We all believe silly things as kids. We’re inexperienced, we’re gullible, and there are always adults in our lives who are willing to take advantage of all of those things.
That said, these 17 people have to laugh when they look back on these dumb things they believed – probably for way too long.
17. Big downer.
That when I turned 10, I would be able to see Pokémon in the world.
My tenth birthday was a little disappointing.
16. Bahaha and Dad just played along.
That drinking and driving meant any kind of drinking.
I would get so nervous when my dad and I would get fast food that a cop would see him drinking his soda and arrest him.
15. That ups the stakes.
Being fired at work meant you were actually incinerated.
14. Oh, bless. I feel like she would have liked that.
I thought Barbara Bush was Eve from the Bible.
The news said she was the first lady, and I didn’t know what else that could mean.
And she did look pretty old from my perspective.
13. I bet many still believe this.
An island was a giant piece of land floating in the ocean.
12. That would be more helpful.
I thought the term “wind chill factor” was “windshield factor.”
Like the weatherman was letting you know if you needed to scrape your windshield in the morning.
11. How charming.
I thought my TV was too small to see adults in shows like Tom and Jerry and the Powerpuff girls.
10. His brother wanted all of the lemonade for himself.
My brother is quite a few years older than me and liked to tell me little fibs all the time.
Some of the more memorable ones include him telling me that our uncle invented hamburgers, and that lemonade has a little bit of pig pee in it.
9. Except we never really learn about the Eastern half, do we.
I thought up until like 3rd grade that we were only learning about one side of the earth and we’d learn about the other half in later grades.
I didn’t make the connection between the big flat roller map my teacher would pull down across the chalkboard and the round earth everyone kept talking about.
8. Who wasn’t afraid of escalators?
Escalators would consume me if I didn’t step off fast enough.
7. Yes, yes, swim fast.
When I was like 7 or 8 I was on a competitive swim team. I was pretty bad at it. I got a lot of participation ribbons, I’ll put it that way. One day I dove in the water and thought “I should try swimming fast today!” So I did and when I poked my head out of the water my coach was standing there looking at me like wide eyed. She yelled “Thats a first! You got first place!!!” I won the race. Or whatever you call winning at swimming.
Anyhoo, I randomly remembered that years later and it hit me. Like, wtf was I doing before that? Did it just never occur to me to try to win? What did I think swim meets were for? Just for fun? And why did I never try this new trick of “swimming fast” again? God I was so dumb.
6. Dad laughed forever.
My dad convinced me that before Kodak invented color drops for your eyes, the world was all black and white and that’s why old films are in black-and-white.
Shortly after learning this, a classmate at school asked the same question I asked my dad. (why there’s black and white films/photos)
So I answered with my new knowledge and the teacher laughed SO HARD.
I went home after school and waited on the couch for my dad to get home. The moment he walked in the door I screamed “I HATE YOU DAD!!!” and ran to my bedroom.
5. Bless that teacher.
I went to a Catholic elementary school. I was giving a presentation in front of my second grade class regarding how God created the heavens, the earth, the mountains…I never really understood how the timeline worked around all that, I just knew the basic bullet points of the creation story.
But then I go on some tangent about how upon the creation of Earth (remember, I didn’t understand the timing around it and just winged it), God must have been a big fan of prominent historical figures. George Washington. Abraham Lincoln. Jefferson. Roosevelt.
My second grade teacher realizes what I’m about to do, and rescues me from the impending hurricane of ridicule I was about to summon from my peers. She hurriedly separates me from my execution panel, and in the privacy of the hallway, explains to me that Mount Rushmore was not a natural occurrence.
4. This goes so deep.
When I was a little kid and my parents were driving I would see the car in front of us have these rear blinking lights and generally speaking, they always lit up pointing in the direction our car would be turning. How did it always know? I didn’t understand what they were for so I thought they were there to give instructions on where to go to the car behind it (us).
After all how did my dad always know which road to take get to McDonalds, ToysRUs, etc? Obviously he was following the instructions provided by the car in front of us.
Hence, I’d always get concerned whenever my dad ignored the instructions the car in front of us was giving with it’s little blinking rear light. But I figured my dad was just taking a shortcut because he was my dad and dads know everything.
For people asking/mentioning our car’s dashboard blinkers I had a simple explanation for that. I thought the car in front of us was also transmitting a signal to also show the arrows in case it was raining or snowing and it was difficult to see the car in front of us.
3. It’s like the opposite, really.
I used to think germaphobes were just people scared of Germans or Germany.
2. Always keep your toes covered.
That people would come in the night and cut off any appendages not covered by blankets.
I conveniently convinced myself heads didn’t count (because that would be too gross).
1. Technically not wrong.
To microwave something you had to put in a code that corresponded with the time.
I was really confused when I found out you just entered the time.
I have to say, these are hilarious.
I may have believed a few of these myself, but I’m not telling which!