballs off the tree and that you harvested them like honey, putting the wasps to sleep and gathering them quick. They obviously didn't have a harvesting kit. I fell for it hook line and sinker, and about a month later, threw a tantrum at my teacher because obviously, they exist, I saw one!
My mom lost it laughing in the meeting and had to correct the problem and was far more careful what "funny fibs" she told me. I would believe anything.
Sources: Reddit, ,
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