My father is a terrible practical joker. He inflicted his sense of humour on all 4 of his children, and, unfortunately, now on my nieces and nephews too. Amongst the things that I believed were:
That dad was a god, with magic powers. He could change traffic lights from red to green, by commanding "lights please change". Miraculously, the lights would change colour - it wasn't until i was about nine that i realised that dad was watching for the lights in the other direction to turn before his command!
He also told me that the giant bales of hay in farmers paddocks were in fact 'wild hay', a type of very shy animal that would move only when no-one was looking at it. Occasionally they were covered in a tarpolen, because they were prone to catch colds, and the farmers were worried about them. I suppose its not that unusual for a city kid like myself to believe this, but unfortunately my older sisters kids - born and bred in the country - believe this as well!
Unfortunately, my father's jokes appear to be genetic - last week i convinced my three year old niece that bread grows on trees. We spent nearly an hour hunting around the backyard for bread to have with dinner. Amazingly, we found a french stick and two rolls - that i had hidden earlier.

Rebecca H.

I used to think I could change traffic lights to green.
If I knew we were in a hurry to get somewhere I would talk to the
traffic light under my breath and promise it lots of new wires if
it changed to green , and it would a lot of the time.
It was sort of cruel of me to lie to them.lol.

Anon

I used to think that there was a man controlling traffic lights: he would wait until there was a car before changing the light to green.

ano

As a kid I used belived that when the Traffic lights turned Green, it meant "Go" for everyone. And so I would run like mad to cross the street darting between the cars. I also belived that the books and teachers were wrong in school, coz if it means "GO" for cars it means "GO" for everyone.

I realised how lucky I was in college when I saw my friends wait for the light to turn RED to cross!!

Ami Newton

It always amazed me when my grandfather and I would go for a drive. Each time we stopped at a red light he would say "presto chango" and the light would turn green. It only changed for me occationally when I did it. I never noticed him watching for the traffic lights from the other direction to turn yellow. Being the oldest off all the grandchildren, I was finally able to trick my cousins once I caught on to it.

Randi H.B.D.

I used to believe that if you were stuck at a red light, you should blow real hard an swish your hands so that it turns green! I did this up until i was about 7.........LoLz

Silly Little Girl

I asked my dad one day how the traffic lights worked. He told me that there was a department in city hall where a large group of civil servants was employed with pushing the buttons for green, orange, and red.

I then asked him why the lights would flash orange after 20:00 (as they used to do in my country) and in the weekends, to which the answer was of course that that was the civil servant would be done working.

I don't know if I actually believed this, but it made an uncanny kind of sense!

Solitary Dolphin

I used to believe that while on holiday in Spain, i had seen the red and green man at a pedestrian crossing fight each other, and would tell people about this whenever the thought entered my head until i was about 5. That was only because i again saw whatever film that scene appeared in (i think Superman 1 or 2), and realised my utter stupidity.

Gary Mckenna

I used to believe that traffic lights in certain parts of the world had giant blades that would drop down if your car went through them after you were red. As kids we thought it was the coolest thing to imagine a red light runners car being chopped in half... Imagine if this was a law!

Jordan Moline

I was always impressed by what a great job the workers did flipping the switches to change the lights. Their timing was impeccable! It must've taken alot of training to learn how to do that from their offices under the streets.

Maryk

When I was five years old, my dad told me that green meant stop and red meant go, which messed up my perception of traffic lights for at least three years...

Christina

when I was about 4 or so, i asked my dad how the traffic lights (the red, yellow, green) could know when to change so all lanes of traffic could get a turn. he told me that midgets sat inside them and talked to each other with walkie-talkies. i believed that until i asked my first grade teacher about 2 years later how the midgets get up into the lights in the first place

Jason

My sister and I used to believe that my Dad could correctly predict when the stop light would turn green. We would try to out guess him but always lose. It wasn't until I was about 7 that I realized that the stop light going the other way turned yellow right before our light turned green...

Ray

when i was a little kid, i used to believe that there was someone controlling stoplights. like, a little man in a big room full of buttons and litghts and cameras. it just made sense to me, because as soon as there got to be a lot of cars on the side of the road where i was sitting, the light turned from red to green, and we could go. i was so convinced, that sometimes, i would even wave at the stoplights, just to see what would happen. and silly me, if the light turned right after that, i thought it was all about me.

anonymous

My dad managed to convince me that he had some sort of special power that could make traffic lights change. I have no idea how he did it, but he always knew when it was about to go red or green when it was on amber.. he told me that it was something that all drivers knew... and the thing is, he wasn't wrong.. but I thought it was some sort of magic power that only drivers had...

Anon