Kids not only say the darndest things, but they actually believe the weirdest stuff, too – stuff that goes way beyond the little white lies we tell them to make childhood more exciting (or palatable).

They get things in their head, or they observe something and then assume, but no matter how they come to the belief, they will hold onto it until someone finally tells them otherwise – and looking back, these 13 people are just shaking their heads at how silly they once were.

13. Clever grandma.

My grandma would send us outside with a salt shaker and tell us that if we could get salt on a bird’s tail it wouldn’t be able to fly. We spent hours trying to get salt on the bird’s tails.

It wasn’t until I was an adult telling a friend about that childhood memory that I realized it was all a scam to get us out of the house.

12. That’s a new one.

That oral sex was phone sex…

Similarly I thought orally meant you had to speak, like oral reading. Medication taken orally confused me quite a bit.

11. A magic mama.

That my mom had real quick hands and that’s why I never saw her turn off the turn signal after the car turned a corner.

10. How now brown cow.

Brown cows made chocolate milk.

9. Like the roadrunner.

There was a lady in my neighborhood who ran marathons at a competitive level. She was jogging by one day and my friend told me she is one of the fastest runners in the world. I said “but I can still see her”.

I thought if you ran really fast you’d be invisible until you stopped miles away.

8. This is so whimsical.

That clouds were permanent and just travelled around the world.

I always thought that they’ll show up the next year at the exact same time.

7. Of course.

I had a real weird one – I read a biology book for kids where in one part they explained how babies were made, and the sperm and the egg and all that. The picture accompanying that was a mother and father sitting on a couch together, presumably explaining this process to their kids.

But I got confused and thought the picture had something to do with the process, so for a little while I thought that you only had to sit on a couch next to someone to get pregnant, and that the sperm must jump from the father to the mother like a flea.

Of course, you had to be married first to unlock the ability to get pregnant.

6. Like a play on television.

That people acted out movies every single time I watched them and sing songs on the radio live every time I heard them play. I would always watch/listen closely, just waiting for them to mess up.

Also I thought people really die in movies. I understood that they were famous actors so the are saying lines in front of a camera but I didn’t know that there are things like fake wounds or blood.

I found it weird that these people were so obsessed with getting famous that they were willing to die for it.

5. I mean obviously.

Guerrilla warfare were battles between armed gorillas and human soldiers.

4. Musicals are a bit confusing.

I expected movies and tv shows to be like fly-on-the-wall documentaries I guess so I just thought it was SO unrealistic that they hardly ever showed people using the bathroom.

I also never understood how everyone all knew the words to songs in musicals. Like I remember watching one of the Land Before Time sequels and being so put off by how unrealistic it was that all the dinosaurs knew the words to the song they spontaneously started singing (but not at all concerned the by idea of singing dinosaurs in general lol)

3. This makes total sense.

I sat next to a Michael Jackson in first grade. In second grade someone asked me if I like Micheal Jackson and I said “yes I used to sit next to him”. I had no idea who the singer was.

2. I mean this is adorable.

We got a lizard once and my mom said we have to find a name that fits her. I took that literally and kept checking her size and width to find a name her size but was extremely confused on how I was supposed to do that.

1. Parents are liars, man.

I liked peaches and evaporated milk as a dessert, but decided I didn’t like apricots in evaporated milk as a dessert (the tinned ones in syrup). That’s until mum explained that apricots were just baby peaches, so it was irrational to dislike one but not the other.

I’ve eaten both, fresh and tinned, with and without evaporated milk ever since.

I forgot all about until a friend told me her mum told her sprouts were mini cabbages, to get her to eat them. I laughed and then had a memory jolt. No wonder we got on.

Stories like these just remind me how interesting and magical growing up can actually be.

What’s something silly you believed for way too long? Confess to us in the comments!