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.
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I used to think that the whole world was in black and white, just like all the old pictures and movies I had seen, then at some point we discovered color and turned it on! After that there were no more black and white pictures and movies anymore.
Its weird that this is top answer and I was about to post the same thing.
That Pluto is a planet.
For a long time, i thought that people thinking that the pyramids were made by aliens was a joke and that the number of people who truly believed it was 0
Traffic lights were hand operated.
The small town where I grew up had one pedestrian traffic light for crossing the main road. There was a small brick shed next to that traffic light with no windows and a little door. When I was little I was convinced that was an operation's center where someone worked to turn the lights red or green.
In reality it was a power substation for the neighborhood, but I was seriously convinced that behind that door was a man looking at a TV screen and operating the traffic light at the right moment.
When we went to a larger town nearby, where there were traffic lights without a convenient mysterious building nearby, I told myself that the traffic light people were most likely working under ground, peeping through the drains.
I.. was good at making up answers for myself instead of just asking my parents.
City Planner: Hey, I'm just reviewing the plans for the traffic light control shed and that there's no way for the guy inside to see what the traffic's doing outside.
Architect, who forgot that windows exist: Err.. that's for .. well.. it's to ensure the safety of the operator during road rage incidents ... They'll be using CCTV to watch everything. Of course I know about windows haha..
My mom told me that Dad went to work to make money, and I actually expected to see money making machines when I visited him at the office.
Plot twist: OPs father actually works at the United States Mint (but in an office job)
That Africa was largely unexplored by humans and mostly unpopulated
I used to think the poles holding up traffic lights were hollow, and there was a person sitting inside throwing switches to change the lights while looking at a watch to keep the timing fair.
Well you got the hollow part right, at least on some of them.
I thought there was a little room under ground with people watching cameras underneath each intersection to control the lights
That the Gulf War was in the Gulf of Mexico. It was the only one I knew!
That our blood was blue, but turned red when exposed to air and light. All because a teacher told us so.
I heard this one from a teacher as well when I was very young! And it may well have been the same teacher telling us that blood was made of white blood cells and red blood cells, and I knew from my deep work in relevant fields (paints and crayons) that this combination did not result in blue.
Oh yeah I had a few.
- That the moon you see during daytime is actually Mars (I then repeated that to my big sister and she believed it for an embarrassingly long amount of time)
- That the "up" arrows on traffic lights were for planes
Me in the middle of my flight when my plane pauses in midair to wait for a traffic light
That all large salty bodies of water were called "the mediterranean sea."
That my grandma's name was "grandma".
That Europe is a separate country where all the politicians live
To be faaaaaaaaiir. They might as well
That Everyone the Police arrest is a bad person.
The big stereo speakers in my living room contained tiny orchestras
That my parents never had parents. Sure, I had grandparents and saw them daily, but I somehow never realized that they were my dad's parents.
That people with a beard where poor people. I always felt sorry for them not able to afford a shaving kit.
The preferred term is hobo-chic actually.
I thought chocolate was a color
That the ice crystals on popsicles were bad for you and only girls could eat them cuz they were immune to the koodies
the koodies ?
Cooties
As a very young kid, I thought there was a very hungry monster that lived inside vacuum cleaners. The switch was just a lever to open a flap and expose the monster's sucking hunger.
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.