I thought that when the clerk at the checkout asked, “would you like cash back?” That you could say yes and they would just give you cash straight out of the register for nothing lol.

I figured that most people were very honest and didn’t need the money, so they would just say no thanks and leave it in the register for somebody who really did need it.

So many things…

I didn’t understand how lie detectors were supposed to work so I thought you could hook someone up and ask something like “does god exist” and you’d be able to get answers to all of life’s big mysteries.

I thought there was a left and right sock

I thought wolverines were mythical creatures

I thought if I tried hard enough I could somehow become older than my older brother like it was just a title or something

Thanks to DARE any time I saw a skittle with the S missing I thought it was drugs even in a newly opened package

I could go on…

I remember thinking that women gave birth to girls and men gave birth to boys, and being really worried because I (as a guy) didn’t want to give birth.

I thought CEOs worked super hard

I used to think “euthanasia” was a country.

That other people would do what is right and protect me from abuse, as a child and as an adult.

That the legal system will protect innocent people, punish the guilty and ensure justice is done.

That other people are higher-thinking and moral.

Learned about cremation before I learned about death. Thought we all were burned alive at the end.

My mom told us that microwaves are bad for our health due to radiation. I did not want a microwave in my own apartment until I was 20 and my GF just got one.

I used to think that how your belly button looked was based on a surgical procedure following birth, and “innie” vs “outie” was an indication of a surgeon’s skill. I was legitimately surprised when my son was born and you find out they clamp the umbilical cord and just wait for it to fall off.

NSFW warning. I thought sex had to be anal. Just by the looks, it was impossible that a penis could pass through a vulva, and poop made it evident that it could pass through the rectum.

OP, that thing you used to believe is disturbing as fuck.

I thought that when you peed, your pee would go to a place where it was manually boiled on a stove, making it 100% clean drinking water, and then when you turned on the tap, they would get a garden hose and pour water into the pipe that gave you water. Somehow I assumed this all would be done manually with normal sized stoves and kettles, and that each tap had it’s very own pipe.

I also thought that black people were just tanned, because colder countries had white people and warmer ones had black or brown people. Then I asked myself: why are there black people in cold places? I came to the conclusion that all the black kids in my kindergarten would eventually lose their tan and become white.

That your tongue is divided into segments which each can only taste certain flavors

I remember watching Spartacus with Kirk Douglas. I remember that I thought he was wearing some sort of muscle prosthetics bc I thought people couldn’t be that muscular. It’s funny because by today’s standards he wasn’t buff at all.

My dad told me that walnuts were owl eggs.

He got in trouble when I stole all the walnuts in the house and wrapped them in nose tissues to keep them warm so they would hatch and I would have baby owls.

Though I wasn’t actually raised religiously, just the prevalence of religion in society led to many of my early theories have religious components.

I thought that between dying and being reborn you spent your time in heaven as an angel. While there, you could select your next parents from all the currently pregnant people on earth. I imagined giant ‘rooms’ full of computers in heaven, where every pregnant woman had a profile you could check out (mind, that was in the early 90s - I like to think I secretly invented social networking^^). Once you decided on a mother, you’d be kicked down into her womb and be reborn. I did realize pretty soon after that this theory doesn’t hold water when you see that many children are not born into happy families, but for a short while I was certain I picked my mother from all the possible mothers around the world. She was very charmed by that :D