general

I used to believe that buffalos and reindeer were mythical creatures like unicorns and dragons, but wanted a pet phoenix because they were real.

Me

When I was little - my fish kept dying, so my mom bought me invisible fish. She stopped getting me invisible fish when I was maybe 5 or 6. Lots of years later - after I'd forgotten, when I was 15, I remembered while talking about pets we had owned. My friend insisted there was no such thing as invisible fish. It sounds silly - but til I was 15 I thought jelly fish were invisible so I never had a problem believing in invisible fish. I asked my mom (when I was 15) if they were real - and she replied "Of course they were" (with a laugh) That's when I discovered there was no such thing as invisible fish!

Leighton Jackett

As a child I was totally floored by the fact that my dad owned a monkey wrench. We had never had any monkeys that needed to be taken apart and I could never figure out which part of a monkey it would fit on even if we had.

Gif

not only did i think a hypotenuse was an animal, but i also thought that a hyperbole (pronounced "hyper-bowl") was a cousin of a hypotenuse or something. they were all in the hippopotamus family.

molly pelavin

When I was in High School Chemistry, my teacher showed us a cow magnet. Apparently farmers make cows swallow strong magnets to attach to other metal things they accidently eat, like nails. This somehow prevents damage.

When he told us about them, he said that they sit in cows stomachs, and when the farmer wants to cows to come back into the barn, he turns on a giant electromagnet and the gentle "pull" in the cows' stomachs makes them go back in...

..apparently, he was joking.

SkyPiglet

I heard the joke "how do you get down from an elephant? You don't. You get down from a duck"

I didn't know that "down" had two meanings. So, for the longest while, I thought that if someone were sitting on an elephant, that they couldn't dismount directly but had to use a two-step process. First, move from the elephant to a duck. Then get off the duck.

medina

When I was younger and watching a lot of western movies I believed that horses had the power to bring cowboys back to life by licking their faces . This seemed to happen a lot when a cowboy had been shot or knocked out . Their horse would stand over them give them a lick and they would be revived .

John

when i was little my dad told me that cows that were nearly all white were full of milk and ready for milking and cows that were nearly all black had just been milked!

Anon

I used to believe that the 'duck crossing' and 'deer crossing' signs on the side of the road were actually put there by the ducks and the deer. I remember asking my mother how ducks and deer learned to read.

Sara

When I was small I was told that sausages came from pigs and I thought there was a little hole in their sides where the sausages came out. I even drew it for my teacher for homework

Laura

When I was a kid, I had a storybook with dragons and unicorns, but also kangaroos. So I thought kangaroos weren't real. When I went to the zoo for the first time, I was in pure awe.

Noel

I used to believe cows were ugly horses

Marlene

I cried for a couple of days, throwing terrible tantrums until my parents decided to grill me until they could figure out my problem.

I finally discovered my horse wasn't actually being broken into bits, but would rather come home "broken" to ride.

Jen D

When driving through Maryland, my Dad and I would see a lot of cows. I was so upset one day because I thought they would all be turned into hamburgers. My Dad told me they only use completely black cows for hamburgers (apparently there is no such thing!). When I saw a black cow, and was upset, he told me he saw some white on it, so it was safe. I believed that one until I was 14!

Anon

When I was little, in the 80's, fur coats were still very popular for women, even in the relatively mild climate of central Maryland. My mom badly wanted one, but we couldn't really afford it (and I gave her a very hard time about wearing a dead animal, even at the age of 5).
She would still look every time we were in a coat store, and so I would follow her through the racks, touching each one, because I liked how soft the fur was, even if I didn't approve.
She pulled one floor length coat off the rack, held it up, and said "This one is Australian opposum". Knowing that North American possums are fairly small animals, and not understanding that multiple pelts got sewn together, my eyes got huge and I said "How big do they get there?" She laughed til her face turned red and she had tears streaming down her cheeks.

SH

When i was in elementary school a girl from my class told me that she heard that if farmers dont milk there cows, the cows will go caboom, and all the milk would fly everywhere! I believed her for about two years...

Lauren

When I was 6 or 7 we had a pet tortoise who had previously belonged to my Aunt. One day my parents told me it was taken to the Zoo because the Zoo didn't have one. Turns out he died during hibernation and was thrown in a rubbish skip. I'm 21 now and believed the Zoo story up until about a month ago!

Chris

When I was around 8, my sisters told me whenever they went to sleep, they turned into animals and went about their daily business. One of my sisters told me she was a tiger, and the other two who were twins told me they were monkeys. She told me to wait for a minute, then came back with reddish stripes on her arm as proof. I believed this until I was 10.

Anon

When I was little, my dad told me to "sit there until the cows came home", and I kept looking back at the door waiting for the cows to come through. I always wondered why the cows were never in our house to begin with.

Kate

I used to believe that if I got a pet penguin it could live in the freezer.

Dippingmytoes