Not only do kids say the darndest things, but they also believe some wacky stuff. We’ve all been there—with unlimited imagination and no real experience, kid logic makes us laugh now, but there was a legitimate belief system there when we were young. If old film and television were black and white, then of course color wasn’t invented until the middle of the 20th century. Duh.
But it wasn’t just our imagination that led us to some crazy beliefs, often adults would coax us into believing some nonsense in the name of a good laugh. From the drunken uncle to our parents telling us some “fact” to get us to do things, the child’s brain just soaks everything up. That’s not too hard to believe, though, as we still believe a lot of what other adults tell us. Ha! Nothing has changed!
Sure, we can go around asking people on the streets about some of their most ridiculous childhood beliefs, but then we wouldn’t get the unabashed honesty that we can get with Reddit. Here are some of the most absurd things that people on the front page of the internet have confessed to believing.
1. Flaming Trash
That fire in a toilet would get bigger.
That's how I set my parents' garbage can on fire.
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2. Taking Fire Fighting To A New Level
I thought that firemen burned down buildings.
Let me explain: when I was young, our neighbors moved out. Apparently they sold their house to the fire department for use in training. So every day for like a week the firemen rolled up and set the house on fire. I didn't quite catch the part where they put it out again I guess. From my own observations I then concluded that firemen set buildings on fire. The name made sense and I'd seen it with my own eyes so I had no reason to question my knowledge.
Fast forward a few years. My parents are leaving me with a babysitter or something and say something like "if anything happens, call the firemen". My face contorts into a look of absolute horror. "Why would you do that?!" I ask, horrified. "The firemen burn down houses!"
After a confused conversation my parents figured out what the heck was thinking and gently corrected me.
3. Cotton In The Sky With Diamonds
I was convinced clouds were made of cotton. Unballed cotton, in my head, drifted on the wind like balloons. It was made in big factories and it was an actual job you could have picking up cotton and releasing it into the wind to make clouds.
4. Remember To Salt The Water First
Well my grandparents lived near the beach. As a child I used to believe that the reason why water in the sea is salty is because my grandma would scatter salt EVERY morning. Her doing that vividly lives in my mind up until today, I don't even know how I've come to imagine that as a child.
5. Dogs Are From Mars, Cats Are From Venus
I thought dogs and cats were the same animal—dogs were the boys, cats were the girls.
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6. Pancakes Must Be Nasty
When I was a kid, I thought pancakes were sponges. My sisters used sponges to wipe down the table and countertops after dinner, so I assumed pancakes were sponges full of coffee grounds and Italian dressing.
Every Wednesday when I was small, my mother, grandmother and I would go to this pancake house for lunch, and my mom would have to go to the McDonalds across the street to get me a burger because there was no way I was eating a nasty, germ-filled pancake. One day, my grandmother begged me to try a bite of pancake, insisting I would love it. I didn't want to, but I did want to please my grandmother, so I took a bite—which I promptly threw up. She got mad and my mom got mad at her for forcing me to do it.
I finally tried pancakes when I was about 30 and found I really liked them.
7. Blink To Conserve Eye Energy
I used to think eyes were like batteries and that eventually when you grow old you would run out of battery and become blind. I thought closing your eyes was a way to save battery so I would spend a few minutes every day with my eyes closed, thinking about the awesome things I would be able to see when I was old with all this time I was saving.
8. Spittle It Good
Grew up living in an apartment with a balcony that just had some renovations done on it. There was a drop of clear epoxy that had dripped down from an overhead beam. The thing looked like a frozen drop of spittle. I must have spittle on that same spot twice a day for over six months trying to make it bigger, and was always sad that I had no effect on it.
9. Filling Your Body With Chocolate Milk
I had no idea there was such a thing as a digestive system. The reason I got a chill after drinking chocolate milk was because my body was hollow and everything just kind of flowed into my feet as my body filled up.
10. Robot Chicken Is Real
When I was young, I was under the impression that cartoons were made by using a normal camera with a special light. So it was actual people or robots made to look like people. It took me a long time to be convinced that it was drawn by hand. I'm not sure how I came to this decision. I guess it made more sense to me than people drawing every single frame, one at a time.
11. How To Get Your Kid To Shut Up
When I was little, my dad told me that each person only had a limited number of words they could speak in their life. I'm still not very talkative.
12. I Scream And Only I Scream For Ice Cream
That only my family ate ice cream, no one else. Then I heard an announcement in the grocery store for a sale on ice cream and realized other people ate it too. I have no idea why I was under that impression.
13. Mr. Hankie And Friends Live
I used to think my pee and poop had their own feelings and personalities. I thought there was a whole city in the sewers, where they lived, married and worked.
14. We Were Mislead
Grown-ups are trustworthy, know what they are doing, and live by the same decent rules about sharing and fair play that we were taught in kindergarten.
15. Quit Complaining
I didn't realize that gas prices were by the gallon. I literally thought it was just $2. I was always confused when my parents would complain about how expensive gas was. I never brought it up because I knew my mom would go "Money doesn't grow on trees" or something like that.
When I really found out I went "Dang, gas is expensive".
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16. What Is Lost In Vegas Stays In Vegas
Lost Vegas was a place you could go to find all your lost stuff.
17. FREE MONEY
Created a throwaway because my brother uses the site and will know damned well it's me.
When I was about five my mother would take me shopping with her.
She'd hit a few stores and use her credit card everywhere except for one small, family-owned, bakery, where she'd use cash and be given change instead of a paper slip.
So I saved up the exact change for a cookie from that bakery and asked my older brother, who was allowed around the block, to get me said cookie.
When he came back with it, I asked for my change and he told me that I didn't get any because I gave the exact amount.
I kicked up a fuss and tearfully insisted that the bakery always gives change.
I had basically formed the notion that everywhere gave you useless paper when you bought something except for the bakery, which gave you money for buying stuff, and called it change.
18. When The Clock Strikes 13
My Dad told me that when I turned 13, I'd turn into a boy. I believed him.
19. First Born Rules
Since I was the first born, I thought all the other kids in my class were the first born. When a classmate announced their Mom was pregnant and they were getting a new sibling, I thought my Mom was also pregnant.
20. Is That You Malia?
My parents are named Barry and Michelle. As a youngster I thought that when I grew up and got married, my name would become Barry and my wife would become Michelle.
21. Days And Nights Of Our Lives
That the sun and the moon were at 12 and 6 to each other, on a big disc. I had a book as a kid with a moveable cardboard wheel, one half was a daytime scene the other the night, and the picture in the book would change as you turned the wheel. Naturally I just thought that was the case for years.
22. SpongeBrain SquareEyes
If I spend too many hours watching TV, my eyes would end up being square shaped. I believed this until I was nine, so if I watched TV for more than a few hours I used to cover my eyes to only watch half of the TV 'cause logic. I bet I looked like I moron at sleepovers, thanks dad...
23. United States Of Richard Stanz
I thought that I was pledging allegiance to the Republic for Richard Stanz.
24. Middle Aged
I used to think BC meant "before Christ," AD meant "after passing" and the 33 years in between were the Middle Ages.
25. The Stuffed Animals Are Here To Help
Like, for example, I used to think that stuffed animals had personalities, or that there were people outside my curtains at night who could hear my thoughts and read my brain (yeah, I'm still insane now).
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26. Your Decision To Die
I thought that characters who perished in movies were played by actors who were hired because they really wanted to die.
27. Selective Hearing
When I heard people speaking non-English languages on the street, I always assumed that speakers of these languages were hearing these words in English.
28. NEWMAN!
Also that in movies and TV, an actor was the character they played. Imagine my confusion when watching Jurassic Park and trying to figure out why Newman was there.
29. Waving At Cars With Boys
When my Dad started working night shifts when I was a young kid, me, my mum and my younger sister would wave from the window. My Mum told me that when the red lights at the back of the car came on that was the way people in cars waved, so that was my Dad saying bye. Now I realize they were just his brake lights as he came to the end of our road. For the longest time I was waving at braking cars…
30. Look! He’s Trying To Speak
I was pretty dumb as a kid. We had one of those swing sets that had rope for the swings like most home sets do. When you swung, the ropes would make a creaking sound.
I used to think (this is the best way I can explain it, so I apologize in advance if this makes no sense) there was a little factory inside of the rope with little tiny people passing buckets up the rope. Somehow this made the noise.
Also, you know when there is a room full of people talking and the ambient noise is the collection of voices? When I was in a room like that, like the cafeteria at lunchtime for example, I would try to recreate that noise by myself because I used to think that is what everybody else was doing. It probably sounded like I was speaking in tongues. I should also mention that I did this loudly and not under my breath.
31. The Pickle Has Got Your Back
I used to believe tornados could be repelled with a few pickles. My dad used to throw pickles out into the yard during tornado warnings to keep me from being afraid when I was really little. We lived near the siren so I was especially panicky.
32. When Life Give You Food
"That I would eventually be in a food fight at some point in my life"
- some guy on Reddit
I told my mom I wanted to be in a food fight for my eight birthday party she rented out the community center at our apartment complex and laid down a ton of tarp and we had a food fight.
33. Adult Names
I thought that your first name was only your "kids name" (like Noah or Ethan) and you get a proper "grown-up name" (like Richard or William) once you are older.
I guess this is because all the kids of the same age tend to have similar names which were popular at the time they were born while all older people (parents etc.) have their own distinctive names, "grown-up names" from the perspective of a six-year-old.
34. Disney Influencers
I thought that when people kissed on the lips they automatically fell in love with each other, because that is how most Disney movies made it seem.
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35. Wrong Top
Undressed Bars have no roof. I couldn't understand what they do when it rains... Ahhhh, the innocence of childhood
36. Living On Top Of The Dinosaurs
I grew up in Northern California where it is very hilly. I thought that the dinosaurs just laid down when they passed and the dirt just kinda covered them up.
Youtube
37. Golden Jubilee Gender Reversal
I always used to think that you lived to exactly 100 years old and when you turned 50, you would transform into the opposite gender. I was a weird kid...
38. Mr. Mom’s Jokes
My dad convinced me and my brothers that mommies give birth to boys, and daddies give birth to girls, which was why all the kids in our family were boys. Then he would have us listen to his stomach and make our "baby sister" "kick" by thrusting out his gut.
39. Marichi Alarm Sound
My main clock was a digital clock.
When it read 3:33, 11:11, 2:22—any time when all the numbers matched, I imagined the following:
Somewhere, there was a room of Mariachis who sat waiting for these moments when all of the numbers matched. As soon as they saw it, 1:11 or whatever, they'd burst into furious party mode, blowing on noisemakers and playing tiny guitars. They would do this for the full minute.
When the minute was up, they'd slump down again and wait for the next time.
When I'd see the readout of my clock, I would be jealous because I knew it was party time for the Mariachis, but not for me.
40. Fear Of The Living Poops
Growing up when I was very young I had an irrational fear of "Pooping". My fear was that when I was pooping, my poop could either:
a) come out sideways as opposed to "vertically" (yeah, talk about cartoon physics, I thought the poop somehow became pre-made, and it wasn't merely a product of its journey through these things called "intestines")
b) Or it would be too big and my little kid body wouldn’t be able to pass it, because my fear of pooping prevented me at times from pooping on the regs, so when there was some minor constipation my over-active imagination created these preposterous scenarios where my body would explode from amassing all this solid compacted stuff. It was only a phase of about a year or so when I was like three or four. But(t), boy did it make an irreversible psychological impact on my life!
41. The Door Is Locked For A Reason
That my parents only had intercourse three times to make me and my two siblings. I found out the truth the hard way...
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