Reddit user u/CuriousGeorge2007 recently asked, "What is the stupidest thing you believed as a child?" and people came in with some truly hilarious answers. Read on to find out the wildest and silliest things kids believed were 100% true:
1. "I thought adults were called humans. I told my mom once, 'I wish I was a human so I could get the mail.' Cracks me up to this day."
2. "A kid told me oral sex was a boy on the phone with a girl. He would say 'push,' and she would say 'pull.'"
3. "That 'no exit' signs on certain streets meant that once you go down the street, you can never leave. Needless to say, I had a full-on meltdown when I found out the house we were moving into had a 'no exit' sign on the street. I equated it to basically being imprisoned."
4. "Steel wool comes from sheep that graze in iron-rich pastures."
5. "I thought the Easter bunny lived in the sewer drain pipe next to the local gas station."
"My logic was that bunnies lived in holes. I thought the Easter bunny was human-sized (person in a rabbit costume) and thus needed an appropriately large hole to live in most of the year. The largest hole I knew was the drain pipe (the kind that looks [like] a little cave in the steep grass area next to the road). I thought it was the gas station one specifically because there was always candy wrapper trash thrown into that area. So essentially I thought of the Easter bunny as a homeless guy dressed up in a rabbit costume, bumming it in the gas station sewer."
6. "My son thought all bunnies were spies for the Easter bunny, so he would behave in spring when the rabbits were out in our area."
7. "Drinking and driving referred to all drinks. [I] used to be so scared when my parents had a soda or something."
8. "When I was 3, I thought brown cows had chocolate milk in the udders. I KINDA have a defense for this, because my parents and I were watching TV, and a commercial for chocolate milk came on, and there was a talking brown cow in it."
9. "Quicksand would be a recurring issue in my life."
10. "The world used to be in black and white due to watching old films."
11. "I asked my parents how the bottles with the child-proof locks knew that it was a child trying to open them."
12. "That armed police officers just literally had arms. [I] imagined unarmed ones had lost theirs in police incidents and that it was a very common occurrence."
13. "If you untie your belly button, your bum will fall off."
14. "I thought if I didn't poop often enough my butt would seal/heal itself shut like an unused ear piercing or something."
15. "Until I was about 7, I thought boobs were just lungs on the outside of the body."
16. "Falling in love made your body produce chemicals that made you pregnant. That’s why couples have babies. I was terrified of falling in love as a kid — I was too young to have a baby."
17. "I'm from California, but moved to Minnesota when I was 12. When I got here, I was SHOCKED to see it snow during the daytime. I had no idea it could do that. I assumed the sun would melt the snow during the day, so I thought it only snowed at night."
"In my defense, any movie I had seen up to that time never showed daytime snowing. Always beautiful white flakes across a night sky. Or people waking up in the morning to a blanket of fresh white snow."
18. "People measured distance with feet...like we chose one random guy's foot and have been using it ever since then to measure distance."
19. "When I was around 4, I imagined that every house/building had a certified poop collector ready to catch excrement with a bucket whenever someone flushed. I imagined the sewers as huge underground road systems that allowed the collectors to travel between houses. When their shift ended, someone else would take over for them, and then they'd drive to the nearest manhole and climb out."
20. "Woman don't poop. 'Til almost the end of high school."
21. "I thought when you grow up you get a choice of either getting a job or becoming a bird now and then. I think it’s because my dad was a pilot and when he went to work my mom would say he was ‘flying.’"
22. "That there were humans sitting in control rooms watching tons of traffic cams and turning red lights to green lights and vice versa."
23. "That if two strong men lift each other up at the same time, they would levitate."
24. "When I was very small, I thought you went to the hospital and chose your baby behind the window in the nursery. I thought that’s how you got them."
25. "People who died in movies died in real life."
26. "I was in love with MacGyver, and I thought that if I broke my TV, he would come out of it."
27. And finally, let's finish on one with a heartwarming ending: "For some reason, my brother and I thought the smaller the salt and pepper shakers, the fancier the restaurant. McDonald’s — big shakers, not fancy. I told this to a friend, and he bought me some exceptionally tiny salt and pepper shakers when we moved to a new apartment to make my home as fancy as possible."
What's the silliest or wildest thing you believed as a child? Let us know in the comments!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.