in the street

When I was a child in the car with my folks and we would pass by a building that said "body shop" I did not realize it was for car body repair and thought it was for people.

Rhonda

When I was little, my parents would drive by open fields and point to those round hay bales and say "Look! Joe Barrets!" So, for the LONGEST time my sister and I believed that round hay bales were called "Joe Barrets." As it turns out, my dad had worked with a man who made the machines that make the bales round, a certain "Joe Barret." My parents were just joking around when they called hay bales "Joe Barrets" and never expected that we did not understand their little joke. I was well into my high school years when I figured this out.

simple simple in DC

I used to think there was a big piece of elastic, with one end attached to my back and the other attached to the letterbox on our front door. This meant that if I walked round a lamppost I would get stretched and then have to quickly walk backwards around it again so that I didn't get tangled up.

Dan Littler

When you walked up the high street you had an invisible piece of string behind you & you had to walk back home the right way so it did not get entangled up between lamp posts

martin

Here's a real good one!! We were driving through our local park and they were building a new lagoon. As we were driving through, I asked my dad what they were doing and he told me that a man had lost his watch and they were looking for it.

Months later, after the lagoon was finished, we were driving through and I said, "Dad, did they ever find that man's watch?!"

Haven't lived it down to this day!!

Anon

When I was little I used to think that the crackes in the roads were the lines in a jigsaw puzzle, and our houses and cars were Jesus' toys and he was moving us all around on the puzzle.

Shannon

I used to believe that all sewers, if followed long enough, eventually led to Hell. And that if you lifted a manhole cover, demons would fly out.

T.R.

my father used to tell me that fireworks were discs shot in the sky, then some army or soldiers shoot the disk. when bullets hit the disk, it explodes and make this light and sound.

hashem el-sayd

I used to believe that the house in front of mine used to shake, like during an earthquake happening only with that house.

Kinha SP

When I was little, I thought that when you put a letter in the blue mail boxes that it went directly to the post office.

Jenny

I used to believe that Dick Van Dyke lived in my neighborhood. The house was very 'fifties' looking and its tall-ish owner in my 8 year old mind was the spitting image of Dick Van Dyke from the Dick Van Dyke Show. I felt like I lived in Hollywood. Now when I see this man who bears no resemblance to anyone remotely famous and probably never had I laugh to myself. My mother laughs at me.

ve

I remember going to see the house my family was moving into. As I was sitting in the car on the way to the house, I started thinking about people moving and for sale signs and the like. I asked where the other people went who were in the house before us, and my parents told me they had moved to a new house too. I didn't know much about money at the time, so logically I concluded that people trade houses.

I could see the full coordination as one family talked to another and arranged what home to go to, and would all move on the same day into thier new place.

sampa

I used to believe that all TV came from the TV station in our town. There was a guy who lived next door named Mr. Humphrey. I thought he was the Vice President, Hubert Humphry. I thought the whole world was within a few blocks.

Ralph

I used to believe that the number of digits in an address matched the economic status of the residents. My grandparents on one side had a two-digit address and were very poor. My grandparents on the other side had a three-digit address and were not so poor. We had a four-digit address and were middle-class. Without conscious thought, I simply matched the two sets of data.

Anonymous

As a child I believed that when you put letters in a mailbox, they would magically find their way to the recipient by way of underground tunnels and chutes--operated by gnomes living deep underground. I thought that the earth's core was a series of tubes that connected mailboxes!

unpezzogrosso

My dad told us that the white dots in the middle of the road to help keep you in your lane were really turtles.

D.L.R.

I used to believe our neighbors were royalty! They were very poor by todays standards but they had running water in their house, an indoor toilet, a tub, telephone and a furnace! We had to get water from a well, heat from a wood burner in the center of the home, we had an outhouse and I took a bath in a big washtub! I'm only 45 so it wasn't that long ago! :)

Linda Harms

My parents used to try to point out the "Golden Arches" of McDonalds - I could never see them, because I was looking for the "Golden ArchIES" (the comic strip)!

Debi

When I used to see buildings with the To Let sign outside I thought it meant Toilet and the "i" had fallen off =o)

smaada