this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2024
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When i was a child, i believed autopilot really worked like in the movie Airplane, that it was an inflatable dummy.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

I believed my hair would blow away with sufficient wind. And it basically did, it just took 30 more years

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I hadn't had "the talk" and assembled my own understanding about marriage = "the ability to touch each other's private parts."

I remember thinking, at the age of probably 8 or 10ish, that a bride and a groom, after they were married, in their fancy full wedding outfits would stand on either side of the sink (specifically in my house's upstairs crappy bathroom with mildewy tile) and expose themselves to each other, and then the bride would reach across the sink and "tag" touch the groom's crotch and then pull her dress up, and... at that point I didn't really understand what she would "have" under her wedding dress, but I did assume the groom would reach over and basically "tag you're it" style touch her, at which point the act would conclude.

I didn't have a name for this act, but I was pretty sure this is what adults all did immediately after marriage, one time only. I didn't associate it with babies or anything, more a rite of passage.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I thought 'tomorrow' was a day of the week. So when my mom would say we'd go somewhere 'tomorrow' I'd ask her every day if it was tomorrow yet, and she'd say no, and I'd keep waiting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

For a while, I thought kissing was how women got pregnant.

It MIGHT have had something to do with getting a half sibling in spite of my father saying he hadn't had sex with the mother. Religion makes people weird, is it really that big a deal to admit you had sex out of wedlock, when everybody already knows you got someone pregnant?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I believed that for very small creatures (like ants) time was faster.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I think that is true in a way. Since information has a shorter route to get to their brain than larger creatures, they may react slightly faster

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

In kindergarden, when one kid was about to hit another, the other kid would say "if you hit me, you have to pay the health insurance!". None of us had any idea what that could mean, and I have no idea where that idea came from, but it worked, because to us, that sounded bad.

Some of my class mates thought that wrestling was real, and a few of them thought there was a place in the US where it was legally possible to kill a man during a wrestling match. They were quite offended when I told them how ridiculous that notion sounded to me.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

I thought space rockets had to wait for. Ight to go into space. If they took off during the day whey would just go into the blue sky like planes do.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My dad has this long running bit, that if I needed his help on something, he needed to go to the shop to get a "round tuit". I remember asking what store he had to go to, and how much it cost, and being annoyed at how he hadn't gotten a round tuit yet.

He must have thought I was really committed to the bit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

my stepdad had a round tuit. you can buy them!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

That life would be better as an adult.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

I had to go to a private Christian school in third grade - not because we were religious, we were not, but because gang violence was getting serious in my town and the private school was seen as the safe option my mom decided on for a year even though we couldn't afford it.

Again, not religious, but Christian school meant we had to go to "Chapel" every day - Sing bible songs and get the typical religious indoctrination. Anywho... In the chapel, there was a giant rectangular speaker box suspended up at the center of the ceiling. Not sure how but with all the talk of Jesus dying for your sins and everything, I became convinced that that speaker box was his coffin. I thought he was there, suspended above us, every day at Chapel in our little school

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

I thought that you would get your grandparents by just going into a train station and picking some random (preferably older person) to be your grandparent.

I was convinced that my parents had done that for me, and that's why I had grandparents.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

Wedding rings were there to show who was married and who was available. Once you wanted to get married, you just found a friendly person who didn't have a ring, and then you asked if they'd marry you. I mean, that IS what happens I suppose, but my 8 year old brain played it out like someone asking a nice stranger for the time.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not sure what age I was, maybe 4. I thought the music on the radio was live, that the musicians went to the radio station to sing and it was broadcast from there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Yo thats so real. I thought music videos were people literally singing live while the beat just played in the background or something. I always felt something was off or that it was too hard to be legit, but couldn't figure out what was really upπŸ˜‚

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

That we had to pay our employer to get a job.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The USA was the moral leader the world. But I watched CNN as a kid so...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Been French, thought that. The propaganda is/was huge on this one

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm gonna sound so stupid, but I thought checks just gave you free money. I thought my parents were wasting a check by writing such a small amount, and ask them something like why not write a bigger number?

Then they explained that you need money in the bank to work. I was too young to even be embarrassed, I was just like ok cool, didn't even realize how dumb I was.

In my defence, I was like 9 and I just arrived in the US and never heard of a "check" before.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

I think u being a Lil too harsh on yourself, when I was a kid I thought bank receipts could be turned in to get moneyπŸ˜‚

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I thought the "Gulf War" was in fact the "GOLF War" and was happening at a golf course near our home.. like … halfway to see uncle Peter!! πŸ˜…

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Either I'm stupid or I'm right and relieved, but in French, I think, they're the same words which led me to not understand why the "golf war" until quite late (early 20yo I think). I didn't think it was about golfing or anything but... what golf are we talking about lmao?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I thought babyback ribs were from ACTUAL Babies

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

This reminds me of the first time I went to see my wife's family long before we got married. There was a big gathering for Christmas and she had a kid sister looking totally distraught at the dinner table where a feast was laid out. "I can't eat this! That poor 3-legged lamb!!!" And she ran off.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

I remember knowing that knives will cut you and make you bleed, and that when people were shot in movies they would bleed, therefore bullets must be shaped like little blades.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

I thought the glyph for "heated seat" in cars depicted a raised fist with the pinkie finger extended rather than a chair with heat waves eminating from it.

The Tea at the Treedome episode of SpongeBob SquarePants further convinced me I was seeing it correctly, and I since knew it as "the fancy button". In some regard, I wasn't entirely wrong.

"When in doubt, pinkie out!"

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