I dont remember the age, but it was before Kindergarten, thought men came into the house at night to load the next days shows into the TV.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    141
    ·
    1 year ago

    I thought that when the clerk at the checkout asked, “would you like cash back?” That you could say yes and they would just give you cash straight out of the register for nothing lol.

    I figured that most people were very honest and didn’t need the money, so they would just say no thanks and leave it in the register for somebody who really did need it.

    • Mothra@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      46
      ·
      1 year ago

      Similarly, I thought one could get more money by asking for change. You give one bill, you get more bills and coins in return, it’s gotta be more, right?

    • ch00f@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      I thought grownups got paid every day and “pay day” was just a special day when you got more money.

  • 11181514
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    116
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    So many things…

    I didn’t understand how lie detectors were supposed to work so I thought you could hook someone up and ask something like “does god exist” and you’d be able to get answers to all of life’s big mysteries.

    I thought there was a left and right sock

    I thought wolverines were mythical creatures

    I thought if I tried hard enough I could somehow become older than my older brother like it was just a title or something

    Thanks to DARE any time I saw a skittle with the S missing I thought it was drugs even in a newly opened package

    I could go on…

    • SybilVane@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      33
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I wanted an older sibling as a child and I remember trying to convince my parents they should have another baby. In my mind, if I just waited (my age +1) years, I’d then have an older sibling. It never ocurred to me that I would also age during that time…

    • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      1 year ago

      Your comment about your brother reminds me that in kindergarten I thought that the line order (alphabetical) had something to do with status. My last name starts with C so I was pretty close to the front, but I had a friend with an A for a last name, so I really wanted to move up.

      I told no one of this of course until long after I’d grasped how alphabetical ordering worked myself.

      • 11181514
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        1 year ago

        I hope you’re about 25 because this is basically how I found out lol

    • prd@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      My son was PISSED when I explained how his older sister would, in fact, always be older. He was sure he’d catch up.

  • boatswain@infosec.pub
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    112
    ·
    1 year ago

    I remember thinking that women gave birth to girls and men gave birth to boys, and being really worried because I (as a guy) didn’t want to give birth.

    • abbadon420
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Some do. CEO’s of small(ish) companies who are maybe also a founder of that company, are often personally and emotionally invested enough to actually want to work hard. CEO of my company is always running and calling and stressing and working late.

      Granted, that is after they kicked out the greybeards who were just there because they invested some money years ago and were acting like the kind of CEO you were describing.

      • Nevoic
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Yeah I’m an anticapitalist & socialist, and I have worked with hard working CEOs in small companies. The issue is that their relationship to capital is different, not that all of them are terrible lazy people or something.

        They worked like any other worker, but when the company sold for 10 million dollars, they got a few million dollars, some unseen investors that I literally never met got the majority of it, and I (along with the other workers) got scraps, literally nothing for most of us, and small bonuses for other workers. The CEO didn’t put forward any of their own money, and in the end they were essentially the head of marketing getting compensated equivalent to what we made in a lifetime of working in a single day.

        We don’t need a class of leeches siphoning away the vast majority of the value of our labor. Even if everyone can dream of being a leech themselves, it’s not good for the vast majority of people.

  • TrenchcoatFullOfBats@belfry.rip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    84
    ·
    1 year ago

    My dad told me that walnuts were owl eggs.

    He got in trouble when I stole all the walnuts in the house and wrapped them in nose tissues to keep them warm so they would hatch and I would have baby owls.

  • GCanuck@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    81
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I was trying to figure out what caused wind. I noticed the leaves moving when the wind blew, and I knew that a fan (handheld) also moved wind. So it stood to reason that trees moved causing the leaves to move which caused the wind. And naturally it must be earthquakes that caused the tree to love. And then I thought, we’ll there must be a master tree that started the wind, and the most “logical” place for that tree would be the North Pole.

    So, that there was a tree on the North Pole that caused all the wind.

  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    79
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    That sheep and goats were same species. I thought sheep were the girl versions and goats were the boys, like hens and roosters.

    Wasn’t until well into my 20s that I finally ran into something that put the spotlight on it… IIRC it was some Farmville type of videogame, which included males and females of both sheep and goats. To me, that stood out the same way a “female bull” or “male cow” would have, so I had a little chuckle at the obvious ‘oversight’. Realized shortly after that I was, in fact, a fucking idiot.

    • JokeDeity
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      I know a disturbingly high number of adults over 40 that refer to every dog as he/him and every cat as she/her no matter how many thousands of times they are corrected on it.

      • Haywire
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Have you been around girls and boys. This makes perfect sense. I think the science might be wrong.

  • spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    60
    ·
    1 year ago

    I thought black and what television was black and white because history happened in black and white. I suppose that means life in colour happened after the invention of colour tv

  • Wooly@startrek.website
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    55
    ·
    1 year ago

    I believed until I was 8 or so that beans were a type of meat. When I learned the truth, I had an argument with my older brother with me saying something along the line, “You’re gonna feel real dumb when Mom says I’m right.”

  • edric
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    54
    ·
    1 year ago

    There was a coca cola plant in my hometown. When we were kids, my dad used to tell us that the huge water tanks that were painted as coke and sprite cans actually contained soda and I always imagined diving in them. Obviously he was just fucking with us, but I actually believed it for a while.

  • arby@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    53
    ·
    1 year ago

    When I was five or six, I think I must have dreamed that my dad could turn his head around 360 degrees. A few days later I was in the car with my Dad and asked him if he could really turn his head around. He responded “not now, I’m driving.” I took that as a yes. It was years before I realized the truth…