• phanto@lemmy.ca
    0·
    5 months ago

    I thought that dogs were boys and cats were girls. No idea why.

    Its funny, my niece made it to like 8 thinking that aunts were adults and uncles were kids. She had one young uncle, and me. Called me “Auntie Phanto.” I still haven’t lived it down.

    • dullbananas (Joseph Silva)@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      01·
      5 months ago

      my niece made it to like 8 thinking that aunts were adults and uncles were kids

      This fits well with the accidental mild misandry in Catholic school when we learned about differences between men and women. One of the books we had to read said something like “men consistently outperform their female counterparts at making almost miraculously stupid decisions”

  • simon574@feddit.org
    0·
    5 months ago

    I always thought cigarettes contain tar, as in the substance asphalt on the road is made from. It always felt weird to me, why would they put it in the cigarettes but I figured maybe they need it so the tobacco doesn’t fall out or something.

  • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
    0·
    5 months ago

    I used to think “change” you got from a store was just the business being nice and making sure you didn’t walk away without any money.

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    That America was the greatest country in the world. And truly, not trying to be political, but honestly the propaganda in Midwest America was real. I didn’t know anything about other countries - except for we were better. We figured it out, we built the best system ever and everyone else wanted to be like us.

    Now those are the people I see overseas who are about to get punched in a pub.

    • KaRunChiy@fedia.io
      0·
      5 months ago

      That midwest propaganda is still around, just chewed out a coworker who said they’d be fine with everyone in Ukraine dying so that the US can ‘have more money’ and ‘be independant’

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        Good. Americana think they’re so much different from everyone else and we’re literally not. I hold a form belief that everyone just wants to go to work, get off work, they’d rather get a pizza for dinner but they’re going to try to eat something better, are looking forward to their next day off, and when it comes they’re going to go to their target equivalent for a boring errands run. I think about 90% of the people are in this category, just average working people, and that makes me feel a little more connected with them.

        • abbadon420@lemm.ee
          1·
          5 months ago

          Yes, many millenials have been mentally fucked up by being constantly told that they were special or they would grow up to be special or achieve to become special. Now they’re not special, they’re average, just like everyone else, but they can’t handle it or accept it. They grow depressed, of get a bloated ego or vote for Donald Trump et al.

          I personally think it’s a liberating feeling to just be average. Make the best of your life, no pressure. I’ve made some lasting (positive) impressions on a handful of individuals and that gives me loads more satisfaction than being a world changer and loads less stress.

          • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
            1·
            5 months ago

            I know I failed out of my first year of college simply because all through school I was told I was so smart. So I got to college and was bitch slapped by what actual work looked like. Luckily I turned it around. However I had someone who was sort of my counter part who was in the same advanced classes as me, same thing happened and he works at a gas station in the middle of nowhere now. You want to think your kids are special and want to encourage them, but no.

            We need to teach that special is earned, not a given.

  • littlecolt@lemm.ee
    0·
    5 months ago

    I thought that if you swallowed your gum, it would stay in your stomach forever, so you had to make sure to never do it because eventually there would be no room for food anymore.

    Also, old CRT TVs had this static electricity sort of fuzzy feeling on the screen, and if you ran your hand over it, it would dissipate. I thought that by doing that, you were absorbing the TVs power and if you did it too much, it would eventually stop working.

    Lastly, I believed with all my heart that all the pets you ever owned were waiting for you in heaven and it made me mad when my (very devout Catholic) grandma told me that pets and animals don’t have souls and so they didn’t go to heaven. I said if that was true then I didn’t want to go to heaven! I’m atheist now, so I don’t even believe that anyone goes to heaven, but if anyone deserves to go, it’s all the kitties, puppies, and various rodentia I’ve loved in my life.

    • dullbananas (Joseph Silva)@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      01·
      5 months ago

      At my Catholic high school, one of the teachers who was a Dominican sister told us that animals can’t go to heaven but it’s possible for them to be recreated in heaven.

      I feel fine as long as my rabbit didn’t go to purgatory or hell, but non-eternal souls are hard to relate to

      • Obinice@lemmy.world
        0·
        5 months ago

        It’s good to have a positive outlook, but it’s also important to be realistic, and know when to move your energies elsewhere, I think.

        I could set my mind to becoming a good orchestral composer, but all I’d be doing is wasting years of my life and a lot of money and effort, because I know I’m not at all creative in that way. My creative strengths lie elsewhere.

        I could stick with it, and become at best a very derivative boring composer, but I wouldn’t reach my dream or being a good one.

        And I’d miss out on other dreams I could have been following that were more realistic and would bring me more happiness in the end, you know?

        But yeah, you also have to weigh that against pushing yourself past your limits, because maybe you’ll be great at something you wouldn’t have expected!

        I think in the end as with most things in life, it’s about finding a balance between idealism and realism that works best for you :-)

  • abbadon420@lemm.ee
    0·
    5 months ago

    I believed that you’d only get a finite amount of words in your life. So I didn’t speak much and I would think that the annoying kids in school that always were talking through the teacher’s explanation, would get their punishment later in life when they’d go mute because they would have used up all their words.