My parents didn’t specifically tell me if Santa Clause was real or make-believe. They wanted me to come to my own conclusion, I guess. My dad is a rationalist person, and my mom’s from a culture that doesn’t traditionally celebrate Christmas.

So what I believed was that the appearance of presents on Christmas was an unsolved mystery, and Santa Clause was just a hypothesis to explain it.

I suspected the real explanation probably involved the tree working as an antenna for some kind of cosmic energy that triggered the appearance of presents. Perhaps in ancient and more superstitious times they discovered this phenomenon by accident and continued to put up the tree ever since.

I thought that you would get your grandparents by just going into a train station and picking some random (preferably older person) to be your grandparent.

I was convinced that my parents had done that for me, and that’s why I had grandparents.

Wedding rings were there to show who was married and who was available. Once you wanted to get married, you just found a friendly person who didn’t have a ring, and then you asked if they’d marry you. I mean, that IS what happens I suppose, but my 8 year old brain played it out like someone asking a nice stranger for the time.

I believed my hair would blow away with sufficient wind. And it basically did, it just took 30 more years

When adults said things like “In this day and age, nobody says please and thankyou any more”, I misinterpreted “this day and age” as “The Stayan Age”, which was our current age, which obviously followed on from Bronze Age, Iron Age etc.

I used to think that there was a country called Cyclopedia, that was full of all kinds of fascinating things. I had a book all about it called “In Cyclopedia”.

Not sure what age I was, maybe 4. I thought the music on the radio was live, that the musicians went to the radio station to sing and it was broadcast from there.

Not me but really funny - when my mom was little she thought white people weren’t real. She thought they were made up for tv

I used to think those coins in the fountain at the mall were just money people wanted to get rid of. One day, little me tried getting away with a skirt full of coins and got in trouble.

I mean, to be fair, a coin on the ground is fair game, and they don’t make these “unspoken rules” clear enough, so I couldn’t imagine a coin in a fountain not being free to just pick up.

I thought propeller planes worked by spinning so fast that they temporarily moved the gravity out of the way so the plane could fly.

I was always phlegmy and coughing as a kid so I became convinced I had diphtheria and would die soon, and thought it would be terrible to let my parents know this sad fact. Turns out it was because 1980s parenting meant smoking anywhere and everywhere at all times and cigarette smoke makes me ill.

There was a park near my house where often cops would sit to catch speeders. Driving past one day, I didn’t see a cop and I told my parents I was surprised by this. My folks told me that they were there, just undercover. I asked where, and they pointed to a woman walking a dog and they told me it was an undercover speed dog. For years I’d point out suspected speed dogs when we’d drive places. I am not a smart man.

The USA was the moral leader the world. But I watched CNN as a kid so…

In the 80s when i was a child there were billboards with PSAs saying don’t drink and drive. I’d promptly scold my parents if i caught them taking a sip from their soft drink after hitting the McDonald’s drive through.

I’m gonna sound so stupid, but I thought checks just gave you free money. I thought my parents were wasting a check by writing such a small amount, and ask them something like why not write a bigger number?

Then they explained that you need money in the bank to work. I was too young to even be embarrassed, I was just like ok cool, didn’t even realize how dumb I was.

In my defence, I was like 9 and I just arrived in the US and never heard of a “check” before.