1. “That a Haggis was an animal that lived in the Scottish hills and had two legs shorter than the other from living on a slope. Carried this belief way to far into my teens.”
2. “I had seen some Sci-fi thing on TV that led me to believe that we all had implants in our brains that could make us all completely obedient if needed - and that it would always be used FOR GOOD.”
3."When I was about three or four years old, playing in the garden one day, I became convinced that I could be like a rhinoceros. I realised I was still human, but I believed that at the very least I had been endowed with rhino powers. Of course the chief power of the rhinoceros is its ability to smash down objects with its big solid head. As it happens, my dad was building a new wall in the garden that day. So I lined up, put my head down, and charged at it head-first as fast as possible, and woke up in the car to the hospital gushing *unbelievable* amounts of blood.”
4.“I believed my mum was friends with Colorado country pop legend John Denver.”
5. “I convinced myself, and tried to convince my mum, that I had actually been sent by aliens. Like Jesus, but from outer space. I also pretended to be pterodactyl at school when I was about 5, for a week, because it's a cool word and pterodactyls are cool. I am cool.”
6. “I thought that if I went up a bridleway near Salcombe, south Devon, I'd reach Middle Earth”.
7. “My brother went to Australia when I was small. When he was leaving he gave me a stuffed bear and told me it was magic and that every time I spoke to the bear he could hear me and when I hugged it he would get the hug. I completely believed it.”
8. “My Ma once said to me as a child: "A little bird told me..." My jaw hit the floor and for a while I wasn't quite sure how she managed this amazing feat of sorcery.”
9. “My grandma, in order to discourage me from picking my nose, told me that it causes cancer...”
10. “I believed my mum had won a World Championship yo-yo competition because when I asked her why she had this high quality yo-yo with 1966 engraved on it she told me she had. I believed this for about 8 years, until she finally fessed up.”
11. “My father told me, when I was about 6, that there was a button near the boiler in the understairs cupboard that, if it were pushed, would blow up the house. It only occurred to me some years later that houses were unlikely to come with self-destruct buttons, and that my dad was just trying to stop me from fiddling with the heat.”
12. “My mum told me babies were born knowing language and just pretended not to, to fuck off their parents. I think she genuinely believed this herself.”
13. “Whenever I didn't know where mum was, dad used to say she had run off with the coal man. I believed it.”
14. “I believed it when my nana said she was “21 again” and then worked out my Mum must have had me when she about 7 and it upset me.”
15. “I misunderstood the superstitions around opening umbrellas indoors or putting shoes on tables, and for much of my childhood believed both were illegal.”
16. “I used to think that W H Smith was pronounced “Whesmith.”
17. “A friend of mine believed as a child that the kids from Fame could suspend themselves in mid air, such was their dancing ability. She and her sister used to practice this move jumping from a bunk bed. The most tragic part is that they thought they were getting better at it over time…”
18. “A friend, who was taken to Guys Hospital twice to collect brothers his parents were adopting thought all babies came from London, and told other children at school this, until he was corrected aged 11.”
19. “If you swallowed chewing gum, it could wrap around your heart and you would die. Took me far too long to realise this wasn't possible. Oh and that pregnancy just happened. So when I wasn't worrying about dying in a chewing gum related incident, I worried about becoming spontaneously pregnant at age seven.”
20. “That the large grille billowing hot air from the subterranean heating in our local church was actually the gateway to hell (and that "going to heaven" was somehow akin to going to Devon).”
21. “A friend and I persuaded ourselves that there were a fixed number of words we were given to speak in a lifetime and that we shouldn't use them up too quickly or we would end up silenced and unable to talk, like an elderly person we knew of in the village. So we didn't speak for days and passed each other written messages.”
22. “Er.. something to do with the Third Secret of Fatima and nuclear war… though it's all a bit hazy. Also, that Cadbury's Creme Eggs contained real eggs.”
23. “That they let sharks out in the swimming pools after hours at the Britannia leisure centre.”
24. “I believed David Attenborough was my other grandfather.”
25. “I thought my grandad and Fred Astaire were somehow the same person existing at different times. Also thought that the Bee gees sang about Stena Line ferries.”
26. “I was raised vegetarian and my friends convinced me I couldn't eat grass cause it had meat in it.”
27. “The shadow of the oak tree on my window was Peter Pan and he was coming to kidnap and kill me.”
28. “Chinchillas lived in coffee jars.”
29. “That all dogs are males and cats females.”
30. “To escape a werewolf you had to throw lentils at them as they couldn't chase you until they picked them all up.”
31. “I thought Rocksavage power plant was where Spider-Man lived.”
32. “That my pillow was alive and had a evil face.”
33. “If i was ever in a plane crash that i could just wait until the plane had almost hit the ground and then just jump like 5-6 feet and be fine.”
34. “That I was a half-elf.”
35. “I thought that teeth were always falling off and growing again. Up until when I was 12, when I made a remark that my teeth hadn't fallen recently and friends told me the truth.”
36. “That you had to choose either an ITV telly or a BBC one when you bought it. This is because we only ever watched BBC1 and my nan only watched Granada.”
