When I was eight, I used to think that the towering water towers in town were actually secret government control centers that would direct the fire department or the police if something went wrong. I also used to think that they would watch us play outside, and if we did anything wrong, they would know and call the police.
I've debunked that theory, because we all know the government uses televisions to watch us =) j-k
neighbourhood
2,178 beliefs in this area
I used to believe that the statue of the WWI soldier in front of the high school was the Statue of Liberty. I don't know why.
When I was young I would get on a swing and launch myself as high as I could thinking if I jumped too high Superman would swoop down and catch me. I stopped believing that when I jumped off a swing got really high and racked myself on a fence.
When I was little my mom always told me never to walk outside barefooted. One summer day I touched the street (twas scorching) then I realized that if I walked on the street barefooted I would be engulfed in flames.
When my family went downtown to go to the top of the tallest building in the city I was scared because they did not tell how we would get up there. I thought we had to climb up the outside of the building and I was terrified. But my grandmother was with us so I thought if she can do it I can to. I was relieved to go up to the top in an elevator.
Whenever we'd eat out when I was a child, and I'd hear of waiters or waitresses "waiting tables", I thought it was "weighting tables" instead. I couldnt figure out any connection between "waiting" tables and "waiting" as in patiently waiting for something, so I thought waiting tables must be "weighting" instead. I could figure out a connection there, since after all, putting food on tables DOES add weight to the tables.
When I was a little girl, I was completely mystified by McDonald's restaurants and their amazing ability to have exactly what you ordered ready so quickly.
I used to believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that each and every McDonald's employed a psychic. This psychic would sit in a small, white room and predict what each and every person was going to order before they even arrived at the restaurant. The psychic would then tell the cooks what to prepare so that your food was ready and piping hot when you got there.
When I was younger I used to believe that the sparkly sidewalks, instead of having something added to the concrete to make them sparkly, was actually millions of tiny ant paparazzi. I would hide my face as I walked over it.
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My dad used to tell me that the jingle being played by the ice cream van was to tell people that he had sold out of ice cream for that day! Grrrrrr.
my parents told me that when the ice cream van played his music he had ran out of ice cream i beleved them on one or two occsons
Once, when I was little, we drove by a house that was coincidentally near our trown's water tower. I felt so bad for the people who lived in that house because I was certain that water towers were in reality bomb/nuclear testing facilities and that all water towers would, at some point, explode. I wondered why the people living in that house hadn't already evacuated!
When I was little my uncle told me all about the glass shark that lives in swimming pool drains. He said because it was made of glass, you couldn't see it except as shifts in the current/pool lights. Of course, wind on the water causes these shifts as well. Thanks, Unc.
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I used to believe that when I went back to the Sears Wish Book and I could not find a toy that I had looked at previously that someone had bought it.
at the St. Louis Zoo there are these big brown rocks that are shaped like huge potatoes stacked on top of each other that are around the Zebra and Camel areas. My brother told me that they were grown by the Jolly Green Giant to keep the animals in.
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I used to believe that you get your taxes done at the taxidermist.
My parents used to tell me that the particular ice-cream man that serviced our neighborhood spit in all his ice-cream.
There was a USAF military base near our house and my mom and aunts used to always warn one another and us, "Watch out for the airmen." I had this vision of a huge child-eating alien wearing an astronaut's helmet walking around downtown, and wondered why the government didn't stop it.
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I thought water towers were the HUGE parents of spiders. ALL spiders, (which gave me the creeps) hatched from those towers.
As I child I was confused by two things in particular. Where was the right luggage office. Confusingly the left one sometimes was on the right. Also some safety messages mentioned keeping away from nake flames. If I kept my clothes on, would I be safe?
When I was in third grade, I started walking to school on my own. Each day after school, several ice cream carts would be out, selling ice cream to kids who were going home. To protect me, my mother told me not to buy from those carts, because "Mexicans put drugs in the ice cream, and it's not safe." (She did let me buy from the vans though.) I was so worried after that, I'd hastily walk by each cart pusher to get home.
Sadly, this misinformation (along with a few others) led to a fear of Mexicans that I still struggle with in my adult years, knowing much better than I did then.