speaking

I thought when you were in a cakewalk, you actually had to put your feet in cakes and walk around. I thought this was really gross and cried when my parents wanted me to participate in one at a church picnic.

Mike

When I was a kid, I would hear adults talking about people who talked with their hands...and I thought that, somehow, people could manipulate and maneuver their hands fast enough to make vocal sounds. The idea really intrigued me.

Tony

When we were little my sister and I believed the word Poo to be a rude word but Pooh as in Winnie-the-Pooh was ok. So everytime we said the word Pooh we had to say "H" afterwards or we were being naughty. We used to have terrible arguments when we accused each other of not saying the H. And the song went: "Winnie the Pooh..H, Winnie the Pooh..H" Our parents must of thought we were mad!

Dean

When I was about four, I would talk all the time. My grandfather told me that we were all born with a fixed number of words and that I was using mine up too quickly. I was suitably terrified and believed that, in relative silence, for quite some time.

KO

Age 15. Playing a word game with my parents, I got the word 'Lingerie' on my card. Obviously it's only us romantics who like to linger, because they laughed their heads off at my naive pronounciation.

Mark (England)

I was about 10 years old and I used to belive that 'rape' was simply ripping peoples clothes. Imagine the shock for my teacher when for an exercise in English I wrote the sentence "The dog raped the postman". I thought I was being extremely clever.

Slippery Leprechaun

My parents, in an attempt to stimulate my creative impulses, gave me a few boxes full of "stuff" to play with - dress-up clothes, fabric, ribbons, art supplies, interesting toys, beads, you name it. One fabric bit that I had was purple with silver metallic stripes on it. I had seen a TV show recently featuring circus acrobats and thought I'd make myself a skirt with that fabric so I could be an acrobat for Halloween. However, I did not yet know the word for "acrobat". I taught myself how to sew (BADLY) and made an truly awful tiny little miniskirt a week or so later. I ventured into the livingroom to show my parents and visiting grandmother and aunt. My mom, without thinking, said "You look like a prostitute!" She then realized that she probably should not talk about sex workers around her young daughter and would not tell me what it meant. I, therefore, rationalized that "prostitute" was the word for acrobat and went around school the next day telling people - *including my first-grade teacher* - that I wanted to be a prostitute for Halloween!

channa masala

When i was little i used to think that people who stuttered had used up their allotted number of words for the particular word they stuttered on, and could'nt say that word again without difficulty

kwaziwabbit

I was travelling with my Dad in the car one day when I saw him throw an apple core out the window. Thinking this was cool I threw my packet of chips out the window as well. Dad then yelled at me about how it was bad to litter, so when I told him I saw him do it, he simply said "it's different, it's biodegradeable". For years afterwards when my sister and I weren't allowed to stay up and watch TV with Mum and Dad I would tell her "It's biodegradeable" as I thought that meant something adults were allowed to do but not kids.

Pat

Believe it or not, I used to believe the word gullible was fake and went off telling everybody it wasn't in the dictionary. It took me years to find out that the saying "gullible isn't in the dictionary" was only a joke, and the people I told it to thought I was just saying that joke rather than really meaning it.

John

When I was younger, my older sister convinced me that the words "sock" and "pervert" meant the same thing. You can imagine wha my mom said when I decared "there's a load of dirty pervets in my room".

Biatch.

Marc # 44

I came home from school one day with a notice about Picture Day. I asked my mother if I could get a new pair of shoes. She asked me why I needed new shoes. I said that I wanted to look nice for Picture Day. She said nobody would be able to see my shoes in the picture. I pointed to the flyer and said "Look, it says right here, 'We will be photographing the entire student body.'" I don't think she stopped laughing for a solid two minutes.

Photographic Memory

I couldn't understand why no-one had invented a word for something that isn't big but at the same time isn't small so I used to express the concept with the word "little-big" or "big-little". It was a revelation to me when my mother asked me go to the shops for a medium sliced loaf (of bread) and I discovered that someone somewhere had actually solved the problem that was perplexing me at the time.

Lee, England

when i was about 4 i used to believe that 'on purpose' meant accidentally. whenever i spilled drinks i would shriek, "I did it on purpose, i did it on purpose!!!!"

rosie

The first time I ever heard of doing somersaults, I guess it was summer, and I thought somersaults were so called because someone was doing them in the summer. I supposed that if someone did the same thing in the winter, it would be a wintersault. As time went on and I never heard of wintersaults (or springsaults or autumnsaults either, for that matter), I assumed that there was some reason why somersaults were most likely to be done in the summer, hence the name. It seemed to make sense to the extent that summer is associated with outdoor activities, and I'd seen somersaults done primarily outdoors, probably because few people I knew would have had ample room to do them inside their houses.

Wendy

I used to think that whenever I heard (or read..) someone say 'Nuff said. I thought that it meant that someone named Nuff said it. I used to think "Wow, this Nuff guy must be really popular and smart!"

BlackDeath

I used to believe that "priceless" meant the same thing as "worthless". I was quite confused when a TV show mentioned that the fossils in a museum were priceless. Surely, those fossils must be worth SOMETHING...

Adam

When my sister was little she didn't know what a migraine headache was called. I told her they were called "lobotomies." For a while she used to tell people, "Whenever I get a lobotomy, my head hurts."

Alex

When i was about 5 years old i used to think 'Splendid' meant horrible, so one day when i left my hat at the park, and we went back to get it to find it gone, i exclaimed: "Maybe a Splendid robber took it!"

Jackson

When I was very young (less than 10, maybe 6 or 7?) my parents were talking to other adults in the house and they must have been talking about how tired they were. I thought I'd be helpful and popped up with "You should take some laxatives", believing that laxatives would help them relax. Needless to say, everyone was stunned and I felt stupid about this for a long time before I ever actually learned what laxatives are.

BillR