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

[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...

[fleurravenbooks]

that's true but not everyone is on facebook

[powerplantanimations]

Not me, but my Mom:

When she was a girl, she asked this really strict nun why she wears a hood. The nun told her "because I have pink hair". During recess my Mom got really curious and then took the hood off of the nun one day. She got in serious trouble :v

Also not me but something similar and it really stood out to me:
This girl in my class once thought chocolate milk came from a pink cow.

What is it with the color pink lmao.

[CleverGoat]

I used to think something similar when I was a little kid, I didn't know what dying your hair was and I saw a mom with either pink or purple (one of the two) hair with her daughter and I was wondering why she didn't have the same color hair.

[Fafnir]

I thought the world Album was actually Alblum. with an L. until at work people picked up on it when i talked about a bands "alblum" and mocked me for it.

I got it from my mom. So i told her one day "hey, did you know alblum is actually album?" Cue giant argument about whether or not alblum is actually album, which was only put to rest after i showed her the definition on the internet. lol.

ah parents.