speaking

When I was young I had heard many times the expression "Naked as a jay bird" and knew what it referred to, but later I heard someone mention something about 'jay walking' and I thought it meant someone was walking around naked.

Amanda

"Better than sliced bread"

I used to believe 'Sliced Bread' was a musical band.

Madeline

I used to think that Americans and Australians were just British people living abroad and speaking with an alternative accent because they are international
Lol.

Natasha

1 belief I had as a kid was that being on the phone or radio could distort your voice and make it sound likeypu had a foreign accent.

Anon

When I was little, I heard of someone having a "short fuse" and thought it meant a short memory and that the person was very forgetful.

Anon

that terraced houses were actually terrorist houses. and if there were terrorist houses, why didn't they just arrest all the terrorists since they knew where they lived. I'm from ireland so this was a really big deal.

Anon

We used to watch a lot of public television in my family. I remember watching a NOVA special on black holes with my dad. They interviewed Stephen Hawking, who can't talk properly due to a degenerative illness. When I asked my dad why the man was talking so strangely, he told me his voice was sucked out by a black hole. I completely believed him, and today he won't admit to having ever said it.

Dina

i used to think gymnastics was a person named Jim Nastics. I couldn't understand how he could be at the local youth club AND on TV in the same day- and i could never figure out who he was when i watched it.

Anon

When I was about five years old, there was a commercial for Spaghetti-Os that ended with the announcer saying "with and without meatballs". I thought he was saying "withend without meatballs". I surmised that "withend" was another word for pasta or noodles, and at least once, I used the new word, much to the confusion of anyone who heard me.

Katherine

My sister is older than me and when she got to a certain age, she did not have to wear knee socks any more, but instead got to wear leotards. Since her name was Leah, and my name is Holly, I thought that when I grew up I would get to wear holly-tards.

kcdawg

Once when I was very young my uncle saved a person from drowning at one of our ponds. My grandma was so proud that her child could artifically inseminate someone back to life. She even told the newspapers this......it was years later that we told her that he artifically resesitated and not "inseminated" :)

embarassed family member

I was staying over at a friends house one night and while we were lying in the bunk beds he would be able to fart whenever he wanted to. I asked him how he did it and he said 'Tricular'. For the next couple of years, everytime I farted in front of people I would say 'Tricular' and smile at them. One day when I farted in front of the same friend who had told me the word, he asked me what I was saying. He then told me he had said not 'Tricular' but 'Trick you learn' I felt the last couple of years of embarassment rush into me.

spon000

"Mickey & the Beanstalk" was a picture book and record version of the fable (done by Disney) that was very popular in my kindergarten class in the mid 1950s. An invisible narrator recounted the drama of Mickeys plight and the dim witted giant to an invisible pair of kids -- little girl and little boy. The record beeped when you were to turn the page. Gripped with fear for Mickey's safety, I listened as the narrator whispered and the picture showed Mickey climbing up the sleeping giant's shirt to filch the key to free the harp-woman. Suddenly the little girl breaks the tension describing some NEW character that Mickey should, "leave alone!"

Who was Well Enough and how did he get in the story?!

Mo

I thought that "Doube Bubble Toil and Trouble" was "Doube Bubble, Toilet Trouble"

Anon

I used to truely believe that everyone had it wrong and that "yellow" was actually pronounced "lello". when i was 4 i slapped a girl because she insisted that it was "yellow" and that i just didn't know how to talk properly. When i told the kindergarten teacher why i slapped her, she said that it actually was "yellow" and i screamed at her that she was an idiot and didn't deserve to be a teacher!

lello lover

I'm 20 years old, by the way...
Up until tonight, I believed that Molotov Cocktails were a kind of drink. I was talking on the phone with my mom, when she told me of this story on the news about a man in New York City who stood on top of a building, and threw Molotov Cocktails off of the building and onto the street, causing really bad damage. I was totally baffled as to why anybody would want to throw a bunch of drinks off a building. I even had this mental image of some guy on top of a tall building, throwing drinks in these little cocktail glasses onto the street. My response to this was, "Wow, sounds like *he* had a few too many Molotov Cocktails!", wondering why in the hell anyone would want to do such a weird thing. It was then that I found out that Molotov Cocktails are actually bombs that start on fire when you throw them at things.... oh dear...

~Dominique~

my Grandmother likes to tell the story about, when I was four years old, a neighborhood boy kept coming into my backyard and bothering me, so she told me to "just kick him out" the next time he bothers me... and how, not long after, she came outside to see me kicking the poor little boy's shins all the way to the sidewalk!

harleyhalfmoon

Until recently I thought that a minge was a weird sort of cake...
(I have no idea why)
My brother was helping me create an email address and I said go away and I'll do it myself, I thought of the perfect one, Eat My Minge, I thought it was brilliant and when I went to add my brother he ran into my room and asked if that was me, he looked angry and I just replied "No". He asked me who it was and I said it was a friend of mine. He asked me if I knew what it meant and I said I did but I wouldn't tell him. (I was so pannicked that it might be something really bad) I googled it and to my horror I found out it was slang for Vagina.

Vagina or Cake?

When I was about seven years old, I found out that the word 'bitch' was the name for a female dog.
Then one day, when I was playing outside with my big brother and his friends, one of them came up to me and said 'Sophie, do you know what a male dog is called?'
I said 'B***ard' and they all laughed at me and called me stupid.

I ran home crying and to this day I've not told my family what happened.

Sophie

When I was little my mother called being naked 'nakey-no-nos' as in, "bath time, get in your nakey-no-nos". I believed this was a common term everyone used until I was about 17.

Anon