speaking

I had only heard the name of the combo Hall and Oates, so I thought their name was Haulin' Oats -- like what you do if you have to take your oats across town. It was associated in my mind with hauling ass, and it wasn't until college until I figured out my mistake when I said to a friend, "Hey, the show starts in ten minutes. We better haul oats."

Barbara

When I was about 4 my neighbor would say "Peas" every time we said goodbye, I picked up on it and began saying "peas" to all my friends. My mother told me (after my neighbor moved away) that he was in fact saying "peace." D'oh

x-lax

When I was little, I used to sleep in my Mom's room -- that is, the master bedroom. The door to the master bedroom was actually in the living room, so activity taking place in the living room and kitchen area could easily be heard from the master bedroom, but speech always sounded very muffled. When I was very little, probably about preschool age, I can remember waking up in my Mom's bed after my Mom and sisters were already awake, hearing their muffled conversation through the door, and concluding that my family spoke a different language in the morning -- but they only used it when I wasn't around. I'd often sit up in bed and listen to their strange "language," trying to decipher words and figure out what they meant,

Anna

I was certain that "earwigs" were basically toupees you wear on your ears.

Anon

When I was about ten, I asked my nan what a wet dream was and she answered 'It's when you have a nightmare and you pee the bed'. About two days later, after watching a scary film, I said to my dad 'I'm worried that film will make me have a wet dream.' (I am female). My dad didn't know whether to be embarrassed or angry.

Funny little girl

when i was younger, i didn't understand that "death" did not also mean "deaf". when i was 5, my doctor asked me during a hearing test "can u hear this?" i replied "of course. do u think i'm death??"

ashley

when i was little i used to think that an appetizer was called lingerie, and that lingerie was an appetizer, so once i saw my mom maken like shrimps, and dips and such and i was like: "mom nice lingerie!"

Christina L.

My fianace grew up around his father and cars and always talking about them, looking at them, etc. One night I noticed that he was using the word "deluxe" in the wrong context, and asked him what he thought it meant. When he responded that it mean "bad" or "worse then the rest" i was baffled that he had the exact opposite meaning of what it really meant. I asked him why he thought that. He said that because in cars the "deluxe" version is always the worse of the models. You have stuff like "supreme" and all the super decked out models. Than the base model they still call something nice like "deluxe" even though it's the bottom model. So he thought it meant crappy version.

Anon

When my parents told me as a young child, that if I didn't slow down the speed of my speech, they would take me to ELOCUTION lessons, I believed that they would be taking me to be ELECTROCUTED stage by stage. I very quickly slowed down my talking.

Louise Kilpatrick

Somewhere along the line, my younger sister got it in her head that "kinky" meant "fun". She told my grandmother she liked the spiral slide at the playground because it was "kinky".

Bonnie's sister

When i was a kid, i asked my grandfather how the heat in our house worked. He showed me the baseboard heater in the kitchen and said something that i heard as "the heating elephants inside". Eventually i found out he was saying "elements" but for a long time i had imagined little tiny elephants walking around inside the heater to make it warm. i spent about an hour that day sitting next to the heater trying to look inside it and see the elephants.

Anon

I used to believe that the phrase "the whole kit and caboodle" was "the whole kitten caboodle". Based on that, I thoought that "caboodle" must mean a litter of kittens, especially a large one. Like if a mother cat had, say, eight kittens in a single litter, it might be said that she really had quite a caboodle of kittens.

Stephanie

For 3 years (5-8) I spoke like I was in a book. like '"I'm going upstairs mom" she said quietly, walking down the hall." My mom has tapes of me doing it and it's soooooo funny. I just made my life into a book on tape.

Lexi

When I was learning what things are, my dad pointed at his foot in the swimming pool and said "Foot!"

For a year I thought "Water" was called "Foot"

Sean Murricane

My mom used to act out the one-person, "You must pay the rent!" scene for my sister and me. It's the one where a comb or similar object is used to signify when the person is playing either the landlord, woman, or hero. Well, it always ends with the landlord saying, "Curses! Foiled again!" For the longest time I believed the phrase was, "Purses, boiled again!!" This would always conjure images in my head of a bunch of purses sitting in a huge pot of boiling water. I wasn't sure why purses being boiled was a bad thing to have happen to you, but I had no reason to question it. Eventually I repeated the phrase in front of my mother one day and she had a pretty good laugh before correcting me.

Nikko

Well, as a child, my mother always taught me that when I can't understand a word, to break it down and I'll understand it (I found out later that she was just much too lazy!). So one fine afternoon, I was sitting on my big blue bean bag chair reading the dictionary, and I came across the word 'prostitute'. I didn't know what it was, so I took my mother's advice and didn't even bother to look at the definition. I just broke down the word.
Pro-something you are good at.
stitute- sounds like subsitute.
So it sounded like a very good subsitute in school.
Oh, the look on the poor principals face when my teacher was absent one day, and he came inside the classroom and asked if the teacher was in. (The substitute was inside the closet getting her coat, so he couldn't see her). And I, wanting to sound smart, said, "No! We have a prostitute! She's in the closet!"
Mind you this was in the late 1950's too.
Oh, did I have some fun...

Mary Jones, Jackson, Mississippi

When I was about 5 or 6 I was really unaware of what exactly people were saying when they said "suit yourself". I believed that the correct way to say such a thing was "shoot yourself". So whenever my chums didn't want to do what I wanted to it was always "shoot yourself" that came out of my little mouth.

Kristine from Boston

When I went to Disney World when I was four ,I really thought Epcot was pronounced Cobweb, and I'll never forget how embarassed I was after jumping on the bed telling my parents how excited I was to go to Cobweb today.

Julianne

I used to watch the Disney movie 101 Dalmatians constantly. At the part where Nanny calls Roger a "blooming hero", I couldn't understand her acccent and thought she called him a "bloomineero"--whatever that is.

Jo

One day when I was walking outside with my mom, we saw some dragonflies or something flying around and I asked her what they were. She said "Oh, just some type of fly." Later on when we saw them again I said "Look, Mama, it's a typafly!!" I thought that was the name of them- 'typa-fly'

Anon