10 Things I Thought Were True When I Was A Kid

Oh, to be a kid again. Those were the days when the only questions people asked you were related to your age, height, grade, or number of teeth missing from your mouth. All of them were math questions, too. It’s amazing so many people grew up to hate math. Is that a strong positive correlation I smell?

But when you’re a kid, you’re naive. You don’t understand everything. You don’t know a lot. You come to conclusions without giving them much thought. At least I did.

When I was a kid, there were things I thought were true. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized how wrong I was about most of those things.

Insert blurb about how kids these days are technological wizards and have mastered social media before learning how to do long division. Maybe kids these days are actually smarter than we were? Nahhhhh

Here is my list of things I thought were true when I was a kid.

1. In movies and TV shows, when they had a flashback to a character’s childhood, I thought the child actor was the same person as the adult actor, and they had taken years off of filming just so the child could grow up.

I didn’t know the child actor was a completely different person. The child always had the same hair colour as the adult, how was I to know they were two different people?

FRAUD!

2. I thought actors didn’t actually kiss each other.

I assumed they put a piece of saran wrap between their mouths and kissed each other through that. Then they’d edit out the saran wrap in post-production. How smart is that, though?

I thought it was wrong for married people to kiss people that weren’t their spouse, even if they were acting. Excuse me for having morals?

3. I thought adults always wrote in cursive; kids did not. I also thought that part of knowing that you were growing up was when you transitioned full-time into the world of cursive writing.

When I got to Grade 7, the teacher told us to write our notes in cursive. This made me think that printing was for children and that I was crossing over into the grown-up world.

Thankfully, the cursive writing didn’t last long and I was back to printing my letters like the child that I was. and still am, since I don’t use cursive for anything other than my signature.

4. I thought three minutes was a really long time.

In elementary school, we had to give a speech in front of the class. It had to be between three to five minutes in length. Three minutes felt like an eternity. Five minutes felt like two eternities. Two minutes and forty three seconds felt like “long enough”, until you stopped talking and were deducted marks for being 17 seconds short.

5. I thought $10 was a weekly salary that adults earned at work.

The odd time, I would do some chores around the house and my mom would pay me a dime. Or if it was a big task, like windexing a window, I would get a quarter! I thought I was rich. So in my little brain, $10 felt like the jackpot.

Maybe this is why I’ve always thought I was meant for a different era.

Sorry, just doing some self-discovery mid-blog post. Onto the next one!

6. I thought Santa Claus had my mom’s handwriting.

The tags on my gifts from Santa always looked like they were written by my mom. But I never thought that she actually wrote them. I just figured they had the same writing. All adults have the same writing, right?

I’ve since learned that Santa and my mom draw the letter “A” differently. So no, it was not my mom’s writing on those gifts from Santa.

7. I thought kids in elementary school were really old.

When I was five-years-old, I remember playing basketball in the hallways at school. There was a little (huge) basketball net set up for the kids in senior kindergarten to play with during play time.

(Reminisce over play time for 10 seconds).

One day, little Paul stood there as a bunch of older kids walked by, stared, and made complimentary comments towards me. From my perspective, they were giants. Very old and mature.

Even as I moved up a few grades, I still thought the kids in Grade 7 and 8 were really old. They looked like adults! Some of them had hair on their legs!

8. I thought Grade 8 was going to be extremely hard.

In June, it always got really hot in the classrooms at school. So when the Grade 8’s were on their three-day field trip to “wherever”, younger grades would go occupy their classrooms because they were in the air conditioned part of the school.

And when we sat at their desks, I remember seeing a million and one things crammed inside of them. More books, papers, and supplies than a Staples store. I thought I was doomed. The books were thick. It looked like so much work.

9. I thought the race commentators for Formula One were saying “Cometry Box”.

I knew that people had accents. I didn’t know that it would cause them to say words differently than I was used to. These British commentators always referenced the “Cometry Box”. I never even second guessed it, or asked what a “Cometry Box” was.

It wasn’t until about three years ago that I realized they were actually saying “Commentary Box” – the place where they sit and do play-by-play for the race.

Yes, I was 21-years-old when I finally figured it out. Fight me.

10. I thought “Pull” was actually a third goalie in hockey video games.

Apparently, it wasn’t. I was told that every hockey team had “Pull” as a third goalie, just in case the first two got injured. So, I put “Pull” in net to give him some playing time. The other team came down the ice and shot the puck into my empty net. I screamed, “Where’s my goalie!?!? Where’s Pull!?!?”

And that’s my list. I was a naive kid, but weren’t we all?

In the comments below, share with me some things you thought were true when you were a kid! And then we’ll laugh at them together!