i used to believe - the childhood beliefs site

In Peter Pan, a pirate says, "Here we are collecting barnacles on this miserable island!", the joke being that they were so inactive that barnacles were growing on them.

Well, when I first saw the movie, I didn't get the joke and I thought he meant collecting like you collect stamps or whatever. I thought he was implying that they were so bored that they could only do silly things like start a barnacle collection.

Anon (from media : films)

i distincly remember, when I was little, I thought my freckles were a disease. I thought that my fleckles, would fade; it’s a bittersweet memory.

petit gros minet (from people : appearance)

I distincly remember in the past if I didn’t go to my bed at 8 o’clock, a person would came to my home to take my toys to give them to children in the world and my parents wouldn’t buy new toys for me

Celia (from kids : toys)

i used to think the New York accent was the accent all old people had because as a child all the old people I knew (grandparents, great grandma, great aunts, uncles, etc) had thick NY accents. Also that when you become old you automatically develop a New York accent as like a rite of passage ...I was a strange child

Anon (from language : speaking)

I thought it was physically impossible to wet yourself once you were potty trained or wet the bed if you were eleven or older.

Anon (from body functions : weeing and pooing)

I thought that my Sheriff Woody doll could protect me if I was home alone.

Anon (from kids : toys)

This is not me, but a friend of my father's. Apparently, Dad and his friend used to watch TV together as young boys, and Dad's friend didn't have a TV when he was little, so he didn't know how TV worked, so every time there was an ad break, he would burst into tears and rant about how the show had ended too early.

Anon (from media : tv)

I used to believe the world was all black and white, because of old black and white tv shows my parents watched like Andy Griffith. One day I saw that Andy Griffith was in color so I naturally assumed that sometime when that show was aired color began to come into the world. I asked my parents what year Andy Griffith came out and thought that it was the same year that color came into the world.

Caleb (from the past : history)

I used to believe that every country in the world had the same time. Guess I didn't consider time zones eh?

what are time zones again (from time : general)

There's a song which has lyrics that are basically just a bunch of actions followed by "Rawhide" and then it starts again.
Up until I was *seventeen*, I had only heard of rawhide as that stuff you give dogs to chew on, so I thought that it was akin to have a song where you shout, "Dog food!" at random intervals, so the song made no sense to me.

Anon (from music : songs)

When I was five or six, I drew on a globe and a teacher snapped, "You must not draw on school property!!".
So I thought that drawing wasn't allowed on school premises.

Anon (from school : classes)

My teacher held out a hand to say, "stop" but I thought she wanted a high-five.

Anon (from school : teachers)

I used to believe Monty Hall was a place instead of a man. Let's Make A Deal was before my time and I only knew Monty's name from the Monty Hall problem. I thought "Monty Hall" was the building where the game show took place.

too much game shows (from people : names)

Everybody described the conscience as a "little voice in your head", so I thought that *all* thoughts were from the conscience-- essentially, I mixed the conscience up with the internal monologue.

I had (and still have) a lot of random thoughts, and when I was a kid, I was often told that I was very well-mannered for my age, so I thought that because I was so polite, my conscience was "bored" and just said random stuff.

Anon (from language : speaking)

I thought you could get toffee from mixing tea and coffee.

Anon (from food : sweeties)

When I was five, I was such a ditz that when I cried, I thought that the world really did become distorted (like how it looks through tears).

Anon (from body functions : general)

My mother has this friend whose last name is Stalker, so when I heard people talking about stalkers, I thought they meant my mom's friend and people related to her.

Anon (from the law : criminals)

When I was little, my grandmother had a weather house. It had two doors. There was a woman in one door and a man in the other. The woman would come out if it was going to be sunny, and the man would come out with his umbrella if it was going to rain. I thought the man made it rain. I slapped him and broke the weather house, screaming "I hate you. Every time you come out it rains!"

Anon (from nature : weather)

When I first heard the word "lumberjack", I thought it was "Numberjack" like the TV show The Numberjacks. When I was corrected, I thought a lumberjack was a dude named Jack who lumbered around.

Anon (from grown-ups : work)

There was this one area of the local pool that I thought was called the "Disney Area". Why? Because I thought it looked like Mickey Mouse's head.

Anon (from neighbourhood : swimming pools)