in the street

that the bears which live in the cracks between paving stones are Russian

jonah fonder

i used to believe that scaffolding was used to support buildings when they were having work on them.

Anon

I used to believe that when a family moved to another house, that the family living in the purchased house would move into the first family's house, i.e. a house swap. I wondered at the cooperation of it all.

CJS

There was this homeless man who I would always see on certain streets with my dad and my sister when I was little (I still see him!), and my dad told me that he was the sandman, the guy who puts the crusty stuff in the corners of your eyes at night, so I would always imagine him coming into our house at night, and laughing as he sprinkled sand into my eyes.

Anon

When my son was younger, he thought that every house with B & B sign meant that the people who lived there were BAD and BADDER. So everytime we drove past a house with this sign he ducked down in his car seat so no one would see him.

WK

When I was little, my grandfather told me that all the left shoes travelled in a different lorry to the right shoes, so that if there was an accident people couldn't steal pairs of shoes. This was enforced by the fact that we always seemed to see Hush Puppy lorries travelling in twos.

Janey

My Mom convinced me that those black things that stretch across a road to monitor how many ppl drive on the road...where actually people's garden hoses that they stretched across the road to flatten them out cuz they didn't want to wrap their garden hoses up in circles anymore. And the reason they were black (instead of green) was because the tires and road were so dirty.

Crystal

When my mom would take me with her to run errands we'd always pass this house that had stuffed animals set up for sale on the lawn, and to keep me from begging she told me they were all just outside to dry. It seemed perfectly logical to me, although I always wondered why she couldn't just be more careful trying to keep them clean.

Amanda

when I was a kid and saw a van drive past that were a firm of shop fitters - I always read it as shop lifters & wondered why the Police didn't go after them

(It still catches me out sometimes)

kb

I used to think that the eye symbol on the Neighborhood Crime Watch signs was a toilet lever, and that it meant some kind of motto like 'Help Flush Out Crime'

Scatman

In one of the neighborhoods that I lived in growing up there was this old house that had its windows boarded up and the grass outside was like three feet high and all the kids were positive that a mean old lady lived in there. We called her the cat lady because whenever a kitten went missing it was said that she lured them to her house and fed them poison... forget the fact that we all bought those kittens at the town fireworks for a-penny-a-paw and thought they were old enough to run around the neighborhood by themselves. And it meant nothing that the house was condemned by the town. There was an old lady cat-napping our kitten!!

Sam

In singapore we have these drain gratings on the pathways next to roads. On rainy days, my mom used to tell me "Watch out for the gratings, they're slippery". Only i thought that she was calling them "Grey Things" because well, they were grey and i thought she didn't know wat they were actually called..

Mike

I used to think that the UPS truck was the thing that they haul people to the lunatic asylum in, with white jackets on.

anon.

When I was around 5 or 6, i thought UPS trucks were driven by Oompa-Loompas that tried to kidnap children to make them test candy at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

Scatman

My sister thought there was a little man inside traffic lights who would run up and down all day making them go red, orange and green!

yellownessy

I used to belive a man went round all the street lights to turn them on at night and that he would go and turn them all off in the morning!

yellownessy

When I was little, my cousins used to live at the end of a court. Because the road didn't continue but just ended at their house, I believed that after their backyard would be only sea, because it was the edge of Australia. It never occured to me to wonder why there were more houses behind my cousins house, though.

Jem

I've always had a very bad sense of direction, especially in the dark. This obviously led me to believe that buildings and streets moved around at night just to confuse me.

Marie