When I was in early elementary school, I believed that my mother could make two plus two equal three on a calculator. (I was completely aware that two plus two made four–I just thought that she had some special way of cheating the system.) Until I was eight years old, I did not know that adults could cry. I mistakenly figured that people outgrew tears once they hit a certain age and when an adult told me that she’d cried a few days earlier, I thought she was kidding at first.
Perhaps most famously of all amongst the friends that I grew up with, I didn’t know the correct pronunciation for “Hors d’oeuvre” until I was about fourteen and almost at the very end of middle school; all that time, I’d been reading it in my head as “horz divorce.” Arguing my case against a friend and having my French teacher confirm that I was incorrect was one of the low points of my eighth-grade career.
I know I’m not alone in this, though. As a child, it is easy to misinterpret things that you see or hear and that can lead to some pretty wacky beliefs. People are sharing the strange assumptions that they made as children with the hashtag #AsAChildIUsedToThink and here are some of the funniest ideas.
1. This woman, who was sworn to secrecy:
2. This man, who was concerned about the road workers:
3. Mike, who really needed to educate himself:
4. This cloud watcher:
https://twitter.com/DreLee863/status/690773317343711232
5. This detective:
https://twitter.com/SuptSimonNelson/status/690591555535687682
6. Aunt Carol, who really didn’t want to get fired:
7. This viewer of old movies:
8. This traveler:
9. Rachael, who desperately needed an anatomy lesson:
10. This patriot:
11. This superstitious woman:
12. James, who wanted WiFi for all:
13. This person who lived in fear for so long:
https://twitter.com/rememberthesouI/status/690556752895447040
14. This person who lived in fear for an entirely different reason:
15. Simon, who supports the concept of a mouse house:
16. This person who clearly hasn’t seen 101 Dalmatians:
17. This woman, who isn’t always wrong:
https://twitter.com/LaReinaRose/status/690390300431405056
