What did you believe as a child that shocked you when you discovered it wasn't true?

Sex makes babies.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard : How many little fiddle playing creole bastards have you got running around?

That family members I adored and childhood heroes I worshiped were mortal and could die. I’m not over that yet.

That I couldn’t grow up to be batman.

…Or a ninja turtle.

@hawaii_jake, haha, none, but as a four year old, finding out that dicks and vagoos are where babies come from was rather striking.

Most of my Elementary-school American “history”.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard You grew up quick. I was much older when I found out about “dicks and vagoos.” Lurve for your termonology.

Disney was spelled with a fancy looking “D”. I thought it was some sort of fucked up flipped “G” that was silent or pronounced as a “D”.

When I was twelve, I was told that my brother, that is eleven years older than me was my half brother biologically. I felt betrade for being lied too. At least he’s still my brother :) I couldn’t understand why my parents felt the need to lie to me and show this imagine of perfection when everything was perfect anyways. My mother still insists that when she married my father she was a virgin. I grew up with so many lies that my sense of reality is still super jadded.

Oh—and that I couldn’t fly like Superman no matter how hard I wished.

It was a great disappointment to me when my mother made me wear shoes when leaving the house in my cobbled-together Superman costume.

@chyna, yeah, a crazy first grade delinquent told my preschool class all about it :-/

I believed that wishes came true. Like totally absurd ones. When I was around five I wanted a talking pony really bad. I also believed in magic and I thought I was witch.

When I was younger, the concept of races deeply confused me. Up until first grade, people were people. Some had light hair, some had dark hair. Some had light eyes, some had dark eyes. Some had richly pigmented skin, and others were paler. I was initially jarred that there were people who didn’t speak English (as they had segregated the Spanish-speaking students into a different classroom in order to teach them English. When those students approached me on the playground and spoke in Spanish, I felt frustrated that I could not undertand a word they were saying.) I simply thought we lived in a colourful, diverse world.

First grade ruined that completely and I’m still a little sad about the matter. There was such a leap in racism between kindergarten and first grade that I was unable to process what was going on. I couldn’t see an intrinsic difference between my classmates and wondered why they were being so terrible to one another.

I was also shocked to discover that the dinosaur I had always referred to as “Brontosaurus” was actually just the skeletal body of an Apatosaurus with the head of a Camarasaurus and, therefore, didn’t actually exist. I had to correct everyone and anyone who referred to a long-necked dinosaur as a “Brontosaurus”.

I think I got on people’s nerves. Maybe just a little.

Most of what I was told growing up…I was THANKFUL that it wasn’t true. My beginnings, now seem to read like a bad novel…of someone else’s life.

@muppetish

WTF? There’s no such thing as a brontosaurus?

But what about The Land Before Time?!?

I don’t think anything really shocked or surprised me. But I used to watch a lot of Abbot & Costello, Marx Brothers, and Three Stooges with my dad and it made me very sad to find out that Abbot and Costello had a lot issues with each other.

I was grateful to find out that Laurel and Hardy appeared to have a real friendship. if that isn’t true please don’t ruin it for me

The biggest shock was the irresponsibility of the average human. I was sheltered in a family and subculture that did not pollute, does the right thing when no one is looking, etc. And I also thought our government must be pretty much the same.

I was around 12 when I realized the United States Government and the average person is morally ambiguous. That really was a shock.

@Seek_Kolinahr Little Foot was an Apatosaurus. The Land Before Time and Jurassic Park instigated my undying love for dinosaurs :) Longnecks were always my favourite.

That my family on my Mom’s and Dad’s respective sides loved me. And then I found out that they were some of the most racist people and neither side could stand a little half breed mutt like me.

@muppetish Well, I always liked Ducky, anyway. ^_^

@Winters I am so sorry that you were ever treated that way. It’s terrible what humans can do to humans.

Is THAT what family is for? ~

@Winters I’m so sorry you went through that. When my mum announced her engagement to my father, her aunt told her, “You know you won’t have any beautiful, white babies. They aren’t going to have blue eyes.” My mum never spoke to her again.

@Winters It stills shocks me that people act that way. I grew up watching a lot of 50’s tv shows, so I expect most families to be modeled like that.
I wasn’t shocked about Santa when I found out. More like ripped off. I got the hint when “he” left me Canadian coins where my cookies were.

I used to think the same thing @hawaii_jake ! I always thought i was hearing the real voices of the people behind the radio lol..
I also used to think that if I broke the tv open all the characters in the movie would come out and meet me haha

I think the idea that there is not necessarily a soul mate for everyone (or anyone for that matter) was most shocking to me.

When I was little, all machines had people or animals inside them – like the Coke machine had a little gnome that took your money and passed the soda through the slot, and the car was kept running by a rabbit on a treadmill.

In retrospect, I can’t remember if I actually believed that, or if I thought it was something fun to think about.

When I was nine and my parents divorced. I was in a fog for months trying to wrap my head around the fact that that my father wouldn’t be coming home.

That the universe is infinite. I had always pictured it as having an end, like being in a box or a snow globe.

Finding out at a junior high party that John Lennon wasn’t George Harrison and that George wasn’t John. I suppose I had never seen photos of them separately, or maybe they had been labeled out of order in a newspaper photo. It was a bigger shock than finding out that there was no Santa Claus.

That white dog poo came from white dogs.

I thought everyone had parents who loved them
I thought everyone believed in God.
I thought everyone was as smart as me haha.

@Facade I thought everyone believed in God

That’s another one I had that I forgot about… Where I come from, pretty much everyone is a Christian by default or proxy, whether they actually practice or not. Small towns… hmmm…

When i learned that not everyone is a good person. I didn’t learn from words from my parents.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I’m not from a small town, but everything I did involved God. Christian schools since pre-k, church twice a week. Even my gymnastics coaches (people with whom I spent 4 hours every night) believed in God, so that’s really all I knew.

I used to think that everything was filmed where it took place. So when I found out that Oklahoma was filmed in California, that made my head spin… :P

I also didn’t understand “sets” and all that; I thought everything was filmed in real houses and real office buildings, etc.

Ok, so, for a really long time I never questioned one thing my friend told me about cats. He said they communicated telepathically, ear to ear, by standing side my side. And I was a teenager before I even thought about how silly that was. I think I realized it when I repeated it out loud for the first time. I instantly knew I had been bamboozled. I had a pretty active imagination, I believed a good story lie.

I don’t think I was gullible but just that fanciful. I think my big bro told me a few tall tales just to wind me up, then would deny that he ever told me them. I could just have imagined that.

I also thought that the coal plant’s smoke stacks made the clouds. And that mini versions of myself ran my body like a machine, and they all wore union suits with the butt-flap.