My 7 year old cousin once asked me how the "actress" in Disney's The Little Mermaid could hold her breath for so long. I had to explain to her that she wasn't real she was just a series of drawings.
A childhood belief about cartoons

others believed things like this
- If you hold your breath and make a wish under a highway tunnel it will come true....I still hold my breath :)— aj
- when i was a little kid. i used to think that when u hold ur breath ur heart stops.. LOL :P — Annonymus
- When I was a child I used to believe that movies and series were real.Anon
- I still hold my breath when I pass by cemetaries because it is impolite to breathe when other people can't.— Crystal
- When I was little I thought that if I stayed a long time in the water I would become a mermaid.— Salma
- I swear I heard a Disney Channel/Radio Disney song where the chorus was a repeated “Damn it”— SpengBab