What's Something You Thought Was True but Really Wasn't?

[CleverGoat]

What's something you firmly believed was true when you were younger but turned out to be false. When I was younger, I used to think coffee would stunt your growth.

[Bearkorps]

Not me, but my older brother, but worth sharing. Our father convinced him when he was young (1st grade or so) that if they had duct tape the titanic wouldn't have sunk. He swallowed it hook, line, sinker and was committed to dying on that hill until his freshman high school year.

To balance things out, he convinced me that no outlet signs you see sometimes in residential areas meant that the light posts in the area didn't have electrical outlets for emergency services. I believed that for much longer than I care to admit

[ar-ninetysix]

Heh, I guess this'll be especially funny for a few..

I believed Santa was real until I was 11 or so. Didn't even question it. (No one mentioned him being fake, and I see his face everywhere around the holidays, why would people lie about that????) I also started going to church about a year before and got pretty into it. I happened to wake up early and not see any presents under our tree.. so uhhh..

I went back to my room and prayed for Santa to come and leave presents, basically before the sun comes up. Like?? I go to church now, obviously that makes me a better kid than I was the year before SO LIKE WHERE MY PRESENTS AT- Anyways, I came back out and of course, nothing was there. My dad woke up and saw me all sad in front of the tree, and that's when he told me Santa wasn't real and that money was tight that year.

You might be surprised to learn that I still go to church after that experience lmao

[BLTX]

Oh, the stories I could share... But here's my wierdest one!

As a kid, I had absolutely no idea how cartoons were made, so I had my own theory about them! Does anyone remember that Spongebob episode where Spongebob spends all his time indoors, until a green screened gorilla starts attacking Patrick and Sandy?

Bassiccly, I thought all cartoons were actors in costume in front of still backgrounds (I'd never heard of green screening yet). And how did they get these costumes, you ask?

Well, it doesn't make any sense, but apparently at the time I had no concept of creating costumes on your own, (Even though I knew my parents usually hand-crafted my Halloween costumes) so I thought the creators of these shows obtained the costumes from stores, and they were of preexisting cartoon characters that literally everyone, (Except somehow these new creators) forgot about. And they essentially stole the appearance of these characters.

What's really funny is that I had absolutely no knowledge of scaling things in movie editors. So I actually thought Plankton was played by a 6-inch tall man.

[NickRowler]

There was a episode of Arthur that mentioned coffee stunting your growth so I wonder if you got it from there.

For some random reason I thought To Kill a Mockingbird was autobiographical with just character name changes. I was sort of shocked when I learned, no it’s fiction. I guess I misinterpreted stuff on the book that stated characters were “based on a real person”. But there is a lot of fiction that does that, I am not sure why that was such a big selling point for the book. I have read memoirs that did change names to protect real people’s privacy and that is probably also part of why it confused me.

[AlydaB]

I was told by my mom growing up that if I touched the tabernacle (golden box behind the altar at church) that I would die, so for years I was deathly afraid of it and thought everyone was acting oddly chill about this thing that God would strike you dead for touching.. Still pretty pissed about this one lol

[CleverGoat]

I have a couple of more. When I was younger I didn't quite understand the concept of tv shows yet so I thought it was just all real-life things happening simultaneously being broadcast. Also when someone in my house would watch something on the history channel there would sometimes show reenactment actors acting out a particular moment in history. I didn't know what reenactments were at the time and I wondered how the heck did they footage from that time and nobody bothered explaining it to me.

[fleurravenbooks]

I believed that if i swallowed a gum it would stay in my stomach for a looooooooooong time, and then if i "eat" more they will pretty much clog my stomach and i would need to go to hospital

[Bearkorps]

Funny enough I believed this too and thought that my gum swallowing habit had caused my appendicitis in middle school 🤣

[fleurravenbooks]

I'm starting to believe that parents all over the world had some secret convention where they made up stuff to scare us

[Pony_wearing_a_hat]

My grandma told my that if I didn't let her cut my bangs I wouldn't have bangs anymore. My interpretation of this was that bang hair falls off if not regularly cut. My kid brain did interesting things with the information it was given.

[OLDSAGGY]

I have been drinking coffee since age 4, and have been a heavy coffee drinker since high school. I am now just under 5’3” so I’m not a good counter-example XD. Also in kindgergarten, I had a bad habit of chewing erasers, so my mom told me that all erasers were made of ground up grasshoppers and I believed that for about a year.

[Pony_wearing_a_hat]

I mean... Facebook does exist...

[Swamp]

Childhood Reasoning:

-We have no chimney, therfor santa comes in through the roof
-There is a burn shaped like a deer hoof in my upstairs hallway carpet

THEREFOR: Santa's sleigh is pulled by a herd of burning skeleton deer that go by my bedroom door Christmas Eve

[Pony_wearing_a_hat]

I legitimately believed Santa could just phase through walls. So...

[fsarbolaez]

What's Something You Thought Was True but Really Wasn't:

The American Dream.

...

And leprechauns. Used to set traps for them every St. Patrick's Day until I was about five (six?) years old.

[MeltingCORE]

Ah, childhood memories. Here's a creepy-crawly one as a Florida girl. When I was smol, I thought a roach was the bug with yellow stripes and a fully grown roach was called a "June Bug". When in fact, the one with stripes are nymphs (babies) and the big ones are adults. I'm not sure why I thought adult ones were a completely different bug nor am I sure why I thought they were called "June Bugs". I spent a lot of time hanging out in nature and camping so I probably just got the wires crossed with all the different insects I would commonly encounter in the forest.

[NickRowler]

So when I was a kid, I lived somewhere with no fire place and all the doors had alarms on them at night. So I thought that Santa could pass through solid walls like a ghost.

[MottotteShinji]

My mother when I was young kept telling me that cheese powder taste different than cheese. I don't know why I believed her all the way up to 11th grade (I didn't eat cheese until 12th grade... I think)

[jamontoast98]

I was told on the same day that Santa and the Tooth Fairy weren't real. I was gutted that the Tooth Fairy wasn't real, Santa, not so much. I still don't know why that is...