Thread inspired by Evan’s post below.
Reminded that once when I was five I had this terrible epiphany: as I grow my older brothers will also grow. So they’ll always be bigger than me!!!
I think we often forget how much is new to kids and mistakenly think that basic facts of life are learned once and then remembered forever. I think the reality is that most things you learn have to be reinforced and the way they effect other things and are affected isn’t obvious.
Got paranoid one night that I was the only person that blinked since I couldn’t remember anyone else doing it, at least not at the frequency I seemed to need to.
Although I knew the world didn’t go entirely dark at night and people could be active at all hours, 4ish year old me had this deeply anchored feeling that anyone not sleeping by 10…must be taking part in some kind of important mission to maintain energy, for what I could think of as society/civilization at large. Or people looking out to guard places that might just “disappear” unless someone kept an eye on it before daybreak.
I think I was like, 11 when I learned you could just buy something without having a coupon.
You’re like the anti Zuck.
Perhaps you are too human?
I mean there were three Star Wars so that clearly implies there were three World Wars, right? I asked my mom one day who won that war because I never heard the detay. I think I was 7 or 8
I never had any misunderstandings like this.
My biggest childhood misunderstanding (one I still struggle with today) is that merely being a handsome genius doesn’t pay the bills, although it goes a long way.
a corollary: last couple years i realized i had adult friends who were the same age as my little brothers
my little brothers are mostly legal adults now!!
In early grade school I was pretty sure that English was just differently pronounced German.
I think I have told this before, but I was convinced as a child that Gmork from the Neverending Story would come out of one specific toilet in my parents’ basement if I flushed it. I got yelled at a lot for not flushing that toilet.
I’m actually sort of envious - these misunderstandings reflect active minds and imaginations. I was always content to let reality just be itself.
weirdly, this is the way i feel about people who can distinctly remember not understanding how sex works or where babies come from, which seems to be a pretty common theme in childhood
i feel like i went from having absolutely no interest in this question and therefore no whimsical imaginary concept of touching butts together or whatever to having a really clinical and boring understanding of human reproduction, bc my mom was a psychology teacher who taught human sexuality and childhood development classes so it was pretty much just always there as mundane reality
but i blame not understanding how doors worked on bad video game geometry / geography, definitely
Video games did not prepare me for the fact that vehicles move forward without applying the gas.
You can trick people into doing what you want by manipulating them with psychological/emotional manipulation in the guise of typical social interactions i.e. being nice and listening
I’m not a sociopath I promis
I used to think cars cost like a hundred bucks
i heard a this american life episode about how this one lady thought, until early adulthood(?), like duck/etc. x-ing signs were pronounced “zing” because whatever was crossing was supposed to “zing” across real fast
I distinctly remember the moment I figured out that poop and pee came from what you ate and drank.
past the age of 12~ i thought children came from kissing
that’s private baptist education i don’t think my experience was that uncommon however
I learned of the baby source from another boy as we walked home from school circa age 7.
I don’t remember much about him, just his name was Mitchell and he was Mormon.