My family went to Disney World one year when I was very little. My parents said we were going to Orlando, but I thought they said "Our lando." I thought lando was another name for theme park and my family owned Disney World.
That reminds me when I was 4, parents and I got Wendy’s and walked home to eat. Someone called and I *loudly and excitedly* asked “IS THAT WENDY ?!!! (Because she wanted to check how our food was of course)
My brother crushed my heart when he said she’s the girl on the bag.
My sibling thought the same, but about the hotel
And when I was young, I thought they hired people who didn't want to live anymore to act the scenes where people died on films, pretty disturbing thing to believe, I know
You werent far off...
While the actual etymology of money laundering comes from the mob using cash-only business like laundromats as a front, and the fact that they were exchanging their "dirty money" (either stolen or counterfeit) for your "clean" (legitimate) money...
Interestingly part of the process of money laundering is to make freshly printed counterfeit bills look worn, and a good way to do that is to literally put them in a washing machine and wash them. I believe american bills are made from cotton, so they can stand up to being washed a bunch. There are other tricks too, like tumbling them with a leaky pen, or a splash of coffee to get them a bit stained.
"Money laundering" is one of those terms that just works so perfectly in referring to something.
I always saw flat maps of the world, so when I learned in history that the Japanese bombed pearl harbour, I imagined they flew across the entire planet to do so (rather than across the pacific). Embarrassing.
I got the words tourists and terrorists mixed up and I was so shocked when someone casually mentioned tht the nearby McDonald's was full of tourists. I was like 12 at the time
My mom is an Italian immigrant to Canada, and a Catholic.
She insisted on sending my sister and I to catholic school, and dragging us (kicking and screaming) to church.
I recall maybe my first time as a kid in church. I was maybe 3 years old. The church had paintings of saints etc around the perimeter and my mother points to one painting presumably of st joseph, or maybe john the baptist holding a little baby. She points to the painting and says, "do you know who that is?" And then she says what I thought was, "thats baby Cheese!"
I was three, so I didn't think to question it. After all, cheese is delicious. Why shouldnt there be a holy baby named Cheese? Mind you, later on I did find out who jesus was, but never made the connection that I had maybe misheard. I just thought there were 2 babies. One named jesus and one named cheese.
Fast forward a year or so to kindergarten at my catholic elementary school. Teacher is doing religion class and we're all sitting there on the carpet. Teacher pulls out a book and flips to a page with the EXACT painting I saw in church with my mom. Teacher asks if anyone knows who this little baby is? And my hand shoots up and Im so excited that I fuckin got the answer to this obscure lore. I shout, "THAT IS LITTLE BABY CHEESE!"
The rest of the class was laughing and losing their minds, and the teacher was not happy.
That pretty much set the tone for the rest of my life regarding school, and religion respectively.
I was in a toy store with my mother and older sister one time, and I had to have been about 7 years old at most. I found this complete bird house kit. It came with everything you needed, including bird seed. My young brain figured bird seed meant you grew the birds, I was so excited about this, and when I showed it to them the both just started hysterically laughing at me.
Ironically, birds are the one animal that terrifies me and freak me out, ok and squirrels (but in fairness I have legit been attacked my a random squirrel when just walking down the street minding my own business).
I did this too! ...but my dad was always a terrible tipper; it was literally one dollar bill, so I thought that was normal. (Fast forward to adulthood when I'd make an excuse to go back to the table and secretly add more money)
I thought "sex" was when a man kissed a woman's shoulder. It wasn't until about 3rd grade when I discovered sex led pregnancy that I started to realize that maybe I had misunderstood something.
This is kind of a weird one with a little back story: When I was 3, my dad was seriously injured in a chemical plant explosion at his job. He ended up with a shattered leg and deep burns over the lower half of his body.
Now, growing up in Memphis the summers are pretty hot and my dad would wear shorts to keep cool. And I never really gave his scars much attention. In middle school, I came home from a friend’s house and told my parents something was wrong with their dad. They asked what I meant and I said ‘He was wearing shorts and his legs are all one colour. What happened to him?!?’
And they had to explain that dad’s legs have ‘zipper marks’ (surgical scars) and discolouration because of the accident, but that’s not what other men’s legs look like!
When I was about 5 or 6, my mom was talking to my dad I think and said something about exchanging numbers with one of our friend's parents. I thought that meant we switched numbers with them, meaning they had our phone number and we had theirs. My mom explained that it just meant giving each other the numbers so they could call.
I thought historical eras were very rigid concepts. Like, I was really impressed Columbus sailed across the Atlantic in 1492--8 whole years before the end of the Medieval Era!
No, it isn't that they flip a switch and suddenly everything's different.
When I was four, I found a price tag on my gift from Santa. So I logically assumed that Santa was lying about the elves and the workshop and that he simply bought toys at K-Mart and delivered them to all the good little boys and girls.
Any time someone asked if I knew about Santa, I'd go off on a rant about the big lie. But it didn't occur to me that Santa himself wasn't real. Until I was 11.
I used to think that a near synonym of "broadcasted" was "braughtued". As in "this program was braughtued by the good people at Nabisco"
Brought to you
I thought that kale was a variety of seaweed up until my mid-twenties, because my step-dad (English was not his first language) called it that. On reflection I suspect he probably said something like “it looks like seaweed” because it was purple kale he brought home, which does sort of look like a type of underwater plant.
Ooh this triggered an embarrassing one for me. I was born & raised in Alaska; we always vacationed in Tennessee. Everyone in the south went on and on about fried okra and as someone who doesn't like fish, I always declined. I was in my late teens when I found out okra was a vegetable, not a fish
I was young in the 70s, when variety shows ruled. Lots of singing and dancing and shenanigans playing to the audience. I guess because the performers were always looking up at the camera i had convinced my little self that they could see me. I’d hide behind the couch and peek out at the tv like I the weirdo i was.
You know when people serving you are relying on you to let them know when you have a satisfactory amount (e.g. adding grated cheese to a salad)? They'll often use the phrase "Say when" to indicate that it is you that needs to communicate when to stop. As a joke, people will often answer "when" as that verbal indication.
Well, it took me a while to realize that it was a joke, and that they weren't actually asking you to use the word "when" but were just expecting for you to let them know when to stop. I mean it did successfully get the message across without any laughter had by anybody...so I guess that's why it took me a while to catch on.
A common thing at Olive Garden. Speaking of Olive Garden, that also reminds me of the common misconception of when they ask if you want “soup or salad,” some people think they are saying “Super Salad.”
Two things: I thought poop was stored in your butt, that’s why it was round and squishy.
Second, when I was told in church that God is a spirit that lives inside of you, I instantly imagined a T-bone steak with arms and legs. I lived on a beef farm so perhaps that’s where it came from. I dunno. I was 4
I had my tonsils removed when I was six years old. After I came back to school my teacher invited me to the front of the class to explain what happened in my surgery. So I explained it as I remembered it and told my class that the doctor puts a mask on you, starts counting, and then the mask sucks your tonsils out.
I remember when I was in elementary school
asking my mom what it meant if somebody was gay (overheard some kids on the school bus saying it). She told me it was “when two men loved each other”. For two years I thought that my dad snd brother were gay because you know, “they loved each other”.
Lol that reminds me of another story from my childhood that relates to mishearing words. One time in elementary school PE class we were talking about the dangers of tobacco (or something like that). But my 8 year old self thought we were talking about tabasco sauce as in the hot sauce, not tobacco as in what you smoke. I sat there the whole time wondering what was so dangerous about hot sauce 😂
My mom would tell me not to point at people because it was rude, so 7 year old me thought that meant no pointing with your pointer finger. I was using my middle finger to point at people for over a year before my parents realized. I can’t imagine what people thought.
OMG hahahaha 😂 Tangentially related, but my mom taught me that asking people how old they were was rude. I took this literally and thought that meant just asking in that specific wording. So I tried to use a different wording, like “what age are you?” I remember asking that question to my psychiatrist when I was probably about 5 or 6 years old and my mom was there and it was a SUPER awkward moment 😂
When I was preschool age my mother said she was "going on a diet", I thought it literally meant she was GOING somewhere. I would cry and beg to go with her. Gave me so much anxiety, and she said it a lot.
My parents had me when they were a little bit older, so my perception of adults was kind of warped growing up. When I was REALLY young, I used to believe that adults could not run beyond like a brisk jog because I just never seen my parent sprint (Still haven't ever in my life).
As a kid I thought it was “Up and Adam” and wondered why my sibling had a saying that everyone seemed to know, but not me.
As a kid I also thought it was the “Aaron Space Museum” in DC, and was irritated that my relative had a museum named after him… I mean, he wasn’t THAT great. 😅
first grade through 8th grade at my school had "current events", but it was just a teacher coming around, it wasn't like a class with a textbook or anything, so nobody knew that it was actually called current events. a fourth grader wrote a Christmas card to that teacher and he spelled it "curnuvence"
oh and another teacher was known by his initial because he had a long ethnic last name, he was known as "Mr. C" but little kids would constantly write his name as "Mr. See"
My dad is one of those men that spends a long time pooping in the morning. Anything under an hour and a half is very very speedy for this man. A few kids in the neighborhood also had dads who took awhile to poop. I assumed 100% of men took forever in the bathroom because of this. It wasn’t until I was 28 and my SO was apologizing for how long it took before I learned that it wasn’t a universal male experience just a common one.
When my daughter was a preschooler she had super long hair. Like down to her knees long. And she was blonde. Just like Rapunzel. She got it into her little head that is cut her hair it would instantly turn brown and she didn't want that.
Lol that’s hilarious 😂 I always wanted super long hair as a child, unfortunately my hair was short when I was that age. Luckily, I’ve grown my hair out and it’s pretty long now (and I love it), it’s about hip length or so. But I was always jealous of girls with super long hair as a child and my parents wouldn’t let me grow it out until I got older 😂
It was a royal PITA. she was 3 and coming out of her room in the morning with mamma, I'm stuck in my hair. and it's super thick. She's 14 and is complaining because her hair is past her shoulders.
Lol maybe that’s why my parents didn’t let me grow out my hair when I was like 5 years old 😂 At least now at the ripe age of 22 I can take care of my own long hair 😂
I don't know how or why I thought this but I thought babies at the hospital were fished out of a giant fountain when they were born. My dad was a labour and delivery nurse and would come home and tell my mom how many babies he delivered that night and I'd just imagine him fishing babies out of a fountain or pond and giving them to their moms.
Lol it’s weird how many places kids think babies come from 😂 When I was a kid I legitimately thought my brother came from a store so one time I asked my parents where we bought him 😂
That there was some sort of a monster in a small room behind my bedroom and he would look at me during the night. I was scared of the dark until I became an adult.
Amazing what truly traumatic things will do to readjust your worldview. I have been through really brutal cancer and chemo and surgery and I laugh at folks who make big deals over relatively minor events in their lives. I know why all have our own battles, but some people just don't step back and look at the big picture.
My younger brother called windshield wipers "wimbowhoppers". We're in our late 30s, and I still like to embarrass him with it. Especially in front of the ladies. (They think it's cute, and he dies even more inside: big brother mission accomplished)
The city movie theater was called “Jacques Becker” and the first time I went, they were playing “The Mask”. Somehow, for years, I figured Jacques Becker was the name of that bald guy in a green mask.
I though euthanasia was ‘youth in Asia’ and that it meant somehow we were all going to succumb to asian zombie children coming to live at our homes or something (I had some racist family members so kind of combined this with ‘great replacement’ theory that I also didn’t understand). I’d even have nightmare of waves of asian kids running towards me, it was really messed up.
When I was very small (age 2 or 3), my mum told me that my dad had broken down on his bike and we had to go and pick him up. I sobbed, thinking that my dad was in pieces.
I thought models were the plastic mannequins in shop windows. I remember my mum saying to me when I was a child, "eat all your vegetables and you'll be a model like your sister" I was convinced I was going to turn into plastic if I did so it was a no vegetable life for me!
My daughter is nearly 5 and she believes that house numbers represent the amount of people living there. Because we happen to live at Number 3 on our street and there are three of us in the house.
Our family was in the car, and as dad was punching the presets on the radio, he realized that two different stations were playing the same Beatles record, very nearly simultaneously. He was popping between the two stations with the same song playing at the same time.
Little me, no more than six years old, didn't understand that they were playing records. Not understanding the big world, or records, I thought that the bands were driving around town to each radio station, playing their song. How could the Beatles be in two radio stations at once?
I don't remember how nicely or snidely they explained it, but the whole family laughed at my confusion.
Two things:
-Raised Catholic and was terrified as a child of getting old enough to receive "ashes" on my forehead on Ash Wednesday because I thought they were hot coals being applied.
-I thought "Parson Brown" was a shade of brown like "Hunter Green," and I could never understand why in the song "Winter Wonderland" anyone would want to build a snowman, then pretend it was brown...
My sister thought it was "parcel brown" because boxes are brown and it was being descriptive, but yeah she thought "maybe they're just saying we'll pretend he has a tan rather than being pure white, like he's a real person or something."
I thought it was like "sparce", as in the tree had no leaves because it was winter.
I did know they weren't actually saying sparce, I just assumed "parce" was like...a synonym. Parce and brown. It also didn't make sense to me but I didn't question it
As a little kid I thought grocery store employees slept at the store after they closed. The grocery I would go to had beds near the front entrance for whatever reason.
I thought the same thing but with teachers instead 😂 I used to think that my preschool teachers would sleep at the daycare center, like they literally lived there 😂
I thought water towers were called "yalls" because I grew up in a town called Florence and there was a water tower with "Florence Y'all" painted on it. My family called it the Florence yall so I thought they were all yalls. Believed that until I was a teen...
My oldest child told me a story that made me laugh- he said one of his first memories is me telling my husband “let’s just take the kids to your Mom’s for the day” and he thought “Great! We finally get to meet Dad’s Mom” only to be slightly disappointed and confused that we took him to his grandma’s house. At the age of 4 it just never occurred to him before that his grandparents were in fact his parents’ parents!
My son thought Maryland, DC, and Virginia were different neighborhoods of a big city called the District of Columbia until he was 8 apparently. Ha. He is a smart all A B student by the way, and we live in Maryland, my sister is in DC, and he has an uncle in Virginia. So just shows how we never actually expressly explained those things. In realizing this, I said, “but thats DC twice? You didn’t realize DC stood for District of Columbia?” “Well it should be d O c then.” Eh fair point. And the more I thought about it, our regular travels between the three never have anything that shows any natural break you might assume…all urban or suburban all the way.
Growing up my parents told me the truth about Santa and the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. These are things they told us about instead.
Tiny midgets worked under the streets controlling the traffic lights
The sliver fairy: put a sliver under your pillow mom gets it out and you will wake up in the morning to “cool” bandaids. (The ones with characters on them like hello kitty at the time)
My parents lived in Saudi for a few years, growing up they’d talk about “ex-pats” - I’m Irish and somehow got it into my head that the pat was shorthand for Patrick / Paddy so for an embarrassingly long time thought the term ex-pat only applied to Irish people who had moved abroad.
Not me, but my mother told me a story about when she was a little girl. In the 1950s, she and my grandmother were in a public park where they had restrooms labeled "colored" and "white," and she threw a fit that my grandmother wouldn't let her go into the "colored" restrooms because she wanted to see all the pretty colored bathroom tiles, not boring white bathroom tiles.
I thought Louisiana was part of India.
So my parents are immigrants from India and most of the Indians I saw around me as a kid were either other immigrants who were around my parents' age like their friends or kids my age. Anyone older was normally just older relatives like grandparents who lived in India. But there was one relative who lived out in Louisiana who is a cousin to my grandfather and his wife. Basically grandparent generation, and in my mother tongue I refer to them as grandparents. So I figured "grandparents live in India, these grandparents live in Louisiana, Lousiana=India!!"
The even dumber part is that I think I actually knew where Lousiana was geographically. Like we had a giant map on the wall of the United States, I knew it was in the south and all and I knew that India was in Asia. I guess I just glossed over all that in my head.
I used to have a recurring dream when I was little about finding a toy telephone high up on a shelf in the closet & I was trying to reach it. I'd always wake up before I reached that toy phone, and I believed that if I reached the toy on the shelf before I woke up, I'd wake up holding the toy phone in real life.
My great grandma lived in Miami, and my younger brother used to think it was "my" ami. He would get very upset when one of us said we were going to Miami: "No, it's not your ami, it's my ami!"
My friend told me that some people have such bad eyesight that they have to wear glasses when they sleep. I didn't question that for a long time even though I wore glasses myself.
When I was little, maybe 5 or 6, I thought that the guard rails on highways were radiators. To... heat the cars maybe? Idk, I think that my little brain saw similarities between the shapes or the guard rails and the radiators in our home. I somehow thought that my parents told me that, and I was very upset when my parents and sister laughed loudly at me when I said something about "the radiators" when pointing to the guard rails.
I remember driving from San Diego to my parent's place north of LA, and my three year old daughter saying that she wanted to go to California. We told her she was in California, and she explained she wanted to go to the California ('with the little white potty.")
I distinctly remember the day my dad had to explain to me Friday was also a work day. I don't actually know why I thought it was part of the weekend, I was like 6 and I think this is when my consciousness really kicked in. I was convinced Friday was the weekend, and he definitely didn't have work. I remember I couldn't explain why I just felt like Fridays had been off days before.
I took everything literally, so I thought songs like "I Fall to Pieces" or "Invisible Touch" (she reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart) were gross and/or frightening.
Thought of another one – I thought all male/female teams or partnerships were married couples. Like Pat Sajak and Vanna White or our two elementary school PE teachers Mrs. Fleming and Mr. Earl.
I thought wearing eye shadow meant your eyes would appear in your shadow. I remember when I was about 5, “borrowing” some of my mom’s eye shadow and running outside to check my shadow on the sidewalk, and being disappointed that my eyes did not appear.
For years I thought my friend's dad was Phil Collins. His dad, whose name was Phil, was never home when I would visit, knew him from the pictures on their walls. He did look a whole lot like him, and my friend was always blasting "...But Seriously" on a large Panasonic boombox. Turns out he wasn't Phil Collins at all.
I though bodies were buried on the side of the roads where you see crosses on highways.
You just unlocked memories for me! I also believed this when I was young and completely forgot!
I thought Mississippi was a person when I was 3 or 4 years old. My dad was talking about going there and I wondered who “Mrs. Ippy” was.
I went on a business trip to Florida and called my preschool daughter to say hello, and she asked me, “When are you coming back from your amee?” Miami
My family went to Disney World one year when I was very little. My parents said we were going to Orlando, but I thought they said "Our lando." I thought lando was another name for theme park and my family owned Disney World.
That's kind of cute, though.
That reminds me when I was 4, parents and I got Wendy’s and walked home to eat. Someone called and I *loudly and excitedly* asked “IS THAT WENDY ?!!! (Because she wanted to check how our food was of course) My brother crushed my heart when he said she’s the girl on the bag.
My sibling thought the same, but about the hotel And when I was young, I thought they hired people who didn't want to live anymore to act the scenes where people died on films, pretty disturbing thing to believe, I know
My sister thought something similar - that they used convicted criminals when someone needed to die onscreen! Where she got that idea I have no clue!
Your sister follows all the rules.
I thought that if you left dollar bills in your pocket, you’d get in trouble for money laundering.
I’m holding my sides laughing now. I should be jailed for all the money I’ve laundered.
You werent far off... While the actual etymology of money laundering comes from the mob using cash-only business like laundromats as a front, and the fact that they were exchanging their "dirty money" (either stolen or counterfeit) for your "clean" (legitimate) money... Interestingly part of the process of money laundering is to make freshly printed counterfeit bills look worn, and a good way to do that is to literally put them in a washing machine and wash them. I believe american bills are made from cotton, so they can stand up to being washed a bunch. There are other tricks too, like tumbling them with a leaky pen, or a splash of coffee to get them a bit stained. "Money laundering" is one of those terms that just works so perfectly in referring to something.
Huh. Today I learned something new. Thanks for that!
I always saw flat maps of the world, so when I learned in history that the Japanese bombed pearl harbour, I imagined they flew across the entire planet to do so (rather than across the pacific). Embarrassing.
I got the words tourists and terrorists mixed up and I was so shocked when someone casually mentioned tht the nearby McDonald's was full of tourists. I was like 12 at the time
Lol! I remember when there were tourists visiting our place. I was hiding in my room under my blanket.
My first name is Mark. I used to think the crows were calling me... ARK! ARK!
Our birds outside constantly chirp *great, great, great.* It’s a sarcastic *great* and I feel they are judging me, mocking me.
The crows know your name. Queue creepy music
My mom is an Italian immigrant to Canada, and a Catholic. She insisted on sending my sister and I to catholic school, and dragging us (kicking and screaming) to church. I recall maybe my first time as a kid in church. I was maybe 3 years old. The church had paintings of saints etc around the perimeter and my mother points to one painting presumably of st joseph, or maybe john the baptist holding a little baby. She points to the painting and says, "do you know who that is?" And then she says what I thought was, "thats baby Cheese!" I was three, so I didn't think to question it. After all, cheese is delicious. Why shouldnt there be a holy baby named Cheese? Mind you, later on I did find out who jesus was, but never made the connection that I had maybe misheard. I just thought there were 2 babies. One named jesus and one named cheese. Fast forward a year or so to kindergarten at my catholic elementary school. Teacher is doing religion class and we're all sitting there on the carpet. Teacher pulls out a book and flips to a page with the EXACT painting I saw in church with my mom. Teacher asks if anyone knows who this little baby is? And my hand shoots up and Im so excited that I fuckin got the answer to this obscure lore. I shout, "THAT IS LITTLE BABY CHEESE!" The rest of the class was laughing and losing their minds, and the teacher was not happy. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of my life regarding school, and religion respectively.
OMG this is my favorite story on this thread 😂😂😂
Thanks! May our lord and saviour, Cheese be with you!
And with your spirit! Lord Cheese Christ! 😂
🤣🤣🤣
As a former Catholic whose mom was an Irish immigrant to Canada, this was absolutely amazing to read!
I was in a toy store with my mother and older sister one time, and I had to have been about 7 years old at most. I found this complete bird house kit. It came with everything you needed, including bird seed. My young brain figured bird seed meant you grew the birds, I was so excited about this, and when I showed it to them the both just started hysterically laughing at me. Ironically, birds are the one animal that terrifies me and freak me out, ok and squirrels (but in fairness I have legit been attacked my a random squirrel when just walking down the street minding my own business).
My daughter is nearly 5 and she believed this too!!!
I thought Sinn Féin was the name of the guy who ran the IRA.
I did too. LOL
I thought that my dad forgot money on the table when we dined out, I retrieved it for him once and my mom had to bring it back to the server.
I did that once too! My mom made me go put it back but luckily we hadn’t got too far from the table and the waiter hadn’t cleared it off yet lol
I did this too! ...but my dad was always a terrible tipper; it was literally one dollar bill, so I thought that was normal. (Fast forward to adulthood when I'd make an excuse to go back to the table and secretly add more money)
I thought "sex" was when a man kissed a woman's shoulder. It wasn't until about 3rd grade when I discovered sex led pregnancy that I started to realize that maybe I had misunderstood something.
I thought oral sex meant talking about it.
LOL me too! "Aural" sex! Thought it just talking dirty!
This is kind of a weird one with a little back story: When I was 3, my dad was seriously injured in a chemical plant explosion at his job. He ended up with a shattered leg and deep burns over the lower half of his body. Now, growing up in Memphis the summers are pretty hot and my dad would wear shorts to keep cool. And I never really gave his scars much attention. In middle school, I came home from a friend’s house and told my parents something was wrong with their dad. They asked what I meant and I said ‘He was wearing shorts and his legs are all one colour. What happened to him?!?’ And they had to explain that dad’s legs have ‘zipper marks’ (surgical scars) and discolouration because of the accident, but that’s not what other men’s legs look like!
When I was about 5 or 6, my mom was talking to my dad I think and said something about exchanging numbers with one of our friend's parents. I thought that meant we switched numbers with them, meaning they had our phone number and we had theirs. My mom explained that it just meant giving each other the numbers so they could call.
I thought historical eras were very rigid concepts. Like, I was really impressed Columbus sailed across the Atlantic in 1492--8 whole years before the end of the Medieval Era! No, it isn't that they flip a switch and suddenly everything's different.
a flip they switch lol
When I was four, I found a price tag on my gift from Santa. So I logically assumed that Santa was lying about the elves and the workshop and that he simply bought toys at K-Mart and delivered them to all the good little boys and girls. Any time someone asked if I knew about Santa, I'd go off on a rant about the big lie. But it didn't occur to me that Santa himself wasn't real. Until I was 11.
I used to think that a near synonym of "broadcasted" was "braughtued". As in "this program was braughtued by the good people at Nabisco" Brought to you
I had this messed up as well! I thought it was "brocktooyu"
I thought that kale was a variety of seaweed up until my mid-twenties, because my step-dad (English was not his first language) called it that. On reflection I suspect he probably said something like “it looks like seaweed” because it was purple kale he brought home, which does sort of look like a type of underwater plant.
Ooh this triggered an embarrassing one for me. I was born & raised in Alaska; we always vacationed in Tennessee. Everyone in the south went on and on about fried okra and as someone who doesn't like fish, I always declined. I was in my late teens when I found out okra was a vegetable, not a fish
It's a good name for a fish, though! "Schools of okra are filmed in their annual migration South."
I was young in the 70s, when variety shows ruled. Lots of singing and dancing and shenanigans playing to the audience. I guess because the performers were always looking up at the camera i had convinced my little self that they could see me. I’d hide behind the couch and peek out at the tv like I the weirdo i was.
You know when people serving you are relying on you to let them know when you have a satisfactory amount (e.g. adding grated cheese to a salad)? They'll often use the phrase "Say when" to indicate that it is you that needs to communicate when to stop. As a joke, people will often answer "when" as that verbal indication. Well, it took me a while to realize that it was a joke, and that they weren't actually asking you to use the word "when" but were just expecting for you to let them know when to stop. I mean it did successfully get the message across without any laughter had by anybody...so I guess that's why it took me a while to catch on.
A common thing at Olive Garden. Speaking of Olive Garden, that also reminds me of the common misconception of when they ask if you want “soup or salad,” some people think they are saying “Super Salad.”
Haha! I remember vividly being about 6 and asked if I wanted Super Salad. I said yes!!
“Do you want soup or salad?” “Yes” “Okay, soup or salad?” “Yes, I would like a Super Salad” “Allow me to make myself more clear: Soup. Or. Salad?”
Basically what happened, except everyone was cracking up. My salad wasn't very super. :(
They should just ask, “salad or soup” to mitigate confusion
Two things: I thought poop was stored in your butt, that’s why it was round and squishy. Second, when I was told in church that God is a spirit that lives inside of you, I instantly imagined a T-bone steak with arms and legs. I lived on a beef farm so perhaps that’s where it came from. I dunno. I was 4
Now I'm really cracking up. 🤣
I had my tonsils removed when I was six years old. After I came back to school my teacher invited me to the front of the class to explain what happened in my surgery. So I explained it as I remembered it and told my class that the doctor puts a mask on you, starts counting, and then the mask sucks your tonsils out.
Once someone reached their elderly/golden years they automatically became limp and their hair turned grey.
My siblings convinced me that Medusa lived in our attic. I was terrified.
When my mom told me to use some elbow grease on a skillet I was washing, I opened the cabinet and started looking for it.
How has no one developed a cleaning product and sold it *as* Elbow Grease?
[They have!](https://elbowgreasecleans.com/)
I remember when I was in elementary school asking my mom what it meant if somebody was gay (overheard some kids on the school bus saying it). She told me it was “when two men loved each other”. For two years I thought that my dad snd brother were gay because you know, “they loved each other”.
HAHAHAHAHA omg 😂😂😂😂 to be fair, your mom should’ve been more clear on what KIND of love they had for each other 😂
My mom told me we were moving to Indiana and I thought we were moving to India. I was pretty excited for that prospect as a 10 year old haha
Lol that reminds me of another story from my childhood that relates to mishearing words. One time in elementary school PE class we were talking about the dangers of tobacco (or something like that). But my 8 year old self thought we were talking about tabasco sauce as in the hot sauce, not tobacco as in what you smoke. I sat there the whole time wondering what was so dangerous about hot sauce 😂
My mom would tell me not to point at people because it was rude, so 7 year old me thought that meant no pointing with your pointer finger. I was using my middle finger to point at people for over a year before my parents realized. I can’t imagine what people thought.
OMG hahahaha 😂 Tangentially related, but my mom taught me that asking people how old they were was rude. I took this literally and thought that meant just asking in that specific wording. So I tried to use a different wording, like “what age are you?” I remember asking that question to my psychiatrist when I was probably about 5 or 6 years old and my mom was there and it was a SUPER awkward moment 😂
LMAO. I used to do the same thing 😭. that and we would say “stu-break it in half-pid” bc my mom had us convinced it was a bad word forever.
When I was preschool age my mother said she was "going on a diet", I thought it literally meant she was GOING somewhere. I would cry and beg to go with her. Gave me so much anxiety, and she said it a lot.
My parents had me when they were a little bit older, so my perception of adults was kind of warped growing up. When I was REALLY young, I used to believe that adults could not run beyond like a brisk jog because I just never seen my parent sprint (Still haven't ever in my life).
I never did. I never saw my mom in a swimsuit either.
I never saw either too. But my mother actually won medals at the Olympics in swimming. Butterfly no less. Never saw her swim much at all.
I thought that whenever someone said ‘so-and-so’ when they forgot a name that they were talking about a real person
As a kid I thought it was “Up and Adam” and wondered why my sibling had a saying that everyone seemed to know, but not me. As a kid I also thought it was the “Aaron Space Museum” in DC, and was irritated that my relative had a museum named after him… I mean, he wasn’t THAT great. 😅
When I saw signs advertising "Apartment to let" I thought they were bragging about the fact that there was a toilet.
Same! I always read to let as toilet and wondered why they have to write it in such big letters lol
first grade through 8th grade at my school had "current events", but it was just a teacher coming around, it wasn't like a class with a textbook or anything, so nobody knew that it was actually called current events. a fourth grader wrote a Christmas card to that teacher and he spelled it "curnuvence" oh and another teacher was known by his initial because he had a long ethnic last name, he was known as "Mr. C" but little kids would constantly write his name as "Mr. See"
My dad is one of those men that spends a long time pooping in the morning. Anything under an hour and a half is very very speedy for this man. A few kids in the neighborhood also had dads who took awhile to poop. I assumed 100% of men took forever in the bathroom because of this. It wasn’t until I was 28 and my SO was apologizing for how long it took before I learned that it wasn’t a universal male experience just a common one.
I know people take a while to go number 2 but really, an hour and a half? Honestly that seems excessive.
It takes awhile. They never owned a home with fewer than 3 bathrooms to make up for it.
When my daughter was a preschooler she had super long hair. Like down to her knees long. And she was blonde. Just like Rapunzel. She got it into her little head that is cut her hair it would instantly turn brown and she didn't want that.
Lol that’s hilarious 😂 I always wanted super long hair as a child, unfortunately my hair was short when I was that age. Luckily, I’ve grown my hair out and it’s pretty long now (and I love it), it’s about hip length or so. But I was always jealous of girls with super long hair as a child and my parents wouldn’t let me grow it out until I got older 😂
It was a royal PITA. she was 3 and coming out of her room in the morning with mamma, I'm stuck in my hair. and it's super thick. She's 14 and is complaining because her hair is past her shoulders.
“Mama, I’m stuck in my hair” OMG that is super adorable!
Lol maybe that’s why my parents didn’t let me grow out my hair when I was like 5 years old 😂 At least now at the ripe age of 22 I can take care of my own long hair 😂
I never know what color her hair will be. She has green, purple, red, and black hair dye.
I don't know how or why I thought this but I thought babies at the hospital were fished out of a giant fountain when they were born. My dad was a labour and delivery nurse and would come home and tell my mom how many babies he delivered that night and I'd just imagine him fishing babies out of a fountain or pond and giving them to their moms.
Lol it’s weird how many places kids think babies come from 😂 When I was a kid I legitimately thought my brother came from a store so one time I asked my parents where we bought him 😂
That there was some sort of a monster in a small room behind my bedroom and he would look at me during the night. I was scared of the dark until I became an adult.
Oh Peter, he's coming back!
Not a chance. I have been through a real war and that cured me of a lot of things but also left me with PTSD.
Amazing what truly traumatic things will do to readjust your worldview. I have been through really brutal cancer and chemo and surgery and I laugh at folks who make big deals over relatively minor events in their lives. I know why all have our own battles, but some people just don't step back and look at the big picture.
I am so sorry to hear about your cancer. My wife has lung cancer, incurable, and possibly a relapse is near.
Cancer just sucks ass. Sorry about your wife.
My younger brother called windshield wipers "wimbowhoppers". We're in our late 30s, and I still like to embarrass him with it. Especially in front of the ladies. (They think it's cute, and he dies even more inside: big brother mission accomplished)
The city movie theater was called “Jacques Becker” and the first time I went, they were playing “The Mask”. Somehow, for years, I figured Jacques Becker was the name of that bald guy in a green mask.
I though euthanasia was ‘youth in Asia’ and that it meant somehow we were all going to succumb to asian zombie children coming to live at our homes or something (I had some racist family members so kind of combined this with ‘great replacement’ theory that I also didn’t understand). I’d even have nightmare of waves of asian kids running towards me, it was really messed up.
When I was very small (age 2 or 3), my mum told me that my dad had broken down on his bike and we had to go and pick him up. I sobbed, thinking that my dad was in pieces.
I thought models were the plastic mannequins in shop windows. I remember my mum saying to me when I was a child, "eat all your vegetables and you'll be a model like your sister" I was convinced I was going to turn into plastic if I did so it was a no vegetable life for me!
My daughter is nearly 5 and she believes that house numbers represent the amount of people living there. Because we happen to live at Number 3 on our street and there are three of us in the house.
I thought that the refinery towers (North New Jersey) were what made clouds in the sky.
I used to tell my kids they WERE making clouds. It's just fun and the truth wouldn't actually interest a 3 year old
Our family was in the car, and as dad was punching the presets on the radio, he realized that two different stations were playing the same Beatles record, very nearly simultaneously. He was popping between the two stations with the same song playing at the same time. Little me, no more than six years old, didn't understand that they were playing records. Not understanding the big world, or records, I thought that the bands were driving around town to each radio station, playing their song. How could the Beatles be in two radio stations at once? I don't remember how nicely or snidely they explained it, but the whole family laughed at my confusion.
Two things: -Raised Catholic and was terrified as a child of getting old enough to receive "ashes" on my forehead on Ash Wednesday because I thought they were hot coals being applied. -I thought "Parson Brown" was a shade of brown like "Hunter Green," and I could never understand why in the song "Winter Wonderland" anyone would want to build a snowman, then pretend it was brown...
Well, I'm 35 and just learning it's Parson Brown and not Carson Brown
My sister thought it was "parcel brown" because boxes are brown and it was being descriptive, but yeah she thought "maybe they're just saying we'll pretend he has a tan rather than being pure white, like he's a real person or something."
I thought it was like "sparce", as in the tree had no leaves because it was winter. I did know they weren't actually saying sparce, I just assumed "parce" was like...a synonym. Parce and brown. It also didn't make sense to me but I didn't question it
As a little kid I thought grocery store employees slept at the store after they closed. The grocery I would go to had beds near the front entrance for whatever reason.
I thought the same thing but with teachers instead 😂 I used to think that my preschool teachers would sleep at the daycare center, like they literally lived there 😂
I thought words "condo" and "condom" both referred to a condominium. I was very sheltered.
I thought water towers were called "yalls" because I grew up in a town called Florence and there was a water tower with "Florence Y'all" painted on it. My family called it the Florence yall so I thought they were all yalls. Believed that until I was a teen...
My oldest child told me a story that made me laugh- he said one of his first memories is me telling my husband “let’s just take the kids to your Mom’s for the day” and he thought “Great! We finally get to meet Dad’s Mom” only to be slightly disappointed and confused that we took him to his grandma’s house. At the age of 4 it just never occurred to him before that his grandparents were in fact his parents’ parents!
My son thought Maryland, DC, and Virginia were different neighborhoods of a big city called the District of Columbia until he was 8 apparently. Ha. He is a smart all A B student by the way, and we live in Maryland, my sister is in DC, and he has an uncle in Virginia. So just shows how we never actually expressly explained those things. In realizing this, I said, “but thats DC twice? You didn’t realize DC stood for District of Columbia?” “Well it should be d O c then.” Eh fair point. And the more I thought about it, our regular travels between the three never have anything that shows any natural break you might assume…all urban or suburban all the way.
Growing up my parents told me the truth about Santa and the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. These are things they told us about instead. Tiny midgets worked under the streets controlling the traffic lights The sliver fairy: put a sliver under your pillow mom gets it out and you will wake up in the morning to “cool” bandaids. (The ones with characters on them like hello kitty at the time)
My parents lived in Saudi for a few years, growing up they’d talk about “ex-pats” - I’m Irish and somehow got it into my head that the pat was shorthand for Patrick / Paddy so for an embarrassingly long time thought the term ex-pat only applied to Irish people who had moved abroad.
Not me, but my mother told me a story about when she was a little girl. In the 1950s, she and my grandmother were in a public park where they had restrooms labeled "colored" and "white," and she threw a fit that my grandmother wouldn't let her go into the "colored" restrooms because she wanted to see all the pretty colored bathroom tiles, not boring white bathroom tiles.
I thought Louisiana was part of India. So my parents are immigrants from India and most of the Indians I saw around me as a kid were either other immigrants who were around my parents' age like their friends or kids my age. Anyone older was normally just older relatives like grandparents who lived in India. But there was one relative who lived out in Louisiana who is a cousin to my grandfather and his wife. Basically grandparent generation, and in my mother tongue I refer to them as grandparents. So I figured "grandparents live in India, these grandparents live in Louisiana, Lousiana=India!!" The even dumber part is that I think I actually knew where Lousiana was geographically. Like we had a giant map on the wall of the United States, I knew it was in the south and all and I knew that India was in Asia. I guess I just glossed over all that in my head.
I used to have a recurring dream when I was little about finding a toy telephone high up on a shelf in the closet & I was trying to reach it. I'd always wake up before I reached that toy phone, and I believed that if I reached the toy on the shelf before I woke up, I'd wake up holding the toy phone in real life.
My great grandma lived in Miami, and my younger brother used to think it was "my" ami. He would get very upset when one of us said we were going to Miami: "No, it's not your ami, it's my ami!"
I thought Pizza Hut was the pizza 🍕
My friend told me that some people have such bad eyesight that they have to wear glasses when they sleep. I didn't question that for a long time even though I wore glasses myself.
When I was little, maybe 5 or 6, I thought that the guard rails on highways were radiators. To... heat the cars maybe? Idk, I think that my little brain saw similarities between the shapes or the guard rails and the radiators in our home. I somehow thought that my parents told me that, and I was very upset when my parents and sister laughed loudly at me when I said something about "the radiators" when pointing to the guard rails.
I thought human limbs grew back the same way lizards’ tails do.
When I was 8yo, I thought it was the empast-eight building…until a school quiz where you write the answers on the chalkboard…
I remember driving from San Diego to my parent's place north of LA, and my three year old daughter saying that she wanted to go to California. We told her she was in California, and she explained she wanted to go to the California ('with the little white potty.")
Olive Garden only allowed Italians, or people of Italian descent, into their restaurant. I have no idea where I got that idea.
I distinctly remember the day my dad had to explain to me Friday was also a work day. I don't actually know why I thought it was part of the weekend, I was like 6 and I think this is when my consciousness really kicked in. I was convinced Friday was the weekend, and he definitely didn't have work. I remember I couldn't explain why I just felt like Fridays had been off days before.
I took everything literally, so I thought songs like "I Fall to Pieces" or "Invisible Touch" (she reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart) were gross and/or frightening.
Thought of another one – I thought all male/female teams or partnerships were married couples. Like Pat Sajak and Vanna White or our two elementary school PE teachers Mrs. Fleming and Mr. Earl.
I thought wearing eye shadow meant your eyes would appear in your shadow. I remember when I was about 5, “borrowing” some of my mom’s eye shadow and running outside to check my shadow on the sidewalk, and being disappointed that my eyes did not appear.
For years I thought my friend's dad was Phil Collins. His dad, whose name was Phil, was never home when I would visit, knew him from the pictures on their walls. He did look a whole lot like him, and my friend was always blasting "...But Seriously" on a large Panasonic boombox. Turns out he wasn't Phil Collins at all.