childish notions

[WhimsyTheFae]

Watching my parents drive, I thought for a long time that the blinkers were telling them where to go. After all, they went on before they started a turn. I always wondered how they knew where we were going...

Ben

I had an ex-girlfriend (19, but had never driven) who thought that cruise-control steered the car for me (she didn't realize that I was practicing the unsafe technique of knee steering at the time).

 

[BiggusGeekus]

My Mom and Dad had one of those lovey-dovey books on how to raise children. In the early part of the book, it had a "recipie for a happy child" or something like that. The entries read

1/2 a cup of love
3 hugs
2 kisses


... like that.

I knew how to read just enough that I could tell it was a recipie, but not enough that I could read the words without help. My Dad "helped" me with the words and you can probably figure out what happened. I ended up thinking it was a book on how to cook little kids.

 

[EricNoah]

Remember Weebles?

The slogan was "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down." I was very surprised that when I held them in mid-air and then released them, they fell to the floor. I thought they wouldn't fall down!

 

[RangerWickett]

Man, I must've been the smartest kid ever. I didn't believe any of this kooky stuff.

Of course, I grew up during the era of Unsolved Mysteries and The X-Files, so I, y'know, believed in aliens. I always wondered why the aliens would never abduct people like me, who believed in them and wanted proof. No, they only took the weird people on TV.

My cousin convinced his brother, who was 3 years younger and really annoying, that when boys hit puberty, all their fat turns into muscle. Poor kid . . . all he wanted was to have lots and lots of muscles. . . .

 

[JoeBlank]

I thought the same thing but with the radio.

I remember explaining to my little sister that this was the main difference between the radio and TV, radio would "wait for you" when you turned it off, but TV programs kept going even if you were not watching.

Where did we get this idea?

 

[dogoftheunderworld]

When I was growing up, my family doctor always told me to put my hand over one ear, while he was looking in the other-- you know, so the light wouldn't shine through. Until I was about eighteen I fell for this, well, because why would a doctor lie to me, right? Right?


When my kids were younger, we watched a lot of videos -- we didn't have cable and there just weren't that many good kid shows on. When we got cable and started letting them watch TV, they couldn't figure out why they couldn't just Pause the shows when they went to the bathroom or while we ate dinner.

 

[Warrior Poet]

Where did we get this idea?

Commercial repetition? Same songs played over and over again? Or maybe a sense that it was like a book, that it "started" where you left off?

*shrug*

Dunno.

Warrior Poet

 

[sniffles]

My 4 year old daughter is under the crazy impression that these bronze statues of children playing in the park are actual children who were dipped in bronze because they disobeyed their parents.

It's probably because I tell her that every time we go there.

Why does this not surprise me?

 

[WayneLigon]

I used to think that people who took the foil lids of milk bottles rather than carefully piercing two holes in them were stupid moral degenerates. (This was because my dad insisted on doing this, and got incredibly upset if someone else got to the milk first and took the lid off).

(Bottles?!)

I remember one weird notion about milk. In first grade, it was a terrible, terrible thing to open both ends of a milk carton. If you did it would 'let all the air out' and the milk would be ruined.

 

[John Cooper]

Rel: My 4 year old daughter is under the crazy impression that these bronze statues of children playing in the park are actual children who were dipped in bronze because they disobeyed their parents.

Sounds like an excellent quest for Samantha the Red!