going shopping

I used to be terrifed that if you were in a store in the mall after it closed, they would shut the gate on you and lock you in there for the night. Everytime an employee went on the intercom announcing the store was about to close, i would burst into tears and start screaming hysterically until we left.

...yeah.

Sarah

my mum always told me that the ice cream mans music meant that he had run out of ice cream..... how mean is that!

Anon

When I was little I used to think the Salvation Army was a real army (like the U.S. Army) and all the stores (I had never been inside one) were like PX's
for civilians. I have no idea why I thought this since neither of my parents were in the military.

PixieGoth

'Black Friday', the traditional first shopping day of the christmas season in the US is so named, I now know, due to the fact that the immense revenues gained by stores therein, put them often 'in the black'. That is, operating at a profit. However when I was little I seriously used to believe that on Black Friday, only Black people were allowed out on the streets.

Anon

I used to belive that there was a magic underground room underneath the fotomat where little "fotomat gnomes" developed your pictures!

Anon

when i was young, i used to believe that clothes and shoes grow smaller over time when my mom said to me 'this is too small for you now, we bought it last year'.

fang

whenever i saw those big spotlights from car dealierships, i used to think that it was a big hollywood premiere. i remember really wanting to go and see the movie stars and wondering why my parents didnt think it was as big a deal as i did

dib

When I was a kid I thought the huge signs that hung up in stores like John Lewis said "Please play here", as opposed to "Please pay here". As a result I was always askinh my mum to let me go to the play area, and she'd ask where, and I'd point out the sign, and she'd laugh at me and tell me it didn't say that. Sometimes I'd believe her, then we'd walk to a different part of the shop, I'd see another sign, and I'd say "Can I go and play over then there please?"

Even now when I see the signs it makes me laugh.

Gemz - I want to play!

One of my earliest shopping trips with my mother, I noticed that she had to pay more than she'd expected and needed to look into her handbag for change. When I asked why, she said she had to pay for the tax. So when we got home, I dumped out the bag looking for the "tacks." I told mom that we didn't get them!

Julie

I was sort of a weird kid anyway, but when I was very young, I used to think that the little circular plastic bits they put on hangers-- you know, they're little colored discs and they have a S, M, or L, or XL on them-- were called "chemicals." Every time my mother or aunt took me shopping, I would crawl around on the floor underneath the racks collecting them. After a few trips my collection at home was getting a bit large, so my mother insisted that I leave them at the store. And so at the conclusion of every trip, I would take my handful of plastic bits to the register and hand them to the cashier, saying "Here, I cleaned up all your chemicals."

Kelly

When I was little, we went to the mall and went on the escalators. I thought that the very last escalator step looked like a mouth with teeth and that if you didn't hop over it, it would grab your feet and suck you under! I still laugh about it, and every now and then I'll hop over the last step on the escalator, just in case.

Teresa

The mall I go to has a slope going around it so that there are parking lots on both floors. Until someone showed me the slope, I thought that if you go out the door to the parking lot on a floor where you didn't park, you'd end up in some alternate dimension.

Mitsuki The Ninja

When I was little, I was at a photography studio with my parents. I saw a sign that said something like, "Order today and get 12 free wallets!" I didn't understand that "wallets" were a type of photo and I spent the rest of the visit wondering what anyone would do with 12 wallets. I figured you could give them away to family and friends...

Erika

I used to be confused by signs in stores that said "sale" or "on sale". I thought to myself, "if this stuff is 'on sale', does it mean that you can't buy all this other stuff? And if you can't, why do they have the other stuff in here anyway?"

John

My son used to believe that the "no candy" line in the grocery store meant you couldn't be in that line if you wanted to purchase candy. One day I was buying Halloween Candy and he read the sign and he became horrified that I would break this law, and told me to get in another line.

Janet

When you buy something in a shop and you don't have enough money, the shopkeeper will give you change so you can have it..........if only!

Alastair

I used to think that you could only buy stamps in a book of 4 (Because I always heard my mum say 'book of 4 stamps please')so the first time i went to buy stamps, I only needed one and I asked for '4 first class stamps' i was so annoyed when she started tearing 4 single ones from a big sheet, but i was too embarraced to say i only wanted one. How dumb is that.

Katy

I used to beleive in stores that were open 24/7 , that the people that worked there worked 24/7 nonstop.

Anon

I knew it was wrong to talk to strangers so I would yell at my mom and get worried when she chatted with people in the grocery store line.

Anon

I was convinced by my aunt that ALL the clothes in shops are tried on by either customers, or the assistants in the shop so if we get clothes we have to wash them twice before wearing them to clean all the dirt them left in it. i used to run the bath tub and wash the new clothes with shampoo, then dry them with a hair dryer. I stopped believing this when I ruined a really expensive only-dry-cleanable dress that I was suppose to wear to a wedding when I was 11.

Anon