around the house

I used to think that there was something called a 'sittit' relating to military equipment, because whenever my mum or daya would come into my bedroom they would say 'this room looks like a bomb sittit'. I thought the toys must have been arranged to look like a cannon or something

Claire Lawrence

My mother always told me that when we turned on a light switch and the lightbulb blew out, that I we "turned it on too hard". I was in my 20's before I learned the truth.

ferrari

When I was 6 or 7 years old, I absolutely believed that if a thermometer broke--the world would end.

Suzi

My dad once told me when i was very very young that when you left things like televisions on, you were wasting energy and shortening its life (now i know of course that he ment energy in genral and not the TV's energy, and that by "shortening its life" he actually meant it breaking, and not actually dieing) . Anyway, I naturally belived, and thought that there were little people in all the electrical things, like televisions, ovens, etc. And i thought that if the teledied, then they would die. So for a whole week, i ran around the house turning everything off, and on the last day I went to pull a plug from behind the television and I got a massive electric shock!!! I was flung accross the room, and spent a week in hospital...I never played with electricity again...

Lt Kirby

I'm 14, and up until this year I thought that at Christmas time when they said "trimming the tree" they actually meant trimming the tree with shears to make the branches more even or something. I wondered why they sang about that in songs...

Jasmine

When I was about 4, I believed that if I got out of bed between midnight and sunrise, the floor would become electrified and I would be electrocuted if my feet touched the floor. My sister, who is 8 years older, told me this. I found out years later that she only said that so I'd stay in bed and not disturb her by getting up to use the bathroom.

Marianne

When I was little I thought grocery-bought eggs were dinosaur eggs. In an effort to save the dinosaurs, I would steal eggs from the fridge and hide them under a bed and take care of them.

Anon

We used to live in this really old cavernous Victorian house in England, which got really cold in the winter. However, our parents told us to never touch the thermostat or it would cause the house to blow up. It tooks me YEARS (like till I was in the mid-20's) before I could comfortably touch the thermostat without thinking my life was in danger.

Liz

.. the knots in wood would turn into dinosaurs. I was petrified of pine cladding.

Anon

i used to believe everything had feelings and wanted to be treated exactly as what it was. a chair would be lonely, for example, if someone didn't regularly sit on it. pretty exhausting belief for a kid trying to run around and use everything!

Anon

Until I was about eight years old, I thought that moving to a different house meant you traded houses directly with another family. I learned it didn't work that way only when I curiously asked my mother one day what happens if you find the house you want, but the people who live there don't want to move to your house.

Anon

I used to believe that the only way you could obtain a pool table was by winning it on The Price is Right. Therefore, I told all of my friends my parents were on the show since we owned a pool table.

Anon

I thought that the sign for "babies can't use this toy" which depicted a frowning baby face with a line through it meant "no sad babies allowed".

Anon

when I was like 4 or so I used to believe that if I put my dirty underwear back in my drawer it would be clean the next time I took it out.

cindy lu

I used to think that since my closet was filled with clothes, that if I had one single garmet that it was called a "clo"

Natalie

When I was a child I used to believe that stand up pianos actually told jokes as well as playing music.

L MAN

I was convinced that plastic grocery bags were essentially the same as the parachutes I saw in books and on tv. So I would go to the top of the slide on my swingset and jump off with my arms through the handles like I was wearing a book bag/parachute. Somehow my landing was never really that cushioned, though. I figured that I didn't have enough time to catch air in my parachute and that I would have to jump from a higher place to really get it to work. I knew that the parachutes I heard of could be opened too late so maybe that was my problem being too close to the ground. Luckily I never did get access to the roof of my house!

Suzanne

My brother used to believe that ceiling fans were helicopters flipped upsidedown and stuck in the ceiling.

Seven

I used to think that wood stoves I read about in books were made out of wood. I even developed a theory that it was made out of very hard wood that burned at higher temperatures so it didn't catch on fire like the logs inside it.

Anon

When I was really little, my parents had our entire living room decorated in Elvis Presley memorbilia. I used to be so afraid of the eyes in all the pictures of Elvis, that my parents had to go around to the all their huge pictures and tape tissue paper over his eyes so that I wouldn't be afraid. People used to come to our house and ask "Why are Elvis' eyes covered??"

Jess