skin

I believed that if you moved around a lot while sitting on your beachtowel at the beach, you were more likely to get sunburned. Probably as a result of my mother saying something like "sit still or you'll get a sunburn" without realizing she said it or realizing I picked up on it. I believed this well into my teens when my friends finally caught on and laughed at me.

Meredith

My sister and I thought that white people were vanilla and black people were chocolate (like ice cream). My mom always had to shut us up in the store when we said "look, chocolate people!" (I was very young....) But hey, we were vanilla and wanted to be chocolate.

Patty

I used to believe that freckles were angel kisses.

Anon

My dad told me that the Simpsons were yellow because Marge made a poisonous soup and everybody in Springfield ate it, and became yellow. I believed it until I was 15, and I still suspect that there is an episode I missed in the begining where they turn yellow.

Achva

When I was tiny, I loved to crawl under the table at restaraunts. I was at Pizza Hut with my mom, mammaw, and great-grandmother one day. I dove under the table and found out my very dignified great grandmother had stretchable skin!!! It was amazing! I figured out that as you aged, your skin stretched. It was pantyhose!

Lil Nicki

When I was about 5 years-old, my mom told me that every birthmark was a kiss from an angel.

After that, I honestly wondered why an angel would bother kissing me on the inside of my elbow.

A couple of freckles.

I used to believe that if you didn't have a birthmark, you were never really were a born. I told my younger brother he was a ghost.

Anon

I used to believe that my freckle on my hand was because I drew on my hand with a permanent marker. When i was about 7 or 8 i said to my mom how do i wash this marker off she then corrected me.

Mandy

My daughter belived that she was getting old because she had brown spots (freckles) like an old banana

lauren

I remember telling other children that, since the world was sooo big, there were many different skin colors and color combinations. I had heard there were yellow and red skinned people, I already knew there were white and brown. So I told them that there were people who were purple with green spots.

Karen

When I was little, My dad told me that I had freckles because I was really born black and they painted me white. The freckles was from the paint chipping off.

Lauren

When my younger sister sophie was about 2 she couldn't work out why black people where a different colour than her so come to the conclusion that they where made out of chocolate, It could be embarrasing sometimes when we would walk down the street and she would point and shout "Look its a chocolate daddy" to any black man or "chocolate mummy" for woman.

Gavin James

When my daughter was small she had some skin peeling on her feet, so I told her that she was growing out of her skin because she was getting bigger.

One day my husband and I came home and she was sitting on the couch peeling at her feet, and she said "Look Mom, I can't believe I'm still growing" She was 18!!!!!!!!!

Pat

When I was growing up in Northern BC, Canada, my father told me that Eskimos were different from Caucasians because they didn't have sweat ducts - they didn't need to sweat because where they lived it was always cold. I believed this well into my teens, when I repeated it to a friend who laughed at me. That's when I realized my parents sometimes lied.

akeenobserver

I was about five or so when I asked my dad what that mark on the back of his neck was. He told me it was a mole. For a while, I believed that mark used to be a mole (rodent) that attached to my father's neck one day

Anon

When I was really little I thought that all kids were white and that people's skin changed color at puberty. I use to wonder what color I would turn out to be.

Anon

I believed that if you wash your hands long enough... they'll turn into gold! I washed until my hands started to bleed...I was a bright kid.. yeah...

Anon

I used to believe everyone had outlines.

Hayden

Up until I was almost 11, I thought that a birthday suit was a special outfit you wore only on your birthday

Anon

I was born in the Watts area of Los Angeles in 1960. When an adult. I overheard an adult talking about the "colored" people moving to our block. I imagined a face with swirling colors.

Pete