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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I used to believe that if wore North Star running shoes –or any other runners with stripes on the side–that I would run faster. I really thought it was the sporty stripes that determined how fast I was! (I was 5)
I used to believe that the songs on the radio were being played live. I wondered how they switched out musicians so quickly and in such a small space. I had a friend that believed that the musicians were actually in the record player. Along the line of hymns, another friend finally asked his dad what a “pyonder” was referenced in the hymn “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder.”
When I was little, it was the early seventies, and every night, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley would tell us what the death count was from Vietnam. Sad but true. I believed wholeheartedly that it was illegal, somehow, to have a war zone in the United States. If only that were true………..
I used to believe that if I wasn’t in bed and asleep by midnight, witches would come and take me away. I used to lay there with the covers pulled up tight and freak out when I heard the clock chiming to midnight. I’d close my eyes so tight and hope I’d still be there in the morning.Why did I believe this? Because my sister was evil and I was only four so I had no idea. (She got in big trouble for that one though! 😉 I also believed that while I was in bed, the floor turned into a sea full of sharks and I had to wait for so long (I think until my imagination gave out) until they’d go away so I could get out of bed. Being a child is stressful!!!! LOL
i also believed the watermelon seed story!! could be why i only get seedless watermelons! either that or they are so less wasteful!
hey! doesn’t chocolate milk come from brown cows?? hmm….:^) what a f un post to read! thank you Layla and Kevin
I used to believe that when a long straight line of sunshine peeked through the clouds on a rainy day it was carrying all the dead people to heaven. I also used to believe that if you sat too close to the TV you would it would make you wear glasses. My grandpa told us the one about the watermelon all the time!
When my brother was little and saw those sunrays, he would exclaim, “Look! God is talking to someone!”
My little boy believed that went everyone went to work in the morning they were all going to the same place–“to work,” some big building somewhere. Hahaha
I used to believe the Bermuda triangle was real and I WAS SO SCARED OF IT!
I used to believe that my toys would come alive when I left the room. Funny watching that play out in Toy Story yrs later. A friend of mine used to believe that the song,” Have a Little Talk with Jesus” really said Have a Little Chocolate Jesus. Crack up every time we sing that song in church.
When I was little my grandpa told me that pickle juice and coffee stunt your growth and that burnt toast would clean out your stomach so things would taste better.
thought that it quit raining when we went under an overpass.
I used to believe there was a whole in floor under my bed and people lived down there and if I wasn’t careful they would pull me down there.
A friend once told me that clown statues would come to life at night and attack you. Needles to say that ceramic clown in my room was removed from my bedroom before bed that night.
Another thing that I know a lot of people believed as children was as long as I had at least a sheet on me in bed then the bad guys couldn’t get me. No matter how hot it was I would sleep with a sheet covering me.
I used to believe that thunder was God bowling.
I used to believe that when I laid on my back in the yard and saw the clouds going by that it was the earth spinning and I better hold on.
I don’t know what I believed exactly, but the first time I flew above the rain clouds and saw the sun still shining, I was amazed!
Adorable – LOVE your drawings!!
Let’s see now….. reaching way back in my memory 😉
I used to believe…..
…. brown cows gave chocolate milk
…. thunder was just the angels bowling
…. yep – the one about the watermelon seeds
….. how about the one about if you swallowed your gum your insides would stick together
….. cross your eyes for too long and they’d stay that way
….. the funniest one was something my mom told me and my brother – that we had to eat all of the hard boiled egg ( I liked the white and Ricky liked the yolk ) or we’d be unblanced. She was talking about a blanced diet of course. We giggled over the mental picture it gave us of being unbalanced and not being able to walk straight.
My mom was born on Christmas Day, and for years she had my brother and me believing that she arrived under the Christmas tree in a white box tied with a big red bow.
The box and bow part might not’ve been true, but she was absolutely a gift in our lives!
I used to believe that if you turned the radio off in the car, when you got back in that song would pick up where it had been.
Love the stumbled upon site. Love what we think of when we’re little. Now I’m curious what my kids thought when they were smaller.
hahaha…O my gosh-everyones posts are so cute! Love this!
I used to believe that if I dug deep enough in my back yard I would find a family sitting down at the table eating dinner in China! I was also a believer of the clouds bumping together. We are probably most creative when we children!
My friends and I believed mayonaise would make our breasts bigger — we kept Hellman’s in business. LOL! …but unfortunately I don’t think it is true — although I think I might try it again …just to be sure!
These are so much fun! and I love your drawings!!! I don’t remember any funny beliefs I had, but when my kids were little, I would tell them the parades on Veteran’s Day were for my birthday…. My husband used to think that when you went up in an airplane, the ground beneath you moved to where you wanted to go, then the plane came back down.
ok. this is just the cutest post EVER!!!! and the illustrations are AMAZINGGG!!!
Whew! Nice to know I wasn’t as crazy as I thought. My dad told me the same thing about cows have shorter legs on one side to stand on hills. He also told me my grandmother had to sell Kennedy Airport before we’d have enough money to buy more Barbies.
My sister was convinced there were crocodiles under her bed and she would carry on something awful until my dad collected them and took them to work with him……every night.
I absolutely believed that dry gasoline was a powder. (Do not even think about asking how old I was when I learned the truth!) and I couldn’t fugure how it got there when someone “wired” money.
I too believed the watermelon seed one and because I knew as a kid that I had sin in me and I had accepted Christ…I used to believe the noise I heard in my ear was the devil trying to dig his way out of my body…honestly never knew it was my heartbeat until just now when you told me. (and I’m 41:) LOL
Loved this post Layla ~ saw your tweet today about Jack Frost and it made me smile. I used to believe that the Red Cross was for your red blood and that Blue Cross was for your blue blood ~ because that is what color your veins appeared to be so I always thought we had blue blood!
I legitimately sincerely was POSITIVE that if I smiled hard enough and good enough that I would be seen on Romper Room and my name would be called at the end of the show.
And because of that, I thought that the people on TV could actually see through the TV at me so when I was in the room watching alone and I’d do something I wasn’t supposed to (pick my nose, suck my thumb) I’d try to hide it in case the TV people saw it.
Oh my gosh! I used to jump up and down and wave my hands in front of the tv when Romper Room was on, just knowing she could see me and wondering WHY she never called my name! I mean I was right there in plain sight and she had that big ol’ looking glass — geez!
With a name like Tracy, the likelihood of your name being called was greater than Jamie. I smiled til my cheeks hurt at the end of that show each week!
I used to believe that cats and dogs mated. Cats of course were female and all dogs were male. So when a cat gave birth, the kittens were girls and the puppy’s were boys. Made perfect since to me until I was old enough to know how that REALLY works . . . .heee….hee……
My father’s name was Phil and back when I was little we had full service gas station. We would pull in and he would say, “Fill ‘er up.” I thought he was saying his name, For the longest time, I thought you were supposed to tell the gas station attendant your name when you asked for gas.
I used to believe that my Mom had “eyes in the back of her head”! Then I grew up, had kids and, by golly, I grew eyes in the back of my head, too!
I used to believe that when a girl drank beer, she would grow hair on her chest. My dad told me this and I innocently warned the college roommate of my aunt who was sipping a beer when she visited.
i used to believe that there were little tiny men in the traffic lights watching to see how many cars would line up before he switched it to green.
I used to believe that water towers were an emergency water source. So if your town ever ran out of water, you just had to take a bucket to the water tower and could fill it up after waiting in line. When we’d drive into a new town, I would always look for the water tower, just to be safe in case we needed it 🙂
hahaha i love this because i used to jump to my bed from the farthest distance possible to prevent people from grabbing me from under the bed! i even attached a long ribbon to my light switch to turn it off whilst in bed. i also used to have irrational fears about falling out of my bed and landing on a yellow 6 dot lego right in my back. seriously, this consumed a lot of my sleeping fears. kids are so weird, yet so much the same!
Layla, this was such fun wading through all those “beliefs” from childhood!
I used to believe I could hear the ocean if I held a big shell up to my ear. My Grandpa brought me one when I was in third grade and I swore I could hear those waves rolling in…! LOVE your blog!
LOVED this post! My Mom used to set up our plastic bowling pin set in the long hallway in our house when it was storming, and when we heard thunder it was because an angel had bowled a strike! Years later I learned she did it because she was frightened by storms.
I used to believe that east was always to my right. 🙂
I used to believe (because my big sister told me) that if you swallowed gum it would stay in your stomach for nine years. The day I heard that, I tried to calculate from the last time I’d swallowed gum to see when I’d be gum-free. She also told me that our town’s fireworks were shot into the air using the police officer’s guns. Made sense to me!
And this one is from my imagination: We had a train track running behind our house, with a long narrow hill between our yard and the track…probably supposed to help with the noise, but it wasn’t really high enough for that. I thought that there was a secret tunnel in this hill, part of the underground railroad. Which I thought was a series of tunnels. I spent weeks or months looking for doors into the hill, or trying to dig a hole. It wasn’t ’til much later that I learned the underground railroad didn’t exist in Canada.
When I was little, I believed we had a mouse on a motorcycle living in our house…until I figured out that’s just what my dad said when I heard him toot! (He still says that.) I was a senior in high school when the Sixth Sense came out and my then best guy friend, now husband had reassured me that all the scary parts were over. Except he forgot about Mischa Barton hiding under the bed!!! OMG, I’m scarred for life from that one! Late in life to worry about someone hiding under the bed waiting to grab your ankles, I know, but my mind wanders too much…especially when I’m home alone! That’s why I have to sleep w/ HGTV or the Disney channel on like you Layla! No scary movie trailers! 😛
My dad told me once that coffee makes hair grow on your chest. When I asked why my grandma didn’t have chest hair, he said she shaved it. I still don’t drink coffee!
I also believed the in order for Jesus to save us, he had to bite us. “Oh victory in Jesus, my Savior forever, he sought me, then he BOUGHT me” I thought that was a past tense of “he bit me”. Thank goodness it’s not true, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to tell my kids to stop biting each other because Jesus doesn’t want us to do that! 🙂
I used to believe that if I touched my baby sister’s head, then her brain would fall out. I would not hold her until she could walk, then apparently her skull was hard.
I used to believe that the floor under my bed was a swamp, and I would be sucked into it if I put my foot on the floor. But only around my bed…the rest of my bedroom was safe.
I once read the word “misled” when I was about 7, and thought it was a word pronounced “mizeled”. That meant someone pulled a fast one on you. I used it once in class and still remember the look on my teacher’s face!
I used to believe that we were called Human Beans.
~ Dana
I loved this, it’s so fun to hear everyone’s beliefs and how similar a lot of them are. I too believed that if ANY part of my body hung over the edge of my bed that something would snatch it, bite it, or some other unfathomable evil… and I also believed that ‘drinking and driving’ referred to any kind of beverage and was terrified that one day my dad would be taken to jail for drinking his water/coffee/etc while driving…
I used to believe it was a good idea to tuck my sweaters into my jeans. :0
I used to believe that there tiny little people playing tiny little instruments and singing inside my radio! That’s where the music came from, right?
I used to believe that ever time you got the hiccups that you were growing!
These comments are wonderful, had me laughing out loud. Thanks for a great start to my Sunday. When I was little I used to think girls got pregnant by drinking milk, ( my mom always had a glass in her hand when she was expecting my brother) for a long time I wouldn’t drink it. Never had visions of things under my bed.
When I was about 5 my mom told me that if I didn’t stop talking so much my voicebox would wear out. That terrified me and I believed it for years!
I bought a sweet picture of a happy black lab on a mountain top covered with flowers from you several years ago. eBay, I think. It is one of my favorite pieces of art in the house! Do you still have time to create and sell those treasures?
Oh my goodness… Too funny! I’ve been sitting here eating my breakfast while reading your post and when I read the part about the little girl being so scared that she peed on her brother, I started laughing and actually spit out my cereal everywhere! Thanks for the hilarious little moment to start my day!
HA! I can’t wait to check out that site. What a great idea.
I used to believe that if I dangled my foot over the bed, someone underneath (didn’t matter that my bed was only 2″ off the ground) would grab my foot and never let go.
Silly.
I used to believe that Fraggle Rock existed under my grandma’s house because she has floor vents. I used to sit on the floor and put my eyes and ears to the vent trying so hard to hear the Fraggle Rock song playing. LOL!