in the street

I had a friend who lived in public housing and I thought it was the best cuz it was like a little town and this popcicle vendor used to always be around. I begged my parents to move there.

FunkyDoodle

There was a burn outside of the house I used to live at as a child. Me, and a friend of mine at the time believed that if we dug at the side of the burn, we would find gold, and we spent all of our time digging for gold.

Yes, I had a strange childhood :)

Magnus

As a child I once got considerable ridicule from my father, and from the rest of the family to a lesser extent because, everytime we went riding I was convinced that I was seeing a significant number of flashlights that somebody had dropped into gutters alongside the roads. My father soon began to insist that what I was seeing in the gutters were beer cans and not flashlights. After I persisted in "seeing" flashlights for a while, my father would derisively say, "Oh yes, Schlitz flashlights and Budweiser flashlights!" I finally became convinced that I was indeed MOSTLY seeing beer cans. But I'm STILL not sure that I didn't see at least one actual flashlight in a gutter as the thing that got the whole affair started in the first place.

Bobby boy

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

I used to avoid walking near the storm drains by the sidewalk; I thought I would fall in and wouldn't be able to get out.

rnm

I used to believe that the airport radar light which can be seen in the night sky, was to help locate children lost at the industries fair.

Jaybee

The "wrong way" signs on highways and roads always puzzled me when I was young. I did not understand how someone would know whether or not we were in fact going the wrong way to get to where we were going.
One trip I finally spoke up from the back seat and asked my mom how someone knew or thought that we were going the wrong way to get to grammys house. She just laughed and explained to me what they meant.
I still get a kick out of them when I see them.

Glynn

I used to believe that if I went down the bottom of the hill to the pedestrian underpass near where I lived that the punk-rockers would get me.

Then again, they probably would have you know...

swankydan

The strip of marquee lights flashing over the box office kept right on moving - right into the theatre walls, around the entire perimeter and back out again.

The sign reading, "Star Want Ads" I was convinced should read, "Star WANTS Ads", seeing as how they were promoting them so much.

Emily

I used to believe that the guy across my old street was going to kidnap me.

Briana

you know those bags of sand used to hold down the construction horses? well, for some reason i always thought they were filled with poop, not sand. they had that lumpiness to them. i wondered, how do they get the poop in there? does someone hold the bag under their butt when they go poop?

Anon

I used to believe that each streetlamp in the whole world had a very small man inside who worked the switch.

Rosana

I used to think that when a business put "Support EMS" up on their sign, that it wasn't a message intended to support the local Emergency Medical Service, but that the business needed help, thus they were asking for "Support 'ems" (like support them). I believed this until I worked up the courage to ask my mother. Needless to say she set me straight. To this day every time I see one of those signs I feel embarrassed...

Too smart for her own good

I used to believe that a boy in my class called Naieem lived in a Scip

Quako

One day in the middle of summer, I woke up to the sounds of a constant thudding which seemed to shake the entire house. My first reaction from this peculiar noise was to look at my glass of water and i thought "dinosaurs are coming!"
When I finally faced my fear and got out of bed after listening to the dinosaurs getting closer, I looked out the window and saw a backhoe digging up the asphalt on the road...BOOM...BOOM

kelli

When i was little i thought that it was bad to not be talking to somebody so when I was in public places and no one was talking i would pretend to be having conversations with people or myself so it didnt look like i wasnt talking.

Spanky the Friggin Nifty Bic Pen

Near my elementary school, there was a building that said, "F.L.T. ODD FELLOWS HALL I.O.O.F." I wondered what those acronyms stood for, and since I thought it said, "Old Fellows" it was an assisted living home. Then I realized it was a fraternal organization, and when I was down the Cape, I saw a building with the same sign and realized it was a chain club. Then I went online and found out about the Odd Fellows organization and realized that F.L.T. stood for Fraternity, Love, and Truth, and I.O.O.F. stood for Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

Anon

i used to belive that when you walk across three drains its bad luck so i awlays go sround the drains!!

steph

I used to belive that the street signs that say the name of the road, were actually people, and the street name was their name. So in grade one when learning directions, when the teacher decided to name a street Kaitlin road, I burst into tears, the teacher had no idea why, so quickly changed it to Justin road. My friend Emily still remembers, and is the only one who knows why I cried, and teases me.

Kaitlin Road

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