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Childhood Misconceptions

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00:18 / 15.05.05

goddamn it. it is!

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

Oh god.
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This could mean she was right about the snakes that live under my bed too
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Oh god.
(well there goes my perceptual world again)

08:40 / 16.05.05

The jam reminds me: since I wasn't allowed in the pool anymore right after my uncle put chlorine in it, I assumed that were I to dip my hand in the water, I would lift it out as a skeletal hand.

10:14 / 16.05.05

A childhood friend of mine used to claim that when he went on the Tunnel of Love at somethemeparkorother people were *doing actual sex* and that kids were encouraged to fuck their Mums.

According to my friend his brother acted on said advice.

The thing is, this obviously fictional story was told in a frenzy of childish excitement. The point wasn't to take the piss out of his brother, or articulate disgust, it was to tell a fun sexy story.

10:27 / 16.05.05

Not nice though, eh?
And the really scary thing: I now realise I wanted to believe him.

14:00 / 16.05.05

we were in an english lesson, reading a poem (something by t s elliot with "sweeny" in the title, iirc). it included the word "masticate". the teacher asked who knew what masticate meant. no-one raised their hands, and i shook with fear, thinking she might ask me, and wondering how best to describe masturbation...

15:43 / 16.05.05

If it was Sweeney Among the Nightingales, I think the word you're thinking of is "maculate." Caught me up short, too, first time I read it—even with the footnotes. Such a bizarre image.

16:13 / 16.05.05

I had a similar problem with Dorothea fingering the edge of her reticule in Middlemarch.

Luckily, I had a cool teacher who I think may have found it a strange turn of phrase and knew I'd be the one to come up with the funny answer. Good old Miss F.

02:20 / 18.05.05

I remember when I was about 4 years old, and a friend of mine came out of the bathroom and said to me, "I've just made the most interesting looking poo. Come look!" I said no, and she insisted, and so I told her I couldn't because I'm "allergic" to looking at poo.

That's not really a misconception, but I think it's funny. I can't think of any good misconception, although I know I had some.

Uh....when I was a kid, I thought that everyone who wasn't black was white, even though I knew Asian people, Hispanic people, etc (I thought they were white).

Also, when I was around 8ish I had a habit (which never completely went away) of reading parenting books. Nowadays when I read parenting books, I like to read ones that are decades old because they're hilarious. As a kid, though, I read mostly newer books, and I sort of used them as advice on how to act like a normal kid. I specifically remember reading about the sorts of activities that preteen girls supposedly like, and then when I was at a slumber party (I was a preteen girl, and everyone else there was, too. I'm a man now) I made some suggestions that we talk about/do things that I'd read in the book. I didn't say it was from a book, of course (I kept it a secret that I read parenting books), and the other kids thought I was crazy because they weren't interested at all in doing what I suggested. Something like,

Me: "Let's talk about boys."

Them: "Boys are yucky. Let's talk about something else."

Me: "Well, we could expiriment with makeup." (I remember which book in particular told me that preteen girls like to expiriment with makeup)

Them: "That's really boring."

Of course, I guess maybe my approach was all wrong. I do remember being around that age and being at another slumber party where all the girls (except me and one other) were talking about how gorgeous the guys from New Kids On The Block were. Still, I bought way too much into the ideas presented to me in those parenting books about the ways that both kids and parents should be acting. I was a very, very strange kid, and conformity was a goal I had for myself before I hit the teen years. (Nowadays I just try to seem normal enough that I don't loose my job and whatnot).

18:52 / 18.05.05

I sincerely thought condoms were balloons.

Haus of Mystery

20:06 / 18.05.05

I remember fiction and reality blurring a good deal as a nipper (or rather I didn't...). My Dad did a parachute jump before I was born - just something he'd always wanted to do, and on a whim he signed up for a course. Now when my five year old brain processed this it decided

a) My Dad was a para-trooper in the army
and
b)he was also in the Red Arrows

I guess a combination of Sunday tea-time war movies and going to an airshow as a kid mangled together with the nugget of truth produced this exaggeration, but for fucking years I thought it was for real.

20:28 / 17.01.07

That the neighbours were really into drums.

Quite why I couldn't have been told about the water pipes is beyond me.

Hydra vs Leviathan

21:29 / 17.01.07

OK, one for all the men in the audience. I would like just ONE of us not to have had the misapprehension that vaginas were right on the front hidden under the hair until we encountered one or saw one in a magazine.
Please tell me someone worked it out, as not one man I have ever talked to had.

I think that's actually a very logical misconception to have - it is, after all, a position analogous to the base of the penis, so that, if you'd never seen a person without a penis, you'd assume that's where the end of their urethra would be... if it were true, it would also make "missionary position" sex much more logical as the "standard" het position...

So I pictured this horrible, debilitating disease was caused by things that looked like a cross between a tadpole and a leech that got into your bloodstream by wriggling into your skin. I guess that's not *too* far from the truth, but I was figuring it all happened on a scale where you could see it, and feel them wiggling under your skin into your veins.

I hope you've never heard of the candiru.

When i was a kid, i thought anyone could die at will - obviously, i knew that people died when they were old, or from diseases, getting shot or whatever, but i thought that if someone wanted to die they could just sit down and die. I remember a conversation with my dad when some film was on the TV where someone said "I've come here to kill myself" - me: "what does he mean, kill himself? doesn't he just mean to die?", my dad: "no, he means to kill himself" - which left me very confused, and my dad had to explain the concept of suicide, which in its deliberately-choosing-to-die aspect i already grasped, but didn't realise it necessitated actually doing anything to oneself analogous to killing another person...

I also thought the word "isolate" meant "to turn someone into ice", which possibly shows my overly-logical approach to language...

22:08 / 17.01.07

I used to think that the world was a giant doll house and god's nephew used the world to play with. We all had invisible strings and god's nephew wore a sailor suit.

And then i grew up and went to art college.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

22:39 / 17.01.07

"Psionic." I pronounced quite seriously as "Puh-si-sonic" at the tender age of ten.

22:46 / 17.01.07

I used to call the Bible "The Bibble".

I went to a CofE school too :/

22:49 / 17.01.07

Oh, and at the end of primary school my mate Kenny once told me if you put a cheat into Street Fighter 2 you could make your character doink Chun-Li.

22:51 / 17.01.07

I sincerely thought condoms were balloons.

But i thought condoms had a little hole at the end. God knows what i thought they were for...

My classic childhood idiocy came when i got a tape of Bad (my first album!)...

In the sleeve liner for the album, there is a photo of Michael Jackson Holding his wrist. The hand of the wrist he is holding is enlarged significantly and held out in front of him (I have tried to find a picture of this on the net but have had no luck).

I asked my dad how Michael got his hand so big for the photo, to which he replied 'it's a camera trick'. My young mind interpreted this as 'it's an optical illusion, something to do with angles and camera lenses and stuff'.

So there is a string of photos of me, documenting a month or two of my eighth year, where i am holding my hand out towards the camera and grabbing it at the wrist. The hand is normal sized.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

22:54 / 17.01.07

Er... What does CofE stand for? I assume it's some Christian thing...

Leigh Monster loses its cool

23:21 / 17.01.07

church of england wot

23:51 / 17.01.07

I believed that somehow any type of malevolent creature or being would be unable to penetrate the magical forcefield of my blanket and get to me, if I just always faced the doorv while lying in bed and left as little as possible of my own body uncovered. I literally slept like cocoonboy for many years.

09:40 / 18.01.07

When I was about 7, I was very freckled - and believed that with time - they would explode into an awesome tan! I was quite disappointed when Mum told me that wasn't going to happen.

Oh, also - until I was about 11, i thought oral sex was talking about it. A friend loudly corrected me in a drama class...

10:47 / 18.01.07

When i was a young'un, I was obsessed with the paranormal. Anything from ghost, seamonsters and seances to spring-heeled Jack etc. One of the most terrifying occurances (to me) was Spontaneous Combustion, which i was sure was caused by an invisible ray beamed down from the sky (by whom, i never knew). I was convinced that it was trained on me and would have to change my position in bed every few seconds to avoid it.

lord nuneaton savage

11:33 / 18.01.07

I used to get confused between the words 'protestant' and 'prostitute', Which made it very awkward when Ian Paisley came round for tea.

15:51 / 18.01.07

I thought that I could move objects telekinetically by jerking my hand towards them. Never worked.

Also dreamt one night that I looked out of my window and Jupiter was filling half the sky, with moons zipping around it. I believed that it had actually happened. I think I still do believe it. It was beautiful.

20:50 / 18.01.07

This is disgusting and you do not want to read it. Stop now. STOP!

You were warned.

When I was just little, probably around 4 or 5, I got the idea in my head that black people's skin was naturally filthy and that I shouldn't touch them if I ever met one. I'm almost sure this misconception is attributable to my grandfather on my mother's side, who I adored and idolized. He was never shy about telling "n***** jokes" in front of me and often reminded me to "watch out for those dirty n*****s". This became so far ingrained in me that once on a field trip to the Field Museum in Chicago, I got very nervous when our school group got mixed in with another school group in the museum cafeteria. I remember shoving my hands in my pockets and tightening myself up, trying to be smaller, trying not to be touched by the "dirty n*****s". I probably checked my wallet about a hundred times in the space of those five minutes too. Fucking sad. Sadder still, I lived in a very small, very racist town (the one mixed-race couple in town had a police car permanently parked in their front yard, lest vandalism or worse would happen), and so didn't really get much chance to correct this misconception. It faded into the background during my teens and didn't get put in a proper grave until my college years, when I traveled far from home and got to meet and befriend all kinds of people. Stupid as it sounds, making friends with a black guy was a huge step for me and I'll never forget the shock to my system when I shook his hand for the first time. No filth. No dirt. No slime. Just the feel of a human hand embracing my hand and mine embracing his. He was a hell of a good guy, was Ken, and I think he might have suspected what kind of mixed-up cracker he was dealing with. But he was always quick with the hugs and treated me like his own brother.

Told you it was disgusting.

20:58 / 18.01.07

I always got song lyrics, hilariously terribly wrong. As well as the classic Hendrix "excuse me while I kiss this guy", there was Paul Simon singing "buddy, you can call Ne-ow" and a line from a Kula Shaker track which I was convinced was "revolution pa-pa" (not "for fun")

Indeed, the tradition still continues with my firm -and recently shatterd -belief that the words to the Kook's 'Naieve' went:-

'I know/she knows/I'm not from the Ruskin'

Ah, how my dreams of their cultural status were shattered.

21:41 / 18.01.07

it's ok monk, I grew up thinking male people didn't really have feelings for other people. Not that they were bad mind you, just they weren't capable of caring for anyone besides themselves.
Men, boys, just lived in a insulated state of happy/not happy. I guess I sort of viewed them as emotionally stunted by nature. Like infants.

But then I was also convinced that if I closed a door all the way whatever was on the other side might cease to exist and fall out of reality. Also the sky really went on forever in a huge flat plane.

jentacular dreams

08:50 / 19.01.07

Also dreamt one night that I looked out of my window and Jupiter was filling half the sky, with moons zipping around it. I believed that it had actually happened. I think I still do believe it. It was beautiful.

I had that dream too, it was about 1/3 full, and saturn was right behind it. Maybe it did happen?

Either way it drove my fascination with astronomy for years.

09:19 / 19.01.07

Wow, Monk, must’ve taken you years to shake that one.

Xk, an idea why you thought men were basically psychopaths?
I appreciate that there may be personal reasons why you might not want to answer that question.

13:07 / 19.01.07

When I was young, I thought I could fly.

Turns out it was really more like gliding, and the air currents had to be just right....

13:58 / 19.01.07

Xk, an idea why you thought men were basically psychopaths?
I appreciate that there may be personal reasons why you might not want to answer that question.

Well since you asked I'm okay with providing Too Much Information.
(if you don't want to read it now is a good time to scroll passed it.)

Well I think I lacked first hand experience in seeing them adjust their behavior because of how it impacted other people. The females self regulated out of what I perceived as empathy for how their actions affected others but my limited exposure to males seemed to indicate they just acted out blindedly without a feedback loop. Afterall I was mostly exposed to young males in school or adult males with anger issues.
Again I remember having pity for them and a sense that they were just stunted by nature.

In contrast I grew up thinking women were by nature treacherous emotionally. So later choosing betwen what I perceived as stunted emotional partners or emotionally dangerous ones I usually opted for the stunted. My trust issues with women are actually more problematic than my underestimation of men's empathy. Not to mention how much of a jerk I tend to be in lesbian relationships...sigh.

14:16 / 19.01.07

That's interesting. I'm trying to think if I had any notably strange ideas about sex and gender now.

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