When i was 5 or 6 or something I was convinced that if you did not have enough money for something that the shop keeper would not only give you the item but would also hand over the money your were short of. It wasn't until the nice lady in the sweet shop explained it to me that that wasn't what getting change was about. And that had to happen in the first time i went out with just my younger brother and myself. Embarrassing or what! ... Hmm, that may explain my aversion to capitalism in later life.
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2,178 beliefs in this area
On our street there was a manhole with a small hole in it. We believed that the devil lived down there and every once in a while we would drop a pebble down there and listen hard to see if we could hear him howl.
On the way to my grandparents' house, there was a Les Schwab tire store. For some reason, I had myself quietly convinced that it was a French word - as in "les schwab," the plural of "le schwab." I must have been 10 or 11 by the time I figured out that it was probably just founded by a man nicknamed Les.
The supermarket my mother frequented placed the Wise potato chips on the bottom shelf.
As a preschooler I used to run down the chip aisle in fear because I believed that the eye on every single bag of Wise potato chips was staring at me.
I believed that they wanted to "get me."
My sister would always bring a lunch size bag of potato chips whenever we went to a department store. She didn't eat them herself, she would feed them to the mannequins. She believed that they came to life after the store was closed and they were relying on children to leave some food behind because adults did not know they were alive.
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I used to believe that a stranger was a man with an X on his coat
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When I was younger my parents would tell me that if I peed in the pool it would rise to the top and spell out my name.
My parents use to tell all the neighbourhood children that if they did a wee in the pool it would go red and a trail would follow them and everyone would know and for affect my dad would sometimes put food coloring in - the children never did a wee!
When we used to go swimming with school we went to old Victorian baths where males and females would have bathed in different pools. I was releaved when we'd enter through the 'male' entrance (assuming it was named that to help the postman)and that the 'female' entrance was closed off because females were in fact giant spiders
In the parking lot of the shopping mall once, my mother and I were talking and my younger sisters (aged 2 and 3 at the time) were in the backseat complaining loudly that they wanted to leave. So my mother told them that if they didn't behave those people coming out of the mall, the *mall people* were going to come and take them away.
It became very easy from that point on to discipline my little sisses. We would just tell them, "Don't make me call the mall people!" This did, however, cause them to be afraid of shopping malls for many years.
My son used to believe that the "no candy" line in the grocery store meant you couldn't be in that line if you wanted to purchase candy. One day I was buying Halloween Candy and he read the sign and he became horrified that I would break this law, and told me to get in another line.
when I was little I asked my mother howcome streetlamps turned themselves on at night. She told me there was a little man inside each lamp, that could tell when it got dark and cold, so he turned the light on himself to keep him warm.
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I asked my dad how the concrete mixing truck would turn by itself and he said there were people inside turning it all day.
I used to avoid walking near the storm drains by the sidewalk; I thought I would fall in and wouldn't be able to get out.
Not only did I believe that bands lined up to play every song live at radio stations, but I believed that radio stations were based in water tower silos, and that the band members had to climb a ladder to get up to the radio broadcast booth.
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I used to believe that when people moved, a big bulldozer would physically move their house to a new neighborhood.
When I was four, my dad told me the volleyball poles stuck in the beach were put there by walruses as part of a migratory ritual every August. I totally believed him. Jerk.
I used to believe that the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland took you to a dark place and that you were never able to leave if you didn't get off in time since they have that moving platform.
My brother and I believed that we could make a fort behind the rows of toilet paper in the supermarket. Then we would wait until the store closed and eat everything in sight.
When I was little there were 2 ways to walk to town. I was sure that my mom told me that if you went a certain way than you would end up in China. But it was Ok to come back by that road. Years later she had no idea what I was talking about.