I joined the navy at 18 to be on a submarine. The recruiter talked me into choosing nuclear power plant operator for my job-path and I thought it sounded pretty cool even though I knew zero about nuclear power. The next day in high-school I'm telling a friend about joining and running the sub with nuclear power and stuff and he says to me "oh, so they don't use propellers anymore?", and I'm like "no, they use nuclear power now." I guess I was picturing it to be some sort of jet propulsion type thing with 'nuclear power' shooting out the back of the boat to push it through the water. After boot-camp I started the classroom training and I was a little dissapointed by the low-tech reality of nuclear power. For those who don't know all it does is boil water to create steam for turbines.
On another note about the navy, I didn't realize until boot-camp that wood isn't used to build ships. I knew the outside was steel but I figured the inside must be at least partially wood to reduce the weight. What did I know, I was from Nebraska and had never even seen the ocean!

Anon

1) I was about 10 in 1980 and worried frequently about nuclear war with the USSR. I didnt understand how it worked and somehow concoted this theory that our country and the USSR had buried wires that ran all the way through the Earth to just underneath the other country. If one wanted nuclear war you just push a button and poof! that country vaporizes.
2) One girlfriend I had didn't understand how the space shuttle left the Earth's atmosphere b/c she thought the Earth was surrounded by some sort of glass-like window. She was 25! My current girlfriend confessed to me that when she first immigrated to the US from Vietnam she saw her first vending machine in the airport. When she saw someone use it and get change she figured there must be a midget inside to couint the money. She was 18!

Ryan

When I was little about 4 or 5 I used to think if I took a paper cup and made a hole in the bottom, that when I looked through it, it was my own personal video camera, and it was recording everything I looked at through it.

GoSailor

I used to think the internet was AOL. (America Online)

susan

I used to believe people lived in video cameras.

Taylor

Between the ages of 3 and 7, my older sister, told me that a computer was a big bug that would eat me up if I touched it. I beleived that story till I was about 8!!!! I acedentally told my mom one night when we were having dinner (I thought the asparaugus looked like bugs).

She only told me that because she hadnt figured out how to use passwords and she didnt want me to read her mail!

Jane

There was a sub teacher in my cooking class last year and he started to talk about how micro-waves heated the food in the microwave and before thinking i raised my hand and said "so what does the lightbulb do"

alex

I used to belive that computers could come alive and kill us. (when I was 5)

Beefy

One day when I was young, I asked my Dad where electrity came from and he said that is came from a wheel being pushed by water. I'm not sure why, but I guess I must have been looking at a mountain when I saw it because I beleived that electricty came from wheels in the mountain.

-little Jupiter Kid

When I was little I thought the microwave was the Michaelwave because my name is Michael.

Michael

when i was in junior high and we were driving home from camp, we passed all these windmills. my friend was wondering how they worked and we actually convinced her that there were people inside moving the propellers.

smika

My father has always worked with computers, and when I was 5 or less, it was on of those old computers with black and green monitors and programs on a actual audio tape! That thing scared me to death because I thought it was alive and hated me.

1 My father used to let my older sister and I play that game called the "hanged guy", the one where you're supposed to spell a mystery word wright, unless the guy gets hanged. That thing scared me to death, and I had to run away before the man died and made that spooky sound.

2 When my parents punished me, they would lock me up in their room, where the computer was. I would bang like crazy on the door, crying and yelling, checking from time to times if the computer was getting closer to me because I thought he could eat me.... I'm better now, thank you.

Pierre

I used to believe that computers were powered by hamsters in wheels inside the case, because of the constant whirring sound. Then i found out it's not hamsters, it's guniea pigs.

JiM

I used to believe that you could get cancer from looking in the microwave while it was running.

Kayla

I used to think that giant electricity generating windmills were actually giant propellers that kept the earth spinning in the right direction.

Confused

I used to believe you couldn't burn food in a Microwave Oven, because it works on the idea of rubbing water molecules past each other, right?
And if we cooked something enough for it to dry out, there wouldn't be enough water molecules to keep the food up to a burning temperature -- self correcting!
Well, I'm not a great cook, but I've met someone recently who doesn't understand why you can't simmer something in a microwave oven over an afternoon, without it turning hard, salty, & sometimes burning (honest!)

Anon

I used to believe that if you left a lightswitch inbetween fully on and fully off that the switch would shortly burst into a shower of sparks and flames, burning your house down.

Flipped (switch) out

My father worked in an auto parts plant and would tell us about the dirty, oily machines and vats he had to work around. One time he was talking about a conversation he had with his co-worker about being assigned to a particularly unwelcome task, and he said, "You don't want to work near that machine, there's oil snakes and all sorts of things down in there!"

Being a little kid, I didn't realize he was just being facetious with his co-workerl so for quite a few years, I believed there were actually "oil snakes" that lived among the machinery he worked on. I don't know why I thought an auto parts factory would have snakes in the machinery, guess I just never thought about it...

Anon