Dumbest Things You’ve Ever Thought

I thought people voted their economic interests.

When I was in elementary school I thought that the “Underground Railroad” was literally a brick-lined subway tunnel with train tracks that ran hundreds of miles from the South to the North.

To my credit, I did wonder how they built it and why Southerners were unaware of its existence.

That this thread had possibilities.

When I was a little kid and saw family photos from the 1940s and earlier, I thought their world was in black and white and did not have color.

I think I've told this story on here before, but when I was in Paris, I saw a dog respond to, "Viens!" My immediate thought was, "OMG, that dog speaks French!" Then I facepalmed myself.

R4, I also thought that when I was really young. I once asked my grandparents what it was like when their life was in black and white, and they laughed at me.

I suppose Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny don't count.

As a child,. I thought there were people somewhere hidden in buildings near street corners whose job it was to turn the traffic lights from green to yellow to red when traffic thinned in one direction.

I thought there were eight days in a week. Thank you, Beatles. (I was six, and I knew the song, but I couldn’t remember what that last day was! And I was too embarrassed to ask…)

That I could find a man who loved me the way I loved him.😕

I thought a light sabre was a light saver.

R2 I also thought this. I thought they used the subway tunnels.

R8 Same.

I also thought there was a little man in the TV working everything.

When I saw "Garage Sale" signs in the neighborhood, I couldn't understand why somebody would sell their garage.

I thought it was Jesus who taught humanity how to tie our shoelaces.

I thought that when people got married in the movies, they were really married.

R4 I used to think that too lol but more so black and white films. I thought their world back then wasn’t in color until I was about 10.

I thought Jerry Lewis was funny.

I thought Donald Trump was funny.

When the teacher wrote, “See Me” on my test papers, I really thought it just meant to pay closer attention and never went up to her.

That I would one day be a talented, beloved pop singer who would be married to one of Hollywood’s top actor/directors for the rest of my life!!!!

When my parents got a new table they said it was Formica . Whose mica? I thought.

My sisters and I mispronounced “ it’s mine .” We said it’s mying - like mine but with a g at the end R20 — the best !

In late 2016, when I thought Trump's presidency couldn't possibly be worse than everyone was imagining.

I mispronounced words I’d read even though I knew what they meant. Epi-tome, was one.

Your mom.

This reminds me of when I had a distinct moment of being able to read. I was in the car with my family driving through downtown and could finally read the signs that we passed for the first time in my memory.

It was such a revelation to be able to make sense of those things that had been indecipherable to me until then that that moment sticks with me to this day.

In primary school when the teacher said we'd soon be breaking up for the holidays, I thought the whole school would be demolished, and then be re-built for the new term.

Until I was in about the fourth grade, I did not know there was a difference between Washington DC and Washington state. I never could figure out why they put the US capital all the way over on the West Coast though.

R28 you were one dumb 9 yr old.

When your parents said, "Eat your dinner there are starving children in ______", I thought the garbage disposal was a direct line to whatever staving country needed our leftovers. I still think of that whenever the Darfur orphan shows up

I was convinced that Catalina Island was Japan and that I was actually looking across the Pacific at Japan. I would wave at it in hopes some Japanese kid would see me and wave back 🤓

As a kid, I thought that people in "olden days" walked faster than they walk now, since newsreels were sped up.

And I feel like I believed that until I was embarrassingly old.

Thank you, r31. My starving country would gladly accept a direct link to your garbage disposal.

Hook 'er up!

I used to think Africa was a country.

^ Hi, Sweetie, I'll crank up the garbage disposal 😉

As a kid I thought wall to wall carpeting was on the walls.

The little town I grew up in had this big white house on the main road with huge pillars, beautiful landscaping, a circular driveway and limousines.

As a kid, I thought it was the White House where the President lived!

When my grandfather died I learned it was a funeral home.

R33 Fuck you. We don’t accept handout. We only vote big business mud corporations.

That green olives were grown with those little red things inside them (I hated olives and never took the time to learn that the pits were replaced with stuffed pimientos).

In my youth I always ordered chocolate ice cream because I thought vanilla was simply the absence of chocolate. Why did anyone order vanilla?

When people talked about items purchased on the "black market," I pictured actual market stalls, hand-painted in black. I was a bit of a literalist.

When I was about 4, I developed a theory that because smaller animals generally died earlier, and larger animals generally died much older, and smaller animals took more breaths per minute than larger ones, your life size was governed by how many breaths you took. I used to hold my breath all the time.

Remarkable thinking for a 4-year-old, R42, and far from stupid. You were clearly a highly intelligent child.

R28 I knew there was a difference between DC and Washington State,, but I was about 11 before I learned the Washington Redskins played football in DC and not on the west coast. I felt like such a dope that I didn’t realize that before.

That there is something called "god" and it had a son.

I thought you could dig all the way to China - not necessarily literally, but I thought there was nothing but dirt separating one side of the globe from the other.

R46 - You mean there’s not?!? 😳

That thing about believing in a god.

What a fool.

^ It's like believing in Santa Claus, when you find out the truth it hurts for a minute then you move on

That songs were performed live on the radio, and if a song was really popular, the poor singers were probably exhausted from schlepping from station to station.

That if you stood right next to the TV screen and peered down, you could see the rest of the person’s body. It took many disappointed Cinemax viewings to disabuse me of that notion.

When I was very young, I conflated the image of the President and God, before I could conceptualize the difference between "most powerful man in America" and "most powerful being in the universe." I am a lifelong atheist, but I still picture God as Jimmy Carter for some reason.

^ Jimmy is on his way, he'll put in a good word for you 😉

R50 actually not completely wrong. A lot of visual information was lost on those old tube TVs (especially the round screens) due to overscan.

[quote] I conflated the image of the President and God, before I could conceptualize the difference between "most powerful man in America" and "most powerful being in the universe."

R51 Trump did, too, but he never grew out of it.

[quote] I still picture God as Jimmy Carter for some reason.

R51 Well, Carter is certainly the most godly president in my eldergay lifetime.

I had a friend who's first name was Dan and last name was 'sounds kind of like Geraldo' and didn't send him a Christmas card because Geraldo Rivera is Jewish. It really somehow made perfect sense to me.

I watched Wizard of oz on TV and it scared me. I went over to my friends house afterwards and my mom told me it would only be starting over there. And it was. For years I thought each house watched something on tv then the next block got it. Years later, at some party, it was said that that family had only ever had 2 tv stations growing up. Suddenly it clicked: Oz was on a different tv station at a later time the same day.

When I heard about someone coming down with Pneumonia - I did not know how it was spelled and thought of my mother's bottle of Ammonia in the pantry closet in the basement- how did someone get Ammonia?

Back in the '70s I went to Catholic School. When I was 12 or 13 they started having discussions about why the Catholic church was against contraception and gave preliminary information about the rhythm method that was theologically approved, but did not go into detail on how it worked other than saying it was natural. Myself and two others boys misunderstood Sister Trinita's pronunciation as "Ribbon Method". We were at my friend's house and he asked his older brother who was 17 about it. The older brother was a high school jock and very cocky etc, he told us that one a Catholic girl gets her first period the priest gives her a red ribbon to wear on her left leg when she does not want to get pregnant. All of us totally believed this .

R59 very creative answer, though! LOL

I remember thinking that an ice cream sandwich was two slices of bread, with lettuce, tomato, etc, and then a scoop of ice cream in it instead of a savory filling.

That when someone said a baby was delivered the doctor brought it to the parents in an old timey black doctor's bag.

In third grade we watched a film about The Deaf Miss America pageant. Miss Deaf America was beautiful, and I believe for her talent she signed to Barry Manilow, evocatively. I remember thinking "Oooooh, ALL the deaf men are going to want to ask her out!"

R63. Was it Copacabana she signed to?

I used to think everyone thought religion was made up stories that we pretended were real. I didn’t realize they took it seriously, as fact. I thought girls had penises down there and was shocked to discover they just had nothing at all. Pee drained as if from a hole. I believed that Tv world and the real world were not separate and different but represented reality to an equal measure.

Same here as stated earlier about the world being back and white before the 70's. When I was about 8 yrs old back in the late 70's I remember hearing on the radio that the actor Jack Haley who played the tin man died. I looked up at my mom and sadly asked her "Does that mean they will no longer show the movie on TV?' I used to think that every show or movie on tv was made lived even the reruns. So, I figured if he was dead they wouldt get back together to film the movie every year.

I thought astigmatism should be “a stigmatism.” I disagreed with how it was spelled.

Also, I didn’t realize gay men had anal sex until I was about 12. I thought they just sucked each other off.

My partner, when young, thought rumble strips were to help clean the snow from under your car.

I thought God specially created bananas to be conveniently hand-sized for human beings.

Hey, iI was only forty-five y. o. at the time.

I used to think that when girls started their period, it meant that they bled everyday for the rest of their lives.

I thought that my father had a period!

One of my friends thought there was a movie star (female) named Fredda Stair.

A friend once told me that through most of his teenage years, he believed that black men have black semen.

In the Green Stamps catalogue there was a photo of a girl baby on a blanket, and I thought it meant you could get a little sister with Green Stamps.

When I was little, I thought milk was made from melted ice cream.

When people talked about the UK, I thought they meant Ukraine.

R11 Not only did I think it was "light saver," I thought they were real well into my teens.

R51 I thought God was Pope John Paul II. I couldn't understand why people doubted God's existence. "I just saw Him getting off a plane on the news! "

I thought Now & Laters were Nile Laters until I actually read the candy package. Them ghetto chirren in DC can’t talk 😆.

I grew up in the Deep South and people would pronounce “tennis shoes” as something that sounded like “tenny shoes”.

I thought tenny shoes were distinct from tennis shoes which were distinct from sneakers.

R81 - That actually sounds like a Baltimore accent. Like Pockey Book.

My mom had a Southern accent. She referred to a dresser as a chest of drawers which sounded like "chesta drawers". My brother was very embarrassed when he went looking for a new dresser and asked the salesman if he could see Chester's drawers.

Not me, but my mom told me my cousin thought Pearl Harbor was in New Jersey.

When I was little I thought that sharks could come through the faucet into the bathtub.

I thought the amount of tv you watch impacted your cable bill. The more tv you watched, the higher the cable bill.

What a maroon!

I used to think the man couldn't go up in the man.

When people said, “like so”, I thought they were saying “like soap.”

When I watched Western movies on TV I thought that when a character was killed, the actor died. One time I asked my grandma how much she thought those men's families got when they were killed. I think I tried to explain myself for ten minutes before I gave up.

In second grade, I dared a girl to lift her shirt so I could count her ribs. She did and when I counted the same number as I had, I accused her of being a boy. Yes, I actually thought women had one fewer rib than men. Fucking Sunday School!

I used to think my pussy didn’t stink.

I thought one had to be invited to a funeral until I was a junior in high school and missed a close friend’s dad’s funeral.

I thought calling a woman "batalax" was a high compliment, since that's what my dad called my mom. Until I told my first grade teacher, whom I adored, that she was a real batalax. She sent me to the principal's office.

When I went to a movie I thought the people were on the other side of the screen acting it all out.

I wasn't expecting this thread to be so adorable

When I was about 4 I asked my dad if when he got as old as my great grandparents if he would grow back into a little boy again. He evaded the question. Lol.

R89 - I believe the myth is that men have one fewer rib than women because God took a rib from Adam to create Eve.

At Sunday school some dumb cluck told us that it was true a man has one less rib than a woman because of Adam's rib making Eve. I was fascinated and immediately told my mom (a nurse) when I got home. She rolled her eyes and said that's just a story and not true!

When I was really little, I thought the songs on the radio were being performed live at the radio station. I remember realizing the DJs were just playing records!

There are So many of them i can not choose.

I thought a race of giants moved us around just like I played with my toys.

When I overheard my parents watching a news story about an “army of guerrillas“….well, you can imagine what I thought.

I was way too young to see Jaws when it came out, but nevertheless, I was afraid to take a bath after the Carol Burnett spoof where people were getting attacked by sharks in the bathtub.

I thought/assumed that the Queen was the actual ruler of Great Britain- I wasn't a little kid when I was still believing this- Junior high school age which was also the age I still thought Africa was a country.

I mentioned the Africa thing earlier on this thread.

When I was a kid, I thought the rhythm method was all about the position you were in while fucking that prevented the woman from getting pregnant.

[quote] I was way too young to see Jaws when it came out, but nevertheless, I was afraid to take a bath after the Carol Burnett spoof where people were getting attacked by sharks in the bathtub.

I was in high school when Jaws came out but I look no older than you do. However old you happen to be.

When The Outer Limits TV show came on, I thought it was really controlling our TV set and that we couldn't change the sound or the channel until the show was over.

In the early ‘70s in LA there were ads in the paper for adult movie theaters. I was always intrigued by the smaller section marked “All-Male”. At my young age I could understand basic sex, but I couldn’t grasp the concept of all-male porn movies. I was really puzzled. I truly thought they were films about a bunch of men sitting around talking about having sex with women. What a waste of film. Who’d want to watch that?

I once thought my checked-in baggage flew in a separate plane.

Actually, it sometimes does when airports become a clusterfuck. R107

Every Friday night I watched the Partridge Family. During this time there was a Special Event - like NBC Tuesday night movie - one night “Okalahoma!” Was on - my brain COULD NOT understand what Shirley Partridge was doing in that movie - looking so YOUNG and GIRLISH - because to me “Oklahoma! Wasn’t an “old movie” - it was new to me. It really troubled me. I guess if THAT troubled me I had a pretty happy childhood!

r83 my mom and dad always said Chest of drawers and I heard "Chester Drawers." For a long time I called it that until one day I was thinking about it and realized that it was strange the word drawers was in there and that maybe someone named Chester invented them and then it dawned on me that it was Chest Of Drawers.

I used to lay in my bed at night getting myself all worked up over the idea of "asking god to come into my heart" as they told us at Church that when God was in my heart, I would feel it. I would beg God over and over and always got upset because I wouldn't feel anything and I just knew that I must not have been worthy because I felt nothing. I truly believed I would feel this divine presence. My parents were fundies and loved to take us to church where people would suddenly start speaking in tongues (that scared the shit out of me because it would be loud and nonsense that actually sounded like what I thought Satan would sound like). Then the person would fall onto the floor and writhe around and that scared me too but then I'd get jealous thinking that that was probably what it felt like when God entered your heart.

It's so funny to me now to look back and wonder WTF were my parents doing, filling our heads with such crap when we were so little? The sad thing is, I know if I was having those thoughts, other kids likely were too and that makes me feel so angry at the religious idiots in this country who brainwash their kids with their stupidity in believing such an archaic religion.

I don’t exactly remember my age. When there was all this talk about going to the moon. I thought you could throw up a really long string to the moon and just climb up it. I told my daughter and we laugh about it.

That the songs on the radio were being performed live at the radio station.

Bottle blonde tomfoolery.

I expected semen to be luminous glow in the dark GREEN. I also didn't associate Gay with being a sexual thing just that they were camp, like John Inman on are you being served..and were asexual. I also could not understand how in shows people were in different clothes in the next scene. Especially a tv show like Morecambe and Wise, with an audience and various sketches. My younger sister reminded me of this recently.

Cody Seiya’s OF account is “postmaload”. I’ve always thought it a cute and literal name referring to him posting loads. Last night the light bulb turned on and I realized it was a play on Post Malone. (I do not subscribe to this or any OF channel.)

When I was a kid, I thought everyone who lived in England was a Royal—Prince or Lady or Duke SomethingOrOther—and lived in a castle or a palace. And that they wore all those crown jewels every day. I don't think I knew otherwise until I became familiar with Oliver Twist and Eliza Doolittle.

r92, My late BF asked me why I was being such an old Battleaxe, I was 29, and I thought it was one of the sweetest things he could have said to me.

When I was little I thought it was the “next store” neighbor because that’s where you went to borrow something.

To pick up on the royal theme, R116, when I was younger I thought the Queen was meant to convey the most beautiful woman in the world. But I couldn’t wrap my head around the notion that Elizabeth was that beautiful.

Two things come to mind.

1) Until I was WELL into college, I thought pharmacists made pills. Like they had a little pill press and whatnot to create 60 doses of whatever for a customer. I think it came from an old western movie I saw when I was a kid where the pharmacist was like a chemist.

2) Until I started working on a project for work last winter, I thought The Hague was a building. I would hear about being sent to The Hague and thought it was something like a courthouse in the Netherlands. And no, I am not a young person.

[quote] Not me, but my mom told me my cousin thought Pearl Harbor was in New Jersey.

Don’t be silly! She’s not done with her St. Olaf residency until after Christmas!

I thought President Ford built my parents automobile.

I don't know why, but I thought kissing a girl would taste bad. Like, bitter or sour. I was at a party dancing with a bunch of girls and one of them kissed me. It was... perfectly fine. Didn't taste different than anyone else. I was pleasantly surprised.

Maybe it's a good thing that most of the stories are of you dumb whores as children, which means you wised up quickly. I had a roommate after college (she and I are still best friends) who would have airhead moments from time to time. One particular moment was memorable because it happened it front of a large group of people.

She and I were hosting a Super Bowl party one year, and as everyone was getting their tequila shots ready for the coin toss she commented, "Why are they deciding which way they want the ball kicked? The team names are already painted on each end of the field!?"

Near the end of her life, my mother opined that only stupid people get dementia. And no, her mind was otherwise clear to the day she died.

I thought my parents were trying to harm me, because children’s medicine tasted so bad and it was only ever given to me when I was sick.

I was a huge MARY! and I would weep copiously while they tried to explain that kids medicine is made to taste bad on purpose so kids won’t like it and take too much of it.

And then eventually, they would give up trying to reason with a sick child and one would hold my mouth open while the other poured some horrible liquid or dumped some crushed up tablet down my throat.

^ Weren't you a little drama queen

My brother told me Juice Newton was Olivia Newton John's sister... which I believed for many years.

[quote]Also, I didn’t realize gay men had anal sex until I was about 12. I thought they just sucked each other off.

When people talked about gay people sucking cock, I thought they said this to insult gay people by coming up with something incredibly vile that nobody would do in real life.

When people talked about playing "cards", I thought "cards" was a distinctive game with its own set of rules.

R129 but what did you think they did?

R127, I was a huge drama queen. My older brother told me that if you got the dry heaves after throwing up, you would suffocate and die.

So when I would have an upset stomach and had to vomit, I would make my parents stand outside the bathroom door and pray that I wouldn’t die. They were nice enough to do that.

^ Mary!

R132 — Is your name Dr. Sheldon Cooper?

@r132, This you?

I thought Olivia Newton-John was married to Elton John and Carly Simon was Paul Simon's sister.

But never feel bad about childhood misconceptions. I knew a lady who thought the faces on Mt. Rushmore were created by God.

I was well into my 40's before I realized it wasn't "for all intensive purposes".

Because the nuns would not tell us what “thou shalt not commit adultery” meant, we decided it was when a kid pretended to be an adult.

It's due to my upbringing deep in religion, but when I was a child and early teen they taught us we weren't going to have to die because Jesus was coming and we'd be raptured so we wouldn't have to worry about death. Then I started worrying about what would happen to everyone else if people were raptured and driving vehicles, piloting boats, or flying planes. That was kind of hard for me to take, all these unnecessary deaths because of rapture.

[quote][R129] but what did you think they did?

I think I thought they just hugged and kissed.

I used to think sex and love were intertwined. So I was constantly disappointed when I would have sex with someone, and they didn’t fall in love with me. Talk about being young and stupid.

I don't remember ever thinking about The Queen at all.

Some of you are the most adorable little gaylings I ever met and some of you- should have made news around Christmas.

R118 bahahahaha 😂. Ghetto.

[quote][R129] but what did you think they did?

Festive brunches wearing caftans and playing canasta.

Wow so many dumb cunts in this thread

[quote]I used to think sex and love were intertwined. So I was constantly disappointed when I would have sex with someone, and they didn’t fall in love with me.

Especially when you've had sex with someone at least a hundred times.

@r138, That's funny, because as a kid I thought, "Thou salt not covet thy neighbor's manservant or maidservant" meant that if my mother hired the cleaning lady who worked next door she was going to hell 😳

I was pretty close to adulthood before finding out the Bible was all about slavery and how to deal with them

Up until I maybe 10 or 11 I thought cock was short for caca aka feces.

r149 Up until I was...

When I was coming out, some of the guys were talking about a porn film they saw (“Boys in the Sand” I think). They talked about a fist fucking scene. I thought it was jerking off with your hand. I learned differently soon enough.

R37: the phrase don’t cut off your nose…… until a few days ago, I thought the rest of the expression was “despite your face.”

That’s how it always sounded to me After studying the curb episode about doing things “for spite,” I realized the expression was “ don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.” Is that correct.????

I genuinely thought a blow job was just you blowing air on a dick. I was so pleasantly surprised when I learned that it wasn't that at all.

Before I ever came, I assumed the sperm came out through the pubic hair, since the two were appearing simultaneously.

(R63) my apologies both for the slow reply AND misinformation. It was Billy Joel, "I Love You Just The Way You Are."

When I was a boy, my friend and I were playing in his room and it was very hot so he said he’d take off his pants. He did and his pee pee was big! He told me it was sore and felt funny so I told him I’d rub it until it felt better. We were hoping it would get smaller again but it got even bigger!

Eventually he started squirming around and his face got red then he let out the strangest sound! And my hand got wet! I was worried and rubbed harder but he nearly jumped right out of his skin when I did!

But then finally it got smaller! But the strangest thing was, now mine was big and felt so funny. Here we go again!

We were so dumb!

[quote] I was well into my 40's before I realized it wasn't "for all intensive purposes".

And is that because someone here “Oh, deared!” you?

OP, your mother is correct. Oxygenated blood is red. Hypoxic blood is blue.

R156 is that story real?

^^^

No, that’s the screenplay for Toy Story 5, Rose!!!

[quote] I thought calling a woman "batalax"

Battle.

Axe.

Yes r159

R160 😂 😂 😂

The man who hired Bert Lance, Jody Powell and Stansfield Turner was not godly.

When we learned about the 'greenhouse effect' in fourth grade, I thought actual greenhouses were somehow bad for the environment. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why they were so harmful though. My teacher had to keep me after school I've day to try and explain what the "EFFECT" part meant. Bless her heart!

I thought the FDA was actually protecting us and that doctors are actually capable at their jobs. I found out the (very) hard way that those two assumptions were dead wrong.

⁶ one day

Until my teens, I thought Transylvania and Timbuktu were both fictional.

I thought horny meant cuttin' up and actin' silly. Then Doo shoved his big pecker in my cooze and said that's what horny means you dumb hillbilly!

I thought that General Mills was a person.

I thought "vacation" was "daycation" until I was about fourteen.

I thought the contestants at the end of Wheel of Fortune got "partying gifts."

I thought Alzheimer's was Old Timers' disease.

When I was a kid my mother told me the Wicked Witch of the West was made out of brown sugar and that's why she melted. I took it to be an acceptable explanation.

I used to ask my mom what my dad was doing, during the day, and she said "making money". So I thought he was literally making coins and bills.

Once I had learned to read, I was amazed so many important people (monarchs, presidents, superstars) spoke Dutch, as the newspapers would obviously translate their quotes.

That tuna was chicken that knew how to swim.

A large portion of people posting on the DL are from India because of gross ignorance about the entertainment industry and pop culture history.

When I was 12, I would (very confidently) pronounce hyperbole as hyper bowl.

r178, nah, it's just a lot of us don't care about that stuff...or sporting things.

R2, I have a 50 year old relative with a master's degree who also believes there was an actual underground railroad or tunnel whereby slaves escaped the South.

That Uranus was unpopulated, OP.

R179

My son said suB-tle until 7th or 8th grade - he just never connected the seen and heard word.

R168 My 40 year-old best friend didn't believe me when I told him Tasmanian Devils are real.

I have never had one dumb thought in my head despite the influencers.

r178 what a very odd statement and assumption.

I used to think the sound of audience laughter on TV was the sound of people laughing at home. I used to laugh extra loud and ask my friends at school the next day if they'd heard me.

R187 Some of these comments make you guys seem so cute. I love us.

It was the summer of 95 and I discovered MTV. I remember seeing TLCs Creep, Ll Cool J’s Hey Lover, some Green Day vid, and Hootie’s only wanna be with you. I thought Everytime I saw the video the singers were acting out the video for about a year.

I thought I invented the word "dagnabbit".

When I heard it on cartoons I just figured my grandmother had told someone about my invention and they "copied" it as my grandmother was always praising me to others.

My grandmother was my biggest cheerleader, fond memories.

I thought Ipanema Beach in Rio was pronounced "I-Panema" and that "El Cajon" in San Diego was pronounced "El Cajun." Those got belly laughs from my friends. My most humiliating offense, however, occurred when I called AppleCare for technical assistance with my Macbook. The agent asked me which version of OSX I was currently running, to which I replied "Yo-semite" (pronounced like 'sodomite' only with a 'Yo' in front). The AppleCare agent informed me that it's pronounced "Yo-sem-it-tee" and then fell the fuck out laughing at me. I'm willing to bet she still laughs with her coworkers about it anytime anything involving OSX Yosemite comes up. I know I still cringe about it every time I see a photo of Yosemite.

And this all happened rather recently--as an adult 🤦

My late mother used to think that Dinosaurs never existed and that Satan had put the fossils on Earth to "Test mankind's faith in God."

How to pronounce segue.

I grew up in a small town where high school basketball was the main religion. My parents took me to games my whole life. When I was a kid, I used to cheer along with the cheerleaders and student crowd. One cheer was “ Succotash, Succotash, Don’t let him Shoot! *clapclap*” Many years later, I learned it was “check that man, check that man, don’t let him shoot.” 🤦🏻‍♂️

I thought I had actual friends in the workplace.

In the old days of analogue clocks, I thought that during daylight savings time the electric company would send extra electricity to the clocks to make them go forward one hour.

I thought I had actual friends.

When a done stadium opened in my city, there was talk of fans having something to do with the dome’s operation. I thought the talk was about real people.

The stories about mispronunciation remind me of Lily Tomlin’s brilliant monologue about the time she pronounced the word “island” as “iz-land” in front of Miss Sweeney and the whole class.

I thought the future would be more sterile and dust free.

I thought we would all have a higher standard of living in the future.

On the Jack Benny TV show, when the man (later I discovered it was Mel Blanc) announced that the train was leaving for Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga, I thought these were made-up names.

.....

LOL R202 - Same here with Walla Walla, Washington!

R203 Haha

As a fourth grader, I stood up to give a presentation about the Titanic (which I'd learned about in my SRA (Silent Reading Activity for you young 'uns), and was embarrassed to learn that my pronunciation of "Titanic" was incorrect: it was pronounced TY-TAN-IK, not TIT-TAN-ICK as I used throughout my entire presentation.

I didn't realize it until afterward, when my teacher let me know in private of the correct pronunciation. My cheeks were red for the rest of class.

I'm also guilty of the "all intensive purposes" mistake, but happily learned this in my mid to late 20s. It kind of means the same thing, if it's any consolation.

Oh yeah, I also became very upset at age 5 discovering that "tuna fish" sandwiches were actually sandwiches made of FISH. I didn't like fish! I didn't equate tuna fish as actual fish. I think I thought it was tunafish...which was it's own unique thing. I was really pissed off and avoided tuna for several years until I finally came to grips with the fact that I did - actually - LIKE some forms of fish.

R205 in the 90s we just called it silent reading. Or as them churrldren in NW DC would say sylin’ readin’; the t and g were silent lol

r206 no - SRAs were actual cards with activities attached to them.

When I was a kid I thought all girls and women could get pregnant from a kiss on the mouth from somebody of either sex.

R175 so your dad was a gangster too lol. Your mom knew what she was saying.

R206 In the '60s we just called it "reading."

SRAs were my favorite activity in school because it was just me and my imagination reading without other people gumming up the works (in retrospect, I may have been a little on the spectrum, now that I think of it). I had no frame of reference on how to pronounce "Titanic" as it had never come up in conversation, on television or any other way. To me, TIT-TAN-ICK seemed correct.

Boy, was I wrong.

I thought my cousin’s Adam’s apple was a quarter he swallowed that got stuck in his throat.

I pronounced it Titan-ICK

Not really.

[R76] I thought chocolate milk came from brown cows and when we passed cow fields I would always look for the pink ones that gave strawberry milk.

[R175] When my dad was at work my mom used to always say "He's out in the field". I thought he was literally going out to a field every day.

My sister told me that pepperonis were just cut up pieces of cow tongue and I believed every word she said. No more fighting for the pepperoni slices after that.

I had a mean lover mock me for the intents and purposes eggcorn in college; good thing that was a quick relationship. I love playing with language, so now I like it when I find someone using one I didn't know.

How "intents and" even sound like "intensive"?

It figures NPR would come up with a dumb name for it.

I was just reading in SPY magazine that Donald Trump wants to be president one day. I can't stop laughing. Who would ever vote for that guy?

Michael Jackson and Emmanuel Lewis looked so cute together at the Grammy Awards. You can tell Michael really loves kids!

SRA stood for Science Research Associates. Their material was used frequently in my elementary school years in the '60s in California.

I thought a "blow job" meant you literally blew on a guy's dick

[quote] remember seeing TLCs Creep, Ll Cool J’s Hey Lover, some Green Day vid, and Hootie’s only wanna be with you. I thought Everytime I saw the video the singers were acting out the video for about a year.

Actually, that’s about the only thing I have been doing for about 30 years now!

The Christmas Shoes

????

Christmas Shoes is some fucked up shit

[quote] When I was a little kid and saw family photos from the 1940s and earlier, I thought their world was in black and white and did not have color.

I was the same! I remember when old b&w films were on, asking my parents when they changed the world into colour—and most importantly, how did they do it?! I was genuinely intrigued

[quote] As a fourth grader, I stood up to give a presentation about the Titanic (which I'd learned about in my SRA (Silent Reading Activity for you young 'uns), and was embarrassed to learn that my pronunciation of "Titanic" was incorrect: it was pronounced TY-TAN-IK, not TIT-TAN-ICK as I used throughout my entire presentation.

You must have felt like such a tit!

Best "Christmas Shoes" take-down, EVER:

I thought neighborhood covenants referred to people instead of agreements/bylaws. For instance, I thought there was a group of people in the neighborhood who referred to themselves as covenants.

When I was a kid, I thought that jury duty was “jewelry duty” and that you were given actual jewelry when you went. I also thought that the “meet” in making ends meet was “meat.”

I still have trouble thinking of historical figures before color photographs came into vogue as being other than in black & white. I just cannot imagine them in the flesh.

For some reason I thought suicide had something to do with jumping in a sewer.

When I was eight I visited Trump Tower and thought it was super cool.

Back then any tall building pretty much got my nod.

[quote]R174: When I was a kid my mother told me the Wicked Witch of the West was made out of brown sugar and that's why she melted. I took it to be an acceptable explanation.

That's the result of an overly literal reading of the actual Frank Baum text.

"But the wicked creature was very cunning, and she finally thought of a trick that would give her what she wanted. She placed a bar of iron in the middle of the kitchen floor, and then by her magic arts made the iron invisible to human eyes. So that when Dorothy walked across the floor she stumbled over the bar, not being able to see it, and fell at full length. She was not much hurt, but in her fall one of the Silver Shoes came off; and before she could reach it, the Witch had snatched it away and put it on her own skinny foot.

The wicked woman was greatly pleased with the success of her trick, for as long as she had one of the shoes she owned half the power of their charm, and Dorothy could not use it against her, even had she known how to do so.

The little girl, seeing she had lost one of her pretty shoes, grew angry, and said to the Witch, “Give me back my shoe!”

“I will not,” retorted the Witch, “for it is now my shoe, and not yours.”

“You are a wicked creature!” cried Dorothy. “You have no right to take my shoe from me.”

“I shall keep it, just the same,” said the Witch, laughing at her, “and someday I shall get the other one from you, too.”

This made Dorothy so very angry that she picked up the bucket of water that stood near and dashed it over the Witch, wetting her from head to foot.

Instantly the wicked woman gave a loud cry of fear, and then, as Dorothy looked at her in wonder, the Witch began to shrink and fall away.

“See what you have done!” she screamed. “In a minute I shall melt away.”

“I’m very sorry, indeed,” said Dorothy, 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐬𝐮𝐠𝐚𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬.

“Didn’t you know water would be the end of me?” asked the Witch, in a wailing, despairing voice.

“Of course not,” answered Dorothy. “How should I?”

“Well, in a few minutes I shall be all melted, and you will have the castle to yourself. I have been wicked in my day, but I never thought a little girl like you would ever be able to melt me and end my wicked deeds. Look out–here I go!”

With these words the Witch fell down in a brown, melted, shapeless mass and began to spread over the clean boards of the kitchen floor."

In 1974, Art Carney did a reading of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' for Golden Records, and in it expressly stated, "the Witch was made of brown sugar."

So, you can see how the idea was floating around. Your grandma wasn't crazy.

[quote]—The Illustrated version looked like my grandma

You read the book?

Here's the Witch melting, from the W.W. Denslow illustrations.

𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡 looked like your grandmother, R174?

R233 What about his mother, though?

When I was a kid, I thought you made tea by pouring milk into coffee.

Good catch, R235. My mistake. By the time I was concluding that post, I'd lost sight of the fact he said it was his mother who'd told him that.

My brother told me that ham grew on bushes; it wasn't a meat, didn't come from pigs. I believed it.

My boyfriend once confessed that as a little kid, he believed the world had a hidden soundtrack of classical music, just like in the movies. He even asked his parents why they didn’t have their own orchestra following them around. Their baffled faces made it clear that, even at four years old, he was wise enough to know that life doesn’t come with its own soundtrack.

I came back to add something else dumb that I thought and believed and saw that my previous post had been followed up on. I am r117 and r174 "When I was a kid my mother told me the Wicked Witch of the West was made out of brown sugar and that's why she melted. I took it to be an acceptable explanation." Poisoned Dragon r233,r234, My grandmother didn't look like the witch melting but as of her sitting on her throne. Thank you for proving my mom correct it will be one of the many things she will be glad to have said "I TOLD YOU SO." if I share with her. r235" What about his mother, though?" She looks like the original 1969 Velma from Scooby doo.

I was told by an older sibling that ham grew on bushes.

[quote]R241: I was told by an older sibling that ham grew on bushes.

R241, meet yourself at R238, posted back in August.

That I could still get hot guys at my eldergay age of 59.

When I was kid, whenever I saw my parents or grandma watching a black-and-white tv show or film, I thought that the world was indeed B&W and at some moment during the 50s or 60s the worldl was magicaly colorized.

I was once told - by some older children - that ham grows on bushes. It doesn't come from pigs, but grows on bushes like fruit.

I used to think my mom couldn’t really be a whore just because she enjoyed wearing white shoes after Labor Day, until my dad confirmed that she actually was one.

When I was around 8 or 9 I got hold of a nasty Penthouse magazine with photos of hetero oral sex. I misunderstood what I saw and I thought that the vagina had a large cauliflower-like object that stuck out of it that men “ate”. That explains both my vagina-revulsion and other things.

Dumb but also empirical in that last prebuscent boy way:

I thought I heard that boys had three testicles, and I only had two, and I worried about it. When my cousin spent the night and fell asleep (We shared a bed.) I looked under the sheet, turned on a flashlight, pulled his underwear down and counted.

I was mightily relieved.

He didn't find it as funny as the rest of us did when I mentioned it at a family party. But he had forced incest on his half-sister and later went to prison for kid porn, so I didn't expect him to be tetchy.

I thought the Underground Railroad was like the New York subways, between the north and the south.

For r248

R247 - WTF LOL

When I was a kid I thought that a birthmark was the first part of your body/skin that ever came into contact with air as you came out of your mother.

[quote] I misunderstood what I saw and I thought that the vagina had a large cauliflower-like object that stuck out of it that men “ate”.

How did you ever look at crudite the same way again?!?

I used to think the music on the radio came from 1) musicians playing live at the radio station; 2) were actually INSIDE the radio.

Oh, and for some reason I thought John Wayne sang "Cracklin' Rosie."

[quote] I used to think the music on the radio came from 1) musicians playing live at the radio station

You weren't alone.

When I was a kid we used to watch the movie The Lady in Red quite a bit. In it, Charlotte asks Teddy, "Should we break the ice here or in bed?" That line--or its context--led me to believe in my young, naive mind that "breaking the ice" was a term for when a man initially penetrates a woman's vagine. I would always laugh whenever I heard that line because I thought it meant sex.

When I was about 6 I had a vision of a stomach being kind of like a large puzzle, with spaces for different food items to “snap into” after you ate them. Like, I had a specific image of a cupcake floating down into my stomach and neatly fitting into a cupcake-shaped space.

Upon adult reflection, this is especially dumb because cupcakes, apples, bananas etc. don’t enter your stomach in their initial form - they’re all chewed up into pieces/mush!

My taint is bald

I was so disgusted and freaked-out by having to help my father "clean" fish and animals he'd hunted that I convinced myself I was a robot.

None of that horrible mess in me!

I was 6-7.

"Only the tip" meant "only the tip."

When I would hear David Bowie's "Fame" on AM radio in the 70s I thought he was singing "Mame" and that it was a song from the movie that came out around the same time.

Apparently thinking jackals were not real.

I heard that a kid had broken his arm while riding in a school bus and for years I wondered who picked it up from the floor and l how they ever reattached it.

I was scared of sharks in backyard swimming pools.

I knew there couldn’t actually be a shark in the pool, but the filters on the sides scared me. If leaves etc could float in and out of the filter, so could lizards, presumably, and if not lizards, why not sharks?

When I was a child, I misinterpreted the song "shoo fly, don't bother me" as "shoe fly, don't bother me". I was an adult when it finally dawned on me what the actual words must have been.

R265-Thanks for clearing that up. I always thought it was shoe fly, right up to reading your post.

When I was a grade-school boy there was a lesbian couple right next door. Not kidding they were total stereotypes: their names were Kris and Trish and they were both very-short-haired and stocky/fit and tanned and way into tennis and their Jeep.

The older kids talked smack about them and I somehow ingested the notion that Kris and Trish started out as regular women who went and did something exotic to turn themselves into lesbians. Like maybe they did an outlandish medical treatment, the kind that you fly halfway around the world to get and it's top-top secret.

They fascinated me to no end. Fortunately my parents didn't hate on them, and they always waved Hi to me.

R267 - Are you sure that they weren’t TRANSPHIBIANS?!?

My summer job in the late 1980s was as a bagger/grocery carrier at a local supermarket; I'm not even sure that type of job exists anymore. Anyway, I noticed I was carrying groceries to, in my opinion, cars that were too nice for people who had just paid for their groceries with food stamps. From those interactions, I thought that we should end all welfare because people were abusing the system.

Then I went to college, and someone gave me a pie chart showing the very small portion that welfare programs take up in government spending. I also learned about the cycle of poverty, bad choices, and other things that lead to welfare. I developed empathy and broadened my worldview.

When Prell shampoo first came out it was in a glass bottle. Eventually they introduced it in a plastic tube that in their ads on TV they described as "Now in an unbreakable tube".

As a young third grader, I considered that a challenge and when my mother brought home a tube of Prell shampoo I took it into the living room on her off white carpeting and proceeded to jump on the unbreakable tube of Prell. To its credit it survive a couple times of being jumped on but eventually it broke open and the green goo shot across the white carpet, you can imagine the surprised look on my face. I made my mother cry that day. I also learned never to believe advertising that day.

As a 16-year old new driver in the pre-GPS '70s who had a job as a stock boy for a suburban Detroit medical supply company, I was tasked with having to make a delivery in the Downriver area of the city. Lost, I refused to take the (correct) I-94 exit to Chicago, insisting to my mother I then called on a pay phone that I didn't want to go Chicago, I wanted to go Downriver!

When we did the big family vacation to the West Coast in the station wagon, once we hit Nevada I kept seeing all these signs saying "No Minors." I pondered this awhile and finally decided that they didn't want those filthy miners tracking dirt on their carpets and sitting in their nice chairs with their dirty pants. This made perfect sense to. my 8 year of self.

Imagine my outrage when I discovered they were talking about ME!

After seeing “Planet of The Apes” on television, I was dragged to my oldest brother’s high school choral performance. There were different choirs in matchy robes looking pained and hopeless.

I was convinced that every performer on the risers was wearing a wig. This would have been 1974 or 1975.

I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

As a young child we visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, which, if you've ever been there, features a coal mine you enter via an elevator and descend into the bowels of the mine. Once there you get a tour from a grizzled old coal miner. It made one Hell of an Impression on my 6 year old self.

In fact I bought into it so completely that years later I had moved to Chicago and was stopped at the light on Lake Shore Drive where you turn to go to the museum. I look over at Lake Michigan, and then at the museum, and I remember thinking "It must have been a real bitch keeping the lake water out of the mine shafts. You wouldn't think that was a practical place to operate a coal mine." Until that moment I had just assumed that by a great stroke of luck they built the museum atop a real coal mine on the Southside of Chicago.

Most of my thoughts are ludicrous

Although I was the third child, I believed I was from a virgin birth. In second grade it was made very clear to me what my parents had done. I was disappointed - I didn’t have an origin story; just plain parents vanilla fucking during a blizzard.

When I was five or six, one of my aunts got married and she wanted me to be the ring bearer in her wedding. I can still remember how terrified I was at the prospect because I thought they were saying "ring bear" and I didn't want to be a bear!

And I was reading Hermann Hesse at age five, R277. I don't think we would've been friends.

I thought your “birthday suit” was an actual suit of clothes, worn at your birthday party. (I envisioned a white dinner jacket and a bow tie.)

Most of these stories happened in people's childhoods, but from the time I first became a car owner to when I was about *thirty*, I thought that, when you bring your car in for service and they "rotate the tires," what they are doing is removing your tires for good and putting in new tires for you. Yup -- new tires every few months, with the total bill coming up to about $100. Wtf was I thinking??

It only a few years ago occurred to me that beetles wasn’t spelled beatles. It’s not a word I have to write out very often.

When I’d see references to The Beatles I thought the group was named after the insects - I just didn’t dwell on it.

Then really not that long ago I thought, “Oh, they’re The BEATles because they’ve got the BEAT! Beetles the bugs is actually spelled differently, isn’t it?”

I share this with you now just in case anyone else is under the same misconception[bold] : )

My sister thought euthanasia was like the Peace Corp.

r2 porsha?

Just last week as I was talking with my doctor about afib I mentioned "obliteration surgery." She said, "It's ablation." I knew that but for some reason I called it "obliteration." I'm still cringing.

Many years ago, there was a news story on TV about a hippo that died because of some mishap during sleep. It was something about its diaphragm. My kid sister blurted out “hippos use those, too?” My mother and I nearly died laughing at the little slut.

as a kid I though "virgin" was an astrological sign.

The whore doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Ham wasn't a meat. It grew on a bush.

[quote]Ham wasn't a meat. It grew on a bush.

Well, lady ham grows under a bush.

[quote] I thought your “birthday suit” was an actual suit of clothes, worn at your birthday party.

R279 I guess they stopped inviting you to the nude retreat.

[quote] and I didn't want to be a bear!

Ironically, R277 grew up to be a burly man with a hairy chest and lumberjack beard. Sometimes our earliest fears do come true.

[quote]Oh, they’re The BEATles because they’ve got the BEAT!

Still dumb. The name is less of a nod to a musical 'beat' and more to the Beat poets and the bohemian movement.

[quote]I thought that the Alaskan wilderness would have significantly fresher air

OP, unless you were in Anchorage ... the air is significantly fresher and cleaner in the Alaskan Wilderness. Whether it's in the rain forests of southeast AK or above the arctic circle, on the Bering Sea coast - I've experienced freshest, cleanest air I've ever breathed in.

I was in pre-school, and saw some short clip on the making of a Disney movies were they draw the characters. In my adolescent brain, I thought that meant that everything I saw on TV or in movies were draw, even non-cartoons. Then randomly one day I was in the kitchen watching TV and it dawned on me how stupid that thought was. I though that was a massive revelation, laughed at myself, and never forgot that moment of critical thinking (for a kid).

Yes, you can remember things that far back. I still remember my home phone number, I had to recite in class, even though we only lived in that apartment for the year of my parents' divorce, before moving out of state.

r26 I have a distinct memory of the first word I ever read. I must have been around 3, and I was in the grocery story with my mom. The word was "sale."

Somewhat related, here's one of the dumbest things I ever thought: I learned to read when phonics was all the rage. I remember thinking, "I'll have to sound out every word letter-by-letter for the rest of my life." I didn't realize that we remember entire words.

R292 … right, and jazz & Jack Kerouac figure greatly in all the Beatles' early music and lyrics.

When I was a kid, I thought Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” was about a witch secretly listening to private conversations between people on the phone. I was afraid to talk on the phone after that, because I thought she’d be listening to me, remember my voice, and kidnap me at night.

My pussy is like a natural disaster. A mudslide!

I was nine before I understood I was not a virgin birth.

I was the third child. I figured the other two were wrestled out, but I was special.

I was greatly disappointed in my mother.

When I was a little kid, I thought Miller High Life was really champagne.

My neighbor childhood friend in the ‘60s came from a much wealthier family & they ate a lots of tv dinners, so I associated that with rich people.

R292 - "On the Road" and then "Abbey Road" showing the Fab Four literally ON THE ROAD. Coincidence?!? I think not . . . .

the peace sign made by people (like Richard Nixon) meant Playboy magazine.

Misheard lyric by a fool

My best friend swore to me that ONJ sang Ï'll be goddamned you"instead of Ï'll be guiding you"in her song "Magic".

TV dinners WERE a special treat in our household. They were 'futuristic.'

Ironically, the advent of the microwave oven took away that futuristic magic by making frozen meals too quick & easy and mundane.

When I was a child I thought a bikini wax was when a woman puts a coat of car wax on her bikini to make it shiny.

That you were smart

I thought Americans wouldn't be duped twice.