family

When i was very little (like 2) , i asked my grandma why my granddad was so fat. She told me it was because they had eaten too much pie the night before. I believed this for years. The funny thing is, i'd seen him before, and obviously he was still fat... Why didn't it click?

Pie-eater

When I was 4 years old, I thought that every family had to have two children - no more, no less - and that there had to be one boy and one girl. And the older child was always the boy.

Then one day in nursery school a friend of mine started talking about his brother. I was astonished! I said to him, "You can't have a brother - you're a boy!"

I told my parents, and they explained that there can be any combination of boys and girls in a family.

Kdees

Around the early 1960s, when I was 5 or 6 years old, my Uncle J.C. would come to visit my grandmother, who was living with us at the time. J.C. was a master sergeant in the Army and had no hair. Because President Eisenhower had been in the Army and had no hair, and looked like my mom's side of the family a little bit around the lips, I got the idea that President Eisenhower was somehow related to our family. I never mentioned this to my mother, since nobody else brought it up and I assumed it was some kind of big secret.

Rob

My dad was a big rugby player, I grew up surrounded by big men and their families. For some reason I thought skinny men couldn't be dads.

abi rose

My uncle harry has a very long beard and a hariy face. I used to think he was a wizard.

Anon

When I was about 4 or 5 years old, my mom, and I would go to the grocery store. On the way home in the car, I would sometimes wonder if the woman driving the car was really my mom or a "stranger" who just looked like my mom but was actually kidnapping me.

Anon

I still, after all of these years, remember the time my Nan rinsed her silver hair with a shade of blue. I also remember thinking that she was an alien replacement that looked very 'human' but forgot to get'human' hair. I think it took a couple of days and a lot of convincing from my Mum to believe that it was really my Nan.

Lauren

When I was little I used to write my dad 'secret admirer' letters. I told him I had borrowed paper from his daughter so he wouldn't realize who his admirer really was. Then I left the letters on his pillow...how did he figure it out?

Kate

when I was young I was always asking my mom questions, "Mom, guess what?" or "Mom!" just to get her attention. I said mom so much that finally one day she said she changed her name, and it was no longer mom. I then asked, "whats your new name then?" and she said she wasn't going to tell me! I was horrified and started crying...eventually she told me she changed it back to mom just for me.

Mark

when I heard the term " step on a crack, break your mother's back" I thought it specifically meant MY mother. Not only would i never step on cracks, if I saw a man walking down the street step on a crack, i would yell "HEY!! This is my mother! It's your back your breaking!"

Roxie

My mother used to say, when I asked her where she had been, "Timbuktu". I honestly believed she went to some magical place called Timbuktu, and I would always get upset she didn't take me with her. Turns out she was just being sarcastic.

Billy Reid

When i was little, aboout 4 years old, my 11 year old brother would terrorize me by telling me he could turn me into a frog using a cereal carton to get me to do his bidding. I would tell him i didn't believe him, but then he would sit me on a chair and start muttering gibberish while waving the box around. I would get hysterical and do whatever he wanted me to.

Alona

When I was a little girl we lived in what was then a country area. Looking at it now it is so close to our capital city that I have to laugh! Anyway, we went barefoot a lot, and I was the youngest of four. I clearly remember that if I stood on a rusty nail my father would give me a shiny new (Australian)penny to take my mind off it. I am now 65, and it is only recently that I have thought about it and realised that he must have cleaned up an old penny to make me feel good.Isn't that wonderful. What a great man he was!

Mairin

When I was little, my great-grandma told me that she had an invisible thinking-cap that only worked when she tugged on her ear, pressed her nose and made a weird noise. I asked her why I didn't have one, and she told me that mine was still growing on the back of my head. So for ages, every time I saw her, I'd ask her to check and see if my thinking-cap had gotten any bigger.

Onatel

Coming from a 100% Italian family, it was always interesting to me to have an Irish Aunt. I would manage to sit next to her at family gatherings and look up in amazement at her beautiful red hair. Once she told me that she would talk to Leprechauns every night and that she could see them because she was Irish. i would sit there with my mouth open listening to stories she told me of the wee people (leprechauns)...I am sure she had a good time with this..LOL

Jaye Marie

I used to believe my grandmother was just a lady my parents choosen to be my grandmother, I often thought "does my grandmother have a family, or daughters and sons?"

Mary

When I was a kid I had a toy plastic Gumby. My Dad always pretended he was going to eat him and eventually I stopped believing him. Well once he told me he ate him and I told him I know he didn't and he opened his mouth and I saw green stuff smeared all over his teeth. I burst out crying and didn't stop for 30 minutes! He had smeared a green crayon all over his teeth.

Josh

When I was a kid my Grandfather used to take me to his farm. When he was driving and my brother and I weren't paying attention, he would hong his horn and waive. We would turn around and look behind and he would say, "Didn't you see that fellow in the field?" We never saw anyone, but he convinced us that some "fella" was out there working hard like we should when we get to the farm. It makes me laugh to this day because seemed so serious. Now he just laughs about it how once we believed everything.

He also points to everything with his middle finger. He lives by a busy street and I can't tell you how many times he has pointed to something while outside and people passing by believe he is flipping them of. He get honked at frequently. CLASSIC!

JMGrandRapids

When my mom tried to explain "times tables" in math, I couldn't understand what an actual table had to do with anything. Math went downhill from there!

Anon

My dad used to tell me he had seen every episode of Road Runner, and would prove it by telling me what would happen. Even when he messed up, he claimed he was just getting the episodes mixed up. I believed him until I was a teenager.

Laestig