“I Grew Up Thinking”: 30 People Share The Random Things They Thought When They Were Growing Up, And Almost Everyone Finds It Relatable
It's the lens of your past experiences through which you understand the world. But when you're just a kid and haven't been around for long enough, or simply lack guidance from adults, you will formulate your own interpretations of how everything works.
But since they're often based on imagination, it's only a matter of time before reality crushes our naive beliefs. And we at Bored Panda decided it would be fun to check out what misconceptions people had when they were little.
Digging around Twitter, we compiled the funniest "I grew up thinking" statements and put them together into this amusing list. So continue scrolling and enjoy!
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If you grew up in the 60's & 70's quicksand was a real fear. The number of TV shows & films that made you think it was certain death were a tad too numerous.
I was very disappointed years ago when we had mice...and there was no cute hole with a welcome mat out front.
Sure, we can run from the world, even deny the truths that seem too difficult to accept. But this doesn't get us anywhere. In an earlier Bored Panda interview, social science writer and researcher Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D., MPP, highlighted how human life is uniquely anxious compared to other organisms.
"Just compare the range of worries a human could have compared to any other critter. No contest. To cope, we need denial, escapism, entertainment, but to survive we need all hands on deck in reality too," he explained to us then.
"I'm on a campaign I call 'optimal: see illusion, safe escapism or strategic gullibility', encouraging people to take their denialist flights of fancy but always with a return ticket to reality safe in your heart pocket. It's not how far out you go, but whether you remember to come back. The big difference between a death metal concert and an authoritarian political rally is what happens in the parking lot after. After the metal concert, people return to reality. After the rally, people think they've experienced something more real than reality. That's dangerous."
First time I flew to Bahamas, I was terrified and did not understand why the plane will not make a detour. LOL
One study of 2,000 adults across the United States, which was commissioned by global tour operator G Adventures, suggests that the average American spends 12 hours and 56 minutes escaping their reality each week. (That's roughly four years over a lifetime.)
The most popular forms of disconnecting from work, responsibilities, and everything else that drives them crazy came in the form of reading books (1 hour 34 minutes), watching movies (2 hours 37 minutes), and dreaming of vacations (44 minutes).
Not illegal, but parents banned it “because everyone will see what we’re doing.”
But, again, this can't go on forever. Jeremy Sherman thinks people can make it easier for themselves by focusing on what he calls ironic fallibilism.
"An ironic situation is one where you get the opposite of what you expected: you do the right thing and it comes out wrong or vice versa. An ironic attitude is recognition that despite your best effort, ironic situations are not entirely escapable. There is no sure-fire formula for living. Just when you discover the meaning of life, it changes."
"Ironism is not cynicism. It's the recognition that life is deeply tragic and deeply slapstick. Life is tragicomic," he explained.
Marcin Woizciwizynksy asks if it's ok to go home now. He's tired of being the South Pole. You could say he doesn't like his Pole position.
100 dollars is a lot if you have no bills to pay. That's like, 172 pounds of bananas.
"Fallibilism is a concept in philosophy and more than any other notion, fallibilism has given me peace of mind about dealing with reality," Sherman continued.
"I think of the fallibilist mantra as 'no matter how confident I am in a bet, I remain still more confident that it is a bet. Life is iffy guesswork. Yoda is wrong. There's only try. One can make better bets. One can bet with high confidence. One can't escape betting."
... no, they're about as much a problem as I imagined. That's why I don't leave my shoes outside.
Yes, they are very much a problem. Even though I've only seen like 4 my entire life. I am SCARED!
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No. They ARE a problem. You can literally die from a bite. If you live where they live, please be careful. They ARE a problem. Even with proper medical attention, you could have a severe reaction and lose a limb.
I grew up thinking that and I don't think I ever saw one in Wisconsin.
Living in Minnesota all my life, no black widow, one very wayward brown recluse(had the little violin mark), and far too many golf ball size wolf spiders
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They show up in every dark crevice on my property. I don't kill any other type of spider but I will murder the c**p out of a black widow. Especially since my dog ate one and nearly died.
Yeah this the only spider except those other spiders. Brown recluse I will only kill both of those.....and a water spider cause those things we use have all over are house and I use to get bit by them. At least I think that what they where.........😕
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And Southern Arizona. Our house was infested with black widows when we bought it!
Load More Replies... Yes since my dad got bite and got sick from them twice. Yes I really did. I really thought I'd get bit a least once.
I guess that this person doesn't live on one of the very large number of towns and cities which are in the range of black widows. This is as stupid as saying "did anybody else grow up thinking that tornadoes were going to be a bigger problem throughout their your life" to somebody from Oklahoma.
I've posted this before, but my house is full of Florida Brown Widows. They don't hide in shoes, they make nests in every corner. They also make awesome cobwebs that will give your house a great haunted house vibe. I love them, if I didn't get so many bugs in my house, they wouldn't be thriving, they just chilling in the corners waiting for mosquitoes and moths.
Have run into several over the years, at home, at work. Still terrified.
I never really saw one until I had an above ground pool. They liked to live it up under the bottom edge of the pool. One time when I was changing the filter cartridge, I picked up the filter housing to open it. Decided to clean it off a bit. Flipped it over and there was a massive shiny black body right there!!! I threw the filter thing about 10 feet away from me ran in the house and had my partner deal with it. & then I got on amazon and bought some insecticide for black widows.
I used to keep one as a pet. She couldn't escape her terrarium even if she wanted to. I fed her whatever bugs I could catch. In the winter I would get her crickets from the pet shop.
Uh yeah where I live they are a HUGE problem!! Mother in law is constantly killing then if they get to close to her house and it's a lot!! Just last week I had one with it's web on my house! 😳 Everywhere where I live!
Try buying a real Christmas tree from a tree farm in California. We had to shake it out before bringing it inside so the spiders would fall out. They were a bigger problem in my life than the fairy tales and books led me to believe they would be.
Black Widow is not very well known in our place. We are more afraid of tarantulas.
Absolutely! They live all over my house but they don’t bother me and I don’t bother them !
TBH, fight against Acid Rain was one of the few successful environmental action taken in modern times. Since the 1970s, new regulations passed worldwide pushed for the widespread introduction of de-sulfurization processes for fuels (especially crude and coal) and technological innovation let to cleaner high-temperature combustion processes. This efforts more than halved the emissions of acidifier agents in the atmosphere. Acid rain impact has been successfully mitigated in America and EU, it is still a problem in mainland China, especially in the east, due to general lack of environmental responsibility, use of cheap dirty fuels and high concentration of industries with old machinery.
Sherman sees ironic fallibilism as the antidote to two unworkable approaches that are often combined:
The first one is fundamentalist hypocrisy, or pretending you have the formula for living though you don't, can't, and shouldn't live by it. And the second one is cynical hypocrisy, or pretending there's no formula so you can do whatever you want.
"[Jerks] (I'm a psychoproctologist) employ both. Everyone should live by their supposed fundamentalist formula that they cynically don't think they have to live by. No deed is too dirty for saints like them."
It's more of an issue when you have your own apple tree. The worms are very real.
I mean seriously, let’s replace “rock paper scissors” and flipping a coin with this!
We must constantly work on educating ourselves and seeking knowledge that can provide answers to questions we sometimes can't even articulate. It's one thing to grow up thinking it's illegal to rip off your mattress tag. But it's another to take this notion into adulthood and beyond.
History can be a nice subject to start with, as it shows what happens to those who deny the facts, reminding us about the scientific method and that following the evidence we gather is our best bet to navigate the world.
I did not. Because I once heard a comic say Evian spelled backward is Naive.
This reminds me of a story that my dad likes to tell. When he was in college, he couldn't decide between majoring in geology or marine biology. He asked his advisor for some input and his advisor told him that he should go for the marine biology degree because if times got tough, he could always eat his experiments. My dad became a geologist! 😂
I always hoped I'd get to go through a tunnel of love and be kissed inside. Never happened.
As a person who passes a family of skunks every day on my way to work, I still think this.
That is actually the test now here in central Florida. I think it’s ridiculous and in no way prepares kids to deal with the roads around here
In my country (belgium) it is in fact illegal to drive without shoes because of safety
Note: this post originally had 94 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I thought I’d get sucked down into the escalator if I didn’t step off it in time…
Anyone growing up think that umbrellas would really help you if you jumped from a wall or a tree?
When I was very young, I thought I figured out Santa's secret...He was old Jesus.
On a similar note I thought Tom Petty's "Running Down a Dream" was "Running Down the Drain" and for years pictured a tiny man frantically trying not to be washed down the drain of a kitchen sink!🤣
Load More Replies... Aliens didn’t make the list! Growing up in the 80’s I really thought aliens were going to be a bigger problem !
I once saw a movie where a lady was telling her parents she was pregnant or wanted a baby or something, I don't know, and the montage showed her eating ice cream out of the carton with a baby bump. I thought women just ate a lot if they wanted to grow a baby.
Reading this post, today i learned that my face is not ‘going to stick like that’
Also the 1st time I was told “ put some elbow grease on it”, I tried to squeeze my elbow for the grease to come out ! I was maybe 6
This is a unique thing of my own but when I was a munchkin I was CONVINCED my grandpa was actually Bill Clinton. They gave him a fake family to protect us. And that was why he traveled so much, especially to DC. I mean I thought I had figured out some major secret. I believed this for his entire first term as President. I eventually came to the disappointing realization that he was who he said he was. I love him all the same :-)
Anyone else grow up thinking that Disney movies and other movies portrayed what love is/how it works? It just made me delusional..
I thought I’d get sucked down into the escalator if I didn’t step off it in time…
Anyone growing up think that umbrellas would really help you if you jumped from a wall or a tree?
When I was very young, I thought I figured out Santa's secret...He was old Jesus.
On a similar note I thought Tom Petty's "Running Down a Dream" was "Running Down the Drain" and for years pictured a tiny man frantically trying not to be washed down the drain of a kitchen sink!🤣
Load More Replies... Aliens didn’t make the list! Growing up in the 80’s I really thought aliens were going to be a bigger problem !
I once saw a movie where a lady was telling her parents she was pregnant or wanted a baby or something, I don't know, and the montage showed her eating ice cream out of the carton with a baby bump. I thought women just ate a lot if they wanted to grow a baby.
Reading this post, today i learned that my face is not ‘going to stick like that’
Also the 1st time I was told “ put some elbow grease on it”, I tried to squeeze my elbow for the grease to come out ! I was maybe 6
This is a unique thing of my own but when I was a munchkin I was CONVINCED my grandpa was actually Bill Clinton. They gave him a fake family to protect us. And that was why he traveled so much, especially to DC. I mean I thought I had figured out some major secret. I believed this for his entire first term as President. I eventually came to the disappointing realization that he was who he said he was. I love him all the same :-)
Anyone else grow up thinking that Disney movies and other movies portrayed what love is/how it works? It just made me delusional..
