spelling

When I was about 4, my friend and I thought that writing in cursive was just writing a letter and then putting a big squiggle behind it, and then putting the next letter with a big squiggle, etc..
i.e.
"car" in our cursive would be
C~~~ a~~~~ r~~~~~
We didn't figure out what cursive actually was until 3 years later...ooops

Kels

one day when i was little i drew out the alphabet and i made a story about who loved who. For example a and b loved each other and c and loved each other. Mr C and Mrs D to be exact. Mrs I. and Mrs. K were both in love with Mr. J though. Uh Oh..

Isabella

At my elementary school we routinely sang "O Columbia, the gem of the ocean." I heard this as "Columbia, the jam of the ocean." I understood this to mean that America had got in Columbus' way when he tried to get to India. Sort of like a traffic jam.

BB

Up until I was 10 or 11, I thought the word anonymous was 'annoymous'.

Anon

When I was in middle school I had to write a paper for English. I remember my mom proof read it and looked at me confused and asked me to clarify by the phrase "I ran next store to borrow bread". I guess each time people would say "next door" I heard "next store". I remember arguing with her about it because I knew I was RIGHT!
It was a harsh reality that day!

Anon

I always had trouble with spelling and reading. I learned all of the rules but that never seemed to help. I was so proud of myself when I learned that "shun" was spelled "tion". So in my mind "otion" definitely spelled ocean.

tonybaloney

LA was Ellay

Anon

You could spell all letters.

B = bee
C = sea
J = Jay

So how do you spell A, D, E... ? For some reason, they just didn't teach you how to spell all of the letters in school.

Jessica S.

I used to think "Zed" and "Zee" were two different letters.

Anon

One of my friends used to believe that the letter "M" could have as many lines as she wanted so she would do a letter M so it looked bit like MMMMM.

Anon

I used to believe that if you got all of the letters of a word such as "stop", it didn't matter what order they were in. So, on my first spelling test I was very upset with the teacher who marked my spelling of "ptso" wrong. I was convinced that all the letters were there, so I should get credit.

Anon

When my mom taught me how to read and write, she compared the lowercase b and d to pregnant women. I took this literally and thought she meant that they actually were pregnant. I always saw lowercase letters as children and was horrified that they were pregnant so young. I knew they must be having a hard time, so I made it a point to always capitalize those letters, even in the middle of words.

Kassi

I used to think "fonix" was a dangerous drug that would mess up your spelling because a kid at my school always wore one of those humours "hukt awn fonix wurkt fer mi" t-shirts

xfactorial

Whenever I went to the department store with my mom and saw the heading "lingerie" I thought you pronounced it leangeree. So when I found some fancy undergarments in my moms drawers I asked her why she had leangeree and if it was for a fancy dance. I don't think she ever knew what I was talking about...

Kiersten

My husbands family went out to eat as a family when he was young to "Chilies." Well if you look at their sign the "l" kind of curls into the first "i" and makes it look like a "J". So my husbands siblings convinced him that Chilies was really Chijies, pronounced Chejees. He called it Chejees until he was 18, but now the whole family calls it that just to make fun of him... guilty as charged!

Kiersten

First off, My name is Brian, and when my mom would write my name, I always thought the "a" was a captial "Q". So for my first few years of spelling, I would write BRIQN. And everybody though it was just a lower-case "a".
And at the time, my dad worked at a local Imo's, so my picture of my name is still hanging on the wall, for all to see.

Brian

My friend once told me that when she was younger, in a spelling test a question was 'my favourite toy is my ........' my friend, hoping to spell beanies., as in beanie babies, spelt it penis. The school called her mum and had a chat to her aswell!

Anon