I started learning BASIC when I was 7 and used to think that the POKE command was a magical incantation that could do anything. Like you could make an entire game with a single POKE. You just had to find the right one.

I thought CEOs worked super hard

That women are attracted to nice guys.

It’s 97% untrue.

Not saying they are attracted to jerks either - in fact my overwhelming impression is that women despise those too (some exceptions exist of course).

Just saying that however equality has come, and should still come, attraction exists at a lower level. And at that level, someone who can hold their own, push their way through and be kind about it, will always attract more women than the “nice guy”.

Before you react - I’ve been together with my wife 17 years, we have four kids and I’m not some kind of player.

Just stating that I was brought up to believe women always prefer nice guys. And in retrospect I can see that I was brought up by a well meaning parents (mother, my dad was in the navy so away a lot) who tried their best to make me “not an asshole”. They succeeded. But I wish my dad at some point had sat me down to tell me a few home truths about how the biology of attraction works.

that adults are trustworthy

I thought black and what television was black and white because history happened in black and white. I suppose that means life in colour happened after the invention of colour tv

When I was little, I used to think that before I was born (1977), people and the world in general were in black and white. All the photos I had of my family before my birth were in black and white.

My mother used to tell me that the jehovas witnesses had like a blacklist of households that they are forbiden from knocking on their doors since their inhabitants are unsalvable (and are going to hell according to the list but mom didnt say that) and that the peerequisits of being added to the list was not opening the door when they came to pester our house hold.

We laughed a lot about this until one day i bring it up back again and shes like “what are you talking about m8?, Theres no such thing, i made that up, i cant believe you belived that was a thing.” And then she started laughing at me and made fun of that the whole day but like in a good way.

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I thought that during commercial breaks the characters in the show I was watching were still doing things and I was missing it because the commercials were not pausing the show in the background but playing over top of it.

I thought that when you peed, your pee would go to a place where it was manually boiled on a stove, making it 100% clean drinking water, and then when you turned on the tap, they would get a garden hose and pour water into the pipe that gave you water. Somehow I assumed this all would be done manually with normal sized stoves and kettles, and that each tap had it’s very own pipe.

I also thought that black people were just tanned, because colder countries had white people and warmer ones had black or brown people. Then I asked myself: why are there black people in cold places? I came to the conclusion that all the black kids in my kindergarten would eventually lose their tan and become white.

Santa, Easter bunny, tooth fairy, god, etc

When I was five or six, I think I must have dreamed that my dad could turn his head around 360 degrees. A few days later I was in the car with my Dad and asked him if he could really turn his head around. He responded “not now, I’m driving.” I took that as a yes. It was years before I realized the truth…

I live in Ontario and Quebec was undergoing a referendum to leave Canada when I was a kid. I asked my Dad if Canada would still be the second biggest country if Quebec left.

He was impressed by the insightful question, but in reality I thought Quebec was just the tiny town where my Grandma lived.

I used to think all food for adults were called Sad Meals, as opposed to Happy Meals (like at McDonald’s).

I thought some wild stuff as a child that feels more fantastical than strictly dumb. Like I thought everyone was psychic except me and could hear my thoughts. I thought time worked differently depending on who I talked with. I thought the earth was both flat or round depending on where you were standing. I’d often get dreams and reality confused too. For some reason I thought dogs were people who had been cursed into becoming pets, probably because of me seeing the donkeys from Pinocchio. I thought half of people were robots fueled by pieces of the sun they’d pluck out of the sky.

This one is common, but I thought water simply phased through your body if you touched it. There was an episode of Bill Nye where he mentions that water “goes through your hand” and says it just like that. So I thought water simply phased through hands.

I think I was just abused as a kid and neglected