We all have gaps. There's so much to do, and know, and see, in this big world of ours, and no one can get it all in. You know your gaps. Maybe you've never seen The Godfather, or you never actually learned how to drive stick shift. You go through life thinking "I'll get to it someday" and just hope it never comes up until then.

But for some people, it's even worse than not seeing a classic film or having what some might consider an essential skill. Some people believe in things that just aren't real. That's not some cheap shot at religion, what we're talking about is the equivalent of making it to adulthood and still believing in the Tooth Fairy.

Whether a white lie from mom or dad really stuck, or you just never thought to question something you assumed as a child, these people came together and confessed the things they thought were real for way too long, only to find out these things don't actually exist.

Prepare to have your mind blown.

Photo by Dima Valkov from Pexels

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68. Moo-ve Over

Cow tipping. Yeah, any farm kid who has ever been in a cow pasture late at night can tell you that as cows are VERY observant and will react to your presence quickly and alertly if they don't know you - they ARE prey animals that herd for protection. Even it they were your cows, hand-fed by you since birth, they would not just stand there while you run into them at full speed. And heaven help you if there is a bull in the pasture.

source: grew up on a farm, spent plenty of late-night walks through the pasture being stared at (and moo-ed at) by herds of nervous bovine.

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67. People Make Mistakes

Pens with white-out on the back.

When somebody has an obvious but good idea, people say, "It's like putting erasers on pencils!" But, as far as I can tell, nobody has ever done that with pens, even though more people use pens, and the lack of an eraser on them is the biggest complaint people have about using them.

Seriously, just put a brush on the back and attach a cap that has a white-out dispensing pad on it.

How does this not exist. It's literally exactly like putting erasers on pencils.

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66. If Only Students Knew This...

The often mentioned "permanent record" that teachers would threaten me with. "You don't want this on your permanent record, so just tell us who was in on this with you." Such nonsense.

Pixabay

65. How's Your Aunt?

My Aunt Carol.

For years as a child my parents took phone calls from my Aunt Carol, received packages from her, and would go to the office to write her letters. I heard about her so much I formed an imaginary picture of this woman in my mind -- the way she looked, talked, walked, etc.

Turns out "Aunt Carol" was parent-code for weed. I have no Aunt Carol.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

64. That's What They Want You To Think

I heard about "chemtrails" being a thing when I was very young but I didn't hear about it in terms of being a conspiracy theory. I thought they were traces of exhaust of some kind left by planes and I never thought twice about it. Then I saw a long one a few years ago and said to check out that chemtrail and my buddy started arguing about how it's all a rumor and I had no idea why we were arguing. Feel like an idiot now but it was one of those things you thought you learned about a long time ago and accepted it.

Pixabay

63. Pretty Sure This Exists

A long form version of the book The Princess Bride. To anyone who has not read it, the book is filled with references to this original, tolkien-esque reference book that the author shaved down into the romantic short novel. I was so excited to finally be able to read it as I got older. I would re read it, and tell myself, "next time, I'll be able to read all the thousands of pages of the original, I just know it." My sister has always been a book lover, so one day I asked her if shed ever read it and where I could find a copy. I was a month shy of my 18th birthday, but I felt the disappointment of a child that day.

Pixabay

62. Turning Lemons Into Computers

When I was around 8 years old, the big candy colored iMac's were still considered trendy (I still have mine 15 years later), I was convinced that you could obtain a secret color called "Lemon." How did you obtain a lemon iMac you might ask? I actually sent a lemon in an envelope to the apple Headquarters with a letter asking about the secret iMac color. A few weeks later I got a response from apple, Lemon iMacs did not exist at all, the only colors were Indigo, Ruby, Graphite, Sage, and Snow (which I ended up buying).

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61. They Haven't Evolved That Far

Spicy tuna. It never occurred to me that it was tuna and sriracha. For whatever reason the idea that popped into my head was that there was a species of tuna swimming around out there that was naturally spicy. I never put more than 3 seconds of thought into it and so that was the half-witted assumption that stayed.

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60. The Claw

Throat claws. When I was but a wee runt, my father told me when I ate anything, a claw travels up my throat to get the food and drags it down to my stomach. That was so amazing to me, I decided to impress my first grade teacher with this grown up "advanced" information. I even argued with her about it because my father was NEVER wrong. I tried eating a ramen noodle attached to sewing thread to catch the claw and show my teacher. After a near disaster, my father confessed he fibbed. I wasn't even mad at my dad. I was mad at mother nature for not really making throat claws for us.

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59. Not Much Of A Stretch

We were boat people from Vietnam and when we came to the States, we lived in West Chester, Pennsylvania next to the Amish. I started school in the fall and didn't know a lot of English and we were learning about the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. I thought the Amish were the Pilgrims we were reading about. After that we moved to southern CA and it was an embarrassing amount of years before I learned that Pilgrims don't exist anymore.

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58. Everyone Knows This

Someone told me that you could dig to China and the people there were really tiny, like worry-doll size. My sister and I were so excited at the prospect of meeting these tiny Chinese people, I remember spending an afternoon digging this giant hole in the backyard (which was probably only two feet deep) expecting to see some at any point. We had no concept of how large the world was at that age and kept thinking "any time now...."

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57. Maybe Someday

I wanted to be a ninja when I was kid. If you were a kid in the late 80s early 90s, you practiced your awesome karate skills on furniture and siblings. I sharpened my abilities for years hoping one day to join an elite ninja clan. The day I realized there are no more real ninjas I cried. Then my boss told me to get back to work.

56. Chicken Or Beef?

I believed that chicken and beef burgers are the same burgers, but cooked at different temps.

Uses to tell the waiters/waitresses "I'll have my burgers cooked at beef temperature" when ordering food as a kid as if I were suave. I always got weird looks or laughs from them with them replying "How cute of you! So the Hamburger should be with or without cheese, honey?"

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55. A Tree In Its Own Class

Australian Money Trees. My dad always used that tired old phrase, "Money doesn't grow on trees!" When I was a kid, but he always added, "Except in Australia, of course." I was a well-read kid and knew Austrasia had a lot of...interesting flora and fauna. I just took for granted that the Australian Money Tree was one of them.

Pixabay

54. We Would Be Upset Too

I planted a popcorn tree once when I was little. My mother told me that popcorn kernels where seeds and if planted, would grow a popcorn bearing tree.

I watered this thing for WEEKS. They would go outside and get progressively larger sticks and stick them in the dirt while I was at school.

Eventually this thing grew kernels of it's own which eventually 'popped' and they glued a bunch of popped popcorn to this stick they found in the garden... I was so upset when I found out it was just my parents messing with me... God I can't wait to have kids...

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53. The Jackalope Legend Lives On

My uncle is from Alberta, Canada. As a child, I always saw Alberta as "The Wild West" as my parents always told me my uncle lived in the west (being from Ontario, this was true).

So, my uncle being the jokester that he is, made me believe for the longest time that he was the sheriff of a western town out in the west, and went as far to make sure that he was wearing a cowboy hat and chaps when he arrived for a visit.

One time, he brought me an antler shed, just a small 3 point one he found in the bush. When he gave it to me, he told me that it was from a Jackalope back in Alberta. I was so excited by this awesome gift he had given me

Boy did I feel stupid when I proudly showed my grade 4 class my Jackalope Antler for show and tell.

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52. The Technical Term Is 'Bologna'

I thought that the phrase "they can't make end's meet" was referring to a type of meat called "ends meat." As in, poor people who were so poor they couldn't even scrape up enough money to cook ends meat (which I figured was the worst cut of meat). It wasn't until I was 26 that I realized that ends meat isn't a thing.

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51. Never Heard Of Him

When I was little my dad would always talk about "Whatchamacallhim" and I thought that was a real person until I was about 13.

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50. Now Where Could That Idea Come From...

When I was little, I thought the USA was the only country that had freedom, where all the citizens were free. I thought in every single other country, people were constantly controlled by their government and had no freedom. Actually, I'm not sure exactly what I thought other countries were like. But all I thought was that the USA was the only country where everybody was "free."

'Murica.

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49. Grease Is The Word

I thought there was really such a thing as elbow grease. When I wore my soccer cleats inside for 17th time, scuffed the floors for the 17th time, my mom god mad for the 17th time, and made me clean it up.

"HOW?" cried jerk 11-year-old me. "With ELBOW GREASE!" was her exasperated reply.

I searched under all the counters, in every cabinet, all over my dad's workshop and came up empty. Mom found me watching Punky Brewster (probably with my cleats still on). I told her I couldn't find her magical miracle solvent. I didn't get in trouble for that, because I honestly didn't know it wasn't something literal, like Turtle Wax. I did, however, have to reorganize my dad's workshop area. Because I tore that place up.

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48. I've Got A Golden Ticket

When I was four or five, I saw Willie Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, so when I saw the "Willie Wonka" Candy in a store, I assumed the place was real, and that somewhere out there a bunch of little orange men were making candy and taking boats across rivers of chocolate.

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47. Wanna Buy My Air Guitar

Air-guitars. When I was little, I thought an air-guitar was a variety of guitar that employed the flow of air to create it's sound. Not the craziest idea, right? I mean, many instruments use air-flow to generate their notes. Now I know that an air-guitar is merely nothing. Nothing at all.

Wikimedia

46. All Of The Lights

Unbeknownst to me, my wife's father told her when she was 8 that it's some guys job to work traffic lights at intersections. Like, he flips the switch to turn the light to green or whatever. On our third date, we were stopped at a traffic light and she began flipping off the traffic light and calling someone a jerk. When I asked who she was talking to she said, "The moron who works this light! He's such a mean person! He always makes me wait here so long when there's no one coming. So he's either too stupid to know how traffic works and needs another or he's just hateful."

It was a difficult conversation for a fledgling relationship.

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45. Men Don't Like Dairy

I thought only girls liked cheese and boys didn't for a very long time -- based on the preferences of my family.

I worked at McDonald's at 13 and spent a year putting girl toys in cheeseburger happy meals, and boy toys in hamburger happy meals. I only ever asked "Girl or Boy?" If they ordered chicken nuggets.

Married a guy who hates cheese, confirms my theory.

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44. I'll Never Let Go

All throughout my childhood Titanic was my favorite movie. Going off of the common knowledge that the Titanic was a real ship, my prepubescent self assumed that the whole story was real. I still remember the day my mom broke the news to me, it was like telling a child Santa doesn't exist.

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43. Journey To The Center Of The Yard

Someone told me that you could dig to China and the people there were really tiny, like worry-doll size. My sister and I were so excited at the prospect of meeting these tiny Chinese people, I remember spending an afternoon digging this giant hole in the backyard (which was probably only two feet deep) expecting to see some at any point. We had no concept of how large the world was at that age and kept thinking "any time now..."

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42. Apprentice Squirrel

I was 100% sure chipmunks were baby squirrels until 10th grade. It was common knowledge to me that chipmunks just lost their stripes as they made their way into squirrelhood.

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41. Gonna Assume That Was A Dream

When I was a child, I thought everyone had an onion in their butt. I swear I have a vivid memory of my mother pulling an onion out of my butt, looking at it and then putting it back. I thought butt onions were just a normal part of anatomy. I realized over time that this made no sense but I still wonder where that memory came from.

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40. The Fall Of The Roman Empire, For Example

My childhood was spent in Southern California. I thought that seasons, like winter with snow and fall with piles of leaves, were a thing of the past. I saw seasons in old black and white movies but never experienced them for myself. I was blown away when I discovered that people in other places experience seasons even in modern times!

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39. You Should Have Let Him Believe That

About two or three months into our relationship, my boyfriend told me that when he was younger he thought people had a word limit. He wouldn't speak too quickly or frequently for fear of running out of words for the rest of his life. It was one of the most precious things he ever told me and I still remember it two years later.

Pixabay

38. Such A Primitive Country

Until the tenth grade, I seriously thought that you called people from the Netherlands "Neanderthals". Apparently not... Sorry, Dutch people.

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37. That Would Be Pretty Cool

As a kid I remember my mom referring to the hospital as the emergency room. I thought that the emergency room was an actual room in my house that my family would go to if something bad happened. Like if there was a fire my mom would take a book off of a bookcase, it would reveal a secret room, and we would all go into this little safe room.

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36. Thanks, Creationists

I was raised in a very strict, very Christian household. I went to a church-run school that housed all grades (and my dad, the local preacher, was principal) until 3rd grade. Even then, in public school in the area, things were very skewed science wise. It wasn't until I went to college and met some new friends that I learned it was silly to think that man and dinosaurs lived together. I still don't know how I reconciled my belief that man must have just hid in caves all the time to avoid the giant dinosaurs, with the stories of civilization I was learning from the Bible.

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35. Yikes

For some weird reason, up until I was 13, I thought unicorns were real and existed. Throughout my childhood, I only saw drawings and illustrations of them in books but never questioned why I didn't see a real-life photo of a unicorn. Didn't think anything of it.

At 13, I went on a school trip to the zoo and we had a tour guide showing us around. When he asked if we had any questions, I raised my hand and loudly asked (in front of parents and teachers as well) ,"Where are the unicorns? I haven't seen one yet." Everyone was confused, and teachers thought I was joking.

Tour guy replied, "We don't have unicorns because they don't exist." I argued with him that they did but everyone said they didn't.

That whole week, I did my research and asked family. My life was turned upside down when it was confirmed that they actually didn't exist. Biggest brain spin ever.

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34. The Burger Tree

When I was about 7 or so I was convinced that if I planted sesame seeds, I would grow hamburgers. The next morning, I went out and there was a big stick with branches in the ground and about 4 or 5 (still wrapped) Burger King hamburgers tied to it. The wrapping kind of gave it away, but I was glad to have my own hamburgers that my sister didn't get to share because (to quote my Mom), "she didn't do all the gardening work."

In other news, my parents were awesome.

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33. Who Invented Red?

I thought when I watched black and white films that everything back then was black and white, and colour had to be invented.

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32. Stop Clowning Around

When I was little, I thought there were real clowns. As in, I knew there were people who dressed up as clowns, like my grandparents for instance, but then I thought there were also actual clown beings. I wasn't afraid of the regular people who just dressed up as clowns, but I was afraid of the "real clowns." Does this even make sense?

Bloody Disgusting

31. Isn't That A Pizza Topping?

This didn't happen to me, but a guy I work with once told me his friend thought a pepperoni was its own animal up until he was 20. A four-legged creature called a pepperoni...

Pixabay

30. Did Someone Say "Yams"?

I thought yams were animals. More specifically, a crossbreed between a Yak and a Ram. That sounded correct in my mind until my 10th grade honors English teacher told me otherwise.

Wikipedia

29. The Where Do They Come From?

When I was little, my grandmother had a little houseplant, and she would put marshmallows on the ends of the branches that we would pick and eat when we visited. When we left, she would put mini marshmallows where we had picked the big ones and told us we had to wait for those ones to grow back. So until I was a lot older I thought that there were marshmallow trees!

Pixabay

28. Stay Grounded

I thought that those anti-gravity chambers that astronauts use in certain movies were real. It wasn't until one day in a science class we were talking about gravity and the teacher said something along the lines of "there are actually people that think you can just turn off gravity using a machine like in the movies." Everyone else was just like "wow there are some dumb people out there." On the outside, I was saying "I know right, who would ever think that?" But on the inside, I had no idea that it wasn't a real thing.

Cinemablography

27. Run Kitty, Run

When I was a kid, I thought it was an extremely common thing that dogs would eat cats. I used to think if a dog saw a cat, they immediately saw food and ate them.

Pixabay

26. Underground Railway Is Neither

When I was learning American history in grade school, I thought there was an entire railroad system under the Earth's surface that Harriet Tubman built to smuggle slaves across the country.

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25. Not Very Nice, Mom

My mom used to tell me that the ice cream van only played music when it had run out of ice cream.

I believed it until last year.

Pixabay

24. Is Anyone Else Confused By This?

Lucky Birthdays.

It's the birthday when your age is the same number as the date of your birthday. It's meant to be an extra special birthday. So mine was when I was eight, as my birthday is the 8th of November.

At university, I exclaimed how I was jealous that my brother was celebrating his at the age of 27 and how I didn't remember mine because I was so young. Everyone looked at me like I was an idiot... and that's when I discovered that my parents lied to 8-year-old me to make me feel special.

Pixabay

23. It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's A Flying Whale!

After seeing Fantasia 2000 as a little kid, I thought that whales could fly for the longest time. Why else would people go whale watching? You can't see them underwater!

I was more than a little disappointed to find out I was wrong.

Art Station

22. If Only This Was Real

A French-to-the-English alphabet. I seriously thought that you could convert them letter-for-letter, like some sort of cipher.

How I thought this, I don't know, especially seeing as how my grandparents and my mom spoke Italian to each other regularly and I knew that didn't have a letter-for-letter correlation.

Pixabay

21. Innocent Evangelical Mistake

My friend actually thought that women and men had a different number of ribs because Eve was crafted from Adam's rib.

He thought that was the way they identified the gender of skeletons. He seemed genuinely gobsmacked when we told him.

Funny Or Die

20. Robots Are Real, Aren't They?

Robots that can talk to you.

When I first learned about robots as a kid, I thought the robots that could recognize you and talk to you already existed. Since I learned that computers can calculate things in seconds that would take human months, this seemed so easy in comparison. Many years later I learned the true complexity of such things and the fact that they don't exist even today.

Pixabay

19. Happy Halloween

Pop-up pumpkins. So one year, my dad had bought my brother and I a bag of pumpkin seeds to plant. As it got closer to Halloween, my little brother and I got more excited about growing our own pumpkins. It was literally the day before Halloween that my dad had us plant the seeds. Now me, being at least fairly smart for my age, began to wonder how pumpkins would grow overnight. Dad said that they were special, pop-up pumpkin seeds. That's all the explanation I needed.

The next day, sure enough, there were pumpkins half-way out of the ground where we planted our seeds.

I had to be close to nine or 10th grade when I finally realized that they were just pumpkins my dad got from the store and buried part of the way.

Pixabay

18. We've All Been Doing It Wrong

This is actually a pretty recent thing. Around 10 years ago when I started to study for an engineering degree I was under the assumption that we had a good way to turn heat straight to electricity. For some reason, I was under the assumption that you use the heat to build up electricity by cooling and re-heating a substance. We're still using turbines and steam. There's a step between the transfer of energy still existing that I thought wouldn't be there.

Peltier cooler elements do the same thing, but they're not efficient enough for most people to care.

Pixabay

17. Dorothy Goes To McDonald's

Long, long ago (probably mid-70s) I watched The Wizard of Oz on television.

After the very last scene, they transitioned to a McDonald's commercial in a black and white room that looked just like Dorothy's room in the movie. They were cross-promoting meals (did Happy Meals exist back then?) that came with hand puppets of the movie's characters.

For over a decade after that, I thought that The Wizard of Oz ended with a puppet scene. Whenever I watched the movie and it wasn't shown, I got mad at the station for cutting the last scene from the movie.

Sadly, I was actually an adult before I thought back on it all and realized what had really happened.

Austin Chronicle

16. Is This True, Captain Crunch?

When I was younger, I had myself absolutely convinced that Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch used to come with a small jar of peanut butter.

It was like any other food that came with a topping or sauce packet. There's even a picture of a peanut butter jar on the front of the box!

So I would keep asking my mom where the peanut butter was. I would keep telling her it used to come with peanut butter, and that's how I liked it. So my mom gave in and got out the regular peanut butter and let me put it on my Peanut Butter Crunch.

I still eat it like this today, and it's so worth it.

Pixabay

15. Seems Like A Pretty Good Idea

The U.S. Navy wears a blue camo uniform. So I had always been told it had a chemical to turn the uniform orange when someone went overboard... You know, for visibility. Makes total sense. This doesn't exist. They're just harder to see in the water.

Pexels

14. This Should Be Real

As a kid in the 80's, my mother convinced all five of us kids that cars don't start unless all of the seat belts are buckled. I thought this was a real safety feature.

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13. Date Night Takes An Unexpected Turn

For all my life as a child, I believed in a place called Fred's Pickle Warehouse. Every time my parents went on what I now know was a date, my dad would say they went to Fred's Pickle Warehouse and the open barrels of pickles were too dangerous for children. He kept up the ruse for years and even brought back a pickle whistle one time. He told me when I was 15 it wasn't real.

Amazon

12. Sounds Like Gringotts To Me

I used to think that everyone who had a bank account literally had like a pigeon hole with their money in it that they had deposited. And when someone wanted to take money out, the teller would take it from the pile of cash they had lodged over the years.

It was a sad day finding out this wasn't the way it is.

Pinterest

11. France Is Bacon

When I was young, my father said to me: "Knowledge is power... Francis Bacon."

I understood it as "Knowledge is power, France is bacon."

For more than a decade, I wondered over the meaning of the second part and what was the surreal linkage between the two? If I said the quote to someone, "Knowledge is power, France is bacon" they nodded knowingly. Or someone might say, "Knowledge is power" and I'd finish the quote "France is bacon" and they wouldn't look at me like I'd said something very odd but thoughtfully agree. I did ask a teacher what did "Knowledge is power, France is bacon" meant and got a full 10-minute explanation of the knowledge is power bit but nothing on "France is bacon." When I prompted further explanation by saying "France is bacon?" in a questioning tone, I just got a "Yes." At 12, I didn't have the confidence to press it further. I just accepted it as something I'd never understand.

It wasn't until years later I saw it written down that the penny dropped.

Biography

10. Beware, Latin Is Afoot

The philosopher/historian Ibid.

I found myself quoting Ibid a lot in one particular essay as the reference part of my textbook (which was contained at the back of the text and referred to by the footnotes when someone such as Socrates etc. was referenced) showed his name against many of the quotes and facts in the text.

Being a straight-A student, the teacher pulled me aside when giving back my essay to explain Ibid was a Latin word and not actually a person. Shame as Ibid seemed to know so much about so many things. I, however, wasn't marked down for it somehow.

This was trumped later in life when in 2nd-year law school a fellow student presented to the class quoting "Justice Incurium" for many of her points on a case, after continually seeing "per incurium" written in the court judgment. You can imagine the delight the cocky law tutor had in correcting her. He referred to her as Incurium for the remainder of the semester.

Pixabay

9. Wait, Superman Isn't Real?

When I was little, we had a rock collection. My older brother told me the green sand glass was kryptonite. I kept that rock safe for years thinking if Superman ever showed up angry about something then he couldn't hurt me. One day in high school biology, we were talking about rare stones. I said I had kryptonite. Everyone laughed. The truth hurts.

Porapak Apichodilok on Pexels

8. Robots, Horses, Who Knows?

In the reverse, I once convinced my girlfriend that giraffes were actually just robots. I had to explain that the mechanics of a neck that long was physically impossible, and the idea of a giraffe was first invented in a children's novel as a demonic horse creature. Then the animal took a cultural turn and people liked them so much that they made robots that looked like them and put them in zoos.

We broke up for unrelated reasons.

Pixabay

7. Send In The Bears

The Russian bear calvary. I was a very bookish child who read constantly, and was at any given time in the middle of a number of books ranging over a variety of subjects. Apparently, I was at one point reading a steam punk novel and a book about WWI concurrently, and the two things fused together in my mind.

This did not come up until many years later, in a history class taught by a notoriously tough teacher. I was one of the few people getting an A, and was therefore one of the teacher's favorites. One day, however, he was describing a battle that happened during WWI in which the Russians lost fairly badly, and I asked him why they didn't just mobilize the bear calvary. He, of course proceeded to look at me like I'd lost my mind.

Pixabay

6. Uh... It's Tradition

My grandfather convinced me as a wee child that a "Yule" was actually a small, fur-covered, water-dwelling rodent and relative to the beaver and otter. This was a answer to my question about the song "Deck the Halls," when I asked what a Yule was from the phrase "See the blazing Yule before us."

The problem was that I didn't give my grandfather context, so I grew up thinking that it was a holiday tradition to set one of these creatures on fire, or cook it as a meal or something. I was certifiably horrified of torturing one of these creatures for years.

It was explained to me much later that a Yule referred to a log burned in the fireplace. I've been relieved ever since.

That said, I kept up the tradition of the flaming rodent with my younger siblings, since my grandfather passed before they were old enough to speak.

I know he'd have wanted it that way...

Photo by Juan Pablo Serrano Arenas from Pexels

5. Mind. Blown.

The magic chemical they put in pools that turns the water purple when you pee in it.

A few people insist it's real. It's not. If you were a lifeguard and saw a color changing thing because they were testing minute amounts of water to make sure the pH and chemical quantities were appropriate for safe swimming. You would need so much indicator in a pool that's tens of thousands of gallons full of volume that it could make the water unsafe for swimming.

Think for a second - Urea is the distinguishable component of pee (it's what you're getting rid of) that they test for, but urea (and urobilin) is also present in your sweat.

If this existed, then there would be tales of pools - public or otherwise - where all the swimmers swam in a pool with a faint green/red/yellow/purple/blue dye because they jumped into a pool with sweat on them. Even if no one peed, there would be a faint dye color.

Also when do you sweat? On hot days. When do you swim? ON HOT DAYS.

Pixabay

4. Childhood Was A Lie

The Brontosaurus. After watching The Land Before Time when I was a little kid I thought Little Foot and his kin were the bestest coolest dinos around - especially the brontosaurus! Then I read an article a couple of years ago saying the bronto never existed.

There are plenty of dinosaurs that did exist that are basically the exact same thing as the Brontosaurus. But yeah, the Brontosaurus is basically the scientific equivalent of putting a dog skull on a cat skeleton and calling it a new species.

Had to explain this once to an older gentleman while I was working at a museum. There was a sign right next to him in the exhibit that detailed the whole thing. He still looked at me like I was some kind of alien.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

3. Napoleon Had What Now?

I was a very inquisitive child always asking my mom questions. It drove her nuts. One day I asked her why Napoleon always had his arm in his shirt in all his pictures - I don't know why I asked this? I guess I was learning about him maybe? Anyway, she'd had it and had started making up answers to my questions which I didn't know at this point. So, and who knows where this came from, she told me that he had a hormone disorder and was growing breasts and that the hand was always in is shirt so he could hide his growing breasts - and he only had one testicle. I think that's how the hormone disorder came about...

...anyway, flash forward to 10th Grade and I'm in World History class and my teacher actually brings up the reason he has his arm in his shirt/jacket all the time. She said it had to do with a military stance or something and I raised my hand and said no it didn't and proceeded to tell the class that it was a hormone disorder.

I could see the color drain from my teacher's face as she looked at me like what are you doing. As I said it, I realized how ridiculous it sounded and that it wasn't true. But it was too late. I was kicked out of class that day.

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2. Once Upon A Time In Dubbo...

Ever heard of a Fuggout? No? Let me tell you sheilas about my Dad’s fuggout.

I grew up in a town called Dubbo, in outback Australia. Dubbo, eh? Have you tried the cinnamon challenge? That’s what breathing air is like on a hot summers day in Dubbo. Like sucking down a dusty sack of spicy powder.

Growing up, there was not much to do. My family leaved in a pretty poor neighbourhood and us kids spent most of the time poking sticks at snakes and peeing in the dam.

Anyway, I came home one scorcher of a sunday arvo, probably after trapping some kind of small marsupial, and heard my parents yelling upstairs. Belting their bloody guts out, they were.

Some kind of dangerous snake, I assumed, or perhaps a drop bear has climbed through the window. Bloody low-hanging branches.

So being the little kipper I am, I run upstairs, burst through the door and whip out my boomerang, ready to chuck shit. My mum seemed to be in heaps of pain, practically doubled over, panting, red-faced I could’ve sworn she was about to boot any second. That’s when Dad needed to use the Fuggout. He yelled at my to go and get it, but I was pretty young, and I’d never even heard of a fuggout.

“Righto, then,” I quipped, and racked off to the garage to find it. I searched for ages, but couldn’t find anything labeled fuggout. I looked through the spider pit, the koala cage, even the snake closet – but nothing. I asked my brother Trev if he knew where it was, but he didn’t know what I was talking about – stupid durry muncher. I had to tell Dad we were out of Fuggout. I didgeri-diddle my way back upstairs, slamming a couple of bevans on the way. He opens the door naked, redder than a dog’s tongue. Didgeri-what now?

I told you boy, get the FUGGOUT!

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1. The Fourth Dimension

Time. I was under the impression that time is tangible, real, yet it is only an idea. It never ceases to baffle me the characteristics of this concept. For everyone has a set amount of time, yet people always ask for more. But it doesn't matter because nobody on earth can trade it away or receive more than they already have. Some people have more than others, and treat it with carelessness. Others know they have less, and therefore treat it more valuable. Everyone has said at least once they've run out of it, but it is essentially limitless until you are told it is not. There can be a certain amount of it, and eventually it has to run out. However, most seem to ignore this fact and instead persist as though it is limitless by nature. Time runs our lives. Time runs our work schedule each day, our family moments that are most precious, and our memories that we choose to deny or the ones we choose to hold. Time runs the moment you've talked to your son about what happened to his mother, the memory you have of your very first kiss inside your parents car when you first got your permit, or all the records of childhood card games and laughing with your friends. It reminds you of the moment you didn't gain your father's approval over twenty years ago or yelled at your mother decades back before she passed away. We cry over it when it is over, yet still it persists. We laugh when it proves us foolish or when it teaches us something we did not know. We capture it when it is precious, and push it away when it is not. We look back on it, we look forward to it, yet it never truly moves position. The only thing that changes is our perspective and the way we view time, time itself is continuous and unchanging. It exists because we want it to exist, and it doesn't because we cannot bear to live without it.

Photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels