11 Silly Things People Believed As Kids That Are Hilarious To Think About Now
Kids will believe anything, those silly rabbits!
Elvira Kashapova / Shutterstock Growing up, I could easily have been convinced of anything. If a kid at school told me something was true, I would accept it as fact, no questions asked. It’s not surprising. There is a lot to take in when you are a child. Life is new and kids have an open mind. It makes falling for things like the existence of Santa Claus or the magic of Disney easy. There is science to back this up. And many of the silly things people believed as kids are seriously hilarious to think about now as an adult.
According to a study published by the Association for Psychological Science, children are especially trusting of things they are told. “Children have developed a specific bias to believe what they’re told,” says the study's author, Vikram K. Jaswal of the University of Virginia. “It’s sort of a shortcut to keep them from having to evaluate what people say. It’s useful because most of the time parents and caregivers tell children things that they believe to be true.” Caregivers often tell children what to believe. This could come down to religion or other values. However, this makes kids susceptible to believing some serious lies, especially silly ones that come from their peers. We were all guilty of thinking something out of this world when we were growing up!
These are 11 silly things people believed as kids that are hilarious to think about now
1. If you eat a seed, a tree will grow inside of you
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This is a hilarious lie that I know I believed as a child. I’m sure that my parents told me this to prevent me from swallowing seeds, as they can be a choking hazard. However, I fully believed that I was at risk of sprouting a whole plant if I took down a seed, even if it was by accident.
Virginia Fallon of the New Zealand Post grew up believing this same thing. She decided she would ask an expert if a tree could possibly grow within someone’s stomach if they indeed swallowed a seed. She contacted Dr. Bryan Betty, who said, “No, the stomach’s incredibly acidic and just breaks it all down, there’s no way a tree is going to grow.”
So you can rest easy knowing that a tree will never sprout from you internally. Phew!
2. Cars don't move, the road does
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Unfortunately, as we grow up, we learn quickly that for a car to move, we have to operate it. Wouldn’t it be great if we could chill out and let the road take over? As children, we had no idea how a car worked. Some kids were convinced the road was moving, not the car itself. Imagine if that were true.
People on Reddit were discussing the silliest things they believed growing up. One commenter said they thought that “cars didn’t move, the road moved like some kind of magic carpet/treadmill situation.” They added, “No clue where I even got that stupid thought.”
3. Carrots help you see better in the dark
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Believe it or not, there is some truth to this one. Dr. Jill Koury, MD of Duke Health, confirmed that carrots do help your eye health. Sure, carrots aren’t some magic vegetable, but they do contain vitamin A, which can help your vision.
“Vitamin A in normal, recommended quantities is essential for the maintenance of good vision,” Dr. Koury said.
However, there is no evidence that the vegetable specifically gives you the ability to see better in the dark. Somewhere along the way, a myth got started that convinced children they would be granted night vision if they ate a lot of carrots. Of course, many parents are happy to go along with this one, as it helps get their children to eat their vegetables.
4. Life would be different as soon you turned 13
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Remember the movie "13 Going on 30"? The main character goes to bed on her 13th birthday and wakes up as a 30-year-old fashion editor. All she wanted was to become a successful adult after humiliation at her birthday party. Could this be where the idea came from?
Turning 13 is a big deal, although you certainly don’t wake up 30 years old. Turning 13 marks the beginning of your teenage years. There is a great deal of excitement that comes with transitioning from being a pre-teen to a teenager. Life does feel like it will undergo drastic changes. However, we all know that not much changed between the ages of 12 and 13. Society did make us think becoming a teenager would be life-changing, though.
5. You have to wait 30 minutes after you eat before you go swimming
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According to Welia Health, 80% of people believe it’s important to wait 30 minutes after eating to go swimming. I know that when I was growing up, I thought I would get a cramp if I went in the pool too soon after eating a meal. To kids, there is nothing more important than a good swim session, and waiting 30 minutes felt agonizing.
As frustrating as the truth may be for all of us who had to wait to go swimming in our youth, this is a myth that started with a book published in the 1900s. The passage read, “Many boy swimmers make the mistake of going into the water too soon after eating. The stomach and digestive organs are busy preparing the food for the blood and body. Suddenly, they are called upon to care for the work of the swimmer. The change is too quick for the organs, the process of digestion stops, congestion is apt to follow, and then paralyzing cramps.”
This idea has since been disproved.
6. Glasses make you smarter
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Listen, I know this one has no truth to it. My glasses only help me see better. However, growing up, I definitely thought they made me smarter. Or, at the very least, made me look smarter.
While it’s not true that glasses make you smarter, one study found that it is common for children to believe that they do. So, if you hold this belief, you are not alone.
“According to our study, children between the ages of 6 and 10 years typically do not make judgments of their peers based on spectacle wear, but they believe that their peers who wear glasses appear smarter. This finding has been confirmed by studies of adults,” the researchers stated.
7. The moon is made of cheese
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Did you think there was truth to this one? It may seem silly now, but craters on the moon do make it look like Swiss cheese, right? Pop culture fully embraced this myth, with Wallace and Gromit voyaging to space to score some cheese in the 1980s. But this myth dates back further than you’d expect.
“The origin of the idea that the moon is cheese is older than you’d think. The earliest written record is from the English writer John Heywood, “The moone is made of a greene cheese” is mentioned in his 1546 Proverbs. Part ii. Chap. vii,” said Elisa Shoenberger, known as the Cheese Professor.
"Scholars have interpreted that the word green does not refer to green moldy cheese," she continued, "but rather to a new cheese. (Heywood is better known for proverbs like 'Haste maketh waste' and 'When the iron is hot, strike.')”
8. Ghosts come out of the toilet if you flush at night
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This one is fun. I’ll be honest, there was something terrifying about waking up in the middle of the night and needing to go to the bathroom as a kid. Having to roam around in the dark was so scary! Along with the fear that arose from making your way through the pitch black came a hilarious myth that your toilet would release ghosts if you flushed it in the middle of the night.
Cat Baklarz wrote a piece for Medium where she looked back on children’s folklore.
“Bathroom ghosts are weird and unsettling. We use the toilet when we are most vulnerable — showering, crying, or otherwise relieving ourselves — and what goes down the drain really shouldn’t ever come back up,” she said. “So why are there so many bathroom creatures in horror films and children’s folklore? And why are some of us afraid to use the washroom alone after dark?”
Something about the bathroom had kids thinking they were at risk of seeing a ghost.
9. Cashiers kept the money you paid them
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In a perfect world, cashiers at retail stores would make more money than they do. Kids, as sweet as they are, assumed that the money given to the employees went directly into their pockets. I believed this, too. I had no idea that most stores were owned by massive corporations, and the person working behind the counter was making minimum wage.
“I thought the cashiers kept the money you gave them. Little did I know they were probably making $5 per hour,” one user wrote on Reddit. Other kids thought that cashiers were stealing their money. A story shared on Facebook even recounted how a child started yelling for help when the cashier took the money he had handed them.
Kids have the funniest ideas.
10. It was illegal to have car interior lights on
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A Reddit user started a thread dedicated to this very myth. They asked why we were all told we were breaking the law if we happened to turn on the interior lights.
“It is harder to see, but they probably didn't want to explain the logistics of how light impacts driving viability,” said one commenter.
Another said, “Some likely believed it because their parents told them. Some likely just found it very difficult to drive with it on, and telling you it was illegal was easier than trying to explain night blindness and the reflective properties of glass when lit from within.”
11. When a song was played on the radio, the artist was in the studio playing it live
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Sometimes, artists did perform in the radio studio. However, this didn’t happen nearly as often as songs played on the radio. The idea of recording music was foreign to children. It was easier to grasp the idea that someone was singing directly into the radio than playing via a recording.
I’ll be honest, I bought into this one as a kid. Let’s face it, none of us were educated on audio recording. However, I began to ask questions when I’d turn the channel and the same song would be on a different station. How could that singer be there twice?!
Haley Van Horn is a freelance writer with a master’s degree in Humanities, living in Los Angeles. Her focus includes entertainment and lifestyle stories.
