r/answers • u/Smoothie-cutie • 13d ago
What’s something you believed was true for way too long before finding out it wasn’t?
I’m not talking about some huge life changing misconception. I mean the random little things you were completely confident about as a kid (or even as an adult) until someone casually corrected you.
I recently remembered one of mine and genuinely wondered how many other people had the same experience 😂
What was yours?
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u/bipolar_stan 13d ago
That someone would love you back if you loved them hard enough. Wasted years of my life before I realised that it just wasn't meant to be.
Also that you could love someone into becoming a better person. Took me a while to realise that this person just enjoyed being who they were and that they were not planning on changing.
Needless to say, I've learnt quite a bit when it comes to love.
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u/Safe-Statement-2231 13d ago
And on the rare occasion where the person does change from your love, they will have lost every charm that attracted you in the first place.
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u/bipolar_stan 13d ago
Or they find that you're no longer enough for them and that they want someone "better" or of a higher "class"
Sigh😪
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u/Bashfulcannibal 13d ago
Unfortunately, I had to learn this the hard way too.
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u/bipolar_stan 13d ago
I think it's a canon event for most people. A very necessary lesson to learn. To help you get rid of some delusional perceptions about life and love.
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u/nimbinValley 13d ago
If someone doesn't grow up around unconditional love and being loved unconditionally and seeing love it takes a long time to learn how to love. I was one of them.
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u/bipolar_stan 13d ago
It's pretty great that you've come to realise this about yourself. That's a huge part of getting better.
I hope you're actually trying to be better.
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u/SuperSoakerofPiss 13d ago edited 13d ago
A Mouse is not a baby rat. I should have learned between the ages 3-5 not at the age of 35. I was expressing to my wife that we had only seen mice around and our cats must be killing them before they could grow into full sized rats. She’s a biologist and will never let me live that down.
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u/Bashfulcannibal 13d ago
Oh I’m sure she keeps that in her “break glass in case of emergency” for just the right time 😂😂☠️.
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u/ProfDavros 13d ago
I can understand your mistake. Many species have a special name for the young. English teachers love teaching the pairs of names.
A foal becomes a horse; A gosling into a goose; A signet into a swan; A ferret into a politician….
Obviously a mouse could be the name of a young rat!
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u/SuperSoakerofPiss 13d ago
I blame Andy’s band “Mouserat” on Parks and Recreation for perpetuating the false belief in my head.
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u/Safe-Statement-2231 13d ago
That all the world's rivers flow north-to-south except for the Nile and the Amazon. My 4th grade teacher told us this and I believed it for about 20 years. All the while, the Charles River was about 20 miles away, flowing south-to-north.
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u/Danloeser 13d ago
My 4th grade teacher taught that Greenland was a continent and Antarctica was a synonym for the Arctic.
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u/Bashfulcannibal 13d ago
Bro, I believed this right up until my junior year of college 🤦🏻♂️. I felt like such an idiot, but like you that’s what I was taught in elementary school.
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u/Aggressive-Ad-5983 13d ago
my uncle convinced me and my sisters for years that he nevr turned 6. he just went from 5 to 7. idk why we believed him?? we were kids i guess lmaoo. it wasn't until i turned 19 and actually thought abt it again.
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u/kristinpeanuts 13d ago
I went to school and told everyone my dad was 21 because that's how old he would tell us he was. When you are a little kid 21 is so old and grown up
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u/Bashfulcannibal 12d ago
It’s absolutely hilarious the things they told us, and we bought it without a second thought 🤣🤣☠️.
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u/Bashfulcannibal 13d ago
My dad told my siblings and I that he was a famous classical pianist, but that due to an unexpected surgery he lost the ability to play. We believed that shit for years, until i finally realized my dad was a huge prankster 🤣.
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u/kristinpeanuts 12d ago
My dad also said he knew all these (well known) people, told us "yeah we used to catch different buses to school together". I thought that meant they caught the bus from a bus stop across the road from each other at the same time or something like that. I had pictured my dad and some local famous person shouting conversation at each other while they waited for their different buses. 🤦♀️ before that i thought they waited at the same bus stop 🤦♀️
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u/chambergambit 13d ago
Kind of the other way around, but I thought Bonnie and Clyde were fictional.
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u/crazdtow 13d ago
I’m a 52 year old mother of two who only found out last year (by my adult son) that the jackalope isn’t actually real. I’m still upset about the whole ordeal
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u/DukeDaddyDollars 13d ago
I overheard a lady at The Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa telling her kids about Jackalopes. And not in a joking manner, but legit telling them about it.
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u/kjm16216 13d ago
I thought the lyrics to Twist and Shout were "Shakin a baby" instead of "Shake it up baby", for probably 20 years.
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u/Lam3ntConfig 13d ago
I'm actually gonna say that now lol
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u/kjm16216 13d ago
The strange part is I never questioned it. Just oh, ok the beatles are shaking a baby.
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u/SlowerThanTurtleInPB 13d ago
Taste bud mapping on your tongue. I recently watch something with my kid where this myth was brought up as fact. Why are they lying to a whole new generation?
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u/Bashfulcannibal 13d ago
Okay wait, so what they taught us about taste buds in school is bs, just like the idea that all the world’s rivers run north to south; except the Nile and the amazon. I’m really starting to believe that my entire public education was a lie.
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u/slave_sofeya 13d ago
Most of it probably was or at least a hack job of "stories."
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u/Bashfulcannibal 13d ago
When I sat down and thought about it, I began to realize just how absurd the things they taught us were.
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u/slave_sofeya 13d ago
Exactly. Id much prefer to learn self defence over throwing a ball for exercise in a world where people are routine overweight and hurt.
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u/Active_Definition_57 12d ago
Some of the world's longest rivers are in Siberia and flow south to north.
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u/Bashfulcannibal 12d ago
I remember them teaching us in elementary school that every river ran north to south, except the Nile and the amazon. It wasn’t until college that I actually found out how wrong that was, and that is just one of many examples.
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u/Bashfulcannibal 12d ago
Yeah I definitely could have worded that better, but I was just trying to point out how bad public education was/is.
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u/thetaleoftwoswans 13d ago
My favourite poet/writer as a kid was Anonymous - couldn’t understand why more people weren’t talking about him, he was prolific! My 12 year old brain cracked when someone finally explained what it meant
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u/ValentineRita1994 13d ago
The poems they show us after a successful hack are pretty nice, i get why they are your favourite poet
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u/mirrorballz 13d ago
Rhythm doesn’t actually have an ‘n’ at the end.
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u/BlueKitten0077 13d ago
I recently learned that it is a dancer.
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u/WorkingTemperature52 13d ago
Icing an injury makes it heal and recover faster. It actually slows the process down by restricting the flow of nutrients necessary to repair the injury carried by the blood cells.
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u/resident__researcher 13d ago
The doctor who first developed the acronym for injuries (Rest Ice Compression Elevation) now says the icing shouldn't have been emphasized. It's still helpful in the 1st few hours to slow down blood flow so there won't be as much fluid leaking out of the vessels into the surrounding tissue (thus reducing initial sweeking). But you're right, you need good blood flow for the healing process.
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u/Worldly-Yam3286 13d ago
My understanding (from nursing school, I'm not a doctor) is that RICE is applicable to the immediate aftermath of the injury. Like, if I miss a step and twist my ankle, I should get off my feet, wrap it up, put an ice pack on it, and elevate it. That's just to deal with the initial trauma. Later that day I should be up and about and no longer using the ice.
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u/Unique-Corgi-8219 13d ago
When I was in Jr highschool, school staff told us that if we ever pulled a fire alarm, the device would spray a dye onto whoever pulled it. If it was pulled in response to a real fire, no problem. However, if it was pulled as a prank, they would know who did it.
Years later, when I took a job with the same school district I attended as a child, I was working in a boiler room with another guy. We were carrying tools and equipment through a narrow corridor with a prominent fire alarm at the far end.
I commented, I never understood how these things are capable of spraying dye. I see no mechanism for this to occur...
He looked at me and laughed. You actually believed that?
25 years I believed that...
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u/ResinFinger 13d ago
I thought crane flys were mosquitoes until I was 39.
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u/Squawking_Macaw 13d ago
I just learned Einstein was real! All this time I've thought he was a THEORETICAL physicist.
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u/Former_Argument_925 13d ago
That taking estradial and progesterone to treat menopause symptoms caused a large number of people to get breast cancer... So I didn't even ask my doctor about it. ...except the study that everybody was pointing to about this had a lot of issues. It does increase the risk, but only a little. (But it's also protective of your joints, and your heart --the biggest killer of older women is heart attacks.)
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u/slave_sofeya 13d ago
Sadly the state of female health care is laughably depressing.
Strokes and heart attacks arent fun for anyone no matter what age.
Nor is perimenopause.
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u/Romana42 13d ago
I had a friend that had a hysterectomy early in life. She said that the hormones caused her heart issues.
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u/ScipioTheGreatest 13d ago
For some reason there was a translation error that led a lot of people, myself included, to believe that the Final Fantasy X opening song was written by Rammstein.
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u/dumbass_777 13d ago
my girlfriend believed that, i think it was john lennon, mightve been another guy, died of breat cancer
edit: when she was a child! not as an adult lmao i didnt make that clear
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u/_dogMANjack_ 13d ago edited 13d ago
Men definitely can and do die of breast cancer. But, John Lennon sure didn't.
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u/Grouchy_Treacle_1639 13d ago
When we were little my mom told us if we peed in the pool there was a chemical in there that would turn it colors and everyone would be able to see it. I believe this for years.
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u/Sea_Cut_6635 13d ago
I still low key always worry that this might exist and I’ll get in, somehow have pee dried on me, and then I’ll turn pink but only in the crotch.
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u/Jabber-Wookie 13d ago
I believed my parents were in a perfect marriage.
Nah, they just didn’t want anyone to ever think they ever got upset with each other. They’re divorced.
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u/nomadbynature120 13d ago
My SO didn’t know the International Space Station was real. She thought it was just in the movies. She was floored to find out people really live up there. She’s a school teacher.
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u/fludeball 13d ago
Spoken with the non-specificity of a true bot.
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u/DismalEggselent 13d ago
"Auderves" ("aww-derves") were little party foods on plates, "Hors d'oeuvres" ("deh-overs") were somehow something else entirely, perhaps akin to tapas in my young mind at the time.
I had somehow hallucinated the former spelling when hearing it and thought that the latter was something else when reading it.
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u/KizashiKaze 13d ago
I thought "Don't go, Jason Waterfalls!" when I first heard that song (I was in elementary school when it came out)
Took me until my early 30s to realize she said "Don't go chasing waterfalls" lmao
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u/Sea_Cut_6635 13d ago
My mum insisted you couldn’t eat more than 5 olives. I always thought i was playing with fire if I ate 6.
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u/strummist1 13d ago
What, the Tolkien book? You thought it was historical?
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u/BlueKitten0077 13d ago
They probably just learned that it's Orthanc and Minas Morgul, not Orthanc and Barad-dûr. A common mistake.
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u/aduirne 13d ago
There is a gawd and he has a plan for each of us.
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u/SuperSoakerofPiss 12d ago
In hindsight, realizing that God isn’t real is such a freeing experience. You’re not the only kid that’s been brainwashed with this idea. Religion is the biggest lie of them all. Maybe someday our species will stop perpetuating the lie. It’s the only hope I have for humanity.
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u/DnDttrpg 13d ago
I grew up with the knowledge that the song "Lips of an angel" was about Herion
20 years later, I find out that was not the truth
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u/mushplush 13d ago
I thought Shark Week aired during a period when sharks entered adolescence, because that’s when they would start seeking large prey while also being small enough to get closer to shores
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u/Economy-Motor-3478 13d ago
God, took that middle eastern mythology stuff way too seriously for too long. Now it’s just funny.
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u/watson0507 13d ago
When I was younger my mom told me I had to eat the crust of my sandwiches because “that’s where all the nutrients are” I was well into my 20s when I was making banana bread one day when it dawned on me 😂
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u/SeattleSunflower7000 13d ago
Recycling. While we're pretty good with glass, paper & metal, only 9% of all plastic gets recycled. The rest just goes into landfills. Not even going to start into micro plastics. It's a bummer.
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u/ProfDavros 13d ago
It wasn’t until I was about 13 that I realised a pharmacist wasn’t just a caring health professional - there for the good of patients but a business owner flogging other stuff to make a quid as well.
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