family

When i was about 5 my mum used to say if i was bad she would send me to the "Jaggy Jerseys" where a man would come and collect you and take you to his house and make you wear a jaggy jersey forever and only feed you bread and water, whenever i annoyed her she would say remember the jaggy jersey man

Julie

When i was 4 i thought that all the grownups where robots

Nomad

When we were small children we had an aunt that was extremely overweight. At some point we came to the conclusion that you eat so much, you get fat and then you blow up and pop like a balloon. The aunt is still alive.

Lori

When I used to talk too much as a child (which was quite often) my mother used to trick me by making me play "the silent game" - see how long you can not talk for. I did actually think this was a fun game, even though I wasn't very good at it.

I also used to be very un-cooperative about getting dressed sometimes, so to get my cooperation this is what my mother would say: "Do you want to put your shoes and socks on before or after you eat your toast?" I would happily reply "after I eat my toast", then happily put my shoes on after eating my toast - thinking I had got exactly what I wanted.

Anon

Since my relatives always acted so nice and perfect when I was around, for some reason I thought they were the only people in the world who could never make any mistakes or do anything wrong. I just figured that while other people do make mistakes and do bad things, they never did.

Anna

I have an aunt that I resemble in every way-looks, disposition, etc. She has twin sons that are 5 years older than me, and they have always told me that I'm really their younger sister, and their dad didn't want a girl, so they gave me to my aunt's younger brother, who i believed to be my dad. The sad part is, all my life I've questioned this, and everyone just laughs like it's a big joke, but I have never had it either confirmed or denied. I'm eighteen now, and a little part of me still believes my older cousins/brothers...or whatever.

Confused

I used to think that my great-grandmother was this lady that worked at a store that I once met when I was 4 and she was showing us her glass pieces (she was trying to sell them to us!)

Girl w/o a shop keeper for a great-grandmother

When we were small my dad said that evry fouth child born in the world was chinese, and that is why there were only three children in our family .

colin williams

I used to believe that My grandparents didn't have any other name except grandma and grandpa.

Emelia

When I was a kid my mom and I would drive by nursing homes and I remember thinking that it was very sad that all the babies without moms had to go there to get "nursed".

Alaina McCullough

When I was little my mom and grandma used to say bad things about my aunt like that she was a back stabber and stuff well because they said this I was aways afraid she was going to kill me I wouldn't even eat the food she would make for me when I came to her house.

omg

when my sister was a toddler, my parents would jokingly tell her that her real father was the garbage man. one day when she was on the front porch with my mom, the garbage man(a large black man) was collecting trash and my sister held out of her arms and starting screaming "DaDa! DaDa!"

Ippy

I used to think that everyone's grandma had the same last name, like your dad's mom had this name and my friends grandma had the exact same name. So i went up, asked my best freind how his grandma (with my last name) was doing..he said he didnt have one. I told him how sad i was. He told me he had a grandma (his last name) i never made the connection of names....i just assumed she was a different age, hence my great-grandma having a different last name then all my others.

dudeman

My great-grandmother was Hungarian. She passed on some of her sayings to my mother. So, whenever I was bad, Mom would say, "I'm going to sell you to the gypsies!"

Terrified of Gypsies--I wonder why

When I was a small child, my Nannan would keep me amused by telling me a mixture of world + family history, fairytales, + Bible stories. I knew she was speaking from memory when she told me about the Second World War + my Mother's childhood, so I assumed that everything else must be from her memory, too... I thought she must have met Henry VIII + Jesus + Oliver Cromwell in person, or at least watched them on the news...
I can't remember when I found out she wasn't immortal, but it must have been a bit of a dissapointment.

Nin

My parents divorced when I was a baby. When I was 3 they tried to get back together, the result being my sister.

Up until I was about 10, and had already had some sex-ed in school, I thought my sister was a residual pregnancy from my parents marriage. Then one day my mother pointed out to me that that is impossible, and confessed they had been "trying to make it work" when I was 3....

Sexually Uneducated

My half-sister is 14 years older than me, so I was about 5 when she was expecting her first baby. Everyone was really excited about the baby, and so was I until I heard my mom say that when it was born she'd be a grandma. I cried because I thought that the moment the baby was born, my mom would suddenly get white hair and wrinkles and I wouldn't recognize her. Mom had quite a time trying to convince me that all grandmas don't have to be old!

Mandi

When I was about eight years old, my older cousin turned twenty. Because she was my only cousin living on her own at that time, I thought that she was now an adult, and couldn't be my cousin anymore. (I suppose I figured she'd become my aunt)

Kelsey

I used to believe I was at my parents' wedding, even though I was the last child born of 4, and they just pretended I was the youngest.

Kristine O.

I used to believe I didn't have a grandpa. My mom explained that I did, that my "Papa Gerry" was my grandpa, he just didn't like being called grandpa. I didn't believe her until I asked Papa Gerry, and he said it was true!

H