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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[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

That all television, even live action, was just made by someone who could draw really fast.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I believed a kid who told me that every 4th of July, former US presidents who were still alive - which I somehow imagined was a large group - stood in a circle around the statue of liberty and held hands singing, "He's got the whole world in his hands."

[โ€“] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I was always phlegmy and coughing as a kid so I became convinced I had diphtheria and would die soon, and thought it would be terrible to let my parents know this sad fact. Turns out it was because 1980s parenting meant smoking anywhere and everywhere at all times and cigarette smoke makes me ill.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Wow. When I started doing theatre in 1983 smoking was becoming evil. Restaurants were required to have nonsmoking sections. The drama instructor quit and was a militant anti-smoker.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

that if we break tv's screen , tv charecters can get out of it and we can enter tv

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[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

That all adults are smokers.

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

I thought that I'd die of cancer because that's my zodiac sign and nobody could convince me otherwise.

[โ€“] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago (4 children)

My parents didn't specifically tell me if Santa Clause was real or make-believe. They wanted me to come to my own conclusion, I guess. My dad is a rationalist person, and my mom's from a culture that doesn't traditionally celebrate Christmas.

So what I believed was that the appearance of presents on Christmas was an unsolved mystery, and Santa Clause was just a hypothesis to explain it.

I suspected the real explanation probably involved the tree working as an antenna for some kind of cosmic energy that triggered the appearance of presents. Perhaps in ancient and more superstitious times they discovered this phenomenon by accident and continued to put up the tree ever since.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Santa Claus cargo cult

[โ€“] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago

Christmas tree as extraterrestrial cargo cult ritual. Holy shit that's brilliant.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

I used to think a car direction indicator was a GPS guiding system, and not manually operated.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

New York city was the size of the whole state. Like the entire thing looked like manhattan.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Not me, but I have heard that kids used to think 'olden times' were black & white, because all old films were before the introduction of colour. Like, it's only in the last 80? years that people see in colour...

It makes me giggle when modern movies use b&w to depict pre 21st century, or even 'flashbacks' are b&w

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Honestly I have to remind myself of this myself. Yes, these are images of events in (say) 1938. No, things weren't actually black and white in 1938, people saw colors the same way, with the same sharpness, they do in 2024, it's just photographic technology that has improved since then.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

That we would live in peace

[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

I used to think those coins in the fountain at the mall were just money people wanted to get rid of. One day, little me tried getting away with a skirt full of coins and got in trouble.

I mean, to be fair, a coin on the ground is fair game, and they don't make these "unspoken rules" clear enough, so I couldn't imagine a coin in a fountain not being free to just pick up.

[โ€“] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In the 80s when i was a child there were billboards with PSAs saying don't drink and drive. I'd promptly scold my parents if i caught them taking a sip from their soft drink after hitting the McDonald's drive through.

[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

"Drink" is such a weird word in how it has both a general and specific meaning, but no other word for the general meaning is commonly used.

"Drink your milk! No drinking until you're 21!"

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I fixed it lol

[โ€“] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There's a park in Brasilia that has a "little rocket". I refused to enter it when I was something like 4yo, because "What if it launches while I'm inside?"

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[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

There was a park near my house where often cops would sit to catch speeders. Driving past one day, I didn't see a cop and I told my parents I was surprised by this. My folks told me that they were there, just undercover. I asked where, and they pointed to a woman walking a dog and they told me it was an undercover speed dog. For years I'd point out suspected speed dogs when we'd drive places. I am not a smart man.

[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Actors are dying... for real.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

I remember thinking they probably just found actors who wanted to die anyway

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

in that same vein, i believed that if actors kissed they must have been married or in a relationship in real life

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