TBH, one of the best parts of being a kid was believing some of the most random, ridiculous, and nonsensical things ever.
Well, this viral Reddit thread asked people to share the stupidest thing they believed as a child, and the responses are equal parts hilarious, adorable, and "WTF?"
1. "I thought burglary was a profession, and that criminals' shifts started when the sun set, so they'd be on the clock all night robbing houses. To calm my fears, I would put my blinds up a little, lay down in a pile of stuffed animals, and freeze, staring out the window. That way, I'd look like a doll, and if a burglar saw me through the window, they wouldn't realize I was a human. Then I could get up and call 911 when they looked away. I feel asleep in that stuffed animal pile every night for two years."
2. "I believed that every song on the radio was being performed somewhere live, and that when you turned up the volume on the radio, the singer would sing louder at their venue."
3. "My parents called sex a 'special cuddle,' so when I was six years old, I thought it was just a hug. But I knew it had something to do with the balls. So I thought when a man and woman 'hugged' the man's balls transferred into the woman's body. But I had concluded that if two men hugged, they would just swap balls, so one day, I decided to prank my brother by punching myself in the balls then hugging him. While doing so, I asked him, 'Do your balls hurt?' and he said, 'No?' And that's when I realized I had just punched myself in the balls for no reason."
4. "I thought that when people died in movies, they died in real life as well — and that they gave their life to complete the movie."
5. "I thought that poop was stored in your butt cheeks — the bigger the butt, the more they had to poop. So when I saw someone with a big butt, I'd think, 'Wow, she should really use the bathroom."
6. "I didn't know that 'sleeping together' meant having sex. When I was 13, my mom asked me if my boyfriend and I were sleeping together, and I replied, 'We don't have enough time together to be taking naps."
7. "I thought that the 'eject' button on my dad's car would send me flying through the roof."
8. "I used to believe that if I drank enough milk, I could grow enough bones for two extra arms...which I would then use to climb walls."
9. "When I was 11 years old, I heard about strap-ons, but I was confused as to what they were and exactly how they worked. I thought they were dildos that went in instead of out, and that women were just walking around with dildos inside of them while shopping. Whenever I saw a woman in public smiling, I thought maybe she had a dildo strapped 'in' her."
10. "I believed that all dogs were male and all cats were female."
11. "When I was a kid, it seemed like every movie and TV show had some episode in which someone had to escape quicksand, so I thought, 'Oh shit, I better be prepared for when I inevitably fall into quicksand as an adult.'"
12. "I thought that anal sex was two people standing back to back, rubbing butts."
13. "I used to think that the money offering collected at church would be put into a huge cannon to be shot up to heaven for Jesus."
14. "I thought that any time a woman went to the hospital it was to have a baby. So when my 98-year-old grandmother was in the hospital, all I wanted to know was when the baby was going to get here."
15. "I was convinced that when women died, their boobs would inflate until they blew up. And that that's why they nailed coffins."
16. "When I was three or four years old, I understood that sperm plus egg equaled baby, but when my dad told me that the sperm comes from the father's penis, I had a mental picture of him peeing through a tea strainer, catching a little flopping tadpole, and then stuffing it into my mom's vagina."
17. "I believed that eating sliced bread would make me immortal."
18. "My address was 25029, and my parents told me that number represented my mom's age, 25, and my dad's age, 29, when they got married, and that the 0 represented how many kids they had at the time. I thought that rule applied to all home addresses, and I would always see houses with addresses like 05785 and wonder how a 5-year-old married an 85-year-old and already had 7 kids."
19. "I thought that chocolate milk came from brown cows."
20. "I used to think that before color TV everything was black and white, and I asked my Nan what it was like when people saw in color for the first time."
21. "I was told that God lived up in the sky, and the highest thing I could think of was the pipe sticking out of my neighbor's roof. So I thought God lived in the pipe."
22. "I thought I could trap good weather in a bottle and release it later. Except I didn't have a bottle, so I used an empty Tic-Tac container — I filled it partially with tepid water, opened it on a perfect day, and got all that good weather in there. Then I saved it and released it several months later, and I SWEAR the weather turned nice!"
23. "I used to think people in high school were grownups, until I got there. Then I thought the same thing about college. Now I know that 'adulting' is just faking it and acting like you actually know what you're doing."
Some responses have been edited for length and clarity.