in the street

When I was young I thought that VOTING was actually BOATING. One November I went with my mom to vote, and I was being bad during the ride over, so she threatened to leave me outside. "But Mom, who is going to watch and make sure I don't fall in!"

Kat

I use to think whenever we drove past property that had signs saying "commercial property", that was where commercials were made.

angie

I used to believe that all English fire trucks all had their own individual names!
What made this even more special was that i was forever seeing the same one, embarressingly it wasn't untill my now husband pointed out that "DENNIS" was in fact the name of the company that made them!!!!!!<---CRINGE-------->

Anon

When the mosquito truck comes through our neighborhood, my son and I dash inside. We did this for several years before my son realized the truck was killing mosquitos -- not spitting them out at us.

Kevin Hogencamp

When I was about 5 or so, my good friend (same age) and I used to play this game called "Pie Pie". It involved us trying to unscrew the manhole cover near the bottom of my neighbor's driveway with my plastic tool toys. I don't know why we named it Pie Pie; we could have possibly been trying to pronounce "Popeye". Anyways, I thought that below the manhole there would be a world of dinosaurs while my friend thought there'd be a lot of hot women. Needless to say, we never managed to open it. My dad still likes to joke with me about this.

Matt

We once lived near a drive-in cinema, we could see the screen from our front porch. I never understood why people would pay to see a movie without sound. In addition to that I was frightened to look at the screen in case they caught me watching without paying.

Steve

Across the road from where I lived as a kid there was a house with a giant white concrete wall out the front. In this wall they had placed rows and rows of sectioned earthenware pipes perpendicular to the wall, in all there were about six rows of twenty pipe sections. This created a cheesy quasi Spanish effect and the whole neighbourhood quietly laughed about it. My mum once joked that they often went on holiday and built that wall so their mailbox wouldn't clog up every time they delivered the local paper, I missed the humour and totally believed this. Just this year I moved to a house near this wall and while driving past with my girlfriend I *almost* said, "hey, there's the wall of the people who always go on holiday".

Steve

I used to believe a sign "MOD Hostel" near a building where I lived was a place for bad "mods" opposed to "rockers". It wasn't until I was a bit older the penny dropped and I realised it was a place for people to sleep in the Ministry of Defence.

John Cooper

my friend told me that curbs painted yellow would turn to lava and burn up anyone's legs who stood on them for too long. all i could do was watching in horror whenever anyone set foot on them, waiting for their legs to be burnt off.

juliet

I was told that petrol stations drew fuel from directly out of the ground. When the fuel ran out they had to close down.

JB

when walking down a quiet road & a car came along - if I didn't reach the next lamppost before the car, then something terrible would happen. This continued into early adult life.

Sarah from Orpington

When I was young I used to believe that cats eyes (the road kind) were lit by little men on bikes holding torches. The men supposedly rode in tunnels under the road and had very quick minds as they could tell which way you were going to turn every time!

Joe

When walking to and from my nursery school, we'd pass a big red postbox every day, which I'd always say hello to.

I have no idea why

benjymous

There is a block of flats on the way up to my dad's house, it had a very steep alley that led down to a car park under the flats. I used to think that that's where "the black market" was!

Ela

I used to believe that the pelican crossing got its name because when they compared the cost of building one with the cost of a zebra crossing "it had a bigger bill".

Ben