in the street

when i was 3 i would look out the window and see the street lights shining in the dark. i thought they were diamonds.

wacko zacho

When i was younger we drove up a hill that lead to a "Private Drive" well i had just started the first Harry Potter book and i thought it said "Privit Drive" (Like as in where Harry lives!) so i said "Mom, look its where Harry Potter lives!" I was so disspointed when she corrected me...

Brednon Urie Is Love

When I was young and playing out with my best friend, an oldish lady walked past and said hello to her. The same lady would stop and give her treats and always say hello. My friend said the lady was ‘my lady’ (as in, she belonged to my friend) so I just presumed that we all had our own ‘my lady’ who would give us sweets and stuff, and we just had to find our one. I thought that for years until I twigged that this was a friend of my friend’s parents!! Ha ha.

Claire

I thought that they built gas stations on top of where the oil deposits were in the ground. That's why the gas stations in my neighborhood were all clustered on corners of the same intersection.

When the big gas trucks would come along, they were filling up their tanker from the gas that was in the ground to take it somewhere else.

Also, when a gas station went out of business, it was because the finished sucking the gas out of the ground so they had to move somewhere else.

boxlight

When my neighborhood friend from New York moved to Florida, I expected my new neighbors moving into the house to be from Florida as I was sure they were exchanging houses. I had no concept about buying and selling and I assumed it was just a trade. When I found out the new neighbors were from across town, I was very concerned about what happened to the poor family from Florida.

Will

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

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

On the way to my grandparents' house, there was a Les Schwab tire store. For some reason, I had myself quietly convinced that it was a French word - as in "les schwab," the plural of "le schwab." I must have been 10 or 11 by the time I figured out that it was probably just founded by a man nicknamed Les.

Alice

when i was just 5, i remember like it was yesterday, driving with my mom one night and i was asking her questions, and then i saw the search\spot light circling in the sky, { from a store's grand opening}...and i asked her what it was, and she told me it was looking for me, i better hide so they dont get me!! i flew down to the floor and wet my pants,

sassy

When I was six I saw the sign at the gas station and it had a picture of a key with an x through it(telling you to turn off your engine) and I thought it looked like a lollypop, and I wouldnt eat lollypops because I would get arrested.

froglegs

I used to believe that homeless people would catch germs from the unhygienic conditions, and that was why they used to have to get a big bottle of medicine from the chemists and take a big gulp straight out of it. I thought it must have been quick-acting too because they always looked as though they felt a lot better soon afterwards!

Anon

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher told us that spring was right around the corner. So, when I got home, I looked around the corner of our house and was very disappointed that I did not see spring.

Megan

I used to believe that inside each streetlight there was a little stick-like person called a magic-doom. i thought that thye lived in there and that they would turn the lights on and off for us.

I also thought that they would jump out at night with parachutes and play games all through the night.

Giggy

A kid on my block showed me this particular square on the sidewalk under this tree, kind of at the corner. He said it was a big secret for kids on our block. If you rode your bike really fast around the block three times and then concentrated really hard when you passed over that square, you could go into the future. If you went the other way around the block, you went back in time, of course. He must have had a great time watching me try repeatedly. I think maybe he was influenced by that Superman movie.

Cosmic

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 a kid of less than 10y I thought I was connected to my home with an invisible sort of elastic band and I had to be careful as to how many times I took a bend, so as not to get tangled with my "cord" ] afraid of not being able to return home properly if I did. And when my mum chatted with her neighbours and I stood aside waiting till she wanted to go back home, I often got very cross when she (or the neighbour) walked over or through my invisible cord. Bizar isn't it?

Sheila Na Gig

i also belived that when you moved from house to house you picked up your hole house. that isne as weird to me now because some like mobil home things do that but we lived in a big house

Anon

My daughter loved to check the mail when she was little. I noticed that she always raised the flag to open the mailbox and lowered it after she closed it back. She believed the door was locked when the flag was down. I couldn't tell her the truth, it was too cute to watch! She did this until she was 7, then I noticed one day she stopped doing it. I guess she finally figured it out on her own.

B's Mom

My dad used to tell my sister, when she was young that the shredded tires from eighteen wheelers on the sides of the highway were road snakes.

David B. Los Angeles

The first time I ever saw the Rose Parade on TV the announcer said something like "the floats are all made entirely of flowers." I took him literally. I did not understand that they were DECORATED entirely with flowers. So I wondered for several years thereafter, how the floats were able to move under their own power -- how, in other words, one could build a working engine, tires, and all the rest, entirely out of flowers!

dcguy