While some of us take longer than others, we all eventually find out that Santa Claus isn't real and that it was really your parents who were putting coins under your pillowcase, not the tooth fairy (sorry, if I've just dropped that on you). The point is that we all get there in the end, and boy do we feel silly later in life for having believed characters like that existed.
But it turns out there are a bunch of other things people thought really existed for years before they found out they weren't real. The people of Reddit have shared the most embarrassing things they used to believe in, and they are hilarious. Here are 8 of the best.
1. Acting would've seemed one of the bravest careers"When I was a kid, I thought that when someone died in a movie, that they actually died (for real). When I would watch a movie in which someone died, I would always wonder to myself, 'was this role worth dying for (especially if it was a terrible movie, or if they were just an extra)? how did the actor come to the decision that this would be their last role?' And I would feel sad for the actor that they couldn’t make movies, or be alive, anymore."
2. Terrifying"My mother used to tell my sister and me about 'tunnels' inside stores where they sent misbehaving children in an attempt to get us to behave.. she had us fooled a majority of our childhood, because when the A/C kicked on, she’d say, 'Oh, they caught another one.'"
3. No pears for 22 years!“I was having lunch with my uncle while we were on a fishing trip. There was a bowl of fruit and I grabbed the last pear – he told me 'You don’t want to eat that, you’ll get pear farts.' I put it back and he picked it up and ate it. I was about 5. For years, I refused to eat pears in any form. When I was about 27, I was visiting home for Thanksgiving when his wife brought a pear and apple pie for dessert. I refused a slice, citing pear farts, only at that moment realizing that it was all a lie and he had just wanted the last pear.”
4. Just imagine...“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.”
5. OMG the "pickle whistle"“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 that it wasn’t real.”
6. So where did all my Christmas presents to her go?“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.”
7. Same, TBH“I thought that those anti-gravity chambers that astronauts use in certain movies were real. 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 'Psh, I know, who would ever think that?' But on the inside, I had no idea that it wasn’t a real thing.”
8. Impressive indeed!“When movies show flashbacks and there are younger kids playing the characters…I thought they were the actors as kids. I was always impressed that they resumed filming after 15+ years.”
Have you got any of your own to share?