I stumbled across a website called I Used To Believe yesterday, which is chock full of funny and bizarre beliefs that adults thought were true when they were children.
There were beliefs about nature…
“Thunder is created because of the collision of clouds.” -Anonymous
“I used to believe, when I was like five, that space had a bottom. I thought that the North Pole was the only safe place to live, because it was facing up. I had no idea of gravity.” -Anonymous
“There is large factory in the largest city near my hometown that has an impressive smokestack. When I was little, I thought that the factory was where clouds came from.” -Anonymous
Beliefs about home…
“I used to believe that when people moved, they just switched houses and all the stuff in the new house was now their stuff.” -Luke Barber
“When I was 4, my uncle moved into a new house. He had a huge basement with a wooden staircase. Due to the Home Alone movie, which I loved, I was afraid to climb down the stairs because I thought I’d fall through.” -Anonymous
Beliefs about the boogie man…
“I used to believe that there were 3 people that lived under my bed. On the outside edge, there were two scientists. There were constantly scheming on how to do experiments on me but they could only reach me if I were to just walk up to the edge of the bed and get in. Apparently they weren’t “allowed” to get out from under the bed, only to reach out with their arms. They also could only “get” me if while I was in the bed, I allowed my hand or foot to dangle over the edge. So I of course would run and jump onto the bed from as far back as possible. Then there was the Carrot Man. He was a happy guy that lived in the center under my bed. He had a long white beard and just layed there surrounded by carrots and eating them all day and night. I have no idea where any of these characters came from in my bizarre imagination. I am however a science teacher today. Go figure.” -Christa
“When I was little I thought that there was a hand that lived under my bed. I refused to walk on the floor of my bedroom for over a year. I would jump from the door to a chair and onto my bed. I shared a room with my older sister. She had our brother hide under the bed one night. I had to go to the bathroom, the chair was too far away and she refused to pick me up and put me outside the door. I finally worked up the courage to step on the floor and my brother reached out and grabbed me. I peed all over him. But after that I wasn’t afraid of the hand because I thought it had been my brother down there the whole time.” -Raku
“I believed the shark from Jaws lived under my bed at night. To avoid being bitten by this large ocean-roaming eating machine, I constructed elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque systems to turn off the light switch across the room from my top bunk. Ultimately, the systems would fail (scotch tape does weaken over time). I would be petrified about jumping as fast as I could to the light switch and back to the bunk. I had bruises on my stomach for a full year from missing the bunk — which, I suppose, was better than being attacked by a shark in my bedroom in upstate New York’s dairy and grape-growing region.” -Jana
Pretty funny, huh?
When I was little, I used to believe that the “snowflake streaks” that appear on the hoods and windshields of cars on chilly mornings were actually left by Jack Frost’s ice skates…
(I saw these on my car the other morning and immediately pictured Mr. Frost skating around out there while we were asleep- ha!)
I also used to believe that the noise I heard in my ear when I laid my head down onto my pillow at night was a teeny tiny scarecrow walking up and down my ear canal. Boy was I happy to discover it was just my heart beat.
What did you used to believe?
PS- Kevin used to believe that if he swallowed a watermelon seed, a watermelon would grow in his stomach. (I remember believing that, too- ha!)
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haha I love this. I used to believe that if I practiced hard enough I could play in the NBA. And I was serious. You should know I am 5 feet tall & weigh 100 lbs…safe to say the NBA was out of reach & probably the girls HS team as well! haha.
When I was little I watched The Rescuers movie. When Medusa held Penny at gunpoint I thought Gunpoint was the name of a real place. Apparently I wasn’t the only one since they wrote that line into a Friends episode.
Funny! I used to believe that Seldom was a person, you know, from the song Home on the Range – “where seldom is heard, a discouraging word”.
LOL! When I was a kid my dad was a song leader in my church. I used to ask him to sing the “toilet snare” song. He couldn’t figure out what I was talking about until I sang it for him.
“Through this world of toilet snares,
If I falter Lord, who cares”
I misunderstood the “toil and snares” in Just a Closer Walk With Thee. He still laughs about that to this day.
When I was little I believed eating the crust of my bread would make my hair curly (lovely little lie my mother told me). Truth or not, I guess it worked! 🙂
I used to believe everyone was a robot except me, and they didn’t know I was in on their little secret. That the song “put me in coach” was about requesting airplane seats. That when you send a fax, the actual paper goes through the power lines. I still think that might be true. 🙂
Put me in coach!! BAAAHH!!!
I used to believe that the internet was aaaaaalllll bbaaaaaaadd and that only creeps lived there. But if I had kept that belief I never would have realized that a whole lotta wonderful people are out there too, and if I had kept that belief I never would have met you – now THAT would have been a true tragedy. 🙂
LOVE your drawings girlfriend, keep on making us smile!!!
xoxo
Kate
Great drawings Layla. very cute.
My parents had a motel when I was growing up and I used to think Vacancy was something like bacon and when the “No Vacancy” sign was up we had run out of bacon. Also we lived in the country so at night on the TV we got the News in Brief, the National News and the Local News. I was always asking “where is Brief?”
Funny!
cheers Fiona
I can’t believe you typed “boobie” lol love it! 🙂
I used to believe I could draw. Then I saw your post.
One more…I used to believe that if I sat closer than 6 feet away from the TV, I would get pregnant. Yes, I would measure it out.
I thought all cats were girls and all dogs were boys
Me Too!!!!! To this day I will, and have, only own female cats. Male cats just seem “wrong” to me. 🙂
this is GREAT! my hubby used to believe that the smoke stacks were cloud-making factories too!!!!
i was a scaredy-cat when it came to stuff being under my bed. you NEVER let your arm/leg dangle! someone would grab it, and you’d be gone forever!!!!
Giggled all through this post.
I believed I was the main character in a show about my life- a la “Truman Show,” and would proceed to talk to the audience occasionally so that they knew I was in on it. Wouldn’t want to look foolish in front of the audience, you know.
(oh-my-goodness… me too…) i would do that “break the 4th wall” move like Zach Morris on Saved by the Bell!
hahaha, oh Zach Morris… my first love 🙂
What fun! I used to believe I had a string coming out of my back: invisible. It followed me everywhere and I had to go back the way I came, or I would tangle my string. What a relief when one day I’d had enough and I took imaginary scissors and cut that string!!! A cloud factory is much less stressful! 🙂
Holy Mackerel! I believed the same thing about the string – (exactly!), but thought that would be too ridiculous to say out loud. Talk about childhood OCD! Man, that was stressful. I’m glad I finally cut that string too!
K
I used to believe that Mother Nature was God’s wife (I still kind of do, actually!)
As a child we lived in an area with lots of cow pastures. My dad told me that two of the cows legs were shorter, that’s how they could stand on the side of the hill and not topple over!
I believed that when you lied, a silver screwdriver would shoot out of Heaven and unscrew your bellybutton and your BUTT would FALL OFF, and you’d be SHOWN to be a liar!
How did I come up with that one? I didn’t– MOM told me that, and I believed her. Asked when I was grown up why she told me that, and she said, “Well, Suzi, whenever you were trying to lie to me, the first thing you did was cover your stomach”. Yup, my Mom!
Sheesh!
Greetings from NW Illlinois
~Suzanne
Oh, I love this one! It’s got me giggling!
too funny! what a smart mom you have!
I love that! Your mom was clever, wish I had thought of that when my kids were little!!!
Aww, that’s really sweet with the Jack Frost thing.
I used to believe if you swallowed your gum that you’d um, blow bubbles out the opposite end because I was fool enough to believe, along with 3 other people I might add, that the kid who told us actually did it. Yeesh!
These are all so fun!! I really love the drawings too – especially the first one. I would pay money for one of those! 🙂
Someone once told me that if you shook a coke that it would explode! I took that very literally and wondered why anyone would ever drink the stuff if it was that hazardous! But being 7 or 8 I did not have the self control to keep myself from drinking it, and I was a little more than concerned as to why my parents would offer it to me to begin with! I never asked about it though, keeping my concerns to myself, and after drinking the explosives that I could not resist, I would try my best to sit still for at least 30 minutes to make sure that I didn’t blow up into a million pieces. As you can imagine, that was really difficult for a kid to do after drinking all that sugar and caffeine. Not sure when I figured out that I would be ok!
My uncle used to tell me that if I ate dill pickles then I would grow hair on my chest like him. Yuck!
I used to believe that sidewalks “grew” in winter . . .
I used to believe that cakes were made into chocolate inside the oven . . .
(little girl I beliefs . . . )
This was fun and bet I will think of it off and on all day . . .
When I was little my older cousins told me, and I beleived, that dragonflies could sew up your eyes if they got too close. I was petrified to go near them for much of my childhood, now I love to watch them fly around the yard eating the bugs. .
I just love you….you always make me smile. 🙂
I used to believe that there were tiny people living inside the television and they were acting out the shows for me. I thought when I turned off the tv the show would stop…and I thought it should pick right back up where it left off when I turned it back on. Hey…I think I invented tivo! lol
:0)
Why WHYCUZICAN your post is the one that had me outloud laughing.
Thanks for the smiles this morning Layla.
In the early fifties, families would drive around just for recreation. I remember fondly the “Let’s go for a drive!” suggestion–and then arguing with my two brothers over who got the window seats. We’d simply drive around town (Cleveland) or through the Metropolitan parks. Sometimes we’d drive out to the airport, park outside the fence, get out of the car (in our pajamas), wait for our parents to spread a blanket on the hood of the car, then lie down on the hood to watch planes come in right over our heads as they landed.
At the end of one of these nightime drives, as we were heading home down the street where our school and church were, I told everyone in the car that I wanted to live in the big house next to the church. When my parents asked me why, I said because they had parties there every night it seemed–the lights were always on and lots of people were going in and out.. My parents started laughing, and when I asked them why they thought that was funny, they had to explain what that house was: Corrigan’s Funeral Parlor. And then they had to explain what “funeral” meant. And then they had to explain what “dying” meant.
I still prefer my party version.
Ha! Love this 🙂 I used to believe that as long as I was wearing my Wonder Woman Underoos at night, our house was safe from “robbers” and other bad guys. Because, really, who can take on a 5 year old in Wonder Woman Underoos and win?!
Oh my goodness!- I totally thought the same thing about the sound when my head was on my pillow. Except, I thought it was someone coming up our stairs, and my poor father who I used to call in my room over and over because, “Someone is coming up our stairs, I swear!”
I thought “Mary Worth” lived under our basement steps waiting to grab anyone who came down. But she’d wait until you started to go back up so I would run as fast as I could. Funny, she never got me!
Once the lights were out, I had to jump into my bed at night or else the creature under the bed would cut my feet off with a scythe. Really.
Love this post! I also used to believe Jack Frost was a little person with ice skates. So funny to read what we believed when we were little.
I had (and still have!) too many beliefs to list! But here’s one I am willing to share….there was a dark blue house across the street from my house. It had a garage with windows (we didn’t have a garage). I thought that my parents were spies and at night they would go into that garage and use binoculars to spy on me while I was sleeping. It makes no sense but I believed it.
Ok, one more…. about the bed thing. I had tons of “rules” to follow to keep myself safe in bed. One was that my “friends” (dolls and stuffed animals) had to surround me completely. I would arrange them around my whole outline, all around my head, down my sides and the bottom of my feet. Any left over friends would be laid on top of me.
I used to think that “incognito” was a place because I heard someone say, “I’m incognito.”
I thought cotton candy came from those “pink clouds” produced by beautiful summer sunsets. Once I told the vendor at the fair to just get his ladder out and pull some more down when he told us he was sold out.
so sweet
What a delightful post brought to life by your exquisite imagery!! You are truly gifted!
I used to believe that if I didn’t finish eating what was on my plate it would go from the garbage disposal to be delivered to starving children. So I never ate everything on my plate.
I used to believe that the Arby’s sign was a whale coming up out of the water with his mouth open. (Look at it, you’ll see) I never understood what a whale had to do with fast food. Not until I was in my early teens did I finally see it for what it was. A cow boy hat! Ah! that made more sense.
I always thought the Arby’s sign was two people kissing on a hot dog.
Cute post! When I was little I thought honeymoon meant you go to the moon with your husband and eat honey, I remember seeing Paper Moon when I was little, so of course I pictured it like that – a bride and groom in their wedding finery, swinging on a quarter moon, eating honey.
This will date me, but I loved the Tony Orlando and Dawn show. They always sang “tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree” and so I thought it was ‘their” song. We went to our state fair and Bob Hope was there and he sang it and I was outraged, because it wasn’t “his” song. Yes, the fact that Bob Hope was a huge star compared to Tony Orlando and Dawn was totally lost on me.
I used to believe that the really tall antennas with long guywires to the ground were sail boats that had been buried, lol. I remeber my mom being so confused when I would ask how they got the boats under the ground like that…
Not only are you an amazing decorator, but you can draw too!? You’ve got talent! Love the post!
Jen
athomeinthenorthwestblog.com
I used to believe that if I ate too many marshmellows, I would turn into one!
I think that is actually happening to me right now. 🙂
I used to believe that chocolate milk came from the brown cows!
My siblings and I used to call chocolate milk “brown cow”.
I smiled & laughed at your Jack Frost comment. In our 1st grade music book we had a song entitled “Jack Frost” with the picture of this little elfish man. One morning my mother said, It looks like Jack Frost was here last night…I looked & looked trying to find that little elfish man!!! 🙂
I used to believe, that when my parents would stay up to watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve, that “the ball” was something in the sky, kind of like a small sun, that would drop into our front yard.
Hey, a cloud factory! I grew up in Pittsburgh and there is a factory there right behind the Carnegie Library that produced large puffs of smoke from a bright yellow smokestack. Everyone calls it the cloud factory, it was even mentioned in the book The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Which is a beautifully written book, by the way.
I used to believe that carrots had a “sharp spot” that you could choke on. My older sister told me that so she could eat all my carrot sticks when our mom would make us a snack. I still don’t really like carrots 🙂
I used to believe that sheep and goats were the same species but goats were boys and sheep were girls.
I lived in the country where it was very quiet. At night, the stars were so magnificent and you could see the Milky Way. There were so many stars that I thought they made a sound when they twinkled. It turned out to be crickets.
I am at work and I literally laughed out loud at the “Under The Bed” stories. How great! I used to believe that every piece of gum I swallowed was growing larger and larger in my stomach and someday I would just explode! So glad that hasn’t happened!
Judy 🙂
I very distinctly remember believing that if I slept on my side with my ear exposed, a spider would climb in and lay eggs in my brain. So I slept with a pillow over my head for much longer than I care to admit. 🙂
I love this post and all the comments. But I specially love those drawings! Layla you are so talented! I just kep thinking about a children’s book the whole time.
I used to believe that fireflies were fairies and I didn’t want to catch them so they wouldn’t put a spell on me.
what a fun website! i totally used to believe that i would get worms in my feet if I walked around outside barefooted too long. and only because my grandfather kept insisting it was so!
Love it….I’ll have to check it out. I used to believe quite a lot. And the snowflake pic? AMAZING. 🙂
Shaunna