I believed films that were set in the future were accurate...
I always dreamed of the day when I was grown up that I would be able to use a hoverboard and wear clothes that automatically fit. It is so depressing being an adult and looking back at the childish wonder and hope you had only to find out that the real future is much like the past, just with better hair.
(The Kwyjibo A big, dumb, balding North American ape., Fri 20 Jan 2012, 11:19, 10 replies)

I believed that women carried hambags
Obviously when I was young, I misheard "handbag", which isn't surprising considering the average Belfast accent.
I never questioned the name "hambag", or even why they weren't made of ham because they were boring things only girls used. I just thought that's what they were called and that was that.
Nobody ever picked up on it when I said the word "hambag", on account of me having the very same accent that messed me up in the first place.

That is, until I was an embarrassing age doing a GCSE German exam where you had to listen to the word in German, then write down the English word.

That happened 10 years ago and people still remind me of it. Dicks.
(Kushan just wants to fit in..to your mum, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 10:59, 3 replies)

Sleeping together and vibrating members
My best guess at how the birds and bees thing worked was that the key was sleeping together. When you are asleep in a bed with a woman, the sperm comes out of your penis and sneaks across the bed and up the fanny and into the womb. So if you don't want a baby don't get into bed with a woman - or make sure you don't fall asleep.

I also had a friend who put his limited knowledge of the reproductive process together with the fact that women could use a vibrator for fun if no man was handy, and decided that a 'proper' hard-on must therefore vibrate. He reckoned his did. I got quite spooked for a while that my stiffies didn't.
( Prof. Piehead, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 10:57, 14 replies)

I used to believe that all the world's a stage, and that the men and women players, who all have their entrances and their exits.
This does not entitle one to a prompt, however, if stuck for words having accidentally revealed to one's mate's girlfriend that he's also seeing someone else behind her back.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 10:53, Reply)

Banana Blancmange
It's not cold custard, it's banana blancmange. (I hated custard, but loved banana blancmange - or so I thought...)
( Prof. Piehead, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 10:50, Reply)

Tomatoes
I used to believe that tomatoes were vegetables, then I got clever. Tomatoes are actually fruits.
Then I got wise, and stopped putting them in my fruit crumbles and flans.

Oh, and a strawberry isn't a berry.
(lordy lordy, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 10:42, 9 replies)

Limes are unripe lemons
That is all
( monkeyboyalpha jumping on the bandwagon since, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 10:40, 2 replies)

Speed of Light
When I was a lot younger (honest!) I thought the speed of light was how quickly the light bulb when out when you pressed the light switch.

Think it may have slowed down a bit nowadays due to energy saving lightbulbs!
(DangerFlange Chamone Mother Hubbard, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 10:39, 3 replies)

That only males were unfaithful.
Realising otherwise was an epiphany that opened a whole Pandora's box of illicit 'payback' fornication for me.
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 10:06, 3 replies)

Scared of 1980
I was born in November 1976. Obviously, this meant that, as 1979 drew to a close, I'd just turned three years old. And already, one thing was clear: I was an utter dolt.

Even at that age, I was still unable to count beyond single digits. (I'm willing to accept that that might have had something to do with going to a nursery school where they gave us toys and a sandpit rather than books and lessons: I couldn't read, either.) Particularly, I couldn't work out whether nought came at the end or the beginning of the number sequence from one to nine. However, I did know that the year was 1979, and that 1979 was about to end. What would come next was the problem. As far as I could see, since it was unclear what followed nine in the number sequence, we were about to run out of numbers. This was a worry. More than a worry, in fact. The end of 1979 scared me slightly.

That there were three other digits in the year and that these might tell us something didn't cross my rather stupid mind.

I'm not sure whether I was dropped on my head shortly after birth. If not - if stupiditly like that was predictable development - I have a horrible feeling that I ought to have been...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 10:03, Reply)

Fabrication
In my youth I firmly believed that a university degree would give me an advantage in life.

Turns out it sets you back three years of earnings potential and you just drink a lot of watered-down beer.

Glad that myth has finally been busted though :-)
(BinDipper, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 9:15, 40 replies)

my mum ran me over when i was 3
sat in the hospital waiting for them to operate on my leg, i turned to my dad and asked him if i was going to die.

the funny ideas you have as a child eh?!

for the record i don't think she meant to run me over.
and the car was yellow.
( Ya What Skiddlyboop, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 9:14, 5 replies)

i watched jaws 2 when i was younger
couldn't use the loo for a while afterward as i was convinced jaws was gonna come up the pipes and get me.
( Ya What Skiddlyboop, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 9:08, Reply)

My parents told me about sex at a very early age...
...but this was started by my dad asking me one day, "Do you know what sex is?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed proudly. "It's when a guy puts his willy in a girl's bottom and pees!"



Also, when I was a nipper, I couldn't quite work out how you were meant to drive a car. I reasoned that the gear lever must in fact be a joystick, and the driver used it to control the direction of the car like some awful 80s videogame.
(Flap Burger hasn't really got a burger made of flaps, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 8:57, 1 reply)

Grown up shot
When I was about 11 and the sour memory of rounds of booster vaccination shots was still fresh in my mind, a friend told me that his older brother had just turned 18, and when boys turn 18 they have to get an absolutely massive shot done right in the pouch and taint area. I'm not sure what the shot was supposed to be for, but probably something to do with becoming an adult who's done with puberty.

I believed that story for years all the while dreading the idea of turning 18- I'm not sure when I stopped, but I must have eventually asked other people about it. It's a good thing, because I might have run away or offed myself if I knew that was really coming up.


Also, I remember assuming that sex was like a subtle docking procedure, and once the business parts were locked in place, you just kind of lay quiet and still and waited it out for a while until the process had completed. The first bit of porn I saw really surprised me.
( the prick of misery pierced my foot on a spiiiike on, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 5:04, 2 replies)

My Girlfriend when she was a kid believed a funny thing. Though it was her mum's fault for telling her
She got told by her mum that if she ate the sesame seeds on a burger bun then a burger tree would grow out of her stomach. So she used to pick off all the seeds before eating her burger
(wehttamman via B3ta for microwave, Fri 20 Jan 2012, 1:33, 3 replies)

b3ta bellybuttons
There seems to be an incredible amount of us with horrible belly button stories on here.
What is it about the silly little indent (hopefully inny as outies are just disgustingly WRONG)
My brothers, I had 3 older ones, used to tell me that if I played with my belly button, or let anyone else play with it, and it somehow started to bleed, I would never stop bleeding and I would bleed to death.
I obviously believed this when I was a kid. A handful of people have tested my belief in this as an adult.
They have either ended up injured or offended.
I can't help it! The involuntary reaction is to to go into 'life preserver' mode and immediately punch anyone who, for a laugh, puts their finger in my belly button. I am in no way a violent person, but god forbid....
I do warn them.
( Herb Alpert's Taxi Driver I have very beautiful lips, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 23:28, 3 replies)

My grandad...
My grandad had a thin pencil moustache and was (i thought) the spitting image of David Niven. I couldn't quite understand how he spoke with a posh English accent in films rather than his native Geordie and couldn't do so in real life.
He had a cavalry sabre displayed in the entrance hall and every time we would visit he would tell us how he had skewered four Germans on it in one go. Turns out he never left England in the war, but was a fireman & the sword was his brothers.
When we used to sit down on a saturday evening and watch Dad's Army, I always though it said "Have you been watching" at the end. I could never work out why anyone would want to check. Or why there wasn't a question mark.
(peely, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 23:10, Reply)

Until a ridiculously late age (late teens)
I thought that you weren't supposed to take sweets from strangers because the bastards would have put poison in them.
(who, me? The comedy account of someone who's not funny., Thu 19 Jan 2012, 22:59, 2 replies)

i thought
if you had a black light bulb and switched it on it would go dark, also my parents had loads of vinyl and some of them were albums, so when it said blah blah volume 1, i thought you had to play it quiet
(goonbreath, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 22:41, 1 reply)

Pictures Queue
My Momused to pronounce certain words strangely, just for shits and giggles. Things like 'Hoard Overs' for 'Hors d'oeuvres'. Another was 'Picturesque' pronounced 'Pictures Queue'.
When I was ten or so, we learned 'picturesque' in English class. The teacher asked how to pronounce the word and called on my wildly waving hand.
'Pictures queue!' I proudly announced.
'That's not quite right, Parkie.' said the teacher.
So I began to argue with her. It ended with me in tears screaming at the teacher that she was wrong and a call home from the school about my behaviour.
I still say Pictures Queue every chance I get, and am leading my daufghter down the same dark path.
(parkiesgonnagetagun, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 22:06, 6 replies)

Once you've had around 5 weeks of karate/judo/[martial art of choice],
you will know all the points of weakness on the human body, along with at least 3 instant kill techniques.

Of course, I can't show you how to do them, as they're illegal (and would kill you), but I definately learnt them.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 22:02, 11 replies)

Not me, but the reviled former Mr Quar, a science teacher, believed until his 20s that women's breasts grew larger when men felt them.
He let this slip one day in conversation. When I'd finished laughing hysterically I asked him for more detail.

He said that big-busted women must have had them felt a lot, possibly by loads of different men, and were slags.

This set me off laughing again, as his own mother had huge norks. Presumably Mums aren't slags because only Dads are allowed to feel them up.

Anyway, when he thought it all through he realised that he was the last of his peer group to outgrow this belief, possibly by a good 10 years. Better late than never.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 21:52, 2 replies)

When I was younger the family hired a copy of ET and sat down to watch it. It shit me right up, I would have been about 6.
I hated it, it was freaky. My elder, evil cousins told me that this sort of thing happened all the time and they'd had an ET in their house last year. We probably had one too, and they usually hung about at the top of stairs. I knew fear that day.

Fast forward 10 or so years and my mother finally explodes with rage. 'Why the blody hell do you have to sprint down the last half of the stairs all the time? You've knackered my carpet! If you tripped you'd bloody kill yourself!!'

It was only then that I realised what an effect the words of my cousins had had on me. for the last decade id walk half way down the stairs to where they turned back on themselves and then sprint as fast as I could, three steps at a time until I reached the 'safety' of the ground floor. Going upstairs was an all out dash, head down, using all my limbs for propulsion.

Of course I knew that ET didnt actually stand on the landing waiting to jump me, but I raced up and down those stairs all the same, no matter what, holding hot dinners, following guests, it didn't matter.

I fucking hate my cousins and even now when I'm visiting back home I have to remind myself to walk slowly when on the stairs there.

TL:DR? My cousins are cunts, I'm gullible and believe in aliens.
(FartThroughAWalkieTalkie wished you were dead in ditch on, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 21:10, 1 reply)

Killer bees.
Anyone old enough to remember the killer bees from South America stories? Proper shit me up, they did.
(hiraeth SPACE £19.99. I say yer buy one yer get one free, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 21:09, 1 reply)

A girl in our class apparently had 'mange'
And if you touched her you would instantly catch it. This could only be cured by touching someone else or 'throwing it' during class.

So often there'd be chains of 'mange' going round, passing it from one seated child to another.
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 21:04, 7 replies)

Playground full of herpes
When I was younger my Dad used to let me watch snippets of the Harry Enfield show if I had behaved myself. I thought it was hilarious, and at Christmas couple of years later, in one of those 'Homer buying Marge a bowling ball' type present purchase decisions, I got him (via mum) a Harry Enfield 1997 video (the yellow one with 'Kevin' on the front for those that remember).

At some point on Christmas/Boxing Day family gather round to watch it. Several sketches in and all are having fun, until the sketch where 'Wayne & Waynetta' win the lottery appears. In it they are asked what they will do with their winnings and Wayne replies 'get my herpes cured'. I did not know what herpes was. I asked my parents. I am told, probably after much squirming looking back, it is 'bad breath'. This accepted we watch the rest of the video, eat chocolate etc.

Return to school post holidays, and I can't remember the exact happening, but at some point in the throes of playground name-calling, I accuse someone of having 'herpes', which I explain means awful garlic breath. Circa a week later and 'herpes' is now part of the standard 12 yr old vocabulary alongside 'gay', 'knobcheese' et al. At some point after this, the inevitable teacher involvement occurs after the remark is overheard. Cue mass bollocking but luckily I was never revealed to be the original source. Much hilarity at the teacher trying to explain the true meaning of the word. In short we were insulting each other, just not in the way we thought, but it still makes me smile.
(hebangsthedrums, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 20:38, 1 reply)

I practiced it as a kid...
and still believe to this day, that running up the stairs using your hands AND feet is the quickest (and arguably most stylish) manner of getting upstairs.
( the dalai farmer always likes tea, but especially on, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 19:21, 21 replies)

here be monsters
when I was a nipper I was obsessed with myths and monsters, my bible at the time was the usbourne book of monsters that had all sorts of facts, bigfoot sightings, grendel, the kraken etc.. and narwhals. Imagine my face last year as I walk into the grand hall of the museum of Zoology in Cambridge with a very audible 'what the f***?'
( Filthy narwhal titty titty tits tits tits, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 19:20, 3 replies)

missing people on milk cartons
As a child I went to a typical school, the kind that although claiming to be an atheist school insists on reading from the bible and telling the kids all about god. At 4 or 5 years old I didnt really understand it much but used to listen to the stories sat on the floor in the school hall every morning in assembly. We also had the typical lectures about what to do if you were ever seperated from your mum, got lost or something.
I was walking down the street with my mum and I asked her "Why do some people go to church?" and she replied "to find God"... That was it, I was convinced god was missing and we should all be out looking for him. For the following 3 or 4 months I kept a constant vigilant for god, and closely watched any beardy man that happened to be in the street/local shop.
(samurai_beth, Thu 19 Jan 2012, 18:57, 2 replies)