misheard carol
I used to think there was a country called Orientar (where the three kings come from, in the carol)
(paperkitman, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:56, 3 replies)

The Flintoffs
For the last few years I've been not really listening to the sport bit especially not the cricket bit of the Radio 4 news before paying attention again for the weather/comedy animal story. The names Freddie Flintoff and Andrew Flintoff had ahem penetrated my consciousness so my most sensible assumption was that these were two related cricketers, probably brothers, maybe cousins, and I was aware one had stolen a pedalo in high jinks post-ashes. Just discussing the other day how let down Andrew must have been after Freddie stole the pedalo...Ah. My mistake
(willydoc, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:54, 11 replies)

My own personal and slightly retarded headfuck
It comes from the early days of seeing both colour and black and white television shows and films. As a curious child, I'd ask my Dad why some films were in colour and some weren't. He told me that 'they didn't have colour back then'.

Which I then spent three worrying years trying to fucking understand where colour came and why everyone and everything used to black and white (and how people coped?).
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:51, 1 reply)

Oozalum birds
My dad told me after he had booked a beach holiday one year that the country we were going to was the home of the vicious Oozalum bird. Apparently they lived under the sand on the beach and nipped off your toes.

Of course being 7 i believed him and it took my mum lots of persuasion to get me to step onto the beach when we eventually went.

Course my dad thought this was hilarious.
(funkenstein Be pure! Be vigilant! Behave!, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:49, 1 reply)

Damned Lies
My hilarious father informed me many moons ago, that Cubby Brocoli (of James Bond fame), made his money for the films off the back of his one, great invention - the brocoli plant.

I laboured under this misapprehension for far too long. Far too fucking long.
( Albert Marshmallow is a completely irredeemable cunt, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:48, 5 replies)

ah, the Bomzitit
universalpsykipath's story has just reminded me that for several years when I was a child I used to believe in a fictional creature called the Bomzitit. Purely because when my mum saw my messy bedroom she'd sometimes exclaim "clean this up! It looks like a bomb's hit it!"

I'd never seen one, but I imagined a frantic, messy creature, maybe a bit like Taz, called the Bomzitit, and was amused when my room looked like one.
( sanityclause is waiting until, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:46, Reply)

that if I worked hard and did well in my exams, there'd be no stopping me, I would go on to get a sensational job and be a great success and my life would be smashing
( vladimir, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:36, 5 replies)

Two Prime Ministers.
I used to think that Jim Callaghan and James Callaghan were different people. Which, of course, led to many hilarious misunderstandings.
(hiraeth SPACE £19.99. I say yer buy one yer get one free, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:36, Reply)

As a kid
lots of people told me to work hard and treat people fairly and you'd get lots of rewards.

Now I look at people I knew who didn't do either of those and they have a nice place to live, don't go to work and seem to live in the pub.
( M3rx likes the Asian ladies, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:35, 1 reply)

I STILL don't understand why
When looking at a picture of a woman in a skirt, if I tip it up and look at it sideways, why I can't see up her skirt.

If anyone would like to try and explain this to me, I'd be most grateful, as I've been trying to work it out since I was 6 or so.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:33, 16 replies)

Prostitutes
A girl at school was telling people that when she grew up she wanted to be a prostitute (we were 10).

I asked my mum what a prostitute was. My dear mother thought for a moment, and very diplomatically answered "someone who sells their bodies for money". Vague enough to keep me innocent, but informative enough to not actually be wrong.

So for a worryingly long amount of time, I thought this meant that ladies of the night sold their vital organs, limbs or body parts for cash on the black market. I thought this quite a brave and noble thing to do.
(niceandwarmandhot vive la résistance, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:26, Reply)

Haunted for years.
As a young'un, we lived in a terraced house and as such were always told to "Keep the noise down!" and "The neighbours will hear!"
So I grew up in fear of what the neighbours would do if they did hear me.

At night, without fail, I would hear my neighbour pacing up and down, up and down, up and down. The worry was that he was just waiting for his opportunity to do me harm after all the noise I must have made.

Every night for years, pace, pace, pace. It kept me awake, shivering in fear and worry. It didn't matter what time I was in bed, or even if I woke up in the middle of the night, I could still hear him. I lived in fear, of him and of my sanity. If I lifted my head off the pillow, it was a momentary respite from the dread of hearing those feet. I couldn't sleep sitting up, so had to put my head back down sooner or later.

I don't remember when, but there came a point when I realised it wasn't worrying me any more. Perhaps I'd lived with the fear for so long I'd gotten used to it, perhaps I didn't think of him as a threat, (he was a nice chap, after all) but it was only recently I clocked what was really happening.

I'd been hearing the pulse of my heartbeat as my head rested on the pillow. Go on, try it.
( Blind Meach Cautiously optimistic, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:25, 3 replies)

Tom Jone's Mojo reminded me.
I can remember wondering how they got the tiny people into the radio and TV.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:17, Reply)

Don't do drugs.
Because I know someone who knows someone that took an E and climbed a tree naked in a park and fingered herself in front of everyone.

If you take acid you can convince yourself that you're an orange and peel yourself, or convince yourself you are superman and jump of a building.

This girl my sister knows went to a party took one line of cocaine and bled out of every orifice.

Smoking weed to much sends you insane I know a bloke who smoked to much then used to wank into the clothes rails at Topshop.

I believed all of these.
(shezam slouching towards nirvana., Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:16, 9 replies)

The man, the legend.
When I were a nipper, if my Dad was frustrated with the speed of something, as he often was, he would exclaim: "It's like watching grass grow!"

And for years, I thought that "Grasgrow" was someone on television.

In my mind, Grasgrow was a man who had a regular post-bedtime slot, perhaps on BBC 1. He would comment in his twinkly Irish way on the events of the day, then round it off with the music of Simply Red, or some other similarly inoffensive, middle-of-the-road crooners.

Pausing only to adjust his toupee, he would smile as he read news of the strikes and discontent of the mid-to-late-eighties, his cheerful demeanour giving you that warm "Ah, to be sure, it'll all work out in the end" feeling.
He would have to be Irish, I reasoned, because the only other media personality my father detested enough to refer to solely by his surname was 'Wogun'.
Warm, wise and genial, Grasgrow was the voice of sanity in a crazy world.

When I got a little older, and my bed-time got put back a bit, I asked if I could watch Grasgrow now.

Of course, the truth came out and I was utterly crushed. Partly because my boyish dreams had been shattered, but mostly because for the following fortnight nobody who knew the story could look at me without breaking out into peals of hysterical laughter. Even my teachers.

And that, your honour, is why I skinned those cheerleaders.
(universalpsykopath loves what you've done with your hair., Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:14, 2 replies)

VHS tapes
For years I was utterly convinced that if you took the tape out of a video cassette and held it up to the light you would be able to see the frames of the film you were watching. It was years before I actually tested that theory out and was most disappointed.
(Tom Jones's Mojo Hasn't had any since, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:09, 1 reply)

My dad made some comment
once, when watching a Western on TV, about Indians believing that being photographed stole the soul of the subject.

I wouldn't look directly into a camera for ages, and briefly convinced myself that my Mum might be evil, as she always took lots of photos when we went on holiday.

Also, girls had willies too, but they had to sit down in the toilet because they had weak legs.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 17:02, Reply)

Fungi
My parents had a "classic car" and used to go to owners' club meetings and drives at the weekends. One of the Club activities was a treasure hunt - get a list of locations, drive to each place, answer a question about the place, re-group at a pub to tally scores, that sort of thing. They used to enjoy it and they'd sometimes take me along for the ride. This was the late 70s / early 80s so 'going for a drive in the country' might have been an enjoyable activity back then, rather than an exercise in impotent fury and traffic congestion.

I remember as a five-year old sitting in the bucket seat in the back of the car, barely able to see up out of the window, as my mum read a clue about "look out for fungi" to my dad as he drove. The thought occurred to me that I didn't know what fungi was - what if the word meant poisonous gas? I decided that holding my breath was the only option.

Of course, a few seconds later I needed to breathe. But what if I breathed in the poisonous fungi? Obviously I had to breathe the air from inside my T-shirt, that couldn't possibly be poisonous. So I pulled the neck of my T-shirt up over my mouth and nose and tried to breathe as little as I could, until my parents had passed this next clue.

It took them about ten minutes, I'd guess, to wonder why their chatterbox son had been uncharacteristically quiet. And probably about another five minutes for me to sheepishly reveal why I was trying to hide inside my T-shirt...
( sanityclause is waiting until, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:59, Reply)

My grandad convinced me that if I ate the bits of fingernail I chewed
that they would grow inside me and I'd have to go to hospital to have them removed.
I remember having nightmares about it before deciding that I'd get a few days off school if this happened and that would be a good thing.

He need not have worried, pigshit cured me of nailbiting during my first day of farmwork.
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:56, Reply)

Aged about 11,
I described a friend as being my bum chum. My dad went mental, but wouldn't explain why, his explanation going no farther than "it's rude" and "not something I want to hear from you".

It's the same as bosom buddies, isn't it?

I worked it out, later, as I realised that my dad was a massive homophobe.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:51, 2 replies)

that if you moved your hands around a lot
in mid conversation to emphasise a point, you could get gesticular cancer.
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:51, Reply)

That the man in that car really did have puppies at home.

( Infidel , shit and wrong, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:49, 3 replies)

I used to think that Donkeys were just old Horses.
I'm still not convinced.
( Ya What Skiddlyboop, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:48, 2 replies)

As a nipper I was 100% convinced that a Superman watch I'd seen in a catalogue enabled you to fly.
No wonder my mother never bought it for me, possibly fearing the consequences if I were to ever test it out.
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:48, 1 reply)

My friends' parents...
...used to tell his sister and him that icecream vans only played their jingle when they were out of ice cream.

I reckon the primary reason for having kids now is to fill them full of stuff like this (like telling them that moths are the ghosts of dead butterflies).
(luckybluecoat, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:37, 8 replies)

That jobs were for life.
Then again it was the 70s.
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:35, Reply)

Erich Von Daniken
Oh, I cringe at the memory. I was very young and bright though, eager to read anything outlandish or "amazing".

With only rudimentary critical faculties, I lapped up all that nonsense about alien landing sites (they can cross hundreds of light years but need some lines drawn in the desert to land on?); and anti-gravity (because there's no way brown people could build big things by themselves...) Utter, utter bilge.
(North Utsira South Utsira, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:33, 5 replies)

That all women have a mole on the back of their necks, called a 'strawberry'
My mum, sister and grandma all had similar moles on the back of their necks.

Primary school, I was no older than 8, and the class was discussing the differences between boys and girls.

"Can anyone else name a difference between boys and girls?" Said the very pretty Miss Buckingham (Oh, I guess I was 6 or 7). My hand shoots up.
"Strawberries, miss!"
"Huh?"
"All girls have a strawberry!"
"What?"
"On the back of their necks!"

Miss Buckingham showed me the back of her neck. As did some of the girls in the class. So I ran out of the room crying. Like a boss. I also had a similar experience when I named "a raccoon" as a flying animal, but that was entirely the fault of Mario Bros. 3.
(leviticus no longer likes the cut of your gib on, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:24, 2 replies)

Ouch.
As a small person I was convinced that it was an entire testicle that was shot out of one's equipment. I rationalised large families by assuming that testicles re-grew once used.
(Jack of Diamonds, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:23, Reply)

As a child i didn't think woman had shits

(serge, Wed 18 Jan 2012, 16:16, 2 replies)