work

When I was 5, the mother of one of the kids in my class came to school to talk about her job, which happened to be nursing. During the talk, she mentioned that if you had to go into "theatre" you should never wear nailpolish, as they need to see the colour of your fingernails to make sure you are getting enough oxygen.

Well, a week later, Mum took us to a play....at the THEATRE...and I had nailpolish on. I pleaded with my mother to take it off with remover, but she didn't have any. In sat there in the theatre gripped by mortal fear for the whole play. Mum didn't have a clue about what I was on about until she talked to the teacher a few weeks later!! Finally it was explained to me that the nurse meant "operating" theatre!!

Louise

When I was in first school I started noticing that my friends in fourth year (9 years old, very grown-up!) would vanish over the summer and not be there when I came back in September. I asked one of the classroom helpers where they went; she said they were leaving the school. For another year and a half I believed that once you were nine years old you had to leave school and go to work... in my mind it was never normal office-type work either but something like mining or working in a factory full of smoke. Maybe in Victorian times I would have been almost right.

silverstar1809

At the dinner table each night, my father would regail us with stories from work. He often referred to his co-workers by last name. I thought it was amazing that one of the people he worked with was half man half woman. One night I mustered the courage to ask whether they were split down the middle, or at the waist. The table roared for minutes while I blushed. The co-workers name was "Sheehee".

Trish the Dish

When I was little and my sister asked me what I wanted to be, I replied "A Teddy Bear"

and I was serious. I believed I could be a Teddy Bear.

Meera

When my brother and I were young, our mother worked for Boeing and made ducts for planes. We always thought that she worked at bowling and made ducks. We would get angry because she wouldn't take us to see.

Anon

I used to accompany my dad when we dropped my mom off at the subway stop to go to work. I thought thats where my mom worked: at the subway stop.

Rachel

At some point I had heard the saying 'you need money to make money' and I thought that it meant than in order to get a job you had to pay the business you wanted to work for first. I never thought it all the way through though, so I didn't really know where the making more money part came in.

Willow

I used to believe "work" was just where grown ups went to sit around all day. Like kids sat at desks at school all day.
I didn't imagine some jobs were physical. Thats why I sometimes looked at my mom and always wondered why she was tired from work. She was a nursing assistant that worked nights but to me she never did anything and got money just for showing up!

Faith

when I was 6 i used to believe that cricketers need to cut their legs and undergo some sort of surgery in oder to put on pads and due to this i dropped the idea of being a cricketer in future.

farman

When I was little I thought that there were men who worked under the ground walking under the streets turning on the street lamps one by one and then turning them off again in the morning. I used to think I'd hate that job and all that walking! haha

Laura

i used to believe i had a very important job at my dads office. i ran around trying to get all the "special" orders out to all the elfs.

Anon

I used to believe that teachers lived at school.
When I was 6, my daycare teacher's husband was running for public office and they were both on TV, my mom brought this to my attention I said it couldn't be her because she was at school. LOL

Anon

I used to believe that fax machines worked by sending papers down underground tunnels.

Anon

I used to think that teachers weren't allowed to use the bathroom during the day and that feminine pads were just teacher diapers.

Anon

When I was little I sometimes saw chimneysweepers dressed in black, standing on the roofs. I used to think they were monkeys.

ZX from Sweden

i used to say that i was going to move to jeopardy so i would always have a good job as it was always in the news that there were "thousands of jobs in jeopardy"

PaganJay

When I was very young, probably about 3 or 4 I got very upset when my father had to leave the house to go to work. My grandmother hugged me and explained that he was out making money. I felt so sorry for my dad after that - for years I believed that he was working underground in a horrible, dark, hot factory hand carving coins and cutting out paper notes - poor dad!

Heather

I used to think that Mormon missionaries were men who had received too many speeding tickets.

This came from a line of questioning when my dad had explained that "If you speed, a policeman might pull you over and give you a ticket."

Somebody giving me something for free, especially a "Ticket" (to a park? to a movie?) sounded like a good thing to me, so he had to explain further that "if you get too many tickets, you cant drive a car any more."

A few weeks later, I saw two men, dressed nicely with dress shirts, ties, and slacks riding bicycles.
I must have realized that they looked far to dressed up to be riding just for fun, and assumed they were going to work, but "must had received too many tickets" and couldn't drive in a car.

I didn't mention it for a long time, and would occasionally see pairs of men riding bicycles, and it just seemed obvious that, indeed, some people got too many speeding tickets and had to ride bicycles to work.

Matt Taylor

When my little brother was about three years old, I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He replied, "a California dancing raisin!" Boy, did I ever have a hard time explaining to him that he couldn't be a raisin when he grew up.

Jessica

When i was about 6 or 7 and right up until i was about 13 i believed that football players had to be born in that place to play for that team. So if you played for Liverpool it was because you were born there.

Georgie Girl