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Childhood Misconceptions

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18:46 / 21.04.05

BAH! Can I spell? CAn I? Gawddamn.

19:05 / 21.04.05

Well, I lived with the misconception that my Parents were, y'know, my birth parents. Believed that 'til I graduated college, actually. All things considered, I think I took it pretty well - it was more of a traumatic experience for my mom (who blurted it out when she was going through an emotional breakdown of sorts) than it was for me. Still, a revelation like that kinda throws you.

[Random memory connection: the night she told me I was adopted was the night my wife (then girlfriend) and I went to see Godzilla 2000. Fun movie. Weird night.]

19:13 / 21.04.05

My nan worked in a library as a cleaner, and during school holidays my sister and I would go to stay with her, and hang around the library early in the morning as she did her job. I remember finding a book which illustrated quite clearly how men and women went about procreating. I always felt fairly empowered by this knowledge.

I was, however, convinced that if I could concentrate hard enough I would shrink down to the size of a star wars figure, and when that happened, my millennium falcon would work so that I could fly to school. I still fell like I could do this somethings.

Sidenote, during breakfast BBC the other day, post excitable grimsby film man talking to Natasha about the films, they cut to dermont out on location on the cutty sark (i think) and he linked by saying 'I am here, on the millennium falcon of its day' very smooth.

19:41 / 21.04.05

Benny, you remind me of another Star Wars one - not (quite?) one of mine, though. When I was around 6, a friend of mine believed (or at least tried to convince me) that there was a whole second series of Star Wars figures that were naked, and that peed and pooed. Whether someone had told him this, or it was a product of his own imagination, I don't know, but he did go on about it. I know we talked about it at some length, but I don't think I believed him. Wow, I hope not.

This same friend and I also shared the delusion that, when our parents came to take one of us home from the other's house, if we hid and they couldn't find us, they would eventually give up and we wouldn't have to stop playing. It actually sometimes worked a bit, since our parents were friends and would occasionally get distracted from the search and just hang out and talk for a while.

Around the same time/age, a group of my parents' friends got together at the house of another friend who was a glass blower. He offered to let us all try our hand at shaping some glass - including the children (with a great deal of supervision and hands-on assistance of course). I had seen glass blowers on 3-2-1 Contact, though, and I knew that there was a glob of molten glass right down at the end of a big hollow tube you put your mouth on... and I wasn't going near it, 'cos I didn't want to breath in wrong and get glass in my mouth. None of the adults had any idea what I was talking about, though, since I was having a really hard time articulating my concerns. Thus, thoroughly un-reassured, I spent the glass-blowing party outside, playing in the sandbox.

19:47 / 21.04.05

From talking to others, I'm assuming that this is universal, but my older brother told me a lot that I took as gospel truth for way too many years...

...the best I can remember being when he told me for a friend's birthday he had gone to a place where you could enter nintendo games, and that his friends had controlled him as mario in super mario bros. It was only many years later that I thought back and went '..wait a minute...'

19:55 / 21.04.05

OOh, forgot this one.
Remember the film Black Hole? I saw in a catalogue once that there was one of those hovering robots and I quote "exactly like the real thing". Now, I still want to sue whoever wrote that catalogue because I fully expected that if I could afford one, I could get one that hovered, so I could fly around on it. I wasn't a particularly stupid child, and I think it was because I understood you couldn't make claims like that without them being real. Of course, they wouldn't expect some young numpty to think the real thing flew, either...

Whisky Priestess

21:45 / 21.04.05

When I was little the only picture of a naked man I had seen was Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man

Now, to me it looked like he had two penises, and I put this together with my limited birds-and-bees knowledge to assume (very rationally I thought) that men had two willies, one to pee with and one to make babies with.

I also remember thinking that periods were like one huge haemorrhage of blood and not realising that they went on for days.

21:51 / 21.04.05

C'mon Nobody's Girl. Tell them the one about the garlic, that's a great one!

21:52 / 21.04.05

Dwight, you mean like, folding it in on itself? Jesus.

Coiled, like this:

http://www.centurionfire.com.hk/products/firehose.jpg

Not so many coils, though. What? It seemed tidy.

22:19 / 21.04.05

Oh fair play, I don't roll my socks like that, more like this:

You can see where the concern comes from. A non-Euclidean penis. Imagine.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:34 / 21.04.05

I believed the Sea Monkey adverts.

Imagine my horror when, at the tender age of 25 or so, I finally got some, and they were just midget facehuggers. That fucked. ALL THE TIME.

22:45 / 21.04.05

I thought each finger on your hand was assigned a different curse word to it if held up by its lonesome. I got in quite some trouble for this, back in first grade or so. I also was convinced that monsters wandered into your bedroom to check if you were asleep, which is probably why I still burrow myself in the covers.

Then there's the still-recurring thought that everyone's telepathic except me and they're all privy to my private and frightening thoughts. But I was raised by comic books, so I'm sure it all makes sense.

I'm sure there were more, but I have an awful memory.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:49 / 21.04.05

Then there's the still-recurring thought that everyone's telepathic except me and they're all privy to my private and frightening thoughts

Whoah. I get that, too. It's like you read my MIND!!!
I actually DO get that too, though.

22:51 / 21.04.05

I also remember thinking that periods were like one huge haemorrhage of blood and not realising that they went on for days.

This reminds me of a really embarassing one - though not mine... my best friend in high school was in a 'long' (one year) relationship during which she discovered that her boyfriend thought women only "had" their periods when they went to the toilet, just like peeing. What he thought tampons are for, God only knows. The poor boy was 17 when my friend finally enlightened him! Tragic.

Tryphena Absent

22:54 / 21.04.05

I used to get that in the lunch queue at school. I'd be standing there, quite bored, insulting people in my mind and it would occur to me that there was bound to be a telepath standing next to me. It's definitely something to do with queueing.

23:50 / 21.04.05

I saw T2 the same a few years it came out, which would've made me about 8(? aww). Coming home from school for a few weeks afterward was terrifying under the belief that any "harmless" grandmother or other pedestrian could spontaneously sprout death-arms and stab you a lot.

12:25 / 22.04.05

I was somewhere between the ages of 3 and 6 at the time, and living in the USA. There were some woods behind our appartment and a group of us used to play in them. One day the rest of the group told me that there was a wild dog that had just killed a girl. "It's in there (pointing to woods) eating her dick," someone said. I don't think I had any idea about what female parts were like, but I thought what they had was called a "dick." Other than that I think I was a pretty well sussed kid.

16:01 / 22.04.05

Baz, L, thank you very much. Now I don´t have to stay awake those long nights and wonder...

16:23 / 22.04.05

I thought each finger on your hand was assigned a different curse word to it if held up by its lonesome.

Ha, that's wonderful. It should be that way. I know which word goes with the middle finger, but what about the rest of them?

17:03 / 22.04.05

This same friend and I also shared the delusion that, when our parents came to take one of us home from the other's house, if we hid and they couldn't find us, they would eventually give up and we wouldn't have to stop playing. It actually sometimes worked a bit, since our parents were friends and would occasionally get distracted from the search and just hang out and talk for a while.

Just came to my mind... When I was about 5 or 6 me and a friend of mine, who lived next door, came into a conclusion that we could do a "home-swapping" and that our parents wouldn´t have anything against it. So we simply decided a day, and when we both had to go home for dinner we just gave each other our keys and went happily our ways. Sadly, our families didn´t like the idea of switching daughters, even when we tried to explain that this experiment would last only for two weeks...
The meaning of all this was to find out if the grass would be greener (and mothers nicer) on the other side of the fence.

Little finger: You idiotic, smelly and spoiled loser! Shut up before I stuff a New Beetle up your arse!

17:06 / 22.04.05

would anyone believe i have just spent almost 4 seconds scrolling up to see what whoever's posting as 'little finger' said to deserve that?

It's been a long day...

17:15 / 22.04.05

I crept out of the house, aged about 5 or so, at around midnight. The plan was to meet up with a friend of mine and we were going to climb into the cemetary next door to our estate, and go 'ghost-hunting'. He was a no show, so I sat on his door step playing with his cat.

My misconception? I thought my parents wouldn't mind. Boy, was I wrong.

19:08 / 22.04.05

Okay I still don't get it Little Finger?

19:47 / 23.04.05

B the B: I did the same thing! Only it was a 'haunted house' at the top of my road and I was the one who no-showed because I got caught halfway down the stairs in full ghost-hunting kit (ie, my outdoor clothes instead of my pjs).

05:25 / 29.04.05

/threadrot/ Sorry that this is a bit delayed, but currently I am an Internetically Disabled Person.

Nightclub Dwight was wondering what meaning all the other fingers have, since the middle finger is sort of clear. I gave one possible meaning to the little finger.

...I certainly hope, that there is not anybody called "Little Finger" here? If there is, my sincere apologies. Nothing personal, and little fingers are nice and needful body parts. /threadrot/

06:56 / 29.04.05

Until I knew better, I had no reason to disbelieve a schoolfriend that tampons were a contraceptive. You know, so men couldn't get in there properly...

(Actually, I don't think it took me too long to work out that that didn't seem to be quite right)

17:47 / 29.04.05

I thought you already had to know how to play an instrument, and play it well, to get into Band at school.

I also thought you had to be good at baseball to join Little League.

Not knowing otherwise has saved me from a life of painful rotator cuff injuries, and trumpet-related cataracts.

THANK YOU, YOUTHFUL IGNORANCE! WELL DONE!

21:57 / 11.05.05

Just thought of a good one. 'Til I was about nine I thought my mum had really bad nose bleeds, because (wait for it) she left bloody cotton in the toilet every other month.

Gzzzghhh.

18:23 / 12.05.05

My mother told me that during jam preparation there was a stage (the boiling stage) where jam was so hot that if you touched it it would burn through to the bone. I thought heated jam was like lava for years.

18:29 / 12.05.05

I thought heated jam was like lava for years.....

goddamn it. it is!

DO NOT EAT HEATED JAM, IT BURNS AND STICKS AND BURNS SOME MORE!!!!

(phew that was close ...)

18:31 / 12.05.05

I used to think that orange seeds couldn't be eaten because they could become imbeded in the lining of your stomach and grow into a tree.

18:43 / 12.05.05

My mom always told me that if you eat too far into a watermelon rind - into the white part - you'd get a massive stomachache. This from a woman who ate orange peel but not the flesh of the fruit.

19:35 / 12.05.05

If your hand was bigger than your face, you were mental.

20:13 / 12.05.05

You see I twigged immediatly that that wasn't true, because the boys that told it to me only did so in order to get me to hold my hand up to my face, so that they could then slam it in to my nose and run away laughing.

I was told it signified cancer, not madness, though.

20:18 / 12.05.05

Ah, the guys at my school weren't bright enough to hit your hand.

They thought being mental was bad enough...

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