going shopping

I used to believe that there was a man inside the ice machine, where they had blocks of ice for sale. "He" would dispense your ice block when you put your money in.

Joani

When I was little and my mother would take me with her on trips to the mall, I'd get bored in the department stores because we weren't buying anything for me, and I'd hide in the clothing racks. My mother would get mad, and told me that the department store owners were watching me on the security cameras and would come down and yell at me and kick me out if I kept it up.
One day I was hiding amongst some women's dresses, and they made an announcement over the intercom for a Miss Green to come to the front of the store. I began bawling and ran to my mother, and when she asked what was wrong, I tearfully told her the lady on the speaker called me "Miss Greedy" and she was going to come kick me out!

Not-So-Greedy

I used to think that handbags were actually called hambags. I thought women carried ham around with them or something!

Megan

I used to believe, until I was 5, (I'm 12 now) that the little design in the bottom of paper shopping bags was a monster, and when I got too close to the bottom, I would get attacked.(Well, anyway, it looked like a design when I held it to a light, and saw the overlapping paper, but I also thought that that was the only way you could see the "monster".)

Anon

this is my moms:at road side vegetable stands, people often put a list of what they have, and at the bottom blow horn, to let them know you want service, my mom thought blowhorns were a vegetable!

amy, nj

I thought that mannequins in department stores were real people who were paid to stand there wearing the stores' clothes and stay very, very still. When I was five I told my mom that being a mannequin must be the most horrible job in the world. Cause how can anyone stay still for that long? What if they get tired or get an itch?

Lyssa

I grew up on the East Coast of the U.S., where there was a chain of Thom McAn shoe stores. Whenever my parents took me there to get shoes, I always asked when Thom was going to come out and try shoes on me! I waited and waited, but he never did...

Penny

Mad Butcher is a small chain of supermarkets in the South. Thanks to my older brothers, I used to believed they were called that because when little kids got separated from their parents, they chopped the kids up and put them in the hamburger meat.

Ron

Elevatiors were run by very strong, yet very short people. I used to throw change and small pieces of candy down the crack for them. They couldn't get paid enough and I figured they were hungry.

I dropped a new book down the crack by accident, and tried to convince my mom that the 'elevator men' would give it back to me if we asked them. She wouldn't listen and continued shopping.

She found me some time later after a department store employee rescued me from getting my head smashed between the elevator doors. I tried all the elevators to make the men hear me.

After that I tried to spit on the men, but I quickly gave up when I reaslized the danger of angering them.

Diane

Once I was shopping at the mall with my mother and older sister and my sister had seen a coat that she wanted. She jokingly commented that it must be made out of human skin because it was so expensive. From then on (for a longer time than I care to admit), I believed that they really made some coats out of Human skin and I could never figure out why I had never seen them in any store, but I did not stop looking for them every time we went shopping...

Megancita

When I was little, I used to think that shopp-keapers were greedy. This was because I did't know that theyhad to buy the things that they sold to make money!

Charlotte

When I was small, I used to love to look through the mail-out advertisements that contained coupons. Every time I would see "Save 25 cents on such-n-such" I truly believed that the product was on sale for only 25 cents and the coupon was telling the customer to save up a quarter. But then I would think, surely it wouldn't be that cheap, cause mom would be buying EVERYTHING!

Anon

I live in Denmark where people speak danish. When shopclerks in Denmark have finished calculating the price for your wares on their cash register, they say: "Ellers andet?" which means "anything else?", but when i was a small boy, i thought they said "Æd lasagne!", which means "Eat lasagne!"

Morten Vestergaard

I used to believe that if something wasn't "on sale" at the store, that it wasn't for sale. When we'd go to the grocery store and I'd ask for something, mom would say, "No...it's not on sale." I thought the store wouldn't let you buy it if it wasn't on sale.

Mel.

When I was little I had the worst fear of being locked in a store. When the lady came on the intercom saying the store would close in 10 minutes, I started panicking. I thought I would have to spend the night in the store. There was more than one occasion when I would start bawling when my mom wouldn't leave right away. 0.o I practically dragged her out of the store everytime.

Sarah

I used to believe that if you weren't wearing rubber soled shoes when you rode on an escalator, you would be sucked into it unless you jumped before you reached the last step. ( My Grandmother used to tell me this!)

Anon