“There Was A Legal Age For Caffeine”: 50 Hilariously Silly Things People Believed To Be True

This will probably get lost, but I believed for many years when my mom told me that cows unroll haybales as sleeping bags at night and roll them back up in the morning.

I thought that little people (like peter dinklage) were so small because they were born on February 29th. I figured that since their birthday only came round once every 4 years, they would grow to be a quarter size.

When I was a pre-schooler, my mom told me that you weren't allowed to ride a motorcycle or get tattoos unless your mother was dead. One day, outside the grocery store I saw a big, tough looking dude covered in tats, straddling the loudest motorcycle ever. Damn 5 year old me went up to him and asked, "Hey. Is your mom dead?" Dude looked at me and said, "Yeah." And I was shocked that my mom was right.

That I could be anything I wanted when I grew up if I just worked hard enough.

I believed I owned a whale. My parents “adopted” one for me as a Christmas gift. I had a framed picture of her tail and everything. Her name was Ibis. This was about 30 years ago now. I hope she kept swimming. God speed, Ibis.

The Dairy Queen and Burger King were married, and ruled over a faraway kingdom of fast food. Edit: In the far away land of Inanoute, The Dairy Queen and Burger King rule from the White Castle. Their decrees tempered by the wisdom of their court magician and vizier, Jack of the Bockse, they hold sovereignty over the Fry Folk. Their daughter, Princess Wendy, is as beautiful as the Inanoute itself. She is betrothed to the brave knight, Carl II, of Hardee. The kingdom is protected by the great hero, Whataguy, and his cohort, Attaboy, while the noble Colonel Sanders commands the Royal Guard, composed of the five finest soldiers in the King's army. But all is not well; dark forces gather in the White Castle's evil counterpart, the Krystal, where the wizard McDonald plots to kidnap the Princess, force her to marry him, and usurp the throne of Inanoute.

My dad told me that I could have a pet chipmunk or squirrel if I caught one. He told me the key to catching one was to shake salt on their tail, they would **always** stop to lick the salt off and then I'd be able to catch it.

Not hard to figure out why he told us that, because my brother and I would spend hours a day running around the yard with a bucket and a salt shaker.

I think the last time I tried was when I was like 9. I never really though about it again until I was like 15 and it was mind blowing to realize it was all just to keep us busy outside lol

I felt the need to personally thank the driver of the subway train every time we took it. I thought it would be rude and impolite to not do so.

It must have been so embarrassing for my mom. The driver cabin had tinted windows and I demanded the driver lowered them so I could thank him lol. I was like 5 or 6.

Similarly, I was taught to give my seat to the elderly or pregnant women. One time, as soon as the door opened and an old looking man entered the wagon, I bolted from my seat and ran to him, grabbed him by the hand and brought him to the empty seat.

Thanks god I didn't do that to a fat lady or my mom could have died from embarrassment.

When I was really young, I wondered about what was so special about women's breasts that they had to cover them up all the time-- surely there was something secret about them that everyone was hiding from me. My parents wouldn't give me any straight answers. I have no idea why I came to this conclusion, but I thought that maybe there was something dangerous enough about them that they had to be contained. My guess was that they had little mouths with razor sharp teeth.

When I figured out that they were just a bigger version of what I had, I was very confused and disappointed.

That there was humans sitting in control rooms watching tons of traffic cams and turning red light to green lights and Visa versa

I thought a necromancer was someone who was just very into necks.

Neck-romancer.

There are midgets inside ATM’s. It’s their job to sit inside it and take your card to check it and then pass out money.
They also have a tv and food in there.

Thanks Dad.

My sister and I believed that the ghosts in Pac-Man were played by kids in other countries who played the opposite video game.

That "Inc." meant "in North Carolina." I live in NC and my dad told me that that is what it meant and I believed it for an embarrassingly long time. I still cringe when I think about it. "Monsters in North Carolina" ugh EDIT: I'm crying. I didn't expect this to take off and now I'm so embarrassed. THANKS, POP.

Very late to the party, but here goes:

I grew up with a grandmother who was in a diving accident as a young girl. As such, she was relegated to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Long story short I had a paralyzed grandmother.

When I was old enough to ask what she did for work, I was told she was a paralegal. This being around the time I was learning how prefixes worked in words I heard para, and legal. Thus my young brain made the brilliant connection and all the way until I was 14 years old, I lived believing that a paralegal was a lawyer in a wheelchair.

TL;DR I'm a f*****g idiot

I thought color was at one point discovered or invented. Like long ago we lived in a black and white world but eventually we changed for the better.

My aunt told me god was everywhere including inside me, so I stopped drinking apple juice to avoid getting him sticky. I was never even religious, and apparently didn’t care about everything else I ate that would get him sticky..

That there was an actual black market. I could never understand how the cops couldn’t find.

When I was a kid my two cousins from India were staying with our family as they were trying to settle in the country and become U.S. citizens. My cousins were in their mid twenties, fully grown men. One night I challenged them to an arm wrestling match. They acted like the couldn't keep their arm up and they were breathing hard and stuff. And I beat both of them and they told me how strong I was as a seven year old girl. I thought I was hot stuff until I got to college and randomly challenged a guy to an arm wrestling match and lost pretty quickly. I literally sat there dumfounded and was like "wait how can this be...." And then it hit me.

That there was a legal age (13) for caffeine, like the way there is one for alcohol. When I was in high school, I saw some small kid buy a coffee from McDonald's, and remarked that it was illegal. My friends still make fun of me for it.