What weird/funny beliefs did you have as a kid?

Crocodiles lived in the sewers, though I think this was from a news item of the time in which a crocodile was found in the sewers. Um.

Oh, and that a witch lived my closet, in a hat box. My little sister has the same belief. To this day we can't sleep if a closet door is open (not like the witch couldn't open the door, of course).

I've also had tinnitus (ear ringing noises) much of my life. When I was younger I'd hear this beepy staticky noise not unlike morse code, and I thought aliens were trying to communicate to me.

(maybe they were, and I DONT have tinnitus! ooerr...)

I never understood how people committed suicide by putting their heads in the oven - all I could ever think was "doesn't it get really hot?"

*sigh* I never knew anyone with a gas stove.

When I was small my mum had a Marks and Spencers book called 'Your Growing Child'. I used to read it to check what stage of development I was at. There was a section called 'Masterbation and Sex Play' which I pursued with the thrill of the forbidden. The picture was of a little girl putting two of her dolls into a bed. she was on her own. The paragraph underneath started: "Masterbation, or playing with oneself ..."

For years I thought masterbation meant making up games on your own and wondered what that had to do with sex.

I also thought showers were all named after people. (Shower names I had seen: Russell Hobbs and Mira. My parents knew a Russell and a Mira.)

I used to think that if you went into a shop with a carrier bag from another shop, the staff would throw you out for shopping somewhere else.

In fact only last year, on recounting this tale to somebody, did I realise that "lichen" and "liken" are two different pronounciations of the same thing.

No - "litch-en" and "lye-ken". Boy, was I dim.

Incidentally, when we first got a video recorder, the entire family was convinced that when you recorded a program it recorded any noise in the room aswell. For months we tiptoed around in silence if we were recording something off the telly. I remember the first thing we recorded was "Help!" - my older sister made the stairs creak, so I, angrily, cried "shhhh!" Needless to say, she beat me senseless.

..who roamed the fields near to where I lived, they were 6ft high and made entirely out of sheeps poo (bibby). My so-called mate had me on this for years.

Last time I saw him he was standing at the top of my stairs screeching that Led Zep thing about the "juice runnin' down my leg" in that mid-pubescent way whilst rubbing his thighs and touching himself.

He's probably a scout leader now, or something. Fucking lichen.

I also believed that every family that owned a car had to get into a car accident at least once.

So--why the olive green?

Too much TV: I also believed, when I was 5, that if someone shot you, the only way they could kill you was to shoot you in the stomach. Because that's where the life-sustaining food went, I guess.

No Hawkers
or Canvassers

sign on the door, and wondered why everybody hated Hawthorn fans so much. I think I assumed Canvassers were some rugby fans or something.

Oh! But, when I was little, I instantly thought of one saving grace, which is similar to something someone else mentioned upthread -- I thought that if I just hid under the covers and breathed shallow, non-noticeable breaths, I'd effectively disappear from sight and the Mexican Mafia wouldn't bother me/us. Which sorta worked until I realized I was sorta suffocating and ended up peeking out from under the covers, eyes directed firmly away from the window and toward the hallway, where I ended up discovering this faint bright light I still to this day think might've been a ghostly apparition. I was comforted by this vision, because I felt that the ghost was my protector and wouldn't let harm be visited upon me or my parents.

I now realize that the reason I had these terrors is because I've been a devoted follower of local news since I was about three years old and ever since that time I've been keenly aware of the Mexican Mafia, child abduction cases, home invasion crimes, and murder. Which would make any Hollywood horror flick seem like a fairy tale.

(And the reason behind a huge chunk of the home invasions in this old neighborhood of mine was for burglary purposes. Greedy people abounded, while the blood-thirsty were nearly non-existent. Interesting thing, though -- our house WAS almost broken into, but our front door's deadbolt lock stopped them in their tracks.)

xpost they sound like kind of crap burglars, Dee.

Anyway, we also had burglar bars guarding our windows, so maybe they weren't so much crap as not wanting to bother with a house so fortified when there were other houses in the neighborhood that weren't as well protected. Y'know, like how most car burglars only target vehicles that are left unlocked and unattended... ?

"Deathly moonlight", huh? OMG. That is spooky. But in a fun way.