When I was a child I thought Jesus was a zombie. Like a literal brain-eating zombie. I only believed it for about a week, but it stands as one of the top 3 weird things I believed as a wee-one.
I can see all of your faces in my head right now trying to process how I got from "dude on a cross" to "dude off the cross shuffling down the street looking for brains."
You: "She thought Jesus was a zombie?"
My parents are both Christian ministers now, but as a child they weren't particularly religious and I spent most of my time with my grandfather, who was a Cuban immigrant and practiced Santeria. Jesus was just not a figure in my younger years.
But when the family moved to Florida from NYC my mother got very heavily into church, which meant my life went from no Jesus or any Christian stories to ALL JESUS ALL THE TIME. Seriously. Six days a week in church. Do not recommend. Overkill.
While my mother had a basis for understanding these parables and tales, I did not. I also didn't have the attention span to read the whole Bible for myself so I had to piece the story together based on the bits that my oft-wandering mind tuned in for during the many, many, way too many sermons I sat through.
Jesus was cool. Jesus got dead, but plot twist Jesus wasn't really dead. Something about drinking blood and eating bodies.
Sounds pretty zombie-ish, right?
Turns out a lot of people erroneously believed stuff for reasons that probably make no sense as an adult. But kid brains... those are magical.
Check it out.
Cheerios
Giphy
The Honey Nut Cheerios bee. No word of a lie, I thought he was real. I don't know why. Nobody told me he was real, it was just something I accepted.
When my older step-sister told me that Santa and the Tooth Fairy weren't real, I burst into tears and said, "The Cheerios bee, too?"
Happy Halloween
The candy fairy came the night of Halloween and took a candy tax. My parents would eat some and toss a lot.
We called it the switch witch and she brought a present to replace the candy.
Our parents called it the Great Pumpkin (like from Charlie Brown) that took it and gave us money in return. Then one day we asked my dad if the Great Pumpkin was coming on Halloween again and he was confused and told us it wasn't real and then we cried. When my mom got mad at him he remembered and said that he forgot that's what they called it.
- Info7245
Small Cars
I thought that small cars grew up into vans and buses were just like the elders of cars.
Crackers
I believed that goldfish crackers were individually hand crafted, I thought it was like a line of workers sculpting dough into little fish. I was disappointed when logic kicked in :(
Thanks, Volcano!
Ok so when I was a kid I was scared of dinosaurs. My dad told me they were extinct. So for a good while I believed any fictional thing that scared me (ghosts, vampires, the wicked witch) USED to exist but was taken out by a volcano.
Back To Baby
I thought that when you died of a disease, you would return to being a baby again, but if you were shot, then you would be completely dead and would never get to be a baby again.
Nipples
Giphy
I assumed that grown women's nipples looked more like baby bottle tops since that's what they were supposed to be like. And that bras just compressed them back into the boob.
I Believe I Can Fly
I thought I could fly. I had a weird epiphany at 12 or 13 that I couldn't and maybe I just imagined me taking off from the parking lot and flying over the apartments I lived in when I was younger. Like I suddenly realized I couldn't fly, even though I knew I had before. The damndest memory. I still remember it to this day, floating away and flying over my apartments and coming back to land in the same parking lot. I still remember at 12 or 13 when I realized I couldn't fly and feeling like I had lost something.
Groups Of Ants
I believed that you didn't move your own body while you slept. I honestly thought little groups of ants would move your limbs around and that's why you woke up in a different position than you fell asleep. I believed that for years. Not a clue how that idea got into my head though.
- ashcon96
Adult Body
I always thought that the transition from child to adult happened randomly over night. Like you went to sleep as a kid then woke up as an adult. I feared this day because I imagined all of my clothes suddenly being way too small for me and I'd have to go to the store with a towel wrapped around me searching for clothes to buy that would fit my new adult body.
Anus Scrunchie
For some odd reason, my mother and her 2 sisters told me that in Native American tribes, when someone would pass away, other members of that tribe would cut out the ring around the dead person's anus and use it as hair scrunchie. They made it sound like they were the same stretchiness as an elastic band or something. So ridiculous!
Magical Lands
I'd believed that for each TV show/ movie/ book series etc., there was a different "land" for each of them. If you wanted to reach any of the lands, you'd need to do some random things, and you would be able to cross over into them.
Ace Ventura
Giphy
I used to believe that rhinos were the male and hippos were the females. They were the same animal, but just called different names.
It wasn't until Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls came out (I would be 8 at this time). The scene where he's climbing out of the fake rhino, the lady was saying "Oh look! That mommy rhino is giving birth!" I busted up laughing and told my parents that it's so funny because that lady think the rhino is a girl, Rhinos can't be girls.
It took a few minutes of explanations and confused faces before I accepted reality and I have been thinking this my entire life until I was 8.
Fast Food Love Triangle
I believed that Burger King and Dairy Queen were married. No one told me this, I just believed it.
Also that McDonald's was named Old McDonald, like from "old McDonald had a farm." Whenever we pulled into the drive-thru I would yell, "We're at Old McDonalds!" When I was old enough to read the sign, I was very disappointed.
Stop Screaming
My parents told us that when we screamed or were really loud, it was gonna rain. We played outside a lot so we didn't want that and it helped to keep us a little more quiet. Believed that was true for waaaay too long haha.
- Roxje92
Grandma Really Committed To The Bit
The lady under the bed.
My grandmother would tell me there was a lady who would get under our bed (3 brothers on one bed). She would say that she's there to grab our arms or legs if they were to go over the sides of the bed.
It would've been all good but one night she woke us up screaming "stay away from my grandchildren." She said she caught the lady trying to grab my arm. Hell of a thing for a 6 year old to see. Grandmother yelling at the bottom of the bed in the middle of the night.
I don't believe in the lady under the bed anymore but I've never left my arms or legs dangling off the side of the bed since then.
Queenie And The Epiphany
When I was little we had a female cat that was not spayed, and she would have kittens quite regularly. Our spayed kitty was also female. All the neighbors had dogs and they were all male, so I thought that all cats were female and all dogs were male. I have no clue when I thought the female kittens would become dogs? I figured it out when our neighbors got a new puppy and they named "her" Queenie. Epiphany! (I was about 9 years old then.)
- azjoan
Knew Too Much
I watched some show about alien abductions when I was way too young and was convinced the aliens were gonna abduct me because I knew too much. Like I was somehow the only person in the world who had seen this serialized episode of a TV show.
