counting

When I was very small, I couldn't deal with the fact that there were "number words" that weren't definite. I mean words like "a couple", "a few" and "several". I pestered my mother about this until she told me that "a couple" was 2. Eventually I made up a whole system where "a few" was 3, and "several" was 7. It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that people were sometimes just talking about an unspecified number!

PsyXe

When I started kindergarten, I believed that 100 came directly after 29. Because 29 was the highest number I could count to. I just believed that that was the highest number there was. All the other numbers weren't really numbers, just adjectives, like if you had 36 bananas, 36 was just something that described them, not the quantity.

Jamie

When I was little I thought you could get arrested if you accidentally skipped a number while counting.

Hailey

I used to think that you could never count to 100 because 90 sounds so much like 19 which meant that ou would simply continue to loop from 90 back to 19 in a never ending cycle. I also convinced my friends this was true.

Benjamin

I used to believe for a long time
that the highest number was called
unullellig.
This I also teached my brother.
Oops!

karo

I remember the first time I stayed up on New Years Eve was in 1983. When the clock struck twelve, I told my parents: 'now it's 2084', and was so proud about understanding the calendar system.

Martin

i used to believe that one dozen was the same as one thousand ifound out that it was 12 when i was in 5th grade

wacko

When I was about five or six I remember sitting in the school dinner hall boasting to my friends that I could count all the way to a thousand. Demonstrating I counted 1, 2, 3, ..., 99, 100, 101,... 108, 109, 1000. Incidentally one of the boys to whom I was boasting managed to count to 3000 without cheating when he was sixteen, one boring afternoon.

Stephen K from Scotland

Before I entered kindergarten, I used to believe that 11 and 12 should have been eleven-teen and twelve-teen.

Why not? There's thirteen, fourteen and so on...
I figured the entire group should match. :-)

Anon

I used to believe that numbers had gender, that the odd numbers were boys and even numbers were girls.

Evelyn

I used to believe that to add, for example, seven and three, you'd count "seven, eight, nine". Obviously, adding one to any number didn't change it.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

I have always had a strange feeling that even numbers are round, friendly and helpful because they are willing to be divided by two (and also because 2, 6 and 8 at least ARE roundy).

Odd numbers are mean and spiky and obnoxious because they refuse to be divided by two. (Also 1, 3, 5, and 7 ARE sort of pointy.)

Odd numbers are also bad because you can't share odd numbers of anything with a friend.

Ernest

i used to believe that numbers went in the following order...

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,20,21...twenty-twelve, 30 31...Thirty-twelve...100.

Hairly Less

My sister was always playing computer battleships when I was little. I'd learned my numbers and my letters, and I was looking at the screen one day. I soon came to believe that every number had to be partnered with a letter, otherwise it would just be rejected.

Anon

Whne I was in third grade, I didn't believe in zero. I thought it was ridiculous that there was a number representing *nothing*. So I did my math probmes without the zero. Needless to say, they weren't scored so well.

JD

A few years ago my teacher said that his daughter thought that 20, 21, 22 etc. were pronounced "two-ty, two-ty one, two-ty two" and so on.

Anon

When I was younger, I believed that times tables in maths were kids sitting at tables staring at clocks!

Anon

I thought the word "divvy" was slang for "divide." So, I would say "8 divvy 2" instead of "8 divided by 2." I'm sure my parents and teachers were confused!

Anon

I never really was able to believe that one pound of feathers actually weighed the same as one pound of lead...
'But dad, It's _LEAD_ ! _LEAD_ ! and feathers !'

NoSoup4U

My friend asked me if I wanted to go to cotillion with her. I had never heard of cotillion. I thought it was a very large number. million, billion, trillion. . .cotillion.

Vicki J.