Asklemmy

I thought Salvatia must be the poorest country in the world if even their army has to go around begging for money.

One of my brothers was friends with a pair of twins named Eric and Ryan, but I thought that they were a single entity that somehow had two bodies known as American Ryan

That hiding candy (or other things people wanted) was a universal property of grandmothers.

English is not my first language, but I had heard the expression "search all nooks and crannies", but thought the last word was grannies - cranny is an unusual word.

Now,my own grandmother was in the habit of hiding candy for us to find. I thought the expression existed because all grannies hid things. Search all nooks and grannies!

I grew up with a family that didn't have a lot of luxuries when I was young. We had three channels on TV, so we didn't spend a lot of time watching TV. So I didn't get to watch a lot of pop culture content for about the first 7 or 8 years of my life.

So one of the first memories I have as a kid is in hearing music on the radio, record player, cassette player or any sound system .... I understood that it was previously recorded and performed by other people somewhere else.

What I thought was that all the sounds were generated by human voices. Guitars? Pianos? Trumpets? Brass sounds? Violins? even Drums or percussion. I thought all of it was people just making sounds with their voices.

I'm Indigenous Canadian so my parents didn't have musical instruments, a couple of uncles played the guitar and fiddle ... but by the time I was young, they no longer played these instruments and had them. I never knew or understood musical instruments really until I was about 8, 9 or ten. Up until then, I just thought all music was just people with amazing and unusual human voices.

That encountering quick sand in real life was a real possibility every day.

Bonus: My kid doesn't believe that Santa is magical, he just has really advanced technology.

My parents didn't specifically tell me if Santa Clause was real or make-believe. They wanted me to come to my own conclusion, I guess. My dad is a rationalist person, and my mom's from a culture that doesn't traditionally celebrate Christmas.

So what I believed was that the appearance of presents on Christmas was an unsolved mystery, and Santa Clause was just a hypothesis to explain it.

I suspected the real explanation probably involved the tree working as an antenna for some kind of cosmic energy that triggered the appearance of presents. Perhaps in ancient and more superstitious times they discovered this phenomenon by accident and continued to put up the tree ever since.

Growing up, we had a neighbor in the Air national guard who was a boom operator on KC-135 refuelers, meaning he controlled the boom that comes out the back of the airplane and transfers fuel to other aircraft. The boom operator lays face down on a bench and looks out a window in the back of the plane to control the boom.

When I learned that they "operate on their belly", I somehow interpreted that to mean he performed medical operations on people's bellies.

It didn't even make sense to me at the time but I figured there must be some special reason that the operation had to be done while airborne and I was impressed that our neighbor was not only a doctor but an airborne surgeon who specialized in this one belly surgery that couldn't be done on the ground.

I thought our eyes worked by projecting some kind of energy beam that scanned objects, like how Superman's X-ray vision is sometimes drawn.

That adults had it figured out.

That average people actually care about anything but themselves.

That there is justice in the world.

That a blowjob involved the act of physically blowing air on the penis. When I found out it actually involved sucking, I was like, "Oooh...yeah that sounds much more pleasurable."

That the Empire State Building is a restaurant named Empire Steak Building.

When adults said things like "In this day and age, nobody says please and thankyou any more", I misinterpreted "this day and age" as "The Stayan Age", which was our current age, which obviously followed on from Bronze Age, Iron Age etc.

That every time people had sex, the woman became pregnant. I thought that every sex scene in a film meant the film had to be stopped for 9 months until the actress could give birth.

There’s a highway that formed a loop around the city where I grew up and we used it pretty regularly, but mostly only the western half (since we lived on the west side of town). My parents explained the concept to me that it had “belt” in its name because it circled around the city like a belt goes around a person. This idea intrigued me and I eventually asked my parents if someday we could drive all the way around it. My dad seemed kind of surprised but said we could sometime. I got excited and started planning for things we would need, like a tent and food, since it would obviously take a long time.

The highway’s only about 25 miles/40 kilometers long.

That male orgasm was painful. I got this idea from seeing their o-face somewhere and assuming it indicated pain.

Not me but really funny - when my mom was little she thought white people weren't real. She thought they were made up for tv

When I was little, I thought that "cash back" meant that the clerk literally just handed you money out of the register if you wanted it.

I assumed that most people were honest and only took the cash if they needed it. I didn't know that it came out of your checking account lol.

That a bon fire was a "bomb" fire and therefore, very loud and very dangerous.

That kissing is how you become pregnant. No, really.

I used to think that there was a country called Cyclopedia, that was full of all kinds of fascinating things. I had a book all about it called "In Cyclopedia".

That cats and dogs were the same animal, the cats were the girls and the dogs were the boys

I thought propeller planes worked by spinning so fast that they temporarily moved the gravity out of the way so the plane could fly.

When I was a young lad I thought milk was cow pee and was super confused by the world.

That the world used to be black and white. I once asked how the people making The Wizard of Oz knew when the world was going to change, so they could film the movie correctly.

I ran up to my mom once, completely serious and said, "Mom! I know why all fat people are short. They use up all their skin!"

I felt like a genius until she laughed so hard she fell on the floor and peed a little.

There was a park near my house where often cops would sit to catch speeders. Driving past one day, I didn't see a cop and I told my parents I was surprised by this. My folks told me that they were there, just undercover. I asked where, and they pointed to a woman walking a dog and they told me it was an undercover speed dog. For years I'd point out suspected speed dogs when we'd drive places. I am not a smart man.

that my grandparents remembered middle ages or even the dinosaurs

I scraped my knee and thought that putting skin-coloured paint on it would heal it

I used to think those coins in the fountain at the mall were just money people wanted to get rid of. One day, little me tried getting away with a skirt full of coins and got in trouble.

I mean, to be fair, a coin on the ground is fair game, and they don't make these "unspoken rules" clear enough, so I couldn't imagine a coin in a fountain not being free to just pick up.

Wedding rings were there to show who was married and who was available. Once you wanted to get married, you just found a friendly person who didn't have a ring, and then you asked if they'd marry you. I mean, that IS what happens I suppose, but my 8 year old brain played it out like someone asking a nice stranger for the time.

I was always phlegmy and coughing as a kid so I became convinced I had diphtheria and would die soon, and thought it would be terrible to let my parents know this sad fact. Turns out it was because 1980s parenting meant smoking anywhere and everywhere at all times and cigarette smoke makes me ill.

That we have cables instead of veins inside.

That before I was born cars had the exhaust pipe on the front (in fact I used to draw cars that way).

At some point I also believed that we were born as monkeys and we evolved as we grew up.

My grandmother told me England was not part of the European continent. I got an answer wrong on a test because of that. She refused admit she was wrong even after I showed her in my text book.

The 'H' signs to indicate a hospital was indicating there was a helicopter pad.

In the 80s when i was a child there were billboards with PSAs saying don't drink and drive. I'd promptly scold my parents if i caught them taking a sip from their soft drink after hitting the McDonald's drive through.

That bonzai was Japanese for "fire", and therefore you should never shout "Bonzai!" in a theater.

...Yeah, I'm not sure what I was smoking either.

We live inside the earth. Dogs say barf.

Premises:

1. My family watches the news for [weather] and [ye local murder].
2. My friend says: his dad says: "the news lies."
3. Parents are trustworthy, and cops can't lie to the news.

Conclusion:

They lie about the WEATHER!?

There's a park in Brasilia that has a "little rocket". I refused to enter it when I was something like 4yo, because "What if it launches while I'm inside?"

Most humans have good ethics and beliefs. The more I grow, the more I'm disappointed in our society.

Not sure what age I was, maybe 4. I thought the music on the radio was live, that the musicians went to the radio station to sing and it was broadcast from there.