It’s funny what children will believe. It’s not that they’re not smart, it’s just that they’re relatively new to the world and how things work. That’s why it’s sometimes pretty easy to get children to believe things that sound really dumb to adults. We’re not just talking about fun things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. We’re talking about lots of random things parents make up to make life temporarily easier for them or for their children.

Sometimes parents make things up so that their children won’t feel sad, like when a pet dies. Other times, parents make things up because they think it’s easier than telling them the truth or they think the lie is somehow more appropriate than the truth. Sometimes it’s not parents or other adults who make up crazy things that kids believe. Sometimes the kids are the ones who make false assumptions about life and then believe things that are far from reality.

One Twitter user asked others to share stories of crazy things they believed when they were kids, and the answers did not disappoint. Scroll down to see some examples of dumb things people believed when they were children.

1. that the world used to be black and white which is why old photos and movies were black and white 😩😂

   — chlover (@princessgig_) September 21, 2019

2. My mom bought me from the hospital

   — Tshilidzi (@CeciliaMunyai) March 9, 2019

3. I thought toy story was real and my toys and posters would talk to each other after I left the room 🤦🏻‍♀️

   — m a n d a💛 (@mandaxxvi) March 9, 2019

4. I could shrivel up from being in the bath too long and go down the drain

   — Kaiti Klenke (@KaitiKlenke) September 21, 2019

5. That if I swallow watermelon seeds, watermelons would grow in my tummy. And that pregnant women swallowed watermelon seeds that’s why they have big tummies😭 pic.twitter.com/zmpTCS0ZcG

   — Pam🌺 (@Pamela_Mathye) March 9, 2019

6. You PAY to get a job, thats why homeless people can’t get jobs ( I was dumb )

   — hyacinth (@Maria7866138778) September 22, 2019

7. “If I don’t eat, I’ll be like an ant and people will step on me until I die.” 😱

   — Sila&Seher are the cutest! (EMANET) (@ChenClem) September 22, 2019

8. My grandpa had a well on his property, and when my mom told me I thought she meant there was a whale underneath the ground that shot up water from its blowhole for my grandpa to drink

   — Manda 🌙 (@AhManDuh_) March 9, 2019

9. I don’t think it was dumb PER SE, for a kid it makes PERFECT sense that people are IN the TV. That’s why I didn’t know anyone who grew up to be actors, because, logically, they’re small now and live in the TV.😅😅😂🤣🤣🤣👶📺👏👏👏

   — Katherine Ramdeen🌺 (@katramdeen) March 9, 2019

10. That 1 minute was longer than 10.“Mum, can i have a sandwich?”- “Give me ten minutes.”Ten minutes later: sandwich.- “In a minute.”Half an hour later…

    — The Badger’s Apprentice (@tba_tweets) March 9, 2019

11. Watching Batman returns in 1992 I was under the impression penguins were 6ft tall .. human size. You see them on TV but never in relation to something except ice.In my early 20s I saw a penguin in real life, and my world was turned up side down. 🤯😵

    — Mike Fridman (@_mfridman) March 9, 2019

12. My grandfather once told me that every person who came home from the war got a tank, and he needed me to go in the backyard and dig it up for him cause it was time to pull it out. Little did I know I was tilling the ground for him so he could grow new grass…

    — DanWithAPlan247 (@DanWithAPlan247) March 9, 2019

13. I was about 8 and my goldfish wasn’t in his bowl & my dad told me he was actually a she and at the vet getting married & having a baby fish, the next week I had two big goldfish and one small baby fish in the bowl….I never thought this out fully until I was 20 🤦🏼‍♀️😂

    — Sally 💖 (@SallyHealy) March 10, 2019

14. To have a kid, you had to write a persuasive letter to the govt. Then they sent you a seed which you ate and you birthed a child. That’s why you always had to practice persuasive writing.

    — loser homebody (@ezzedoti) March 9, 2019

15. I remember imagining everything on television to be happening in the moment. So even commercials that I had seen many times I thought were being re-enacted ad infinitum.

    — escort2theafterlife (@oceanicmaster) March 9, 2019