“There Was A Legal Age For Caffeine”: 50 Hilariously Silly Things People Believed To Be True
Kids are naive, and we can't blame them for it. Their wrong perspectives stem from their lack of life experience, and having at least a few is a natural part of growing up. But we sure as heck can laugh at them!
Reddit user Aqkj made a post on the platform, asking everyone, "What's the dumbest thing you believed as a child?" It immediately went viral; as of now, it has over 16.8K comments! Turns out there are no limits to childhood stupidity—erh, I mean, creativity! It's universal.
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This will probably get lost, but I believed for many years when my mom told me that cows unroll haybales as sleeping bags at night and roll them back up in the morning.
I thought that little people (like peter dinklage) were so small because they were born on February 29th. I figured that since their birthday only came round once every 4 years, they would grow to be a quarter size.
When I was a pre-schooler, my mom told me that you weren't allowed to ride a motorcycle or get tattoos unless your mother was dead. One day, outside the grocery store I saw a big, tough looking dude covered in tats, straddling the loudest motorcycle ever. Damn 5 year old me went up to him and asked, "Hey. Is your mom dead?" Dude looked at me and said, "Yeah." And I was shocked that my mom was right.
It always seems funny to me how bikers appear to those who aren't. My dad was a biker. When I was in my teens a new family moved to the neighborhood we got to know them & they were nice people; they said to me when they first moved in they were a little nervous because the lady they brought the house from informed them that my dad was a member of the hell's angels. 🙄
That I could be anything I wanted when I grew up if I just worked hard enough.
I believed I owned a whale. My parents “adopted” one for me as a Christmas gift. I had a framed picture of her tail and everything. Her name was Ibis. This was about 30 years ago now. I hope she kept swimming. God speed, Ibis.
The Dairy Queen and Burger King were married, and ruled over a faraway kingdom of fast food. Edit: In the far away land of Inanoute, The Dairy Queen and Burger King rule from the White Castle. Their decrees tempered by the wisdom of their court magician and vizier, Jack of the Bockse, they hold sovereignty over the Fry Folk. Their daughter, Princess Wendy, is as beautiful as the Inanoute itself. She is betrothed to the brave knight, Carl II, of Hardee. The kingdom is protected by the great hero, Whataguy, and his cohort, Attaboy, while the noble Colonel Sanders commands the Royal Guard, composed of the five finest soldiers in the King's army. But all is not well; dark forces gather in the White Castle's evil counterpart, the Krystal, where the wizard McDonald plots to kidnap the Princess, force her to marry him, and usurp the throne of Inanoute.
I can totally see this being a children’s story for mass-market publishing! This one’s actually cute.
My dad told me that I could have a pet chipmunk or squirrel if I caught one. He told me the key to catching one was to shake salt on their tail, they would **always** stop to lick the salt off and then I'd be able to catch it.
Not hard to figure out why he told us that, because my brother and I would spend hours a day running around the yard with a bucket and a salt shaker.
I think the last time I tried was when I was like 9. I never really though about it again until I was like 15 and it was mind blowing to realize it was all just to keep us busy outside lol
I felt the need to personally thank the driver of the subway train every time we took it. I thought it would be rude and impolite to not do so.
It must have been so embarrassing for my mom. The driver cabin had tinted windows and I demanded the driver lowered them so I could thank him lol. I was like 5 or 6.
Similarly, I was taught to give my seat to the elderly or pregnant women. One time, as soon as the door opened and an old looking man entered the wagon, I bolted from my seat and ran to him, grabbed him by the hand and brought him to the empty seat.
Thanks god I didn't do that to a fat lady or my mom could have died from embarrassment.
When I was really young, I wondered about what was so special about women's breasts that they had to cover them up all the time-- surely there was something secret about them that everyone was hiding from me. My parents wouldn't give me any straight answers. I have no idea why I came to this conclusion, but I thought that maybe there was something dangerous enough about them that they had to be contained. My guess was that they had little mouths with razor sharp teeth.
When I figured out that they were just a bigger version of what I had, I was very confused and disappointed.
That there was humans sitting in control rooms watching tons of traffic cams and turning red light to green lights and Visa versa
I thought a necromancer was someone who was just very into necks.
Neck-romancer.
I was super confused and weirded out by the term "necking"... I thought high school kids rubbed their necks together like cats
There are midgets inside ATM’s. It’s their job to sit inside it and take your card to check it and then pass out money.
They also have a tv and food in there.
Thanks Dad.
My mom told me that a little man lived inside the doorbell, and when someone pushed the button, it tickled his tummy and made him giggle, hence the sound. The next day, I poured my glass of milk onto the doorbell, because I thought the little man was thirsty.
My sister and I believed that the ghosts in Pac-Man were played by kids in other countries who played the opposite video game.
That "Inc." meant "in North Carolina." I live in NC and my dad told me that that is what it meant and I believed it for an embarrassingly long time. I still cringe when I think about it. "Monsters in North Carolina" ugh EDIT: I'm crying. I didn't expect this to take off and now I'm so embarrassed. THANKS, POP.
My mom, aunts and grandmother pulled this on me with hors d'oeuvres. They called them horses doovers to be funny, and I was too many years old before I realized it wasn’t pronounced that way.
Very late to the party, but here goes:
I grew up with a grandmother who was in a diving accident as a young girl. As such, she was relegated to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Long story short I had a paralyzed grandmother.
When I was old enough to ask what she did for work, I was told she was a paralegal. This being around the time I was learning how prefixes worked in words I heard para, and legal. Thus my young brain made the brilliant connection and all the way until I was 14 years old, I lived believing that a paralegal was a lawyer in a wheelchair.
TL;DR I'm a f*****g idiot
This one makes perfect kid sense and perfectly highlights how the English language can be a huge pain.
I thought color was at one point discovered or invented. Like long ago we lived in a black and white world but eventually we changed for the better.
This isn’t really related to the post but why are there so many ads on here suddenly? I’ve never seen this many ads on here Edit: huh, come back the next day and they’re all gone, that’s weird
My aunt told me god was everywhere including inside me, so I stopped drinking apple juice to avoid getting him sticky. I was never even religious, and apparently didn’t care about everything else I ate that would get him sticky..
When I was a kid, (catholic school) I couldn't figure out how if God was love and all powerful the nuns were such mean bit****. Nasty petty and violent.why would god make them like that.
That there was an actual black market. I could never understand how the cops couldn’t find.
When I was a kid my two cousins from India were staying with our family as they were trying to settle in the country and become U.S. citizens. My cousins were in their mid twenties, fully grown men. One night I challenged them to an arm wrestling match. They acted like the couldn't keep their arm up and they were breathing hard and stuff. And I beat both of them and they told me how strong I was as a seven year old girl. I thought I was hot stuff until I got to college and randomly challenged a guy to an arm wrestling match and lost pretty quickly. I literally sat there dumfounded and was like "wait how can this be...." And then it hit me.
You got all the way to college believing that? Like 12 years or something? 😶
That there was a legal age (13) for caffeine, like the way there is one for alcohol. When I was in high school, I saw some small kid buy a coffee from McDonald's, and remarked that it was illegal. My friends still make fun of me for it.
One time my dad filled a McDonald's cup up with beer... I saw it on the counter and my little mind was like "sooodaaaa" and made a beeline..took a huge gulp and thought I was going to choke to death and die. My dad gave me $5 not to tell my mother. Kind of random but this post just reminded me of that
I was a real picky eater as a child. My parents, in an attempt to get me to eat more, told me that each grain of rice in my bowl takes a year to grow, and so I should be more appreciative of my food.
Child me somehow took this to mean that every year only *one single* grain of rice can be grown, so my bowl was always filled with hundreds of years of rice. Thought, "heh, cool!"
My dad made me believe that peanut butter came from squeezing squirrels. He also made me believe that white milk came from white cows, chocolate milk came from brown cows, and milkshakes came from shaking the cows.
I'm pretty sure I've talked about this on Reddit before but my parents thought it would be hysterical if they made me believe I was a puppy.
Yes, I believed I was born a puppy.
Now. Before you think I'm just some gullible human let me fill you in.
They took down every single baby picture of me and replaced them with beagle pictures to prove it to me.
So for the first like 8 years of my life I believed I was born a beagle puppy and I left suspicious puddles and smelled funny when I was wet, so mom had gods cell phone number and asked him to turn me into a little girl when I turned 2.
Which in kid brain, is pretty logical. I mean, I didn't remember before I was 2 did you?? So yeah. Spent a while believing I was a beagle
When I was about 4, my older sister told me that since the population of Japan was so high, Japanese people slept sideways on their beds so they could fit more people on every bed. I believed it until I went to a sleepover at 13 and suggested that we sleep “Japanese-style” on the bed so everyone could fit.
I just showed this to my Japanese grandmother and she laughed so hard 😂
I thought that if you chose to be President of the U.S., it was understood ( as in, part of the job description) that you would eventually be assassinated.
Which made me wonder why anyone would even choose that career to begin with.
Considering that a few US presidents have indeed been assassinated, I can understand his or her logic!
I believed that if you stopped at the "stop ahead" sign, you wouldn't have to stop at the stop sign, because you stopped ahead of time.
It was eternally frustrating to me to watch my parents not take this incredibly obvious shortcut.
When I was a kid I always thought the "one way" sign meant this is one way you can take instead of another 😳🙄🙄🤣🤣🤣 yeah still feel pretty dumb about that and I'm 35 now LMAO 🤣
When I was young my parents told me that if I kept leaving the fridge open then I would freeze the whole world and then no on would like me :(
I for real thought that gay sex was like sword fighting with d***s. I went to a Catholic school so asking for clarification was out of the question.
My family was going to an event where we had to arrive at 7pm SHARP. I heard 7pm SHARK and thought it meant if we were late we would be fed to sharks.
when I asked my mother 'what killed the dinosaurs' my mother, who doesn't believe dinosaurs exist, told me that Shrek did it, and I believed her wholeheartedly.
Dinosaurs are not a matter of whether you believe them or not, they existed it is a fact. How can people be so stupid?
That a hellish monster would kill me if i didnt make it down the hallway and up the stairs in 10 seconds.
I remember watching the series finale of Friends when I was 10 years old. My parents kept saying it was the last episode ever, and I watched it with them.
After it was over, I went to bed and cried. I thought that once a TV show was over, it would never be shown again. I thought that I had just witnessed a part of history that would never be seen again in the future.
My mom had to come into my bedroom and console me, telling me that it would play again in reruns.
I have told this story a few times before, and always said I was about 6 years old. After looking up the air date of the final episode, it turns out I was actually 10 and a half, and I'm pretty embarrassed by that fact.
That the rock group The Eagles were actually The Philadelphia Eagles doing a side project. When you're 7 and hear "This is the latest from The Eagles" being announced on the radio and your Dad is a Philadelphia Eagles fan, what are you supposed to think?
I grew up poor in Colombia. One of my uncles bought a car and gave every single family member a ride around the block. When I finally got to see the inside of that car I thought I was in a space ship. Anyways I remember noticing the blinker arrows by the odometer. I could see them come on and off randomly, left, right, right etc. What I couldn't see ? My uncle turning em on and off. I was 7 when this happened. I learned that the car is in fact NOT telling you where to turn at age 15 (in the good ol U S of A.)
That the reason you tilt your head down when you pray was that you were shooting lasers out of your face at Satan...
That the TV Guide in the newspaper told the TV what was coming on. I just couldn't figure out out how to write cartoons in neatly enough to get it to work.
1. That babies came out of the belly button.
2. That everyone died when they reached 100 years old.
3. That a dad planted a seed in the mom's tummy, which had a 50/50 chance of being born a baby or a fruit/vegetable.
4. That anyone who crossed the centre line while driving was a vampire.
5. That pee was only water, so it didn't matter if I peed on the couch. It would dry!
6. That the ship painting in my bedroom had a face in it that watched me all night long.
7. That an alien spaceship would hang out by my window at night. It was the moon.
When I was a kid, my teacher said humans were mammals. I wasn’t paying much attention, and believed that she said humans were actually camels. So, being the lover of fun facts that I am, I told everyone I knew that humans were actually camels. No one ever corrected me. This went on for years until one day I heard that humans were mammals again and it all clicked.
When I was in 6th grade we had a small sex ed discussion (opposed to the actual full sex ed courses in 7th & 10th grade). I remember our teacher said boys go through puberty just like girls do. Being a girl & not having brothers I assumed puberty was simply girls getting their period. I remember saying to another girl in my class "I wonder what kind of pad does a guy have to use."
I believed that when a woman was pregnant with anything more than twins, the babies weren't all in her stomach area because there was no way they would fit. At the time there was a news story about someone who had sextuplets and I thought the setup was two in the stomach, one in each calf, and one in the underside of each arm.
I asked my library teacher if I could go to the bathroom, she asked “Is it an emergency?”
I thought that meant she was going to call an ambulance. I got scared and said no. Almost pissed my pants that day lmfao
Why are teachers such a******s about this?? Like what important piece of information were you learning about that you couldn't slip away for 2 minutes?? Guarantee you don't remember but will always remember being denied bathroom privileges
I understood decades, but not centuries.
This means I thought the Civil War and hippies protesting for peace were right after one another, followed by the American Revolutionary War and discos.
My dad is missing one of his fingers, when I asked him what happened to it he said it was because he picked his nose with that finger. That was the day I stopped picking my nose.
My dad used to tell us this very elaborate story of how we were born. He told us he had to cut off a piece of his flesh to implant into our mom’s stomach, and how excruciatingly painful it was for him, and why we should therefore be grateful for his sacrifice. He did this in front of our mother, a woman who natural-birthed four children without epidurals. I’m still amazed that she stood by and let him take the credit without saying a thing
Ummm if my husband did this he would lose a piece of flesh...a very important one.
My mom told me that every time I told a lie I would get a black mark in my heart and when my heart turned completely black I would go to hell when I died. This was in the early 2000’s
My aunt said that she put a camera in my dog so I would walk him correctly
I grew up near the mountains. On major mountain roads there are pullouts with "no parking" signs that also say "30 min chain up." Sometime in middle school I learned that those signs meant you could stop for 30 min to put snow chains on your car, not that you would be chained up for 30 min as punishment for parking there.
I've never seen a sign like this and would have no idea what it actually meant, so might well have come to the same conclusion, even as an adult.
That whenever I saw a store with a “help wanted” sign in the window I thought they were asking for help because of an emergency going on inside the store.
I used to think NHL training camps were held in the woods and the players practiced on frozen ponds.
When I was little, I took the expression "there's a first time for everything" a bit too literally and lived in mortal fear of my first broken leg, first gunshot wound, first time getting hit by a car, etc., etc.,
When I was really young, I believed there were actual care bears living on the clouds watching out for kids. I was sad when I started getting bullied and no care bears showed up to help me.
This makes me unreasonably angry. I have never lied to my daughter and I'm shocked that parents lie so casually to their kids. I remember being one of the last in my year to believe in santa. Arguing with the other kids. Then being completely humiliated when I got home and they told me the truth. I've hated untruths ever since
I'm glad my parents lied to me. I have great memories of anticipating Santa coming on Christmas eve, leaving cookies and milk out for him, and wondering about what it would be like if I saw him coming down the chimney, etc. etc. When my sister told me he wasn't real, it was mildly disappointing, nothing more. I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but I think it's harmless fun for most kids.
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When I was little, I took the expression "there's a first time for everything" a bit too literally and lived in mortal fear of my first broken leg, first gunshot wound, first time getting hit by a car, etc., etc.,
When I was really young, I believed there were actual care bears living on the clouds watching out for kids. I was sad when I started getting bullied and no care bears showed up to help me.
This makes me unreasonably angry. I have never lied to my daughter and I'm shocked that parents lie so casually to their kids. I remember being one of the last in my year to believe in santa. Arguing with the other kids. Then being completely humiliated when I got home and they told me the truth. I've hated untruths ever since
I'm glad my parents lied to me. I have great memories of anticipating Santa coming on Christmas eve, leaving cookies and milk out for him, and wondering about what it would be like if I saw him coming down the chimney, etc. etc. When my sister told me he wasn't real, it was mildly disappointing, nothing more. I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but I think it's harmless fun for most kids.
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