going shopping

I used to believe that if I touched things at the department store, there was a person at the store who would come cut off your ears. My Grandpa is responsible for this belief!

Marcia

There's a local grocery store around here called "Foodland". When I was really young, I imagined this place to be giant, mystical land; a wide, open field with plants growing any type of food you could imagine.

Matthew Brabbin

One my mom and I walked in front of this toy store and I wanted to go in and check out the toys. She told me no one that wasn't buying a toy could enter. I believed her. Then, several years after, we were looking for a present for my cousin. She entered the store and I told her that we couldn't go insede unless we were buying something. She laughed at me. Who wouldn't? I was 17!

Rory

i remember my sister, 17, and I going shopping with my mom when walking thru a store, my mom stopped to look at picture frames. My sister, not realising the pictures in them were just for show, asked my mom 'Why would you want to buy a photo of someone you don't know??' Everyone laughed and she hasn't lived it down to this day!

Anthony

I used to think that K Mart was so named because somewhere there must be other stores with all the names from "A Mart" through "J Mart".

Charlene

I used to believe that the real (and only) name of Ethan Allen, the upscale furniture store, was The Look-Don't Touch Store, because whenever we went, that's what my parents called it.

Meg

When I was a kid, my dad told me that if I didn't jump off of the escalator at the right moment, it would suck me in and kill me.

Kelly

I used to believe that every time i went in a store that the grown ups had to buy me something.

jvf

Ya know how kids just love to stand up in the shopping cart and the mom always tells the to sit down? Well after my mom telling me that if I didn't sit down, the cops would come to get me, and not 2 seconds later, I heard a siren...I didn't move an inch

Sherrie

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 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 used to think that a car boot sale was where motorists exchanged car boot lids.

Alan, Sheffield, UK

When I was little, 3 or so, I used to think the elevator in the department store was somewhere you went while the rearranged everything. I mean you go in the box and come out and everything is different. I never used to get confused if we took the stairs though.

Anon

My father used to tell me that the mannequins in the mall were aliens, and if touched would shock me. I, until i was 12, was terrified.

Madi

When I was young I watched the movie ‘The Great Escape’ with my father and he explained to me what solitary confinement was.

Fast forward and we drove past Society of Saint Vincent de Paul thrift store,
it was an old building and the store was closed with roller shutters covering the doors and windows,

I misread the sign and thought it said ‘The Solitary Of Saint Vincent de Paul‘ and I thought it was an old solitary confinement prison that once held someone named Saint Vincent de Paul.

Anon

When i was about 5 yrs old me and my mother went shopping to Marks and Spencer and i was crying and screaming ( as we did when we shopping with our mothers )because i couldnt get my own way, then my mother turned around and told me that there was this child man hiding in this door in the corner of the shop and if he saw a child screaming he would come out and take me away and lock me up in this room until it was time to go home, i never cried shopping with my mother ever again.

Kay

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

As a small child, I believed that items sold in small sizes,
like, 1/2 dozen eggs, travel size shampoo, quart of milk etc. where only for "short people" and I told my mom I wanted to be a short person when I grew up so I can buy the cute stuff.....

lisa

I used to believe that coconuts would fall off of trees in the Pacific Islands, then float all the way to our shores, where there were workers who go around all the beaches picking up all the coconuts, who then gave them to supermarkets.

Captain Raison

On Main St. in the town where I grew up, there was an unfinished furniture store. I was well into my 20's when I finally realized that "unfinished furniture" meant that there was no paint or stain on the wood, NOT that it was missing legs or tops.... I wish I had known that before I bought that set of dining-room chairs that I had to strip and repaint myself.....

Emily