They say that out of the mouths of babes oft come gems.

The thoughts of children can be beautiful, pure, open, strangely insightful …and incredibly stupid.

An AskReddit thread on dumb stuff people thought as kids turned into a goldmine of twisted reasoning and childhood confusion. Here’s some highlights.

16. In some cases, this might be true

I used to think that once you finished a grade in primary school you became smarter than the teacher of that grade.

15. From Jim to Jimmothy

That I would have to change my name when I grew up.

I don’t know why, but I thought my name was suitable for a child but definitely not for an adult, and I couldn’t imagine (being) an adult with my name.

I even talked to my mother about it, saying that at some point we’d eventually have to go to court to have it changed to something more “adult-sounding”.

14. Wait, is that not the case?

That if you drink while peeing you’ll keep peeing until you stop drinking.

13. Still less disturbing than the Cats movie

When I was really young, I was convinced I was pregnant (I’m a man btw), with a baby cat named Bridget.

I went on believing it for about 5 months (that’s how long little me thought cat pregnancy lasted), and then when the baby never came, I went to my mom and asked when Bridget would be born, she finally told me that boys can’t get pregnant and humans can’t give birth to cats.

I was traumatized.

12. The richest kid in the world

That all companies with a ‘TM’ (Trademark) were owned by my family, only because those are my initials.

11. It’s not in Kansas anymore…

I was very very young and I blame wizard of oz but I believed that a tornado was just one big phenomenon that continuously happened and spun from state to state country to country.

I also live in the south so we have frequent tornado warnings so I vaguely remember a time we had two or three warnings in one week and I was scared the “single tornado” would come to our town and never go away.

10. I’m sorry, what?

I was under the impression that there were tiny rats that lived inside of my stomach and when they ran in their wheels for exercise it would make me need to pee.

9. Like a Flintstones TV

That there’s a tiny human inside the TV who executed what the remote was telling him to do.

For example, when you press the button to increase the volume, he is being hit in a specific way that let’s him know that he has to go and manually increase the volume.

8. Like a Russian nesting doll

I thought that there would be a baby inside every girl’s stomach as soon as she is born and inside that baby’s stomach too there would be a tiny baby(the cycle goes on and on)and that the baby keeps growing as we grow and after getting married the doctors will cut the stomach and take the baby out to make space for another baby.

7. I’ve gotta admit to this one too. *facepalm*

That the Underground Railroad was a literal secret underground subway style steam engine that Harriet Tubman was the conductor of.

6. Its’a me…your worst nightmare

I thought if you left a video game on then a character would come out of the tv and kill you.|

I was a bit paranoid as a small kid.

5. Parents can’t have parents

Grandparents were assigned to families.

Like, I didn’t know my Grandma was my Dad’s mom.

4. A lot of adults still think this…

Own two credit cards and use them to pay for each other for infinite money

3. One ring to bind them

My Dad lost his wedding ring in the Bay during a fishing trip.

I was absolutely inconsolable.

It took my parents quite a while to get me to calm down enough to be able to explain why I was so upset about it.

I thought it meant they were no longer married anymore. Lol.

2. So, you’re an American, then

That beyond my country was nothing.

1. This one’s longer, but worth it

We lived in the country and I was raised on Disney movies. We lived on our imaginations.

The movie ‘The Borrowers’ had just come out and we rented it on VHS. My sister and I must have watched it 20 times. We played games imagining people running around and all these fantastical things. It was great. It passed a lot of time for us.

Enter bed time. I crawl into my little bed, swirls of games in my head, and I notice a strange light in my closet that is directly across from the foot of my bed.

I gingerly crawl out and open my closet to see a small slit in the dry wall.

I press my eye up to it and see A SUN…AND TREES!

HOLY S**T, THE BORROWERS HAVE A WORLD IN MY CLOSET!

I run and get my sister. I show her. We fre*k out and run downstairs where my father is gently reading his newspaper after a long day of work. My mother is sitting there talking to him when we bust around the corner screaming about a hidden world in the closet.

My father glares at my mother. My mother tells us she will look into it and brings us back to bed and reads us another story to calm us down.

The next night there was no light. The trees were gone. I destroyed the world. I truly thought I had erased this little existence. I was a murderer…

No.

I had seen a slip of my mother’s marijuana closet farm.

My dad made her move it.

Good thing we’re all so much smarter now, huh?

What about you? Did you have any hilariously dumb thoughts as a kid?

Let us know in the comments.