GTKY: When I was a kid...

KingLED · July 2014

What did you believe as a kid that you kept believing for much longer than was reasonable? Did you think kissing really could get you pregnant until you were 17? Did you think swallowing an apple seed really would make a tree grow in your stomach until just now?

What did you believe?

VeggieFan · July 2014

I believed if you swallowed gum it would stay in your stomach until I was probably around 12 and realized that didn't make any sense.

I also believed in Santa for, what I learned later on, was much longer than most children....

Cythe · July 2014

Yeeaaahh. I was confident you could get AIDS from kissing well into high school. Oddly, I was good at the sciences...

raelynn71109 · July 2014

fuzzylogic said:
Santa was real until I was 8, so was the Easter Bunny. I was pretty gullible.

I was 9 before I found out about Santa. I woke up in the middle of the night and walked into the living room to see my mom typing a message for me on my new Tandy computer from "Santa." Funny thing is, it still didn't click with me until the next day when I overheard my mom tell my aunt how I "found out" about Santa. Thanks, Mom. I could've gone on a couple more years believing!

KingLED · July 2014

14whitney said:

Also... My brother straight up told me that Santa was fake. I was 9, he was 4. Then he really destroyed me by telling me that all of those other imaginary creepy holiday characters were too.

That's great. haha.

raelynn71109 · July 2014

So, when I was a kid I watched a movie called "Cat's Eye" (Stephen King). I was terrified that there was a liitle troll who lived in my wall and that we would come out at night to steal my breath. I started sleeping with my blankets over my mouth/nose. Yeah, this fear and habit didn't really go away until I was in high school.

holliberry28 · July 2014

I thought there was only one religion and everyone celebrated Hanukkah until kindergarten.

holliberry28 · July 2014

I also thought my parents bought me in Toys R' Us. Parents, why would you tell your kid that??

DawnLilly · July 2014

I thought sperm actually "swam". I didn't realize the penis had to be inside. I thought they could travel through water or air until I was about 13.

KingLED · July 2014

Audrey1787 said:

I figured it out when I learned how to measure with a ruler and documented my nose length.

This is awesome.

BillyHorrible · July 2014

I still believe that ear wigs will crawl into your ear when sleeping. When I was little I used to sleep with one hand over my ear.

DawnLilly · July 2014

^ Great Movie

DaBearsFansWife · July 2014

I thought sex was this huge hours long production that was supposed to take up most of your evening until about two years ago. I blame the Viagra warnings (If you have an erection lasting more than 4 hours...)

DaBearsFansWife · July 2014

OMG... very embarrassing one, I believed that if it was 'just the tip' then it wasn't sex and there was no chance of pregnancy. I believed that all through high school. X_X

DaBearsFansWife · July 2014

14whitney said:

DaBearsFansWife said:
I thought sex was this huge hours long production that was supposed to take up most of your evening until about two years ago. I blame the Viagra warnings (If you have an erection lasting more than 4 hours...)
I blame rap songs.

To be completely honest, I didn't know that 5-10 mins was normal until I joined here. You can't imagine my relief lol

DaBearsFansWife · July 2014

krystaloowho said:
Those of you who believed in Santa for a good amount of time, were you pretty upset when you found out?

My SO doesn't want us to do the Santa thing with our kids. Mostly because she remembers feeling lied to and like she couldn't trust her parents after she found out.

I don't remember it being a big deal. I kind of figured it out and went on with my life. I was still getting toys?

I just know if she gets her way then we will have THOSE kids who ruin it for everyone else. Great.

Ok I believed in Santa till I was old enough to get beat up for it. My parents kept telling me the kids were wrong so me and my big mouth kept telling at the kids to correct them (and then get beat). I remember hating that I had to figure it out on my own and those kids always thought I was weird. Luckily we moved about a year later.

acire86 · July 2014

I believed for years that women fell pregnant, like actually fell down to get pregnant.

ImJessesGirl · July 2014

Wait... Santa isn't real??? WTF!!!!!

WolFox · July 2014

I didn't know about vagina's for a little while, and thought babies were born via anus. Ouch. I didn't know how they got in there, but that was the only place I thought there was for them to come out...

Also, I thought that women could get pregnant as just a natural part of their life cycle. As in: when you're a certain age, you 'just get' your period one day, and then in your twenties (thirties, forties etc.) you 'just get' pregnant (a few times...) Even after sex ed I was very worried about it. And we aren't religious at all so I can't even blame that...

DaBearsFansWife · July 2014

I didn't know there are two holes until like 8 th grade.

OITNB anyone?

IrisPetals · July 2014

There wasn't much I actually truly believed, it was moreso that I was afraid of the consequences if I went against what my parents said...I knew Santa's wasn't real, but I also know he's not the devil. I never believed Jesus was real either, hence why I became pagan later on. My mom told me bs lies about sex (hugging a boy gets you pregnant, using tampon takes away your virginity) I knew they weren't true, but again fear was instilled...
I think the one thing I truly believed in was imaginary friends, which sadly lasted into high school. Later I found out through therapy, it was a coping method - my "friends" were the only ones I could talk to and they'd listen.
Wow I sound sad hahahaha

babynica · July 2014

excited2see said:
When I was a kid I thought that once I left a country/room/space that the people I left there stopped existing until I came back.

This! I totally thought this too! I told my mom about it a few years ago and she made me feel crazy!

WolFox · July 2014

babynica said:

When I was a kid I thought that once I left a country/room/space that the people I left there stopped existing until I came back.

This! I totally thought this too! I told my mom about it a few years ago and she made me feel crazy!

This is a known and recognized cognitive stage of chid development. No worries, ladies!!!

catwine · July 2014

I believed in the tooth fairy until about grade 6. And when I was really little I thought when people died they turned into animals.

Wine&Cupcakes · July 2014

DarcyHermione said:
Oh, I also thought a blowjob was where you blew on the penis. A friend in college cleared that up for me. He said, "What? That would fucking hurt after awhile!" I had no idea.

I had a friend that actually blew on a penis thinking it was a blow job. She was a college sophomore. This is the same girl that wound up in a bathroom at Costco a week after losing her virginity to find the condom slip back out....made for good drunken stories!

Pinkrose1012 · July 2014

My brother got me to believe that I was born under a rock. The hospital I was born at had this huge rock by emergency sign, so every time we would drive by the hospital I would ask my parents if that was the hospital I was born at. My brother would say no you were born under that rock and I believed him for a good while.

WolFox · July 2014

excited2see said:

WolFox said:

babynica said:

When I was a kid I thought that once I left a country/room/space that the people I left there stopped existing until I came back.

This! I totally thought this too! I told my mom about it a few years ago and she made me feel crazy!

This is a known and recognized cognitive stage of chid development. No worries, ladies!!!

I believed this until like 13 or so.

Well... cognitive stages age restrictions are pretty general........outliers and such......... ;-)

cautiouslydomestic · July 2014

My mom was a single mom until I was 10, and for at least 7 of those years, I legitimately thought that everyone's dad lived in a different place than the mom and the kids. Opps.

hollyk224 · July 2014

I took the phrase "drinking and driving" or "don't drink and drive" literally. I thought that if you drank ANYTHING while you were driving, you would get in huge trouble. I remember getting upset with my dad on a trip because he was drinking a Coke while he was driving. Lol

acire86 · July 2014

booklover811 said:

acire86 said:
I believed for years that women fell pregnant, like actually fell down to get pregnant.
Where did this belief come from? It's....interesting lol

I overheard my mom gossiping once about someone who fell pregnant. Her way of saying an oopsie baby and i guess my imagination just kind of ran with it lol.

I thought of some more crazy ones. I was the youngest of three with two older brothers who loved to torture me. So
I was convinced i was adopted for a good 3 years.
My oldest brother would play dead every day and every day id call my mom at work freaking out.
I was convinced that we had an elf living on our street. (The guy worked for Keebler and had a truck with the elves logo)
I was terrified that clowns would eat me thanks to oldest bro.
And i was convinced my middle brother could travel to another planet.

Yeah i was gullible.

createmagic14 · July 2014

I was convinced there were sharks in my cousin's pool after dark, and they would eat my feet.

And Santa? Yeah, I was 11. Screwed me up. Don't really want to do it with my future kids, but DH does. Meh.

SchoolPsychSteph · July 2014

My parents told me if I ate before bed, I would have nightmares. I still wonder if this is true, but once I brush my teeth for the night I don't eat anything else.

DaikokuJess · July 2014

These all make me laugh! Cognitive development is so interesting!

@krystaloowho MH and I argue about this all the time. I was raised in a very honest, no-nonsense home and always KNEW there was no Santa, Tooth Fairy, etc. I was the kid who ruined it for everyone. H remembers how magical it was to believe in such things and thinks every kid should experience it. I worry about feelings of betrayal once they find out the truth.

@DaisyCat11 Unfortunately, my mother told me EVERYTHING about sex and lingered on details about how it could be enjoyable. Hearing it from my mom did NOT make me want to do this. I could not see how anything she had described to me was enjoyable. I steered clear of sex for quite a while because of it. I really believed it couldn't be pleasurable at all.

@hollyk224 I can relate! I refused to get in the car with my mom if she had a mug of coffee. Would throw myself on the ground and cry and scream at her that I didn't want her to die from drinking and driving.

FitMom3510 · July 2014

I had heard somewhere that lightning was made when hot and cold reached each other so one time I was in my uncles pool with my family and my dad jumped from the hot tub to the pool and I went into panic mode, then when nothing happened I repeatedly moved my hand from the hot tub to the pool to try and make it happen.

After I saw the Truman Show I thought my life was a tv show for the longest time. It really freaked me out.

dazdareis · July 2014

I used to believe you could get pregnant by sitting on the toilet.

I still remember back to when I was 5-6ish and went into the men's washroom with my dad and losing my shit over sitting on the toilet, yelling I didn't want to get pregnant.

Awkward for my dad

OnceInLoveWithAmy · July 2014

Budders12 said:

When I was little, I thought you could have babies without having sex. This did not come from the Bible, but rather Look Who's Talking. I assumed that because Kirstie Alley's character wasn't married, she didn't have sex, and got pregnant somehow (maybe the Sunday School influence was in there somewhere) . The whole sperm and egg scene went right over my head.

In the movie she told her mom she was artificially inseminated.

The mom says something like "now you and a popsicle are having a baby?"

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