reading

When my brother was learning to read he told my mom he wanted to go eat at a resteraunt because they served beaver eggs. When my mom looked at the sign advertising the resteraunt the word he was reading was "beverages"

Traci

When I was little, my dad and I would sometimes sneak into hotels and use their pool. I was always nervous because I knew we were doing something wrong, and I once read a sign that said trespassers will be prosecuted. I thought prosecuted meant executed and was terrified that they would find us and kill us.

Anon

when i was little i mixed up the story of jack frost (the snow man) and a jack rabbit, so when the ground was frosty my parents would say "jack frost must have been here!" and id look around for a jack rabbit!

Nicullen

I thought a coworker was someone who worked on a cow.

Molly

When I was a kid I used to think that the signs on elevators that said "In case of fire, do not use lift" meant never to use a lift, just in case there's a fire. I wondered why have the lift at all, if you're never meant to use it? But figured since everyone else ignored the sign, the risk couldn't be that great!

Tegan

When I was little I used to get terribly frustrated at the open/closed signs at shops and restaurants. It was before I knew about contractions in grammar so I always read "Sorry we're closed" as "Sorry, we re-closed" (implying that they were currently closed and we had just missed them), and I read "Yes we're open" as "Yes, we re-open" (implying that they were closed at the moment, but intended to open again at some point in the future). So I though that shops with these signs were always closed, and I couldn't understand why they needed two different signs to say the same thing. It seemed so terribly inefficient!

Anon

I knew the "Dr." was an abbreviation for "doctor," but I didn't know it was also an abbreviation for "drive." So whenever I saw a road sign that said "Dr." after a word, I thought it was "doctor."

Anon

I was confused by the word "lowly". One of the earliest places I saw it was in a Neopets mini-game where you collected fictional fruits called "Neggs" and the lowest value one was the happy negg, stated in the description as the "lowly happy negg". I thought "lowly" was pronounced with the ow rhyming with cow and it meant "happy".

Neopets fan

When I was so young that I was still being read to at bedtime, my parents were working their way through the wonderful book "Robinson Caruso" when I began having some heavy-duty nightmares. When my parents asked me what was wrong, I finally asked, "Robinson Caruso didn't really kill and eat a little kid, did he?" When I found out we were talking about a young goat, the nightmares stopped...

JB, Chicago

I used to have a subscription to Highlights magazine. Their slogan on the front cover was "Fun with a Purpose" which I thought meant "Fun with a porpoise." Each month I scanned the pages looking for the fun porpoise...

Anon

Somehow, i used to be sure that Edgar Allen Poe wrote Winnie the Pooh, and whenever people talked about his work being so depresing, I would think "What are they talking about, he wrote Winnie the Pooh!"

Proud weirdo

I used to mix up the words 'prosecuted' and 'executed.' Every time I saw a "violators will be prosecuted" sign, I made sure to be on my best behavior. I was absolutely terrified that my actions would result in death if I did something wrong.

Kristen

i used to get 'prosecuted' and 'persecuted' mixed up all the time, so i figured the signs in stores that said "shoplifters will be prosecuted" meant the store owner was going to take anyone he found stealing stuff out back and shoot him!

Anon

I used to believe that "critical acclaim" meant that they liked it, BUT had some major problems with it, too.

Beth

I used to believe that the sign "in case of fire, do not use elevator" was meant to be proactive. I read it as "you shouldn't use elevators, because someday, there might be a fire." It never stopped me from using elevators, but I remember being puzzled by the sign.

Karen

In the eighth grade, a classmate of min was reading one of Jane Austen's novels for one of her book reports. I asked her what it was about. She told me that Jane Austen was once abducted by aliens and that her novels were about her experiences while so abducted. Later when I first tried reading Jane Austen, I decided that my former classmate must have been crazy for trying to tackle such a thing as early as the eighth grade, for Jane Austen is NOT easy reading. Since I never ran into that classmate again after middle school, I guess I'll never know for sure whether she had quite an advanced aptitude for understanding Jane Austen, or whether she actually WAS crazy (possibly in more ways than one). In any event, I must have believed for several years that Jane Austen was abducted by aliens.

Renee

My favorite crayon color as a kid was cerulean, but I actually thought for a long time that it was called "chlorine." I guess I must've misread the label because a lot of the same letters are in both words. I thought it was a good name, though, because the shade of the crayon was a lot like swimming pool water. I'm just glad that I never had a reason to talk to anyone about my chlorine crayon before I realized my mistake!

Amanda Danielle

i used to believe that when you read italicized words, you were supposed to lean to the side a little bit like the letters did.

Linarite

I used to hear grown-up talk about the book "The Last of the Mohicans", I thought they were talking about a biography of a guy named, "Elastigo Heekins" -- a very stretchy man.

Jess

I used to believe that I could only borrow books from the library that had a 'P' on the spine, because that was my first initial. My mum thought I was a slow learner, since I brought home the same series of books about a monkey every time we had library class. I don't know why I thought this.

Penny M