We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about some of the weird body myths they believed as kids. Here are some of the most bizarre and hilarious responses.
1. "For some reason I had gotten it in my head that the fluid coming out of a woman every month during her period was blue. I think it was from the commercials always using blue fluid on menstrual pads."
Submitted by Sarah Daugherty, Facebook
2. "A girl in elementary school said that if you slept with a pillow under your shirt you would get pregnant. I became terrified of pillows anywhere near me and refused to use them."
Submitted by Kristin Piazza, Facebook
3. ""When I was a kid, I used to poke at my belly button to the point where it would get irritated. So to prevent me from doing this, my mom told me that if I kept poking at it, my belly button would open up and swallow my hand, and then my hand would be stuck inside my stomach forever.
"Years later my (now ex) husband and I were talking about belly buttons when I stopped, blinked, and immediately called my mother to tell her what a liar she was. She laughed for about five solid minutes, and still tells the story at family gatherings."
Submitted by Dawn Ferchak, Facebook
4. "I thought that if you masturbated, an egg would be released and a baby would grow. I was so scared the first time I did. Like, 'How the fuck am I gonna explain this to my dad. I'm seven.'"
Submitted by Victoria Carr
5. "I thought that my ribs were actually called 'shrimps' and that there were shrimp in my chest protecting my heart."
Submitted by Maya Spitalnik, Facebook
6. "I used to think that belly buttons were self-destruct buttons. If you stick your finger in there, your innards would invert and everything would start spilling out. I didn't clean my belly button for over 13 years because of that. Man, the stuff I dug out of there..."
Submitted by Shaikha Nabeel Almulla, Facebook
7. "My parents told me that if I swallowed bubble gum, a bubble gum tree would grow inside me. I don't know what's worse – believing a tree would grow inside me, or believing bubble gum trees existed."
Submitted by Amy Flaherty, Facebook
8. "I believed that the penis was pulled out from the belly button and then pushed back in when the boys were done going to the bathroom."
Submitted by Ashley Rizzuto, Facebook
9. "When I was younger, my mom always told me that if I lied I would get a small black hole in my heart, and then if I continued to lie my heart would turn into one big black hole and I would die... pretty morbid."
Submitted by Brittany Gacek, Facebook
10. "I believed that a mother and son lived inside my butt, made my poop, and pushed it out for me. I would constantly yell "PUSH!!" when using the bathroom."
Submitted by Madeline Bordelon, Facebook
11. "Babies breathed through the umbilical cord to the mom's belly button, which meant they could drown if too much water got into it – which is why you wore a one-piece suit to swim."
Submitted by lostUNIcorn
12. "I had always wanted curly hair, so my grandma thought it a brilliant idea to tell me to eat the crust on my bread as my hair would become curly. Let's just say I ate crust for way too long before I discovered it was all a lie."
Submitted by scowndrel87
13. "I thought that a goose lived in your stomach for your entire life. That goose had hundreds of children, and whenever your body got cold, the baby geese would try to escape and poke up against your skin."
Submitted by alyssamn
14. "I thought 'feelings' were bones in my heart and someone broke them when my feelings got hurt."
Submitted by Kelly Stamy, Facebook
15. "I used to believe that my whole buttcrack was my butthole, and thought poop came out like CDs, even though mine obviously never did."
Submitted by n8vegrl321
17. "I thought that women got pregnant just by thinking 'would like to get pregnant now', and it just happened. Like how you can think you wanna move your arm and it will."
Submitted by vrh_91
18. "I honestly thought that I wasn't 'lucky enough' to have internal organs. We learned about them in school, and on a logical level I knew that I had a heart, stomach, etc. I just thought I wasn't cool enough to have something as awesome as organs."
Submitted by maggieh4db824384
19. "I thought that getting boobs and how big they would be was optional. I always said I wasn't going to grow any. I now have DDDs and they're pretty great."
Submitted by iscourtneythere
20. "I thought that to give birth, a woman's belly button opened up into a black hole vortex kind of thing, and then the baby just sort of tumbled out."
Submitted by soupscissors
21. "I learnt about how flowers reproduced before really understanding how it worked in humans. The end result was a confused 8-year-old who thought boy's 'pollen' was going to float to her and get her pregnant. I remember trying to stay as far away from boys as I could!"
Submitted by martham449dd7d5b
22. "I believed that penises grew like teeth… like, when you're little, you have a 'baby' one and then in time it would fall off and you'd just grow a new 'adult' one."
Submitted by aylintorres11
23. "I used to think that the stomach was an empty space with only three snakes living at the bottom of it, and that when you ate food it fell directly to those snakes to feed them so I thought the reason your stomach growled when you were hungry was because only little crumbs of food fell to feed the snakes so they fought for the crumbs and the movement of the snakes fighting made your stomach growl."
Submitted by adrianfuentes
24. "My older sister told me little people lived in my belly button that came out at night when I was sleeping. I was terrified of my belly button well into elementary school."
Submitted by ellent4778008e4
25. "I thought you just randomly got pregnant at any given time once you reached a certain age."
Submitted by AmylovesDraco13
26. "I used to think that men had to squeeze their penis in order to pee."
Submitted by Jessi Links, Facebook
27. "When I was little, I thought eyebrows and feelings were the same thing. Like if someone said their feelings were hurt, I thought they meant something was wrong with their eyebrows. I guess that explains why I'm a sociopath who cares more about her eyebrows than her mental health."
Submitted by adelinehaileym
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.