eating

I used to think that drink went down one hole, food went down another. How else could they come out of seperate holes!!!!!?

30 something woman

When I would choke on something I ate my grandmother told me that it went down the wrong tube. For example, if it was Wednesday she told me that it went down Tuesday's tube. What a shocker in 6th grade anatomy to learn that we didn't have seven tubes (one for each day of the week) but we only had two tubes...one to eat and one to breathe.

Gullible

I used to believe that when you accidentally swallow a seed, a tree or some kind of plant would grow inside your body. That time, I learned at school that water and sunlight helps the plant grow. So what I did, I neglected water as much as I could and would never go outside on daytime so the plant wouldn't grow. My parents actually thought I got rabies from our dog.

Jin

When I was very young I believed that our bodies were hollow and whatever you ate or drank went down to the bottom of your feet and gradually filled you up. This process took years and when you were "full" at a very ripe old age, and there was no more room, you just died.

Anon

When I was a child I believed that as you ate your feet filled up, then your legs and so on all the way up your body, until you were "full up" when the food finally arrived at your mouth

Val

When I was three or four and living in Boston, I was being babysat by a family friend. He had little experience with kids and when I was obstinately refusing to eat my peas, he gave me an ultimatum: if I got off of my chair witout finishing my peas, I would turn into an ant. When my parents came home at midnight, I was still in that chair...

Richard E.

As a small child who empathised with everything around me (I thought everything had feelings!) I was terribly reluctant to eat a gingerbread man. I expressed my anxiety to my mother, who told me that my stomach would put it back together once I was done eating it.

For many years after, I was convinced that the purpose of the stomach was to reassemble chewed up food. I had a clear mental image of apples, carrots, etc, sitting whole in my belly.

It was quite a few years before it dawned on me that this was ridiculous. My mother still denies telling me such a thing.

tomble

i used to think that inside my stomach were little jelly bean men that stirred up what i ate until it turned into what comes out at the other end. when i got stomach aches, i thought one of the jelly bean men fell in my stomach and drowned.

kristy

When i was five, my dad gave me a bite of steak to try. I didn't like it and went to spit it out in the toilet. Having nothing to do with this event, i started to cough in the bathroom. My dad ran in, and after finding that i was fine, angrily said ''i thought you were choking!'' His extreme reaction brought forth a chain of thoughts in my mind. The likelihood of choking to death weighed heavily on me and i refused to eat anything for over a week. During that time, i remember going to an ice cream parlour with my dad who was trying to order me an ice cream sundae (something that to him seemed impossible to choke on) and just the thought of possibly being served one topped with nuts made me cry uncontrollably in the restaurant...i remember him looking at me as though he thought i'd probably end up starving myself to death.

Anon

I used to believe that when you ate food, it came alive in your stomach. (remarkably, i pictured it whole, as in before I'd chewed it.) I thought you got that "full" feeling because the food was pushing out on your stomach. I also believed this was how people got fat, because their food pushed too hard.

Brianne

I used to believe if you only chewed food on one side of your mouth, that you would only grow on that side of your body. So, I had to chew evenly on both sides ...

Syd

I used to think that when you ate something, it would just stack up inside your stomach. I had this mental picture of all these foods stacking up inside my stomach and once they would reach the top it would start coming up out of your mouth.

Nelly Waters

When I was a little girl, I used to believe that if I swallowed an apple seed, an apple tree would grow in my belly!!!

AUDREY

When I was small I believed that there
were small people in my stomach that ate the food i ate and there were smaller people in thier stomach who ate the food they ate. My father then explained the digestive process in his usual scientific way and for a long time i thought there were stone mill rollers in my stomach that ground the food into atoms and i absorbed the electronic energy from it.I guess I knew there was energy in batteries and somehow thats how it all translated to me.

vitus the mad

I used to believe that when i was eating the food was really filling my whole body up. When I was really hungrey i was "full up to my ankles," and wehen i just couldn't eat anymore i was "full up to my eyes." That way, i was to full to eat my meatloaf, but not too full for the ice cream. I'm not sure where i thought my organs were, or if i had any organs at all.

Tessica

I believed that there were many tiny men in your stomach who each were assigned a specific food group, as well as a wheebarrow and shovel. When you would eat the man that was incharge of that food would scoop it up and take it to where you would poop...this was the digesting process

Anon

You know when you're eating or drinking somthing sometimes it doesn't go down right and you start to cough? People always would say to me "It went down the wrong tube." So I used to believe that people had 3 tubes. One for food, one for drinks, and one for breathing. So like when I was eating somthing and I started to cough, I would just assume it went down the drink tube.

Alena

When I was little, I didn't finish my dinner but wanted my dessert anyway. I told my mom I couldn't finish my dinner because the vegetable sack and the meat sack in my tummy had fallen over. And the reason I could still have dessert was because that sack was okay.

SongOfRuth

I used to believe there were mice in my stomach that ate what I ate. I hate that story !!! I used to believe that till I was 9 years old.

laetitia the mouse, a French student in eighth grade

I used to believe that a little boy lived inside my stomach (which took up my whole abdomen of course) and floated around in the water in an eggshell picking through my food to get what he liked best. This probably came from me watching my mother have my baby brother when I was 5.

Habs