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What are some things that - as a child - you were lead to believe would be a bigger deal when you grew up

Tavernade

Tavernade

Tavernade
Moderator
Sep 18, 2018
8,611
I actually saw real quicksand once! Or, at least, I was on a beach and saw a roped off area that said "quicksand" next to it.

I was told in grade school cursive would be used for the rest of my life and past HS I have only ever used it to sign things.

I thought short stories would be a thing but you have to go out of your way to look for them. I thought stepping on a nail and getting tetanus would be a more frequent thing. I also thought by now we'd have dinosaurs.

AaronMT said:
Calculators. "You won't have one in the work-place".
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"You definitely won't have them on your phone in your pocket in the work-place."
 
Garrod Ran

Garrod Ran

self-requested ban
Banned
Mar 23, 2018
16,203
I was definitely led to believe that construction equipment would be a more ever-present danger in my life.

I have yet to encounter a falling girder or a dangerous steamroller
 
I am a Bird

I am a Bird

Member
Oct 31, 2017
7,208
Probably gangs. When I was a kid everyone was acting like every west coast gang was just chomping at the bit to take control of white middle class neighborhoods on the east coast.
 
Nude_Tayne

Nude_Tayne

Member
Jan 8, 2018
3,666
earth
I imagined that as an adult I would spending a majority of my free time outside of work sitting at the kitchen table doing taxes and "paying the bills".
 
BennyWhatever

BennyWhatever

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,774
US
Stop Drop and Roll was a big deal. Good to know now, but not exactly something I've had to use. Would prefer if there was a cool pneumonic for performing CPR.
 
Princess Viola

Princess Viola

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,080
Florida
I thought there'd be people trying to pressure me to use drugs all the time as I got older.

Didn't even get a friend who offered me some weed once lol.
 
Kaiser Swayze

Kaiser Swayze

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,613
Killer Bees! Not as attention-grabbing as Murder Hornets, but things were simpler in the 1970's. The worry list was mostly nuclear war, serial killers, quicksand, and killer bees.
 
Omanisat

Omanisat

Member
Sep 25, 2018
2,392
North Bay, Canada
My elementary school teachers swore up and down we needed to know cursive writing, because when we got to highschool ALL you assignments HAD to be written in cursive, or you'd get failed on the spot!

Fast forward to highschool and all our assignments were typed up in Word and printed. Never used cursive writing since.
 
Chrome Hyena

Chrome Hyena

Member
Oct 30, 2017
8,768
Quicksand for me as well.

Scared the SHIT out of me as a kid. Also being electrocuted by the power lines. There was an old PSA where a guy puts a ladder on a power line and it shows these cheesy zaps. but it was scary as fuck as a kid.

Also witches. I was warned we had a witch on our block as a kid and if you went into her house she stole your soul.

And nude beaches. I swore it was a fantasy land filled with beautiful young 20 or 30 something women running around naked just waiting on you to show up. I also found out its mostly an old people thing lol.
 
Tavernade

Tavernade

Tavernade
Moderator
Sep 18, 2018
8,611
BennyWhatever said:
Stop Drop and Roll was a big deal. Good to know now, but not exactly something I've had to use. Would prefer if there was a cool pneumonic for performing CPR.
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My school had a CPR dummy and never actually trained anyone how to use it. But don't worry, we learned everything about every STD in health class instead! And watched that dumb anti-McDonalds movie that killed the Super Size.

Chrome Hyena said:
Quicksand for me as well.

Scared the SHIT out of me as a kid. Also being electrocuted by the power lines. There was an old PSA where a guy puts a ladder on a power line and it shows these cheesy zaps. but it was scary as fuck as a kid.

Also witches. I was warned we had a witch on our block as a kid and if you went into her house she stole your soul.

And nude beaches. I swore it was a fantasy land filled with beautiful young 20 or 30 something women running around naked just waiting on you to show up. I also found out its mostly an old people thing lol.
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Nude beaches are weird, because I swear every time they came up in a show the gag was always that it was just old people, and yet as a kid I kept expecting it to be different.
 
Burgess_101

Burgess_101

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,272
My handwriting is awful, I can't really hold a pen properly because I got weird thumbs. This was made to be such a huge deal. To the point they were talking about putting metal plates in my thumbs to stop them bending the wrong way.

Turns out it wasn't at all important because no one writes anymore. And I am actually a writer in my day job.
 
GamerJM

GamerJM

Member
Nov 8, 2017
15,599
entremet said:
"What do you wanna be when you grow up?"

Figuring out your career. Outside some very narrow fields, career changing is doable, very common, and easier today.
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Even if you can change careers it's still important. As a teenager you can choose a career path that requires a college degree costing tens of thousands of dollars and then decide to spend years pursuing that degree. And even if you decide to change jobs later, it doesn't change that whatever you initially choose is something you spend 40 hours a week doing for months on end before you decide to do something else.
 
entremet

entremet

You wouldn't toast a NES cartridge
Member
Oct 26, 2017
59,966
GamerJM said:
Even if you can change careers it's still important. As a teenager you can choose a career path that requires a college degree costing tens of thousands of dollars and then decide to spend years pursuing that degree. And even if you decide to change jobs later, it doesn't change that whatever you initially choose is something you spend 40 hours a week doing for months on end before you decide to do something else.
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I'm pro college in most cases. Just do community college and cheap state school.
 
GamerJM

GamerJM

Member
Nov 8, 2017
15,599
entremet said:
I'm pro college in most cases. Just do community college and cheap state school.
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My point isn't pro or anti college. Just that as a 16 or 17 year old planning out whether or not you should go to a public college, a private college, a community college, a trade school, or no college at all, whatever you choose does have an impact for you down the line and it is an important decision, and it's one that requires you to analyze what you want to do when you grow up. It's not "not a big deal". It's something that has the potential to financially, socially, and professionally impact the rest of your life. It's not an irreversible change or something that is necessarily permanent, but it's probably one of the most important choices in your life up until that point in time.
 
The Masked Mufti

The Masked Mufti

The Wise Ones
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
3,989
Scotland
The Illuminati. Read the conspiracy theories when I was around 12 and thought that trying to not get brainwashed by them is something that would be a big part of life going forward. The best part was reading all that garbage and thinking, "Shit! I know too much! What if they're tracking my browsing history?"
 
Mukrab

Mukrab

Member
Apr 19, 2020
7,486
Dont ever pick something up from the ground like candy even if its in the package cause it could have drugs. I mean its good advice to not pick that up from the ground even if its in the package but no one is for sure giving drugs for free.
 
nicolasacmf

nicolasacmf

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
1,515
My dumbass parents made me believe I'd get cancer from spending too much time in front of the computer lmao.
 
Shadow of the Void

Shadow of the Void

Member
Feb 9, 2018
2,621
A lot of technology-related stuff. We still haven't sent anyone else to the moon, much less Mars or beyond. Virtual reality was constantly being made out to be this huge thing that will dominate entertainment any day now (it's still around and has improved a lot, but still nowhere near becoming the norm). Also, flying cars, although I'm kinda glad that never became a thing. The 21st century ended up in a very different place tech-wise than we thought it would.

A lot of people also thought the Soviet Union would be around forever, and we were always fearful that the bombs would fall any day. This has kinda-sorta made a comeback, just with a non-communist Russia and a pseudo-communist China.
 
Jonathan Lanza

Jonathan Lanza

"I've made a Gigantic mistake"
Member
Feb 8, 2019
6,782
They told me I'd meet all my lifelong friends in university
They told me university was where life really began
They told me I'd be partying and banging em out 24/7 in university

Needless to say university is where I realized that they WEREN'T talking about socially maladjusted manchildren like I.
 
jleo

jleo

Member
Aug 12, 2021
566
My parents insisted the internet was a dark place full of predators, and they'd find me if I played any online games or joined any instant messengers/social networks.
 
Dr. Zoidberg

Dr. Zoidberg

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,207
Decapod 10
Holograms. They were everywhere in the 80s and 90s. Stores existed that sold larger nice ones like art shops. I always wanted a nice one. They were added to credit cards. They were supposed to be the future Of data storage with cubes that could hold untold amounts of solid state data.

Now nobody cares about them and it's rare to even see a real one outside of the tiny authenticity stickers. I'm still waiting on those data cubes.
 
Wubby

Wubby

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,849
Japan!
Mom forced me to take Spanish in school over Japanese since living in Southern California it's more useful. Jokes on her I've been in Japan 13 years now.
 
Hilarious_Bearious

Hilarious_Bearious

Member
Nov 4, 2017
7,348
AaronMT said:
Calculators. "You won't have one in the work-place".
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Oh wow this is one of the best. I'm a data analyst... If I told my boss I did/checked stuff in my head I would get slapped.

As a child of the late 80s/early 90s; AIDS. I was fucking terrified of AIDS when I was like 5 or 6, but knew nothing about it other than it being sexually transmitted. I thought it was a thing that could just spontaneously happen to you if you had sex without a condom, and would then spread to other people through sex. I wondered how I'd know a woman didn't have AIDS before marrying, and stressed about if I'd risk getting it so I could have kids on my own.
 
RoadDogg

RoadDogg

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,059
Definitely fire. We were told every year how to safely get out of our houses when they are on fire and what to do when I catch on fire. I've luckily never had either of those things happen, but even today my kids are being taught the same things in school.

I also was under the impression that people were going to try and force me to take drugs on a near daily basis. I was only offered drugs once in my entire life and I said "No thanks, I'm good" and they said "No problem" and we continued our non drug related conversation.
 
cinch

cinch

Chicken Chaser
Member
Feb 17, 2019
1,246
as a child of the 70s and 80s i was terrified of spontaneous combustion, and quicksand also, like i thought it was a thing you had to avoid in your daily life
 
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