spelling

I used to believe that it didn't matter how many horizontal lines there are in a capital "E", as long as they are evenly spaced. All my "E";s looked like combs.

Kate Joly

When I was in second grade our teacher taught us "I before E except after C". I always imagined a world where I walked in front of E except when C came along, than it had to walk behind E. I imagined them with arms and legs walking on the sidewalk. I had no idea it had to with spelling and always wondered why the teacher repeated it.

Kimberly

When I was little, a boy at my babysitter's house told me that his mamma wanted him to make straight A's. I tried and tried but I couldn't understand that was possible since two of the lines that made up an "A" were slanted.

Brittany

I beleived up until I was about 15 that there were two words for forehead: forehead and forrid. I blame this on living in Essex.

Saggs

For years my friend John and I would hang out in back of the library under a sign "NO LOITERING".
One day, (we were 17) I threw down a candy wrapper. John said "Hey- don't break the rules. There's no loitering here".
I said "What do you think that sign means?"
"No Littering."
"Well, why do you think it is spelled that way?"
"I don't know- I thought it was a fancy way of saying "No Littering".

Tom S.

My sister (when she was in Kindergarten)used to sing the alphabet song with her class, except they'd start "Oh! A,B,C,...)and for the whole year she thought O was the first letter of the alphabet. She even argued with our mom about it!

M.B.N.

i used to think that 'e' was in the wrong place in the alphabet bc to me all letters and numbers had personalies and 'e' was a mean letter and he lied and cheated a lot, so he should not be so early in the alphabet or such an important letter. I think i associated him with the color green which for some reason i really didn't like.

Anon

When I was five (and just learning to read) I was looking at a roll of TUMS on my mom's nightstand and read the letters backwards.

A few weeks went by and instead of just reading the letters, I could actually put the letters together. Instead of my mom's medicine being called S...M...U...T... I now knew it was called SMUT.

At the grocery store checkout stand a few weeks later, my mom was rubbing her temples while we were waiting to check out. I proudly said - so everyone could hear - "Mom, if you're feeling bad, just buy you some SMUT. It always makes you better."

Her jaw dropped, and I think she forgot about her headache.

Hi Ho

when I was little I got paparazzi and pavarotti confused, I learned the truth when Princess Diana died, because they said they were speeding to get away from the paparazzi, and I couldn't understand why a fat itallian singer would be chasing them and why they'd have to speed away from him.

Moose

When I was about 7 or 8, we had to look up lists of words for homework. One of my words was 'infiltrate' and the definition I found was 'To enter secretly with an unfriendly purpose.' Somehow I misread it as 'To enter secretly with an unfriendly porpoise' and I wondered why somebody had made a word for that, as it couldn't be that common.

unfriendly porpoise

I use to think that the abc's went like this: abcdefghijk im a little p qrst..etc

April

I was with my younger sister, who was 11 at the time. Just for fun, we were reading graffiti in a public bathroom. She read the messages aloud - "I love Robert", "Jackie was here", "KB+IH forever." Then we came across one that annouced, "I love porn." I was silently hoping she wouldn't notice it, but no such luck. My sister squinted at it thoughtfully, then declared, "They must've meant 'popcorn.'". I had to struggle not to laugh, but I didn't want to give it away that whoever wrote that definitely did NOT mean popcorn.

Kathryn

So when I was little I used to think the alphabet song just named a lot of letters and I spent inordinate amounts of time trying to think of the letters that weren't in the song.

Megan

When I was little, I would see calendars that had the letters "SMTWTFS" on the top. Whenever I saw these calendars, I figured that SMTWTFS, one word, was a company that made calendars, and not an abbreviation for the days of the week. One day I said to my mom, "Wow Mummy, smitwiffs must be a really big company! They make calendars EVERYWHERE!" My mum is still laughing to this day.

somerandomperson

Back in elementary school, our school song would start: "Emerson, Emerson, E-M-E-R-S-O-N," and so on. As a kindergardener, I had no idea how to spell the school name, so I would choose random letters to go in that part, such as "E-V-R-T-N-P-N" until I gathered up enough courage against sounding stupid to ask how it was really spelled.

AJT

when i was little i overheard my older cousin say that he had to write a letter for english. Well being 4 at the time i thought that he was inventing a letter (as in a letter of the alphabet). i couldnt wait till i was in high school and got to invent my own letter. its name was going to be anzy and look like a spiral.

M J Aaaaaaaaaaaasmith

Because I learned to play the piano at such an early age, I thought the alphabet only included the music alphabet, 'ABCDEFG'.
Needless to say, kindergarten was quite alarming.

Monika

I used to think that the alphabet song went "L, a minnow, P". I wondered why the song was talking about tiny fish!

Aarinsky

I used to believe that a "No Loitering" sign was "No Littering", inexplicably spelled with a Brooklyn accent.

erin

You know how adults sometimes spell out words that they don't want kids to understand? Well whenever grownups did this around me I could usually figure out what they were spelling, and so the point of doing this was pretty much defeated. So I just thought spelling words was a Thing adults did sometimes, and I would spell random words as I was speaking sometimes in an attempt to sound grown-up.

k.