speaking

I was born and raised in NY, as were my parents. My teacher taught us colors in pre-school, and we had just learned "orange", and my teacher pronounced it "ohr-ange." Everytime I would say the word, my mom would correct me and say "ahr-ange." I finally concluded in my little mind that there must be a difference in pronunciation of the color and the fruit, but I didn't know which was which!!! So if I was ever asked to identify either, I would mumble the word because I wasn't sure if I was saying it right.

Matt

I used to believe the word "privacy" was considered rude, because my parents explained to me when I was little the reason they shut the bathroom door was for privacy. I thought it pertained to something involving nudity, and even after I learned different, still felt odd saying the word in public for a long time afterwards.

Kathryn

I often heard people being called dirt bags and wondered what that ment, until one time I was visiting an aunt that had an apple tree in her garden. She was having a problem with moose eating the tree so she tied white bags with dirt in them too a rope fence around the base of the tree. It scared the moose away. I naturally assumed these were dirt bags but never could figure out why you would consider a person to be one.

missa

When I was like four, I went to Disney World. I saw the Little Mermaid's Grotto, which was like this thing where they squirted water on you and you played in very shallow little pools. I wanted to go, but didn't have my bathing suit, so I went without my shirt. My mom said to me, "You have no shame." I thought that was like merchandise, like a Mickey Mouse bathing suit, so when we went to the gift shop later I said, "Mommy, can I get some shame? Pleeeeeeease?"

Katie

My mom would always use old sayings but in front of them she add "You know what they say". I imagined "They" as several british policemen and ladies with eighties hair. I was a wierd kid......

"Curiosity killed the" Cat Eyes

This isn't my belief, buy when my sister was little, she thought a hamster was a type of pig, a fetish was a large rat, and a bra was a beautiful woman.
My mother got very mad at me for teaching her these things when my sister told her teacher that she was her favourite bra ever.

Julia

I used to think the word "rouse" meant a single grain of rice. Since "mice" is the plural of "mouse", and "lice" is the plural of "louse", it seemed to make sense that "rice" would be the plural of "rouse".

Heather

One night, my luittle sister came into my room. She saw a tag on mu dresser. it had been torn off of a set of pajamas, and read something along the lines of "this garment is not fire-retardent"

My sister asked me what a "garment was, and I told her that it was the trident-shaped peice on a bike-helmet buckle.

She belived me.

Anon

When I was a precocious 3 year old, I was certain that all adults spoke Martian among themselves.
I "proved" it to myself by slowly sneaking up on conversations between my mother & our neighbors.
Sure enough, as soon as they psychically detected my presence, the wa-wa underwater-sounds of Martian would smoothly segue into English.

Anon

when i was younger i use to think you would say hillo instead of hello and hi. to this day i say it sometimes.

carly

I used to think that when you went to a baby shower, you actually had to buy the baby a shower and the ones the parents didn't want they'd throw it away. I was a strange kid.

Jeffree Deidara

In Holland we have a sentence when you are scared by a sudden noise or something. I was sitting at the backseat of my mothers bike when someone drove by so fast my mother shouted out 'I scared me a hat!' I remember looking at the sky seeking this hat. I thought it should float somewhere.

hannah

I used to hear random words and start using them out of context.
For example, my dad did something funny, and I said to my mother, "Dad's such a jerk".
Fortunately I never attempted it with any swear words.

Blake

I used to think that when someone said "Good grief", they were saying "Good greep"

Anon

I used to believe that L-M-N-O-P was 1 letter, pronounced elemenopee

Anon

I thought that when people talked about skyscrapers they were referring to the jet airliners that I had always seen flying overhead leaving behind them white scrape marks on the sky. My brother corrected me one day when I pointed up and said, "Look, there goes a skyscraper." After he told me that it really meant a super tall building I thought that was absurd, because a tall building doesn't leave a scrape mark!

DeeDub

Everybody described the conscience as a "little voice in your head", so I thought that *all* thoughts were from the conscience-- essentially, I mixed the conscience up with the internal monologue.

I had (and still have) a lot of random thoughts, and when I was a kid, I was often told that I was very well-mannered for my age, so I thought that because I was so polite, my conscience was "bored" and just said random stuff.

Anon

When I was younger, I thought the word vinegar was the same as the word vagina, and in year 5, we had a TV crew come to our school, to do a documentary on school dinners, and I said into the microphone, which was turned up quite loud 'well I usually have ketchup or mayonnaise on my fries, but my older brother, in high school, prefers vagina with his'. Needless to say, that part was obviously deleted.

Anon

I thought "prison" and "prism" are the same words as each other.

Anon

There's a website called TV Tropes that has a trope called "Heroic BSoD", which means a hero has an emotional breakdown.

Because of this, I thought BSoD was a disorder, like OCD or PTSD, that meant you were prone to emotional breakdowns.

Later, I learnt that it's actually an abbreviation for Blue Screen of Death.

Anon