reading

When I first saw Highlights magazine, I used to believe that the slogan "Fun with a Purpose" was actually "Fun with a Person", and meant that Highlights should only be read with other people. I always read it alone anyway...

Highlights

When we were in English class, my friend told me that they took the word gullible out of the dictionary. Well, that's all it took to convince me. But, later I went to look for it and, of course, it was still in there!

blonde!

For the longest time I'd read the word "colonel" in a book without realizing that it's pronounced 'kernel'.

toon

I used to believe fantasy books told real stories

samantha401

I thought the British town Reading was pronounced "Reeding" instead of "Redding".

Marisol

I used to believe that dangerous was pronounced dangaroos. When I seen the sign 'these animals are dangerous' I believed it meant something similar to these animals are mammals.

Cherise

As a little girl I had a favorite book about a dog who was left alone in a house while his family was away for vacation. In the story the dog is sad and cries because he has been left behind. I would cry everytime my Great Grandpa read the book to me. I would have him read it every day hoping the dog would get to go with his family and then when the book didnt change I would cry.

Lisa

When I was 3 or 4 we owned a copy of a magazine with an article I looked at
repeatedly. The back cover got torn at some point, and one of my parents taped
it back together. Later, I saw the issue intact, with no tape and I concluded that
the magazine had healed. As an adult I realized that we must have had two
copies of the magazine.

Paul S.

i used to think the cat in the hat wrote the dr. seuss books

Kimmie

On 1st grade, I used to believe my classmates would think me too weird if they knew I could read fluently, so I sometimes faked it... especially when I came to a long word (just like they did). On 2nd grade, I didn't need to fake any more, because our teacher told us she'd learned to read at age 4 - same age as I.

Bookworm

Whenever I couldn't read a word, I would just make up something in its place. So, whenever I would read to my mom or something, she would chuckle or something at my completely made up word.

-Confused-

When I was 5, my dad took me to the police station where he works. One area was blocked by a door that said "No Admittance." My name being Adam, I thought it had something to do with me specifically.

Adam

I used to believe that the word "vague", in print, was pronounced "vuh-gyu" or "vay-gyu." I wondered why I never heard it spoken.

Lee Coursey

when i was younger i used to love Andy Pandy books.i dont know why but i always thought that Andy Pandy was in fact a girl (maybe had to do with the fact that Andy Pandy did in fact look like and act like a girl..Deffinantley had a very feminine look...Pretty face and rosy cheehks).I Cant remember who his girlfriend was,Polly or something like that.Well anyway i would spend hours thinking that whow could polly be Andys girlfriend as they were both girls....Imagine what its like to be about 4-5 and trying to understand what lesbians were.It was all really weird and muy mom and dad found it all rather funny

I also used to think that women couldnt get pregnant until they were married.And that the moment they were married they were pregnant and 9months later would have a child...hahahah to that thought

joanna

When I was reading a biography as a fourth grade reading assignment, I first encountered in print the word "determined", as in "He was determined" (meaning firmly resolved), and that phrase occurred a lot in the book. Most of the way through the book, I was reading an extra "d" into the word near the end, and thinking I was encountering a brand new word "determinded", which I was thinking of as rhyming with "better minded". So I assumed it meant some state of mind implied by some prefix, "deter-" (rhyming with "better") and previously unfamiliar to me. Since the word occurred frequently in the book, I came to understand it from the context to have pretty much the actual meaning of "determined" in that context. So I assumed the prefix "deter-" meant something like firm and unchangeable, so "determinded" would mean having such a firm and unchangeable stste of mind. So I was pretty much understanding the correct meaning, in spite of reading it into an imaginary word. Near the end of the book, I finally noticed that the word lacked the extra "d" that would have mad it it end in "minded", and pretty soon thereafter, I guess I realized that it was the familiar word "determined". Guess I was a bit disappointed that I hadn't learned and deciphered a new word after all.

Greg

One time my sister and I were fighting over what game to play so, looking in the corner where a fire escape ladder was, she yelled "If you play boggle with me after you can play whatever you want. We can even play escape ladder!" at first I thought she was joking but after a moment I realized she sincerly believed that the escape ladder was a board game.

Chrissy

As a child my reading vocabulary was much larger than my spoken vocabulary. As a result, for years, I thought that 'Yosemite Sam" was prounounced with two syllables, a long O AND a long I sound (yOse - mIte). Imagine my surprise when I first heard somebody prounounce Yo-seh-mih-tee!

Not as bright as I thought I was

the old sonic sign said "happy eating" at the bottom. For a while as I was learning to read i thought it said happy easter until i asked my mom why they never took the sign down

Anon

I used to stop breathing. You know how you dont consciously breathe? Id be engorssed in a book (i love reading), and suddenly, id stop because there would be a sound missing. Then, id notice i wasnt breathing, take a deep breath, and carry on again. It was weird, because to test that it wasnt my imagination, after that happened once, i consciously held my breath for 7 minutes (best otherwise is 2:32). After wards, i was convinced that when i read a book my soul was sucked into it to talk to the charcters, adn my body got left behind, and kinda forgot to carry on working.

Sam

When I read the phrase "under fire," I thought that "under fire" means there's something burning below us like the White House, ground, etc.

Anon