What Did You Believe as a Kid That Seems Ridiculous Now?

What’s something you used to believe as a kid that seems ridiculous now?

Somewhere in your head is a small museum of nonsense you carried as a child and held with total confidence. The moon liked you. Gum lasted seven years. Let’s take a tour of the exhibits.

This post invites readers to:

• Laugh at their childhood misconceptions.
• Reflect on their present assumptions.
• Remain teachable throughout life.

Things I Used to Believe as a Kid

(That Are Frankly Embarrassing Now)

 

Childhood is the only period of life where you can hold a completely deranged theory about how the world works and nobody asks you for evidence. You just know things. The moon is following the car. The bathroom drain wants you. Adults are in full command of their lives. You believe all of it with the serene confidence of someone who has never once been wrong, because at that age, who could prove otherwise?

Then you grow up, the spell breaks one belief at a time, and you are left holding a small museum of nonsense. Here are a few exhibits from mine — most of which, I suspect, are sitting in your collection too.

1. The moon was personally following me

Every car journey at night, the moon kept pace with us. Other cars fell behind. Houses slid past. But that moon? Loyal. Devoted. Clearly it had chosen me and was seeing me safely home. It never occurred to me that something 384,000 kilometres away might appear stationary to literally everyone, simultaneously, including the kid in the car going the opposite direction who also thought it was his.

2. Swallowed chewing gum stayed in my stomach for seven years

This was delivered with such authority by older children that I treated every accidental swallow as the start of a seven-year sentence. I genuinely kept a mental ledger. I assumed that somewhere inside me was an ever-growing, slowly compacting brick of gum, like a landfill with a heartbeat. Nobody explained digestion. Why would they? The myth was far more fun.

3. Adults knew exactly what they were doing

This is the big one. The foundational delusion. I believed that somewhere around a certain birthday, a switch flipped and you simply understood things — taxes, small talk, how much rice to cook, what the noise in the car meant. I have now comfortably passed every age I once considered impossibly wise, and I can report that the switch does not exist. We are all improvising. The adults were improvising too. They were just better at the face.

4. If I couldn’t see you, you couldn’t see me

A classic of the genre. Hands over eyes, and I had achieved total invisibility. Hide-and-seek strategy consisted of standing in the middle of the room with my face covered, deeply confident I had outwitted everyone. The logic was airtight: my visual experience was clearly the only one being rendered. Everybody else was an NPC.

5. Quicksand would be a major recurring problem in adult life

Cartoons and films promised me that quicksand, lava, and falling pianos would be frequent obstacles. I budgeted significant mental energy preparing for these. To date I have encountered exactly zero quicksand. Meanwhile nobody warned me about expense receipts, hold music, or the precise emotional weight of a ‘we need to talk’ text. The threat assessment was wildly off.

6. The fridge light was hiding something

There was a tiny, persistent suspicion that the fridge light didsomething when the door was shut — that a small drama unfolded in the dark and went still the instant I opened it. I never caught it. I tried the fast-open. I tried closing it slowly to peek. The fridge always won. Honestly, I’m still not one hundred percent convinced.

The exhibit closes

Looking back, the funny thing isn’t that I believed these. It’s the certainty. I wasn’t tentatively wondering whether the moon liked me — I was sure. And that’s the part that ages you, gently, when you notice it: the realisation that conviction has never once been a reliable measure of being right.

Which is a slightly worrying thought, because it means that somewhere in my head right now is a belief just as ridiculous as the seven-year gum theory — one I hold with total confidence and won’t be embarrassed about until I’m much older. I just don’t know which one it is yet.

Probably the one about the fridge.

 

What did you believe as a kid that makes you laugh now? Tell me yours — I’ll add it to the museum.

If small reflections like this one brighten your day, consider joining the Rise & Inspire family. One thoughtful read lands in your inbox at a time, with no noise and no pressure, just a quiet moment worth keeping.

Written in response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 27 June 2026

Johnbritto Kurusumuthu

Founder 

RISE & INSPIRE

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