27 People Share The Dumbest Things They Actually Believed As Kids

Early man had almost no idea how the world worked, and when you think about it, is there a better example of early man than a child? We carry around so many misconceptions as kids because we’re trying to make sense of the world before it’s been fully explained to us.

I’d like to say it gets easier in adulthood, but there are still a lot of things that don’t make any sense. But at least we know where babies come from!

Redditor u/GiammyR6 wanted to know “What was the dumbest thing you thought as a child?” and posted their question to r/AskReddit.

The responses are actually really sweet overall and show how people try to fill in the blank with complicated stories about the little man living in the TV and rats on wheels forcing them to pee. Scroll through for a fun reminder of how stupid you can be as a kid, and also how delightful.

1.

I used to think that once you finished a grade in primary school you became smarter than the teacher of that grade. —Flippy428

2.

I used to believe that night is brought about by clouds – dark ones, of course. Never felt the need to clarify this with anybody, it was an obvious fact —mtulitu

3.

I used to think trees made wind. Trees move, wind happens can’t explain that. —gilbertsmith

4.

That if you drink while peeing you’ll keep peeing until you stop drinking.—RandellX

5.

That a blow job meant you blow air in a boy’s general direction. Thanks to my older siblings for making me believe that one lol. —Ripleyshair

6.

When I was really young, I was convinced I was pregnant (I’m a man btw), with a baby cat named Bridget. My family decided to see how long i would believe this so they never told me how ridiculously impossible that was.

I went on believing it for about 5 months (that’s how long little me thought cat pregnancy lasted), and then when the baby never came, I went to my mom and asked when Bridget would be born, she finally told me that boys can’t get pregnant and humans can’t give birth to cats. I was traumatized, little me was so excited to be a cat father, and then it was ripped away from me. I was such a stupid kid.

Edit: Since so many people keep asking. No, I never ended up getting a cat, and no I didn’t f—k a cat lmao. This would’ve been around 6 years old, and I was raised Catholic and thought god put babies in your stomach, so I thought he put a cat in me. And as for the name, I just really liked the name Bridget, and I still do. —phillanthropist

7.

That all companies with a ‘TM’ (Trademark) were owned by my family, only because those are my initials.—CHOGIWADDLE

8.

I was under the impression that there were tiny rats that lived inside of my stomach and when they ran in their wheels for exercise it would make me need to pee.—ajones321

9.

That there’s a tiny human inside the TV who executed what the remote was telling him to do. For example, when you press the button to increase the volume, he is being hit in a specific way that let’s him know that he has to go and manually increase the volume.—GivenNickname

10.

I thought that highways functioned like Airport Moving Walkways.—michhoffman

11.

I always thought that kids were born with your sh*t, so one day you would go to the toilet and take a dump and then if you looked down there would be a child. And i thought that if you didn’t check you might accidentaly flush the baby—spankthawank

12.

When I was a young kid, maybe between 5-9, my dad took me to the tiny grass-runway airport in my town, and we went on a short plane ride in a small Cessna around the valley. My dad sat in the back, and I was upfront with the pilot.

While we taxied off the ramp and out to the runway, I was given permission to move the yoke. I thought I was steering the aircraft the whole way. I told my mom that I taxied the plane. In school I told my class that I taxied the plane. In fact, it was so strong a memory that, I grew up remembering the memory without evaluating the experience.

I was home on leave from A NAVAL AVIATION SQUADRON when I was talking about that flight with my dad, and I was thinking about it…. And I had this long pause… And I said, “Holy Sh—t, Dad, I just realized that I wasn’t steering that Cessna!” My father laughed his ass off. —MordicusEgg

13.

I remember watching the movie cocoon with my grandparents. I could not have been more than 4 . For some reason I deduced that in order to become adults, children had to die in these pool cocoons and be reborn old. I freaked my cousins out and had a whole group of kids crying at a holiday party over our impending doom. Ruined Christmas pictures that year. —jdnursing

14.

I believed hamburger and hotdog buns were only available for restaurants, not “civilians”. Mom used sliced bread (toasted to obliterate the gums) at home to make burgers and hotdogs. I believed that until the age of 10. —chamel321

15.

I thought that there would be a baby inside every girl’s stomach as soon as she is born and inside that baby’s stomach too there would be a tiny baby(the cycle goes on and on) and that the baby keeps growing as we grow and after getting married the doctors will cut the stomach and take the baby out to make space for another baby.—DisastrousContact

16.

That if people are going to study something they just sit in a circle with other students and think about what they want to do. As soon as they find out, they are done and they can leave. I wish lol. —helikoptr

17.

That I would have to change my name when I grew up.

I don’t know why, but I thought my name was suitable for a child but definitely not for an adult, and I couldn’t imagine (being) an adult with my name. I even talked to my mother about it, saying that at some point we’d eventually have to go to court to have it changed to something more “adult-sounding”. —Stubble_Sandwich

18.

I was very very young and I blame wizard of oz but I believed that a tornado was just one big phenomenon that continuously happened and spun from state to state country to country.

I also live in the south so we have frequent tornado warnings so I vaguely remember a time we had two or three warnings in one week and I was scared the “single tornado” would come to our town and never go away. —ExistentialMeg

19.

My uncle is a priest for an obscure Hindu offshoot religion and he told me quite young that I shouldn’t play sport because each person only gets a set number of breaths in their life and getting out of breath used them up quicker.

I used to spend hours laying in bed trying to make my breaths as long and slow as possible. In fairness, I actually have a decent lung capacity as an adult so maybe it had a positive effect. —TannedCroissant

20.

I thought for years that French people thought in English but translated things in their head before they said them, I just assumed learning/ speaking French was as difficult for them as it was for me (I went to French classes from age 4) it wasn’t until I was probably 11/12 and really thought about it that I realised they think in French (even now I put ‘probably think in French’ like seriously I’m almost 30 and I’m not sure it’s sunk in yet) —magicalii

21.

Grandparents were assigned to families. Like, I didn’t know my Grandma was my Dad’s mom. —RosyMama

22.

i was vaguely aware of a tv show called ironsides, about a lawyer in a wheelchair. whenever i heard the word “paralegal”, i thought it meant a paraplegic lawyer. it made sense to me that people in wheelchairs could make excellent lawyers, based on the nature of the job and their physical limitations. —cesarjulius

23.

That the Underground Railroad was a literal secret underground subway style steam engine that Harriet Tubman was the conductor of. —BMoreGirly

24.

That the local mosque in my city was Aladdin’s vacation home. —Jojorieke

25.

I felt terrible as a kid to eat.

I wouldn’t eat in front of people and every meal I would find myself thinking “poor food, getting eaten ” because I was convinced they had emotions. —Porcupine98

26.

Own two credit cards and use them to pay for each other for infinite money —Squildo

27.

I thought that the hockey player Peter Taglianetti was actually two people: a man named Pete Tagli and his sidekick Eddie. —Daventhal