What did you (wrongly) believe for a long time because you never bothered to rethink it?

StarSong

StarSong

Awkward is my Superpower
Location
Sunny Southern California ♥
This thread is for the little misconceptions you've made over the years that turned out to be completely wrong. When you learned otherwise you felt foolish for not revisiting the opinions you'd formed and seeing the obvious.

I've had lots of these throughout my life, but the one that came to mind this morning was about "urban victory gardens" during WWII. I'd formed a mental image about them when I was quite young and it stuck. My picture? People in every city growing food-producing gardens, then finding their way to giant warehouses with wide varieties of harvested fruits and vegetables that would somehow be sorted, canned and sent overseas.

When in my twenties my mother mentioned the many things citizens were called to do to help the war effort and she mentioned everyone in Brooklyn having victory gardens. I asked how her family got their garden's fruits and vegetables to central warehouses. Did they go every week? Did they only plant what was requested? I knew gasoline was difficult to get, so how did they get the food to the warehouses? Surely not on the subway...

My mother (a gentle soul if ever there was one) said, "Honey, that food wasn't meant to go to the troops, it was for us and our neighbors to eat." I still wasn't getting it.. She further explained that the food that families grew for ourselves relieved pressure from the food industry to feed people still stateside. The more food people grew for themselves, the more commercially produced food could go to the troops.

Well, duh...


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Alligatorob said:
When I was a young kid I did not understand that there was a difference between someone being prejudiced and pregnant. Did not really know what either word meant, and sounded about the same to me. Created some confusion when eavesdropping on my parents conversations.

Now I know.
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Had a friend who thought the word condom and condiments were interchangeable........
oh we laughed and laughed and made sure everyone had ketchup packets
 
I can't think of one for me, but there's been a few for sure.. but I do remember one from my daughter age 6 or 7 who had been clearly learning about food production at school, when I introduced her to my friends' husband Steve who was wheelchair bound from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and used a suck and blow system to open doors, make phone calls etc.

There was quite a few people at the tea party that day, and dd was fascinated by this performance from Steve who was now no longer able to talk except through an electronic device, , and on trying to explain 'Uncle Steve's ' reason for his disability, the whole room went silent.. as I ended with.. and so Uncle Steve has to use an electric chair because he's Paralysed..

My daughter, looked at me with that grin that says.. ha!! I've got mum this time, and she puffed her little chest out and said proudly and loudly to the room... ''Don't be silly mummy, don't you mean Pasteurised ''??
 
When I was a very little girl we had 2 rooms out back one for chicken and rabbit food, the other was later for a while my fathers room. However there in one of the rooms was my little chalk board and all around the edges was the alphabet. I would go out there and I remember studying the alphabet, saying to myself the sounds the letters made. Ever after even today I do not remember grandma teaching me to read but she must have, although I was convinced that I taught myself to read. When I got to first grade the teacher said she knew I learned to read at home because it was obvious I learned through phonics and they weren't allowed to teach phonics any more.I do remember when I would come across a strange word my grandma would say "sound it out". I remember Dick And Jane being a terrible bore, and realizing why none of my friends liked to read they learned the look-say method. My children started school already reading because I didn't trust the schools to do it right especially when one year there was a very strange looking alphabet above the blackboard, they were going to put one of the kids in that class, I asked about it, "oh we teach them to read using that", so I said " when do they learn to actually read with the real alphabet", their answer was "oh well we switch them over later". I was very happy to inform them that my kids already could read.
 
On the beach in the summertime, I thought it was healthy to get as much sun as possible. We did have "suntan lotion," sort of an early version of sunscreen, but I don't think it did much good. And most of the time I didn't bother using it anyway. I am fair, with fair skin, so of course I got sunburned every year.
 
Alligatorob said:
When I was a young kid I did not understand that there was a difference between someone being prejudiced and pregnant. Did not really know what either word meant, sounded about the same to me. Created some confusion when eavesdropping on my parents conversations.

Now I know.
Click to expand...
LOL It's the grown-ups fault. If they hadn't been whispering we wouldn't have had to eavesdrop!

When I was about six I went with my mother to help her cousin who had just had a baby. I heard them whispering about the baby being illegitimate and thought that was the same as illegal. So I spent the whole visit looking out the front window for the police.

They weren't going to get that cute little baby on my watch!
 
Jeni said:
Hallowed be thy name ... neighbor boy thought it was.................. Harold be thy name ..... so he talked of Harold a lot .... was mad we did not understand who he was referring to
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I later wondered if I had ever answered the popular evangelist's question "Do you know God" with the answer "Yes, his name is Art? Doubtful as I was a shy child.
 
My half sisters came to live with us when i was about a year old so i didn't remember them not being with us i thought it was just teenage rebellion that made the eldest call Mama 'Mama Betty'.

A couple of times a year their Mother would visit with her daughter V., by her 2nd marriage. She and Mama often argued. But unless adults were addressing me directly i never paid much attention. So i didn't understand the relationships of all of us.

When i was about 6 the youngest of my sisters (5 years older than me) and i were arguing and she said "You're not our real sister anyway." I was heart broken, assuming i was adopted and neither
parent was mine either. Went to Mom sobbing about it and that's when someone finally explained it to me directly.
 
I belonged to one political party all my life and adamantly stood with it.
I have completely changed my political party, based on what I know now.

My spiritual beliefs have changed and grown dramatically!
New discoveries in physics has opened my mind to infinite possibilities.
 
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That people were happy like we were and when I saw "drama" and fighting, I thought something was
really wrong. Hub would tell me some people lived like that all their lives, that it was just normal for them and I couldn't believe they could live like that and really change it or get out of it.
 
My family of 5 children lived in a semi-rural area (everyone had 5 acres or so) next door to family with children that closely matched our ages, so we were good friends and played together nearly every day. There was a boy my age who I played with regularly, but his brother Jerry (who matched up with my brother) was a couple of years older, and I had a bit of a crush on him.

We were all sitting outside one summer evening and the grass began to get dewy. I asked Jerry why the grass got wet every night. He explained, "You know how you sweat when you get hot? Well, grass sweats when it gets cold. The sweat is called dew." I believed him without question and filed that as fact in my brain. Never revisited it for accuracy.

Fast forward to a college meteorology class and lectures about evaporation, condensation and the water cycle. By that time, I was well versed in condensation, of course, but it wasn't until that very moment that the penny dropped and I realized Jerry didn't know what he was talking about... the water wasn't sweat coming from the grass itself but was condensation from the atmosphere.

A 7 year old asking a 9 year old science questions. What could possibly go wrong? 🤣
 
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