Recently, we shared 18 dumb (but funny) things that people believed as kids as confessed by Redditors, like that TV shows were still happening during commercial breaks or that the black market was an actual place.
That prompted the BuzzFeed Community to share their OWN confessions of hilariously stupid things they believed as kids! So here are some of the best so far:
1. The radio station, part 1:
"I used to think that when songs were played on the radio, the actual band/singer was downtown at the radio station playing it live. Embarrassing."
2. The radio station, part 2:
"I used to think the radio DJ had to bleep all the swear words himself on a song while it was playing. I was impressed they never missed one."
3. It only counts if you're married:
"I was born in January, and my parents didn’t get married until the fall of that year. Even though they were living together and everything when I was born, I was convinced that meant that I didn’t have a dad for the first nine months of my life. I brought it up to my mom when I was a little kid and said something like: 'I didn’t have a dad when I was born.'"
4. The world really improved when Technicolor showed up:
"My parents told me one day as we were watching TV that it actually used to be in black and white. And I thought that the world — like in real life around us — was also black and white. And I asked, 'Well when did the world turn to color?'"
6. Family planning, part 1:
"So when I was a kid, I was told that you use a condom so you wouldn’t have a baby. Well, I somehow thought this meant a condom was like a physical barrier that would literally block the baby from coming out. Like, the baby would still be there, it just wouldn’t be born. I also couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that you could physically have sex outside of marriage, so all the stories about celebrity affairs and stuff were very confusing to me because how were they sleeping with people they weren’t married to? I figured it out eventually lmao."
7. Family planning, part 2:
"I used to think that the mother had to eat some sort of 'pregnancy powder' to become pregnant. Like, you know how people put Parmesan cheese on some foods? Yeah...I thought it was like that. You make the food, sprinkle the powder on the food, mix it in, then eat it. BOOM, you're pregnant."
8. To be fair, those old TVs were huge:
"I thought if I cut open the speakers on my TV I could crawl in and become part of the cartoon. I took my plastic tea set knives and sliced (the damage was minimal with those cheap itty knives) down the sides of the speaker during Tom and Jerry, convinced I would get inside. The kicker: my motivation was for my parents to watch me save Tom (the cat) from getting hurt so they’d be proud?"
9. Trix are for kids, cereals are for killers:
"When I was little I thought serial killer was cereal killer and I thought they poisoned cereal. I even remember when I started thinking that. My parents were watching something on TV and I asked what was going on and my mom said the episode was about a serial killer. You can see where my mind went after she said that."
10. Family planning, part 3:
"I used to think that babies fell from the sky. Then, they would fall into hospitals to meet their parents."
11. Family planning, part 4:
"I used to believe that when you wanted to have a baby, you had to get married. Even if you were already married. Like if you wanted a second child you had to do it again. A marriage for each individual baby."
12. Family planning, part 5:
"I thought a 'test-tube baby' fully gestated in a tube. Like just a fetus growing to full size in a glass tube on a lab counter for nine months. I’m not going to tell you how old I was when I learned the truth..."
—PHM8
13. Toy Story, horror-style:
"This is probably more of a fear, but I used to play with all my stuffed animals and toys equally because I was worried they would come to life. I was worried if I didn't give them enough attention, they would kill me. I never actually saw Child's Play, but I assumed that's what that movie was about!"
14. Better hope you get a good doctor!
"On childbirth: I thought the doctor decided what sex the baby was, because on TV and stuff, the doctor always announced whether it was a boy or girl."
15. An eerily prescient fear about webcam security:
"I thought that since I could see people on TV, they could see me. I refused to undress or change clothes in front of a TV because I didn't want strangers seeing me naked. I was 8."
16. This mom was actually a genius:
"My mother told me that you couldn't eat ice cream during the summer. She said the milk would spoil in your stomach and make you sick. I believed this until I was 20. I said this to someone who pointed out that my mother probably just didn't want to buy ice cream for her six kids."
17. The dead end dilemma:
"I thought you died at the end of a DEAD END street, like there's a cliff or something. I would cry if my mom or dad turned on one."
18. People would actually be pretty mad at you for this:
"I spent my first eight years barely breathing around flowers because I thought that sniffing them too much would pull all of the fragrance out of them, and I knew that I would be in big trouble if I did."
19. Famed car mechanic Billy Joel:
"At the age of 10, the only song I knew from Billy Joel was 'Uptown Girl' and when I saw the music video, I believed for two years he was a car mechanic with one song..."
20. The traffic light operators:
"I used to think that men were in nearby buildings at intersections controlling the traffic lights."
21. And finally...uh, the REAL traffic light operators:
"I thought the Keebler elves lived in trees near intersections and were in charge of changing the traffic lights when traffic backed up."
Do you have any weird things you thought as a kid? Share them in the comments and your submission might be featured in a future BuzzFeed post or video!
Submissions have been edited for length and clarity.