One of the best parts of being a kid is being able to hold completely nonsensical, ridiculous beliefs without serious consequences.
Many of us have memories of hilarious, illogical and cringe-worthy things we believed as we were growing up. Often, they were the result of some combination of irresponsible parenting (Dad – WHY would you tell me picking your nose causes cancer?), limited exposure to the big, wide world (no – it isn’t still Medieval times in England), and misinformed fears (don’t worry – sharks probably aren’t going to eat you in your swimming pool).
England circa 2016. Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures.
So we asked around the Mamamia office, and searched through Reddit, to find the most ridiculous things people thought when they were children.
And some of them are so detailed, bizarre, and disturbing, it's hard to believe these people grew up to be fully-functioning adults.
One woman in our office confessed that as a child she firmly believed her birth story was as follows:
"My parents went to the supermarket and picked me up off the shelf. In a box packaged like a doll."
Well, I mean I guess that sort of...no. No, under no circumstances does that make any sense.
Another thought, "If my doona was pulled up high enough to cover my ear, then I was invisible and no burglar could see me. This meant I would always have to sleep with bed covers - even in the middle of summer in Queensland."
HA, how silly. Especially because it's ghosts, not burglars, that grab you when you abandon the covers. Everyone knows that.
One woman, who now has kids of her own, vividly remembers believing, "God controlled the weather using a series of chains and levers. To make it rain, he would just pull the rain lever, and to make the sun shine, he would pull the sunshine chain."
Right. Because God doesn't have anything better to do and apparently has enough hands to control differing weather conditions ALL OVER THE WORLD.
The responses coming from Reddit, a more diverse audience, were equally as bizarre. One user, known only as Ge0rgeOscarBluth, commented, "I thought catching on fire would be a somewhat regular occurrence. They really pushed the stop, drop, and roll thing on us in school."
Same. I also thought quicksand, volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and tsunami's were frighteningly common. It was really just a matter of time, and I was petrified.
To be honest, some of these ridiculous beliefs make me a little nostalgic for those years when the innocence of childhood shielded me from any shred of common sense, and my imagination was so huge that anything was possible.
NaptownSwagger thought, "the big sound barrier walls on the side of the highway were to keep back elephants." And you know what? I really, really wish this was their purpose.
Another Reddit user TheSuperSucker posted, "I thought my mum grew up in a black and white world because all pictures of her childhood were black and white." Other beliefs might be ridiculous - but this one is actually completely logical. And as a 25-year-old, I remain unconvinced that it's not true.
But one of my favourites came from Reddit user PhoneIsOnZeroPercent (same), who wrote, "Right around the time I began to hit puberty I got a pug. A few weeks after we got him, blonde hair began coming in all over my body. For a while after that I was unbelievably scared that I was slowly morphing into a pug. This also affected my relationship with the dog because as much as I loved him, I kept thinking to myself, I don't know if I can turn into a pug for him."
HOW RUDE. I bet that was one sulky pug.
While (luckily) not all of us spent our childhood wondering if we were willing to turn into a dog (personally, I would have), we all had idiosyncratic, not-quite-logical beliefs that gradually deteriorated as we grew up.
What's the most ridiculous thing you believed as a kid?