around the house

When I was very young I used to wonder what the little tin door was on the back of the house. It was, of course, the entrance to the crawl space, but it bewildered me for years.
There was so much mystery contained in this strange little door . . . what could it possibly lead to? One day, my curiousity got the best of me and I opend it up to take a peek. The first thing I was in this dark area, was a couple of very old, glass soft drink bottles.
That was enough for me, I immediatly assumed that a man lived down there and I should probably not invade his property. I stay a safe distance from that little doorway until I was at least 9 years old.

Scab

When I was young, my mother told me that if I got too close the garbage men,they would throw me in the back of the truck with the trash. Don't know what she was trying to instill in me. Maybe not to talk to strangers. But to this day, I will walk accross the street if nearing a garbage truck picking up trash.

Anon

I used to believe when I was four that when my parents said,"make your bed" that they meant that I really had to make a duplicate of my bed. At first, I didn't know what to do. Then when my parents found me in my room with nails, a hammer,a saw, and wood trying to make my bed they had to explain that MAKING a bed means fixing the sheets not actually making one.

Kristen

One time we'd had something or other, and my dad asked me to put it back in the "icebox". I grew up in a more modern era and didn't know that term. I guessed it must be the freezer because the freezer was rather box-shaped, and it had ice in it(we had the kind of refrigerator most people do: with the freezer on top of the refrigerator; not the side-by-side model). Of course I wondered at the time why we would want to freeze it, but that was what my dad said, so. . .
Later my dad was looking in the REFRIGERATOR, wondering where that stuff was. He asked me where it was; I said, "I put it in the icebox, like you asked me to" and opened the FREEZER to show him. So then he had to expain archaic terminology.

A very long time ago, people used to have to buy large blocks of ice they would put in the refrigerator to keep things cool (there was no built-in cooling system in those days), so a lot of people called it the ice box.

valeda

I used to think duct tape was really called duck tape, and though it was made out of ducks, hence the name, duck tape. heh

lis

I used to believe that the dust on top of doors was poisonous.

draconid

I used to think that the toast would never pop out of the toaster if you watched it while you were waiting.

Anon

I went to stay with my Grandmother and because it was cold at night they put an electric blanket on in my bed before I went to sleep. As it was so lovely and warm I asked my Aunt if I could keep it turned on all night. She replied that if I did that I would never see my Granny again (presumably I would get electrocuted). I spent years trying to work out why it would make me go blind.

Anji Knutsen

I used to believe that the "teeth" on the piano would bite me whenever I touched it...I hated it so much that one day i scratched a huge X and a sad face on the front of my mother's grandmothers piano from the early 1900's. I don't remember what she did to me, but the scrathces are still there!

Dave

when I was a child I couldn't go to bed before having checked that there wasn't nobody under my bed.Now I still check but for spiders

melissa

Whenever my room was messy my mother would say, "This place looks like a cyclone struck it!" For years I thought there was such a thing as a "cyclone-strukkit".

Coop

one day I saw my cousin, Sam, reaching and grabbing things at the window that were invisible to me. when asked what he was doing he replied that he was "catching the sun" (he saw the dust particles floating around and beleived that it must be sun)

Anon

Our kitchen used to have this hideous wallpaper with these blotchy yellow and orange flowers. I was terrified of them; I called them "Sing-a-songs," which was my perversion of "Yosemite Sam," who I had sort of an early love/hate relationship with. My mother was not pleased when I drew all over the wall in an attempt to make it less scary.

juj

I used to believe that the word for vaccum was "sonofabitch" because my mom used to say that when carting our huge ass vaccum out of the closet.

Anon

i used to believe that when you accidentally threw something away you would never get it back (LOL!!!)

bob doodle

I used to think that the record button on a tape deck would make it blow up.(i.e: REC=Wreck) I'm pretty sure this wasn't a theory I'd come up with on my own. My dad agreeing with me may have helped to perpetuate the myth!

Ruth

I used to believe that you could hit glass with a hammer and it would turn into wood in a circle where the hammer head hit it! It was from when we were getting our house added onto.

brabby

Hasn't anyone mentioned the little people who lived in the back of the T.V. yet ???

Leigh Hawkins