Manx cats
My mother convinced me that their distinguishing feature was not that they were tailless, but that they had three legs.

Then the people over the road got a Manx cat and it was run over. It survived and had a rear leg amputated, which didn't seem to slow it down much.

So I was right in the end.
(rogerzilla, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 20:15, 1 reply)

Poisonous polos
Maybe my mum had a hatred of the small white mints with a hole or she really is as evil as I think. But she told me, quite seriously, that every mint polo you ate meant you lost 15 seconds off your life expectancy.

This terrified me for years.

It wasn't that random a statement as this was the 80s and cigarettes were being demonised as taking minutes off your life for every one you smoked.

This meant me gambling if I had a packet of mints; I liked them but were they were worth dying 3 minutes early per pack? I was also worried about how many I'd already eaten in my life - probably hundreds! If I was going to be hit by a bus would it be early that day?

I was 19 when my girlfriend explained my mum was lying...
(Wooden meal is. Or is he?, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 18:59, 2 replies)

Here's a list of things
that I used to believe.

www.snopes.com
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 18:46, 1 reply)

Memory
As a kid, one of the piano and voice songs I learned was 'Memory'....I thought it was a lovely song about a cat who'd had a good night out and was frolicking around waiting to be petted in the sunshine by her owners.

Fucking saw CATS for the first time yesterday and a part of me died inside....
(nolongernuts, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 18:26, 6 replies)

I DON'T LIKE COTTAGE PIE!!
Proclaimed my sister (aged around 4 at the time).

"O.K. well instead I will make mince beef, mash potato with gravy and some peas and baby carrots."
(Frample Tromwibbler climbs an obstacle like old people fuck, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 16:09, Reply)

liquid=water says apparently intelligent dickhead
Just reminded by rev jayneflakes -my step-father believed something similar...

I distinctly remember him adamantly defending the idea that something could only become a liquid if it contained water. I think he didn't believe metal could become a liquid - it just went jelly-like when heated.
Orange juice was used as an example and the subject was brought up in response to something I said about pure ethanol containing no water. In which case, in his mind it would be a powder.

As he had been scholarshipped to grammar school and had a law degree this is actually quite impressive. He was also a bit of a cunt (putting it very mildly) so I feel a little bit gleeful remembering the moment of realisation he actually knew fuck all about how the world worked.
(teasus likes tea, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 15:58, 6 replies)

Bangers and Mash
I remember being so excited one night as I asked what was for dinner and my mum said, "Bangers and Mash" but being confused when presented with a plate with a portion of mashed potatoes and a few sausages on the side... As tasty as it was I was fully expecting a mound of mash with potatoes sticking out of it, a lá the Beano.
(Mr_Lew, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 15:55, 7 replies)

I wasn't quite scarred by early exposure to hard core porn but certainly confused by it.
This is somewhat of a pearoast but because I can't find the original it'll be possbly more embroidered than the last one.

As a ten year old, hanging about in the woods of the local park with my fellow gang members (think Bash Street Kids more than Bloods and Crips) a well known scally who was notorious for being a crazy loner (having a congenital deformation and had since had to evolve an over-the-top personality to compensate) was showing off with his sheath knife, stabbing trees with it until he snapped the blade off, then proceeded to pull a German hard core porn magazine out of his back pocket and leeringly thrust it into our faces saying 'What do you think of that then?'. It was a picture of a mustachioed man in a cowboy outfit (but with no trousers on) inserted into a country gal costumed wench, standard doggy-style stuff but still classified as illegal in this country due to the graphic exposure of hard-on-schlong and penetrative involvement.

Now I was aware that as a growing boy I might eventually end up with curly wurly pubes and a bigger set of equipment so no surprises there. However female anatomy was a differrent matter. Due to early life experiences on family holidays abroad where toddlers were allowed to hang out on the beach with no clothes on I knew that girls had a bum cleft and this carried on in a continuous line from back to front. So what I was seeing can only have been a man putting his substantially engorged willy into her bumhole. Making that assumption I asked tentatively if that was the case where the mentalist scornfully jeered 'That's how babies are made, some stuff comes out of his dick into her'.

Ah. What comes out of a dick? Wee certainly does. Being a bit to young to have experienced spunky splattering all I could think of was wee.

So that must mean babies come from when a man puts his willy up a woman's bum and then wees up her, the magical union and act of love results in a baby falling back down the shit-chute some months later.

Looking back on it now I can see only one problem with my misconception- being red hot Dutch or German porn, perhaps he was doing anal after all but in profile I wouldn't have been able to tell......
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Sun 22 Jan 2012, 13:17, Reply)

That if you ate the pips from an apple core
An apple tree would grow in your belly really really slowly and eventually you'd die horribly with branches growing out of your mouth. I ate a whole apple core once as a playground dare when I was about 6, and spent the next few months awaiting my imminent death.

Also, as a child I had bunk beds (for no apparent reason, as I had a room to myself). I slept on the top bunk and was utterly convinced that Grotbags from the Rod Hull & Emu show was laying on the bottom bunk, and if any part of my anatomy dangled down she would rip it off and eat it. Many's the night I pissed the bed as I was too scared to climb down the ladder to go to the toilet.
(runawayscreaming I'd like to thank the Academy..., Sun 22 Jan 2012, 9:59, 4 replies)

Cannibals
I thought they were everywhere when I was a kid, just waiting to eat me. This is why kids should not watch the news or have weird friends who have been into ed gein since they were six.
(GunProof Grandad Killed your favourite uncle on, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 9:49, 1 reply)

Vomit receptacles
Apparently Vomit is stored in the back of your legs. A fact I believed until about 14.
( Wildyles is back to rimming chimps, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 0:53, 1 reply)

If you're eating a lolly
for god's sake keep hold of the stick, otherwise if you fall over it'll stab through your tonsils and up into your brain.
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 0:51, Reply)

Clementines and Satsumas are baby oranges
and, by that logic, somewhere in the world there are HUGE strawberries.
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 0:50, 5 replies)

At night, when you sleep, the carpet goes from fluffy to spiky
and if you fall out of bed you'll get stuck on the spikes, like with velcro, and have to lie there getting stabbed until the morning.

...this gem brought to you by a two week holiday and my mum forgetting the toddler safety rail to clip on my bed. It worked...
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 0:50, Reply)

When a woman wants to get pregnant
.. the vet comes along, sticks a bottle in her fanny and shakes it around a bit. Several months later theres the possibility of ropes and lots of tugging.

Still sounds feasible to be honest.
(Freakmandu, Sun 22 Jan 2012, 0:03, 4 replies)

Doncasters and Ponies
Two things to say here -

Number one. Sitting on a train with my mum when I was about 4 years old I asked her what the sweets I was eating were called, she thought that I had asked where we were (how she mistook the question I will never know). The upshot is that I thought Fruit Pastiles were called Doncaster's for ages.

Number two. Ponies are not baby horses - I only found this out somewhere in my teenage years.

Oh, thought of another, I thought for years that raisins were a fruit in their own right. I was quite shocked to find out otherwise!
(Vauxhall Burgundy, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 23:46, Reply)

When I was very young, I used to think colour had been invented at some point in the 1950's
because everything I had seen from before then was in black & white. Pictures of my mum's family, my grandparents in their youth, films etc...it was a logical conclusion to a 4 year old that everyone walked about in black and white back then.

It was only when I was taken to an art gallery a few weeks later and saw pictures painted in the previous century I finally got some common sense.
( Bamboo Steamer, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 22:31, 7 replies)

Being a junior science geek,
I enjoyed working out how things worked. Sadly, I did not understand the differing states of matter, being rather young. So it was my belief that metal had water in it which is why it turned to liquid when it got really hot.

To prove this, I took a lighter to toy car with the aim of melting it. This led on a few months later for me to attempt welding with a box of matches. Luckily Mum caught me before I burned the house down. Luckily, I later learned the basics of how matter works and to be honest it still blows me away to this day.

Woo Science!
( Rev. Jayneflakes Buy my book, I need the cash for drugs and hookers, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 21:17, 1 reply)

that labour politicians
in the 1970's actual meant what they said and that the promises they made would be kept







actual come to think of it this goes for all politicians or am i just to think to be of any use to the country?
( fluffybunnykiller Is feasting on the clitoris of life, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 21:07, 6 replies)

Spearmint was just an artificial flavour because,
a knowledgeable friend told me that, and I quote- "real spearmint is poisonous"
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 20:47, 1 reply)

Not me but my Dad..
as a yoot, thought that Brussels Sprouts were not a vegetable in their own right, but merely cabbages gone to seed.
( Sallyrsm, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 20:38, Reply)

One Sunday...
sat round the table aged about three or four eating roast chicken, I broached the question 'Mummy, is this the same chicken that runs round in a farmyard?'
'No', says The Trout, doubtless envisioning me hitherto refusing to eat said fowl, 'these are grown speshly in a field'

I believed that for some years.....
( Sallyrsm, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 20:37, 1 reply)

The only way I can explain this
is that I must have been watching television while my mum was listening to music in the next room, when I asked "who's this?".

The upshot was that I thought that Simon and Garfunkel were Bo and Luke Duke of Hazzard County until I was about 13.
(roszser, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 20:19, Reply)

Poultry is hard
Well into adulthood, my father believed that turkeys were grown-up chickens.
(cubby2, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 19:59, Reply)

I was an unusual child
Never told anyone this, but I remember being taken shopping by my parents when I must have been about four years old. Possibly younger.

We'd gone down into a subway, and then came out the other side.

I spent three years thinking we'd gone through some sort of portal into another world.
(The Luggage is haunted..., Sat 21 Jan 2012, 18:50, 1 reply)

Whenever my mum did the washing she'd hang it up in the Aering cupboard to dry, next to the boiler.
For a long time I thought it was a type of boiler cupboard named after its inventor, a Swede called Aering. I only twigged when I was nearly 21 and finally saw it written down.

In my defence, "airing cupboard" is a daft name for a hot dark enclosed space that gets no fresh air.

MORE AIRING CUPBOARD NOSTALGIA: the cat liked to sleep in there, and would sometimes scrabble at the door wanting to be let in. When the door was opened, he'd sniff at it for a few seconds, lose interest and wander off in a typically perverse cat-like way.

***AIRING CUPBOARD MESSAGE ENDS***
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 18:26, 8 replies)

A sorry tale of self abuse.
As a young lad and like every young lad that has come before or will come in the future I was a walking bag of raging fucked up hormones. This resulted in the usual, high voices, acne and hairy palms from masturbating like a chimpanzee on E.
After a day at the school smoking wall regaling one and all (plump chicks) on our masturbatory tales, one of the sixth form told us that if you pulled too hard and were uncircumcised you could pull your foreskin all the way back leaving nothing but a quivering stump of raw bloody flesh. A bit like peeling a banana but with more blood and with a lot more pain.
This useful bit of advice stayed with me from the age of 14 until I was 18, in these 4 years I remained a careful wanker!!
All came to an end when i finished basic training and was posted to Germany. At the hands of a very skillful (and extremely beautiful) lady of the night I found that my foreskin did indeed go all the way back.
What sucked though was the 4 year build up of bell end cheese/smegma!!
(Hammy1801 may have scabies!, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 18:05, 12 replies)

Plug Hole Men
When we were children our father told us that monsters lived down the plug hole and the noise the water made was them shouting. Sure go us out of the bath quickly!
(FIldoDildo, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 16:36, 3 replies)

That cars had special switches for roundabouts
When approaching roundabouts as a child, it was a common event for me and my brothers to start screaming. This is because our dad had told us that there was a switch in the car and if he forgot to flick it then we would keep going around and around if we screamed. Sometimes he would have already remembered to flick the switch but sometimes we would go round until he could get to the switch. I remember hoping that if we did it for long enough we'd miss school.

Looking back, I wonder what made him think that driving with four screaming kids would be a fun way to pass the time and how long before he regretted his deception.
(pooster found out how long a piece of string was on, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 15:00, Reply)

All films were 3 hours long.
When I used to look at the showing times at my local 1 screen cinema all the times were roughly 3 hours apart, so in my brain I used to think all films were that long.

Of course totally forgetting B-Movies (alright grandad) and trailers and adverts, people going out with sweets and all that.
(Mitchell Gant, Sat 21 Jan 2012, 13:17, Reply)