September is a time when children will be starting or returning to school. At that moment, children’s minds are filled with curiosity, inquisitiveness and imagination. They may also have some very unusual and bizarre thoughts and ideas in their young brains. This gave me the idea of sharing some of the strange and ridiculous thoughts I had as a child.
1. Where do babies come from?
The classic question every young child asks. Although I’m not sure if I ever actually asked it myself, I had an interesting idea as to where babies came from.
From a young age, I was aware women carried the baby in their tummy but I thought the woman went to the doctor to request the pregnancy and the doctor inserted the embryo in her tummy and it grew.
Then when it is time for the baby to be born, the woman goes to the hospital and the baby is delivered through a tube attached to her belly button.
I discovered the truth during my first sex education lesson at primary school and part of the lesson we had to watch a baby being delivered with the camera at her vagina – horrifying!
I think I now know why my brain got damaged at birth – my head was too big for the hole!
2. Does everyone have a father?
Like in every school, many children had married parents, parents who are couples but not married, divorced or separated parents, single parents, stepparents, adopted parents and/or a parent who sadly died.
In my case, my parents were married before I was born and as a child, before learning sex education, I thought the man my mum married was my father but if they got separated or divorced, he’d no longer be my father.
I also thought kids who only live with their mum and never knew their dad due to separation or death, literally don’t have a father. Of course, after sex ed, I realised we all have a biological father.
3. Meat is actually dead animal
As a child, I ate a lot of chicken nuggets and fish fingers and at that time, I thought words like “chicken” and “fish” were two different words – the food and the animal. But then, I can’t remember exactly when I found out, I realised what I was eating was dead chickens and fish.
Strangely, that realisation never put me off eating meat and these days I sometimes consider myself more of a carnivore as 98% of my meals contain some kind of meat. The only time I would be put off eating meat would be if I saw the animal being killed first and then made into a meal.
4. Vegetarians only eat vegetables
This is probably a common thought a lot of children have had when they first heard the word vegetarian. I think I discovered it in junior school when we had the school dinner menu and there was a red option, a blue option and a green option and the green option was the vegetarian option. I remember a girl in my class who was a vegetarian and she would pick that option every day.
I think it was at that point, I learnt a bit more about vegetarians and that they do not eat meat. I think this also links to my previous revelation that meat is dead animal.
5. The weather presenter decides the weather
Another ridiculous thought I had as a child was that the weather presenter on the news actually decides what weather we’re going to have that day. I used to think that there was a legal requirement as to how much sun and how much rain we should have in the UK.
So when the weather forecast is on, the weather presenter changes the icons on the screen to decide what weather they prefer we have that day.
Did you ever have any unusual, bizarre, strange and ridiculous thoughts as a child? Let us know in the comments box or on social media.
