going shopping

when i was a kid, i used to believe that in the utility shop that i passed by every day, they'd have a sale one day, and the price of a real big car would be $1 and i'd buy it

Ian

I used to think when i was really, really young that the liquor store was a candy store, because it's name sounds like licorice.

Brittany

I used to go grocery shopping with my Dad & ask for the most nutrition-free sugary no-chance-in-hell things, like Count Chocula cereal, etc.

Instead of saying 'no', he'd always say "Just wait, we might get it when it goes on sale."

I didn't really understand the idea of a 'sale' & just thought that the evil grocer-man was displaying these items to torture kids & never letting the 'good' cereals leave the shelves of his store.

I hated the grocery store owner's kids for years because of this misunderstanding.

Sorry kids!

Meghan Warby

I used to believe that soda fountains were just that - a fountain that spewed soda instead of water. I was always excited to go to one, but to my disappointed, there was no literal soda fountain.

:p

my mother used to play jokes on me all the time. This is a good example:

We were living in germany, my pops stationed at an Army base over there. Me and Mom go out to the Post Exchange (for you civilians out there, think the military version of a Wal-Mart)

A bunch of men were doing excercises. They were stretching out their quads by placing their hands against a wall of a small building. To anyone, especially a gullble child, it looks like they are, with all their might, trying to hold up the wall

My mom says, "During World War II, American bombers destroyed most of this area. Ever since, they have had to have people hold up the walls so the building doesnt collapse"

For at least 6 months, every time i saw soldiers doing stretching exercises, i totally believed that they were actually holding up the wall

as a sidenote: my mother did this so often, by the time i turned 10, i didnt believe ANYTHING she said. To this day.

josh

I was terrified of shop dummies or mannequins. I was convinced they were moving behind my back and that every time I turned around they'd get closer and eventually kill me. But then I couldn't look them in the eye either. I had to make sure I was facing them, but with my eyes averted.

Mel

when I was a child I couldn't figure out for the life of me why in the world anyone would go to a flea market.Why would you want to buy fleas?Unless of course they were talented as those who worked in flea circuses!I believed this until the age of 12!!

bonnie

when i was little, my mother would put me in the shopping cart. when we went to pay, she told me i'd have to get off, or she'd have to pay for me.

kim

There was an adult bookstore on the main drag in our town. When I was a child, I was pretty bookish, so it was only natural that I'd want to go see what was in "The Book Ranch". I asked to go in every time we drove by, but mom would always change the subject. It wasn't until high school that I knew why.

Anon

i used to think adoption was done by visiting the baby store, and picking out the one you wanted. i can still remember my vague versions of a store lined with babies.
kind of like a pet store i guess.
i had a wild imagination.

Donielle.

When I was a kid, I used to think there was some way to read the barcodes and figure out how much stuff at the store cost

Anon

My mom would always tell me to "jump" when we got to the bottom of escalators so that i wouldn't trip when i transferred myself from the moving stairs to the solid ground. This led me to think that if you didn't jump at the end of the escalator, you would get SUCKED into the stairs, and become part of the escalator.

how horrifying!! haha.

melissa

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

I used to always wonder why my clothes gets shorter within an year of buying it.Finally I came to a conclusion that if you remove the price tag from the dress,it would start diminishing in size every day.I did't realize it was I who was growing and the size of my dress remained constant.

Rohit

When i was really little, i thought that pharmacy was a shop where you could buy animals, like pigs and cows.

Anon

I used to ask my mother why she would complain about spending money at the grocery store. At the end the cashier would hand my mother some coins. So, I reasoned, if you were getting more coins back than the bills you gave, then you were MAKING money, not spending it.

Jayme

For most of my childhood I thought the tiles on the grocery store floor were magic that only affected kids. There were big sections of white and big sections of pink, and I thought stepping on the white would make me weaker, and staying on the pink would keep me strong. Along the edge of shelves there was a strip of dark pink that I thought stepping on would keep me extra strong. Eventually it was replaced with a grey line that I thought stepping on would make me extra weak. I also thought the line was made grey just to make it more challenging for me because I was getting older and better at it.

GazBevMOO

When I was a kid my mother made me hold on to the shopping cart as she pushed it along, so I would not wander off. This was so ingrained that to this very day (I am now 38) I still hold on to the cart when my wife and I are shopping. I am not even aware that I am doing it, and when I catch myself it always makes me laugh.

Charlie

My dad once told me that the litte greasy spots on the pavement of parking lots were little kids that let go of their parents hand when walking into a store. I believed that until I was about 8.

Jess

Before i knew how to read, my sister told me that the grocery store "grand union" was pronounced "grand onion" because she was not actually that good at reading. i figured that they must be well-known for their onions...

Emily