speaking

When I was about 4, I had "male" and "female" reversed in my head. Somehow it made sense to me that boys would have a little something extra attached ;).

XiuZan

As a young elementary-school student I thought you pronounced POLAND (the nation) as Pah-land (short O sound). To this day my father still ribs me about this.

Ellen Levitt

I used to babysit for a little girl, Katherine, and when she was about 2 1/2 she would say that "this is mys" - it made perfect sense to her: if something that belonged to you is "yours" then if it belonged to her, it must be "mys".

nrs

I though that there were a certain amount of words, say a million, that I had available to use before I died. I was a quiet kid

Jude

I was shockingly old - in my twenties, even - when I finally understood the joke "What's black and white and read all over?" "A newspaper"

Of course, written down, it's not so tough to work out...

Z

I used to belive that handicapped meant you were especially smart and talented.

I used to tell my parents friends that I was handicapped!

cr

I used to think the word "stag" meant naked. I was shocked to hear my Baptist preacher father announce from the pulpit that the men's prayer breakfast would be held in our home, and that the men needed to "come stag".

Sarah

I used to associate words with mental images...I had many, but the only one I can remember to this day was the word "Friday" conjured up an image of the king of spades.

Kendra

My cousin used to climb under the electric fence without hesitation and she would yell over to me "Come on, what is the matter-- are you a-scared?"
I said "Ascared?" She just shrugged and went about her buisness. I finally figured out that if you were A-Fraid then you must be A-scared in her little 8 year old mind. I still think about it and it cracks me up!

Sarah

I use to think the Taj Mahal in India was actually the Tajma Hall, a place to have meetings. I though this until I was probably 15.

anne

As a young boy, I became possessed of the belief that every person had a hard limit of 3,000 or so on how many times he could use each word. There was a time when I found my communicative faculties greatly diminished by an unwillingness to waste unnecessary uses of "yes" or "no" on what I considered to be trivial matters.

Andrew

When I was little I couldn't pronounce phonogragph. It always came out pornogragh

Chester

Until I was about 10 years old, I believed that if you were called "ingenious" it meant that you were smart--like an "injun"...

Nancy

I don't recall believing anything that I've since outgrown. However, I couldn't believe that pronunciations could differ. It was a great concern of mine when I was nine and we were to move from Tennessee to Illinois. I remember repeating "bean" over and over and never believing that it could be pronounced other than the way I's always heard it. Big surprise!

Claudia

I always thought a Voo Doo doll was a Doo Doo Doll. Thanks to a very embarrasing moment of voicing this idea, I learned otherwise.

Trish