speaking

I used to believe that if my favorite words were used by other people, the words would get all "used up" and I wouldn't be able to say them any more. My dog was named "Daisy" and I wouldn't let anyone else say her name.

Meowpossum

When I was small I would watch adults talk, and they would often use their hands to make gestures while they were talking. I thought those gestures were like a second language that adults used simultaneously while speaking. I kept wondering when they were going to teach us that language in school.

Anon

I used to think "President" and "present" were the same thing, so every year I would be disappointed I never got any presents on "Presidents Day".

Accordingly, I always got to open the presidents during Christmas.

Anon

when i was 5 my i spilled water all over my cousin she said,"You'll pay for this.'' I wasn't so smart the so i said, ''But i don't have any money.'' she still makes fun of me for it!

Anon

I used to believe that when you had a "crush" on someone, they had to lie down on the ground in front of you, and you would step on their arm.

JifJif

I used to think "bacteria" was pronounced "vacteria" and "taste buds" was pronounced "taste fuds". Nobody ever corrected me :/

David S.

I used to think that macabre was a fabric identical to mesh. I believed this until my first week of my senior year of high school.

Tiffany Jean Greer

When I was younger I used to refer to cars as lawnmowers. Despite my parents constantly saying "c....a....r" I referred to the motor vehicle as the difficult, 3 syllabled word until I started school.

Eoin

There was a cartoon sketch on Sesame Street where a comical guy wearing a barrel talked in rhyme about where all his clothes went. "These are the flies that made off with my ties... these are the moths that ate up my cloth... this is the glutton who ate my last button!" That last had a visual of a squirrel-type critter picking up a button and swallowing it. I thought for a while after that that a glutton was some kind of rodent.

Brenda

One time in kindergarten, my class had to do this sheet that said, "I have ____ letters in my name." You had to fill in the number of letters in your name. But I didn't know that the space where you fill in missing words is called a "blank," so I misunderstood my teacher when she read the question aloud as "I have blank letters in my name." I thought you had to write the word "blank" in the blank! I also asked how to spell it!

Anon

When I heard the name Jose, I thought it was actually spelled "Hoasai". I had seen the name Jose in print, and may have known its pronunciation, but never connected it to "hoasai".

No way hoasai

that the word "horny" was a joke. I played scrabble on the computer when I was about seven years old, when the computer used that word. When I asked my mom what it meant, she told me it was a joke by the creators of the game. I believed that for five years.

Peter

On a road trip through California countryside, I pointed out a beautiful hillside of orange Poppies..."Where, Where?" my 2 year old frantically demanded, "I can't see the orange puppies!!" It reminded me of the time when I was a kid on a trip with my family. My dad pointed out a Baskin Robbins, and my MOTHER said "I don't see any basking robins!" And she was serious, too!

Annabelle Beanbag

I used to believe that 'hospital' was pronounced hos-pill-til, because that's where you got medicines and pills to make you better!

I also remember seeing the word 'Mom' written in a book, and thinking that it was a mis-spelling (in the UK we say 'Mum'), not realising that Mom is American.

Kirstenie

Up until my twenties (yeah, I know) I was seriously confused about the saying "you can't have your cake and eat it too." I thought that if you were eating your cake, weren't you HAVING it? For some reason, the light dawned one day and it was like a spiritual awakening.

Lori

i never knew how my mum and dad spoke to each other i thought they spoke alien until my mother exclaimed it was called languges now i know three english ,german and chinese

three languages

one time when i was like 5, my grandma told me she wanted to take me to a ballet sometime. but my dad said, "no, you don't want to go to a stinky ballet. you want to go to a monster truck rally! those are awesome!" and my grandma said, "don't brainwash the girl", and i thought it literally meant sticking my head in a tub full of soap and water, and scrubbing my whole head, until the soap got in my ears and washed out my brain. i was sooo scared of that concept for the longest time.

rachael

Not one of my own, but...

Some friends of mine had their 4-year-old son tell them that he thought their cat was "a good looker". They wondered where he had picked up this expression. But it turned out to be something he'd just made up, and all he meant was that the cat was very observant.

Alan

Living in the UK during the 70's and 80's I used to get really upset 'cos so many people were losing their jobs as plants and factories were closed down. I even asked my mother why didn't they just move to that town where there were loads of jobs. Following a rather blank look, she asked what I meant. "Well" I replied, "The man on the news said there were thousands of jobs in Jeopardy"

Rosey

When I was little, I played a video game called "The Legend of Zelda" in which the hero must rescue the kidnapped Princess Zelda. From that I divined that this new word "legend" meant that someone was kidnapped and you had to save them; I thought that a game called "The Legend of Your Pets" would be pretty fun.

(Eventually in school they taught me that a "legend" was something found on a map. This didn't help.)

Y