Daft things you believed as a child

[Lucky Star]

I truly believed that unlike everyone else, I would never grow up and grow old ... Time has proved that I was very wrong indeed!

Ditto.

[Eddie Muir]

Ditto from me too.

[KEVP]

I also believed I would never grow up or grow old.

I am almost 48, and so far I have neither grown up nor grown old. So maybe it is true.

[Courtenay]

Could be. Going by my general level of maturity (and I'm often told I look younger than I am — it probably helps that I stopped growing when I was 12), I figured out a while ago that I'm really only half the age I supposedly am in years. So this means I haven't even turned 18 yet.

[Poppy]

I love reading these funny stories of what people believed when they were little, they're so hilarious and cute!

I remember when I was about 5 or maybe 6 I was convinced that I was going to get put in prison for doing small and what I realise now to be quite harmless things. I remember one time when I was waiting at a train station, I picked a flower from one of the flower beds on the platform, and my Nana told me off, warning me that there were cameras on the platform and if anyone saw me picking the flowers, they would be really cross with me. For weeks afterwards, I was terrified that the police would turn up and take me to prison just for picking a flower!

[Anita Bensoussane]

You've reminded me of when I was six or seven, Poppy, and I filled in a puzzle in a library book. I only had a pen or coloured pencil to hand so I knew I wouldn't be able to rub out what I wrote, but I was so eager to work out the puzzle that I went ahead and did it. Afterwards, I felt guilty and scared. I was convinced that when I returned the book the librarian would immediately call the police and I'd be punished - perhaps by being put in prison. I couldn't wait all week for my terrible deed to be discovered - it was too much to bear alone - so I confessed to my mum the next day. She told me off for writing in a library book but also thanked me for telling her. As she didn't mention anything about prison, I felt somewhat reassured!

[Courtenay]

I'm enjoying these too — just remembered a couple more of my own. When I was really little, I assumed that "moving house" meant, well, having one's entire house picked up and moved to a different location. (I was disabused of this notion at the age of 4 when we "moved house" and didn't take our old residence with us. Of course there ARE cases where a house is literally moved, but it doesn't happen that often...)

I also recall that until I was about primary school age, I also assumed that to break one's arm or leg meant the whole limb was broken right off.

[IceMaiden]

I'm loving these, and very glad I wasn't the only one to believe some of them! Courtenay I also believed that about broken arms/legs!

Does anybody remember being told that if you swallowed fruit seeds/pips a tree would grow inside you? Or that if you sneezed with your eyes open your eyes will pop out? I truly believed that, but in the sense that they'd go rolling across the floor like two marbles!! I never thought they were attached to anything!

[Rob Houghton]

Yes, my mom always told me not to swallow apple pips, because they would grow into a tree and would eventually come out of your mouth!

She also told me not to swallow bubble gum etc because it would tangle round my insides.

I also used to thoroughly believe her when she'd look at my ears or neck and say they were so dirty that carrots and potatoes were growing there!

[Eddie Muir]

As a young child, I remember being told that swallowing fruit seeds could cause appendicitis.

[Rob Houghton]

yes that's another one. I still would never swallow apple pips, orange pips etc, though I know some people do!

[Eddie Muir]

Remembering what I was told as a child, I never swallow fruit pips either, Rob. Mind you, I had my appendix removed when I was forty, and so I’m in no danger of pips causing me appendicitis.

[Stephen]

All animation was done by the "flick cartoon" method. They might use special effects to get rid of the "flickering" but if you watch something like Tom and Jerry, it's basically someone thumbing through a very large stack of paper!

The most senior figure in the army was the Sergeant Major. After all, he was the most shouty one so it made perfect sense!

Bands that appeared on Top of the Pops didn't actually come up with their weird and wonderful names, but merely chose them from a list (i.e. the Chart). So for instance, Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt look at the list, see 'Status Quo' and think "All right, we'll have that one!"

Shop window mannequins were living people voluntarily encased in plastic. People who wore clothes to show were called "models" and these were model people so it made sort of sense. It was probably well paid but looked like a rubbish job!

They probably mostly tried to avoid it if they could, but actors could expect to die or be injured in a role. After all, you often saw them smoking and that was bad for you.

When Ivor the Engine said "Psshticuff!" I thought it was the driver making train noises. Never occurred to me it was the train itself. It must have been because it was the same voice artiste doing all the voices!

The red triangular road sign for schools often came with the word "Patrol" meaning there was a lollipop lady or man. But I misread it was "Petrol" and assumed that some schools, as well as educating children, actually sold petrol to motorists!

A very ugly person could crack a mirror just by looing at it (a la Herman Munster).

And you expected everyone would be walking around upside down when you got there, too?

I used to think that although you could obviously walk on Australian land, it would still FEEL as if you were upside down. A bit like wearing magnetic boots and walking on a metal ceiling. The Australians were just used to living like that, but there was no way I would want to visit in such an uncomfortable place!

[Rob Houghton]

I definitely used to think people who got a job as 'a model' were working in shop windows!

[Courtenay]

I used to think that although you could obviously walk on Australian land, it would still FEEL as if you were upside down. A bit like wearing magnetic boots and walking on a metal ceiling. The Australians were just used to living like that, but there was no way I would want to visit in such an uncomfortable place!

Yeah, I should be the one finding it uncomfortable on this side of the world with gravity pulling me down instead of up...

Actually, what I at first found really disorienting — literally — is that the sun is on the other side of the sky here. I kept wondering why my sense of direction (which is normally very good) kept going awry as I was walking in London... I finally realised it was because I was instinctively assuming that the sun was in the northern half of the sky!