cars

When I was a kid and I went into the car with my dad, I'd always roll down the window and it annoyed him, so eventually he locked it. I thought that I had made the window mad and if I waited long enough it would forgive me. I waited one year and then tried the window again, and lo and behold, it worked.

Car Windows

When I was a kid, I was totally convinced that the Care Bears were real. I loved that show more than anything, and one day, when my whole family was in the car together, my dad started asking us kids what kind of car we wanted when we were older if we could have any car that we wanted. My sister and my brother both rattled off prompt answers. I looked up and said very matter-of-factly, "I want a cloud car."

My parents and siblings all burst out laughing and then one of them told me that cloud cars didn't exist, so I couldn't have one. I still remember how much it hurt to hear that.... I cried about it a lot. At age nineteen, I still love the Care Bears!

Still wanting a cloud car

When I was a child, I believed that the tallest man in the world drives a mini, which had no front seats, i.e. back seats only.
I believed that till I was 25 years old.

T W

When we used to go through the drive-thru at any fast food place I thought by father was breaking the law when he got a diet coke. I believed he was "drinking and driving"...

Anon

When i first heard that my family used to carpool before i was born, i imagined a hot tub-like thing inside a mini-van. It didn't help that my brother, sister, and even mother reinforced this idea

Anon

When I was a youngin', I believed that the button on the end of the "windshield wiper/cruse control lever", if pressed, would make the car self-destruct...since my mother never told me to touch it.

Didn;t blow up...

I used to believe that whatever image was on the UHAUL truck, was what was inside. So when i saw a dinosaur on a uhaul truck, i was afraid!

Danielle

When I was a kid, I always heard the phrase "don't drink and drive".
I thought it was because if you had a few drinks of alcohol while driving, it would instantly make you drunk beyond all reason.
I thought there was something that happened when you combined driving with a few sips of booze.

Race

You know how they paint STOP AHEAD on the road? Well I could never figure out where that head was that we were suposed to be stopping for.

Raku

i thought when you went road hunting for deer i thought you ran them over

nick

When my parents were recounting incidents from their trip to NYC, they said that they had run into some friends. I thought this meant an automobile collisin, and I wondered why they did not seem unhappy at the damage.

Anon

When I was a child i thought turtle wax, was to wax turtles.

J.P.

This concerns the large pieces of rubber that come off the tires of semi tractors and trailers.
When my son was about five and we were driving on the freeway, I told him this was wild rubber that was run over while trying to cross the interstate at night. He believed that for a couple of more years before finding out the truth.

Mike

My parents told us that the "child catcher" from "Chitty chitty bang bang" drove Pickford trucks so to shut us up on long car journeys they would tell us they could see one in the distance. for years Pickford drivers would see 5 small children all hiding between the card seats being very quiet.

Kris

Whenever I was in the car at night, and my parents used the high-beam (which was a blue indicator), I always looked for a blue light shining out of the car. After I outgrew this, I wondered why a high-beam indicator was a rock flying through the air or something (that's what it looks like, the rock with the "speed lines" coming out the back). I held this one until I was about then, then saw it another way and realised it was a light with light beams shining out. I think I also thought it was a magnet or something, and they were "suction lines"). The best thing about my personality is that I usually don't reveal these crazy beliefs I have. This was one I didn't reveal.

Anon

Until about the age of 6 or 7, I wondered how you could keep both hands on the wheel, as well as hold on to the key in the ignition. I thought the car wouldn't work unless you held it in there, and turned to the end (ie, the "start engine" position). I guess if I kept a closer eye on my paretns driving I'd have noticed sooner that you can just let the keys hang there.

Anon

Okay, a couple car beliefs from me:
*My brother and I tried to make the car fly when we went through a dip. We thought if we flapped our arms, even if fully inside the car, we could make the car fly when it came up from the bottom of the dip. We also got our cousin to do this whenever he was with us
*I was kind of perplexed about hazard lights until I was about 12. My first thought (until about 8) was, How do you turn left and right at the same time, and I thought you'd get pulled over for confusing the traffic. Then later on it was, How do you turn this off. I thought this when they were turned on and I was sitting in the driver's seat fiddling with the indicator control trying to turn it off. The inside indicator lights flashing just annoyed me more because I couldn't control them!
*Another belief I had: How in the world do the indicators no when to go on and off? Off, understandable, they click off when the wheel goes back. On, I just never saw my parents flip it as the turned the wheel.

Anon

When our kids were little, I used to drive an old Rover 2600 that had a low-oil warning light on the dashboard. This thing was huge for what it was, about the size of an adult man's thumb nail. The electrics in that old car were pretty bad, and this light stayed half-on all the time in a soft ruddy glow.
We were all returning home one evening and this glow was just becoming visible in the gathering gloom, and one of the kids asked what it was.
Of course, we told them it was the Sunset Meter that told us it was getting dark enough to put the main lights on...

Biggles

I used to believe that it was the air coming out of a car exhaust (tail pipe) that pushed the car allong...so the faster the car, the more exhausts it had....which is sort of true, so didn't help the matter

Zappa Cloudbuster

When I was a child I noticed, on the freeways, that when I looked at the cars in front of us the lights were red (tailights), and when I looked at the cars on the opposite side of the freeway the lights were white (headlights). This lead me to beleive that when you drove at night, you turned on either your white lights or your red lights, depending on which direction you were traveleing.

Laura