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Goofy shit you thought as a kid...


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3 minutes ago, 'stache said:

...

That the Texas Rangers represented all of Texas and played everywhere in Texas.

...

Being a rabid baseball fan but not from Texas, I thought the law enforcement agency took their name from the baseball team.  In fairness to me, I had never heard of the law enforcement Rangers until after the Senators moved to Arlington.

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When I was a kid, and listened to baseball games on the radio, Ernie Harwell has a schtick where he would say that foul ball was caught by a young man from East Lansing (or any of 100 other towns). And I thought he had a seating chart of Tiger Stadium and knew where each ticket had been sold.In my defense, when I was a kid, we would get tickets from the service counter from the Sears store, and they had maybe 20-25 tickets and they were the same seats for every game. And if you didn't buy them a week before the game, then you had to go and hope to buy tickets at the stadium. 

I never understood why they had signs that had a speed limit; it was obvious those sign were wrong because my Dad drove much faster than those signs limited it to. 

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That La Llorona was actually out in the arroyos, wailing and listening for crying children so she could come take them to replace her lost children. 
 

That we would all be dead soon from a nuclear war (mentioned above). 
 

That a nerdy, short dude was the coolest guy on the planet (Fonz). 
 

That eating spinach grew muscles. 
 

That McGovern was our man (mom and dad had a touch of the hippie, I remember chanting “McGovern, McGovern, he’s our man. Let’s throw Nixon in the garbage can!”). 
 

That the imminent, predicted next ice age was going to kill half the population.

That the population bomb was going to lead to massive food shortages, starving half the population. 
 

That we’d be out of oil and gas globally by 1985. 

Edited by nnm
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1 hour ago, Wally Fairway said:

When I was a kid, and listened to baseball games on the radio, Ernie Harwell has a schtick where he would say that foul ball was caught by a young man from East Lansing (or any of 100 other towns). And I thought he had a seating chart of Tiger Stadium and knew where each ticket had been sold.In my defense, when I was a kid, we would get tickets from the service counter from the Sears store, and they had maybe 20-25 tickets and they were the same seats for every game. And if you didn't buy them a week before the game, then you had to go and hope to buy tickets at the stadium. 

That and why did everyone boo when Whitaker came up to bat. 

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When I was about 6, we had a tornado pass pretty close to the house.  It twisted some tree limbs on their axes (that's still weird to me), and deposited some letters from signs at a nearby shopping center in the vicinity.

I thought a tornado was some kind of animal for a while.

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1 hour ago, 'stache said:

I thought mommies got pregnant from kissing boys (thank my hardcore repressed catholic upbringing for that one).

I asked my dad if we could stop by the baseball card shop because it had a "Now Open" sign and didn't believe him when he explained to me that it was actually closed at that particular moment.

Same with drinking and driving, thought it was any type of drink.

Was totally confused that Nancy Reagan was telling us that drugs were bad but we frequented the local drug store.

That the Texas Rangers represented all of Texas and played everywhere in Texas.

That sports teams were owned by their cities (I couldn't understand how the Oilers could just move somewhere else).

That the Dallas Cowboys were always the best team and always would be the best team.

Fuck Bud Adams 

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5 hours ago, Amos Moses said:

I used to think:

That it was “bob” wire
That knowing was indeed half the battle
That water proof shoes kept my socks dry
That Eric Metcalf was the best football player I’d ever see
That the Spurs and Astros would never win it all
That Hickory Farms summer sausage was delicious
That you can never eat too much homemade big red ice cream
That riding in the back of grandpa’s truck as he swerved curb to curb was fun
That my camouflage hat with neck flaps was awesome
That the best way to spend a late summer afternoon was a swim in the creek after chasing armadillos with my brothers and the dog

 

at least four of those are true.

 

Here's mine: Once on an old episode of star trek, Spock said something like "Approximately 2.356 seconds to impact". I thought for years that "approximately" meant "exactly".

 

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When my daughter was young, we had our dog put down, and I buried her (the dog, not the daughter) in the backyard. A few months later she asked who my daddy was, and I explained that he had died long before she was born. She asked to go see his grave, and I explained that he was buried far away, too far to go to now, but maybe one day I'll take her to see it. She looked confused and asked why wasn't he buried in the back yard like he was supposed to be.

 

 

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I was convinced that football players would wear jet packs in the future as part of the game.

After watching a matinee of "The China Syndrome" at the downtown Ritz Theater, I actually thought a nuclear meltdown could go all the way down through to China. So, like a poster said above, I thought I'd give digging a hole to China a go myself but with the added bonus of it serving as a bomb shelter.

My parents' place was sort of along a ridge and behind our back yard was a drop off...maybe a 45 degree angle that went a good ways down to the alley. So, I thought I'd give it a start near the top and dig horizontally before beginning the descent. It was that fairly loose, sandy loam, soft West Texas soil so I actually made pretty good progress over a couple days and basically dug out a three foot cave that my 8yo body could crawl in.

Unfortunately, I dug it too close to the flat top of the ridge so the whole thing caved in on me, but I was able to get out of all the dirt clods pretty easily. Fortunately, I didn't start my hole further down the slope and get suffocated when the inevitable collapse would've occurred.

 

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I thought this drop-down button listed every website available on the web

image.png.ec5ff203adc2ec2feca8d51d1036ee3f.png

 

It was at the public library and we only had 15 minute blocks on the few computers with graphical WWW access.  but the text-only browser (Lynx?) was freely available so i learned how to navigate around www.nintendo.com that way

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We went to this small church that was super evangelical Christian.  Slain in the spirit and talking in toungs and all that mumbo jumbo.  Along with that came the belief that angels were real and all around us all the time,  but so were DEMONS!  You had to have the Lord's name at the tip of your tounge all the tie to rebuke them and save your sorry ass.

Well some neighbor kids told me about Bloody Mary.  The one where you turn off all the lights in front of a mirror and say her name 3 times and she will pop out of the mirror and kill you.

I didn't clothes my eyes (let alone turn off the lights) in the bathroom for years.  I washed my hair with my eyes open.  I was freaked out.  Thanks a lot Pastor Estes and all of the youth pastors.  It reminds me of Righteous Gemstones.  Oh yeah, flickering light bulbs meant a demon was in the room too.

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2 hours ago, Litig8r said:

swimming within 30 minutes of eating was a sure way to drown.  

About 8 years old, went swimming once with a buddy right after eating and he barfed.  For a few years after, I was convinced of the 30 minute rule.  Turned out he was just the kid who barfed all the time.

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On 10/11/2022 at 11:53 AM, markstanco said:

I thought Mr. Clean looked like a pretty strong dude, so I drank some. 

Well hey, at least it kept you from getting Covid ;)

Reading some of y'all's goofy shit, makes me wonder how all our dads conspired to tell us this shit decades before the internet.  I can identify with about half of it.  How did these myths make it around the country so well?  

I thought just like we could see everybody in the stands at a sporting event on TV...so too I thought there was thousands and millions of tiny screens above the roofline which showed all of us at home.  So I was freaked out they could see me picking my nose.  When we finally made it Wrigley later in my youth, I was bummed out it was just blue sky up there.  

Later on in 4th or 5th grade social studies when they'd give you those one-pagers on a new country each week.  And you'd learn when it became a country, what language they spoke, the capital city, etc.  And there'd be a box that showed what their major exports were (grain, timber, metals, etc.).  Well I was absent the first day when they taught us how to read those nation profiles.  So I get to class the next day or week or whatever and I just assumed "textiles" were tiles for roofs or floors.  Nobody ever corrected me, not even on a test.  It wasn't until literally college that I found out textiles were clothing or fabrics.  I also used the word "incantation" for "incarnation" for decades, so what the fuck do I know? 

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Man, that reminds me of missing a day of school and coming back feeling like you were gone a week. There'd be stuff weeks later that everyone seemed to know because they went over it that day you were out.

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2 hours ago, YGIFS said:

Well hey, at least it kept you from getting Covid ;)

Reading some of y'all's goofy shit, makes me wonder how all our dads conspired to tell us this shit decades before the internet.  I can identify with about half of it.  How did these myths make it around the country so well?  

I thought just like we could see everybody in the stands at a sporting event on TV...so too I thought there was thousands and millions of tiny screens above the roofline which showed all of us at home.  So I was freaked out they could see me picking my nose.  When we finally made it Wrigley later in my youth, I was bummed out it was just blue sky up there.  

Later on in 4th or 5th grade social studies when they'd give you those one-pagers on a new country each week.  And you'd learn when it became a country, what language they spoke, the capital city, etc.  And there'd be a box that showed what their major exports were (grain, timber, metals, etc.).  Well I was absent the first day when they taught us how to read those nation profiles.  So I get to class the next day or week or whatever and I just assumed "textiles" were tiles for roofs or floors.  Nobody ever corrected me, not even on a test.  It wasn't until literally college that I found out textiles were clothing or fabrics.  I also used the word "incantation" for "incarnation" for decades, so what the fuck do I know? 

Do you find yourself frequently using the word “incarnation” in a sentence?

Edited by After irth
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My mom was a bit of a smartass.   When we would get something new in the house and I asked where it came from,  her answer would always be-"there was a man on the corner, he said 'psst, hey lady, you want this?'.  I believed her every time.  She also had a change jar in the glove box (turns out it was for tolls) I asked what it was for she said it was my college fund and laughed.  I really thought it was. ☹️

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Terrified of Bigfoot. Probably started when he made an appearance on The Six Million Dollar Man, but I also remember a documentary that was on TV. I asked my Dad how long it would take Bigfoot to walk from Washington state to Austin. I would have a nightmare and crawl to my parents room under the windows so he wouldn't see me. Five year olds imaginations are pretty intense. 

 

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On 10/10/2022 at 3:20 PM, FirstTimeCaller said:

I head about someone getting fired when I was a kid and thought that literally meant they were set on fire. 

My grandfather told me about how he had to fire someone.  I thought you fired someone by screaming "YOU'RE FIRED" while chomping on a cigar like in the Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Also, the references to "the Donzerlie light" in the Star Spangled Banner.  Like it was a special light with a Fresnel lens or something. 

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