When you were growing up did you ever have a strong belief you just KNEW to be true only to find out years later you were crazy for thinking it? Well, you’re not alone. Here are some of the times the Quora community realized a strong misconception.
Comments have been edited for clarity. The source can be found the end of the article.
I was around 5 or 6 when I first asked my father where did I come from?
He didnt say God or some other random explanation. He said when you love someone, the force of love creates the child. (I think that’s closest anyone can come to saying that making love creates babies.)
Now sometime later I watched some movie which had some make out scenes after which they showed the girl being pregnant.
Dads love explanation and kissing and pregnancy. As a 6 year old my mind thought – kissing and transfer of saliva leads to babies!
And I believed that for the longest time I guess (till I had the actual birds and bees conversation with my parents).
Aditya Gupta
Hospitals never let people die and if someone goes there they miraculously come home, free of injuries.
Adults are always right no matter who they are, especially on the news.
Magic is real (this one killed me).
Adults always have enough money to buy whatever you need.
Shaheer Jamil
I thought one could get pregnant through urine of a male.
I used to think sperms are passed into the urine and somehow if one came in contact with that, one could get pregnant. It was only in grade 11 that the misconception was solved.
Charvi Kalra
I was totally unaware of the concept of “jobs” altogether till the age of 9 or 10, I guess.
Our family used to own a shop/retail store in our hometown and most of my friends’ fathers also had some sort of retail store. So for me as a small kid living in his small world, owning a store was the whole idea of work.
Harsh Bansal
That every superhero was real.
If anyone said they were fiction, I would cry. On the inside. Then resent that person.
I thought that every time i looked to the heavens, Superman would be there. I thought Power Rangers was real and I was scared that one day the bad guys might attack me. However illogical the characters were, in my mind, they were 100% real.
Nick Christodoulou
Star Wars: When a spacecraft is blown up, the pilot was somehow teleported to a safe place. It didnt occur to me that movie depicts people dying until I was much older.
Mick Hakobyan
Whenever I was in the car with my dad, mom and sister and were stuck in traffic, I thought all the other cars were also going where we were going.
Dimosthenis E. Gkotsis
I thought that if I fell of the balcony with an umbrella wide open, I would float and land safely. I falsified this experimentally when I was at a low-height 1st floor balcony and had an umbrella at my disposal.
Dimosthenis E. Gkotsis
I thought that giving my first love in primary school, third grade, the rarest Pokemon card in my possession would make her my girlfriend. Nope.
Dimosthenis E. Gkotsis
Thought it was ok to steal my moms jewelry and give it to my kindergarten teacher Patricia, whom I heard complaining to the other teacher the previous day, that she was low on money.
Dimosthenis E. Gkotsis
I thought my parents knew everything. Turns out they dont, not even close.
Ilona Juhanson
I believed that ATMs gave out free money.
Francisco Fonseca
People who were shot in movies volunteered to die.
Francisco Fonseca
Blind people went out on a blind date.
Francisco Fonseca
Theres no human inside the clown costume. I thought they were born that way.
Biyan Satyanegara
That the Earth’s rotation is so fast it was like spinning a basketball. So when astronauts landed on Earth, it must be on a random place.
Biyan Satyanegara
So you know those condom machines they have at the airport?
There was one brand which had studded tingeler or something like that on the label. Being the innocent 8 year old I was, I thought that they were designed to go around your index finger like a ring and somehow tickle you… yeah.
So I excitedly told all my friends about what I saw at the airport when I got back to school.
You could imagine my surprise.
Dave Meese
The Cr. after the amount in the bank passbook means Crores (a term equivalent to 10 million used very frequently in India).
Whilst I was busy doing school homework on Saturday, my grandfather asked me if I could accompany him to the bank. Every other thing seems better when you do your homework.
We went to the bank, got his passbook printed/updated, and besides the bank was a pharmacy store where he regularly used to buy his pills/tablets. He was busy buying his stuff when I went through the passbook and I tell you, I have never felt so rich in my life ever since.
The amount was somewhere around hundred fifty thousand, my brilliant mind comprehended it to be hundred fifty thousand crores. My head exploded. It was more zeroes than I could count.
The next two days, I was acting a bit weird and when my mom asked me the reason, I told her that I know they are faking the middle class behaviour and we are indeed very rich.
Well, my family really cracked up listening to that! They still ask me what is my salary and expect the answer to be in crores!
Paritosh Walvekar
I believed if I swallowed gum it would stick to my heart, and I would die.
I can thank my brother for this one. To this day, Im not sure if he told me this as prank, or if he genuinely believed it too.
Like a lot of kids, I loved chewing gum—and my brother always had a pack on him. Every time he would give me a piece, he would remind me not to swallow it or else…
Believing this made me increasingly paranoid whenever I chewed a piece. I distinctly remember falling asleep during a car ride with a piece in my mouth, and waking up in a panic because I thought I had swallowed the gum in my sleep, and my death was imminent.
Jen Ramgopal
I believed if I swallow a seed of fruit then the tree of that fruit will grow inside my stomach.
Aabishkar Wagle
My years in elementary school taught me that I was not alone in believing that movie actors lived inside of the TV. Yup, for an embarrassingly large portion of my life I truly thought that tiny people made their home in there. I also was under the impression that the TV people would only perform for me. In other words, I thought that while the TV was on, the actors were working, but as soon as the TV was turned off they got to take a break, go home, or do whatever it is that tiny TV people would do off the clock.
Faith Paul
I used to think that all foreign languages are just Serbian (my mother tongue) with different accents.
Tamara Marinkovi
When I was told that meat is animal product, I thought it meant animals poop meat, so I refused to eat it until my mum explained me what does ‘animal product’ actually mean. Then, I refused to eat it even more, until I missed the taste of bacon. Oh well.
Tamara Marinkovi
I thought I was the core of the universe, that God created everything only for ME to live. I thought that God loved me MOST. I thought that I was the reason behind everything… That what I thought was the absolute TRUTH.
Hafsa Muftisada
Grown ups light up fireplaces in the night to create clouds: One day I wondered where clouds came from and found a sound explanation, I knew fireplaces made smoke when lit. I also knew that my parents sometimes lit up the fireplace when I was gone to bed (for a romantic atmosphere no doubt) and that was where clouds came from: smoke from lit up fireplaces. And judging by the amount of them a lot of grown ups did it.
Dion Bouman
Scaffolding is hidden in walls. When a house is being built scaffolding is raised. When the house is completed, where is the scaffolding? Inside the walls of course!
Dion Bouman
Wall sockets are the key. By an offhand remark from a electrician I was convinced that behind everything electrical was an (electric) wall socket. The lights on the ceiling! I could never have dreamt something could be wired directly to the electrical system without a plug.
Dion Bouman
Crocodiles in the attic. A little fellow warned his dad for the swarms of crocs living in the attic. Stupid of course, those creatures live in the sewers.
Dion Bouman
Satellite dish is for catching bugs. For a time I was convinced the thingy on the dish was used for catching insects.
Dion Bouman
Dial-up modems are fancy clocks. My dad was exited the day he came home with a dial-up modem. An IT-guy installed it and thus the wonders of early 90s internet where bestowed upon us. All nice and well, but the piece of technology with the weird sounds was just a fancy bedside clock.
Dion Bouman
Cloned dinosaurs! The little baby raptor from “Jurassic Park” part one is real! They created it just for that scene and killed it off before it could do harm to the world.
Dion Bouman
Titanic deaths. I know the heroism and sacrifice from movie-actors is addressed already. But I would like to give my thanks to the actors in the bowels of the Titanic from the movie Titanic that were willing to drown for our amusement with the watertight doors shut.
Dion Bouman
I didnt know the difference between boys and girls. I thought everyone is same, we are all just humans. It was later that I realized that there are two broad categories -male and female and no you shouldnt treat everyone as human, there are huuuuge differences between these two genders and you should respect these differences
Bhargav