being ill

When I was little, I went through a phase where I thought it was impossible to throw up if your mouth was closed. So whenever my stomach hurt, I walked around the house with my hand over my mouth.

Anon

When I was a kid I believed that a heart attack was caused by tiny grass-skirt wearing Africans inside your body throwing spears at your heart. I have no idea how I came up with this theory, but I held it tightly for years.

John

When i was like 10 or 11 i had an extreme fear of getting herpes, after seeing a picture of them at my doctors office. For some reason i was firm in my resolve that i could get herpes from toilet seats and sharing drinks, so i would never sit down until i had a good 20 layers of TP on the potty and would check myself constantly by looking at the back of my throat (for some reason i thought they were bumps at the back of my throat) Finally i became tired of my obsession and rationalized that having herpes wouldnt be that bad because "they are in the back of your throat anyway"

Sarah

The first time we visited close family friends after staying away because the kids had chicken pox, I was looking for the feathers on the floor.

HorntoadX

When i first got the chicken pots/pocks--whatever they are--my mum told me that in the morning i would turn into a chicken. i cried real bad all night and my mum felt guilty and tried to persuade me it wasn't true. In the morning when i saw i was me i smiled all day!

SilentDeath

as a child, i would sit with grandmother, she told me fanciful stories, one went like this.." When you sit too much, your ankles swell, When you sit too much, your knee caps blow, When you sit too much, cankles grow! ".. .i now cant sit for more than 5 minutes.

my ass was on elvis's lap

I used to think that I would get AIDS if I let my head get too close to the toilet when I flushed it.

Anon

If you had a mouth ulcer it's because you've been telling lies.

David Smithers

I once asked my mother how people got AIDS. She responded, "By being naughty." I was baffled trying to come up with a mechanism by which particular germs could enter my system only when I disobeyed my parents.

Swimmy

As a child I was plagued with the unfortunate, frequent occurances of cold sores. When asked by friends about what was on my lip, I would say, "Oh, it's just a coldslaw." Then I would get puzzled looks. I guess my mother's thick accent made the word sound wrong but I didn't know it.

Anon

When I was maybe 8 I used to be very scared of catching rabies.
I had read/heard that if you have rabies, you get really scared of water, and can't stand to drink it.
Sometimes, to see if I had rabies or not, I would pour myself a glass of water and see if I was scared of it.
Then I would see how much I could drink. If I could drink the whole glassfull, that meant I didn't have rabies. But if I couldn't, that meant I had rabies.
I expect that then I would tell my mum, who would give me some 'special medicine' to cure my rabies (after unsuccessfully trying to convince me that I didn't have rabies in the first place.)

dan

Growing up during the 80s scared the living shit out of me. Almost everyday, there was talk about diseases transferred through blood or sexual contact. Any girl I got close to freaked me out and when I was in a room that had blood I was afraid it somehow hopped onto me.

S.J.

i remember the first time i read about HIV and how can needles be one of the ways that transmits the virus. back then i was a bout 8 or 9 and one of my aunts had diabetes. one day she forgot to throw away her insulin needle and i felt i should pick it up and toss it in the garbage can. while i was about to do that, it accidentally pricked me. i didn't tell anyone and i was confidant i had aids and that i was dying. i was depressed for quite a while.

Hanna

when i was 8-12 i believed that i'd get ink poisoning if i got ink (pen, marker, etc..) on the inside of my wrist.. this is because i could see the veins through my skin.

Anon

My earliest memory is of when I was 4 and had gotten chicken pox. My mother tried to give me a bath and put baking powder in the water to soothe the itching. When I saw her add the baking powder to the water I was convinced that she was going to cook me in the bath water and panicked.

stephen

Whenever I had diarrhea, I thought my intestines were shooting out of my butt, so I'd hold it in as long as I could. It wasn't until I was 12 that someone said, "Don't do that!!! Your intestines aren't coming out!"

The Diarrhi

I used to believe that when the news reported that someone treated for shock, it meant they were treated for the emotion. It was a long time before I learned that medically, shock means the inability of the body to supply enough oxygen to the organs and tissue, usually to to injury or blood loss.

Bloopy