speaking

When I was little I used to think that when people in movies would draw their swords and say "On guard", they were saying "I'm God". So whenever I play with someone and I'd pretend to draw my sword I'd shout "I'm God!".

Anonymous

As a child my father used to fix his car with a tool called a ratchet, I always thought he was saying "pass the rat sh*t" I always gave a confused look and meandered off incase I got wrong for knowing what a sh*t was. or even worse, had to actually pick it up!

becca

When I was a kid, I was aware that "gender" was the word for if you were a boy or a girl, but that's the only word I knew for that. So in first grade when we took a standardized test for the first time, there was a space that said "sex" and I knew I'd never had sex before so I wrote "no".

Katie

My spanish teacher used to think "strip malls" were places you find strippers. She was shocked when someone in our class told her she was working at the strip mall

Anon

When I was around five years old, my cousin who is one year older than me came to visit. We were putting on our gear so we could go play in the winter snow. He was putting on his hat, it was one of those hats like a cap with a little pom-pom on top. I asked him what he was doing and he said, "putting on my buttocks." For the longest time after that I thought that the type of hat with a pom-pom was called a buttocks, and referred to it that way.

Hannah P.

I was born in 1940, and was approaching age 5 when World War II ended. During the war, the Japanese were called "Japs." Naturally, when I discovered that we were also fighting the Germans, I made the leap and determined that "Germs" must be short for "German." For a while it made sense to me that the Germs were making people sick.

Jay

When I was a little kid I thought "End's Meat" was some sort of rare delicacy with a very complicated recipe because I kept hearing about people having a hard time trying to make it.

Billie Woods

I thought the word mailman was male man and it seemed dumb to me as aren't all men male?

andalite

I used to think that when people were saying good grief they were saying good greeb. I still don't know what greeb means, if it's a word.

Mia

I thought that "losing your cool" meant you weren't cool anymore (as in weren't awesome) so I felt offended when my mother told me I'd lost my cool.

Anon

Both my parents worked at a hospital, my mom as an ICU nurse, my dad as a biomed tech (fixed hospital equipment). I overheard a lot of hospital gossip because both my parents worked at the same place. Usually it was about doctors. I remember being maybe five or six and I heard my parents talking about some doctor being a "womanizer". This was a word I'd never heard before, but given the medical context, I assumed the logical thing: that he was a doctor who turned men into women (which was something I vaguely knew was possible).

So every year, my parents would take us to the company picnic and they had like a little mini carnival with (crappy) rides, a petting zoo, clowns, live music and a barbecue. Fun stuff. One year I befriended this little girl at the company picnic. Eventually she mentioned that her dad is the same doctor who my mom had called a womanizer. I suddenly got very scared that he was going to find me and "womanize" me. Naturally, I assumed he'd done the same to my new friend, being that she was a girl and I all, so I felt very bad for her. Anyway, I was an idiot.

im now litterally womanized lol

I thought 'infrared' was the past of 'to infrare'.

Lloyd B

When I heard the phrase "there's no rest for the wicked" when I was very young, I thought that it meant that wicked people get very little rest because there are so many wicked things that need doing. I believed that for many years.

the evil microwizard

My family is quite religious. Every Sunday my Dad, my sister and I would go to church together (we're Catholics) but my Mum always went to a different church (she's a Protestant). When I was little nobody actually told me what religion my Mum was. Eventually I picked up on what it was and got it loged in my mind that she was a prostitue (see the likeness???).
Come Christmas time my entire family (you know Granny, Grandpa, Uncle X, Auntie Y, Cousin Z) were about to leave for midnight mass. But my mum wasn't coming. So my grandad asked me "Why isn't your Mummy coming to church with us?" and so I replied loudly and proudly "Because she's a PROSTITUTE!".

Vicky

When I was 9 or 10, I used to call my friend a "dildo". For some reason, I thought it meant "silly", until my friend's horrified mother told me otherwise!!

Lorena

Whenever me or my brothers were getting told off, my mum would say "if you do that again you will get a good hiding!" When she said it I pictured myself actually hiding in the wardrobe or another good hiding place

michelle

Up until I was 18--18! I believed that there were two kinds of appetizers one could serve at a party--"orderves" and "horse dovers." I had read about "horse dovers" many times in books and magazines, but at all the parties I'd ever been to, they only served "orderves."

It wasn't until I heard a woman on the radio saying that she could never remember how to spell "hors d'oeuvres" that I figured it out. When I tried to spell this word on my own and nothing looked right, the Frenchiness of it all clicked.

Freezair

I'm from Ireland and in primary school coming up to St. Patricks Day they'd have plays and stuff on in scool and they'd always mention the millions of people who emigrated, but i thought emigrated meant disintegrated at the time so could never understand how millions of people went puff into dust... i pictured it kinda like vampires getting staked in Buffy... but Buffy wasn't on tv then so blame over active imagination....

nicola

My elementary school was very big on teaching us that litter was bad. I misheard the word as "glitter".

When my brother tried to drop a cup outside the window of our car once in a parking lot, I told him grumpily, "No glittering." I imagined that all the litter, if left on the sidewalk for long enough, would turn into glitter. Of course it made sense that glittering wasn't allowed--glitter was a pain to clean up if there was a lot of it spilled!

Gabrielle

I used to believe that when people explained something and said 'Well basically...' it was because they thought you were too dumb to understand the complicated version.

dippingmytoes