in the street

When I was younger I used to think the Parcel Force were a van full of people that came to your door and forced you to have parcels. I used to be petrified when I saw the van in our street in case they forced me to have a parcel I didn't want.

Lou

When I was little, I hated holding my parents hands while crossing the road. my sister then told me if I didnt hold my parents hands, a car would eat me. she proved it to me when she we were at a car shop thing, she showed me a car with the front truck open. she said that was a car with its a mouth open. then , whenever I crossed the streets, I always went SCREAMING and begging my parents to hold my hands! lolz!

Leyla

I used to think that when somebody wanted to move, they would have to switch houses with somebody else. no questions asked. i also used to think that if they did that, but still wanted to live in the same house but in a different area, they would "scoop" up each house with a giant machine with a spatula-type thing to move the houses.

kerry

I used to believe that dirt roads just needed to be swept (to reveal the pavement underneath).

KSAM

This was not a belief of mine but of a friend who lives in Budapest. There are several bridges over the river Danube and one of them is followed by a tunnel. My friend believed that the tunnel is there so that people can push the bridge into it in the evenings, else someone would steal it at night.

Annie

When I was around 3 years old, I used to belive that when you crossing a pedestrian crossing, you must step only on the white lines, so the car drivers will be able to pass between your legs.

Oriel

I used to think that the signs outside peoples doors that said "No Soliciting" meant the same as "No Socializing," so the people who lived in those houses were mean and didn't want friends.

Rachel

Every morning at Breakfast mum gave my sisters and I a little taste of history. When I was 6 yo, she was telling us that millions of years ago Dinasaurs roamed the earth. I asked if that was why there were so many cracks in the pavements. As they all laughed I thought it was true and told all my friends whenever we were walking on the pavements. I believed it for years!

LD

I used to believe - because my brother told me so - that if I stood on a manhole cover and cover both holes with my feet, the road would blow up because of the build up of pressure underneath. I felt genuinely uncomfortable and anxious when he did just that.

Anon

As a boy fond of throwing and catching, I believed that if a ball or frisbee touched a telephone wire, the thrown object had to hit the ground before being caught to knock the electricity out of it. To not do so was to die immediately of electrocution. My friends still make fun of my continuing trepidation towards catching anything that has touched a suspended wire.

ben

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

When I was little my mom always told me never to walk outside barefooted. One summer day I touched the street (twas scorching) then I realized that if I walked on the street barefooted I would be engulfed in flames.

Bubs

When i was little my mom used to tell me that all the oil spots and/or gum spots in a parking lot or road was children that ran in front of traffic and got splattered! i belived that from the time i was 3 to the age of 7 ....kinda cruel huh?....but i guess if it kept me out of the road!!!!

Tegan

I used to believe that when you drove a car, the tires turned the earth, so it amazed me how two cars could pass each other. I thought it was because the road had two parts, one for each direction.

Hayabusa

When I was a kid, a local window blind company's dellivery trucks had a sign on the back that read, "Careful, blind man driving." I thought they were so kind to hire the handicapped!

Anon

Thanks to her sister, my friend used to believe that it was only impolite to point at people with an ODD number of fingers. If you used an EVEN number, it was okay.

blah

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

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

I uesed to believe that when I posted a letter a little person would snatch the letter from my hand and run along a tunnel to its destination. The "little person" would appear like a mole in the garden of the recipient and post it through thier letterbox. It was years before I connected the friendly postman with the receiving of mail.

Rita Rush Southampton

When I was a kid there was a building site behind our house where they were building some new houses, and naturally us neighbourhood kids would use it for playing soldiers, and climbing on the scaffolding and throwing bricks and planks at each other. The usual stuff.

However, one day I was sat on one of the earthmovers, pretending to drive it when my father saw me and carted me into the house, and proceeded to tell me not to go onto the lorries and diggers, as you needed special leather trousers. If you sat on the seats without these special leather trousers, then if the digger started up, the vibrations would shake all your insides out of your bum.

Damn, I was scared, so I never went on the building site again. Mental scarring, or what!!

Chilly99