swimming pools

My parents were part of this club, and one night they took my sister and I to a get together. There was a pool table there and I honestly thought it was a little mini pool with water.

I had been worried because I hadn't brought my swimsuit.

Jenni

At my preschool, we used to go to the local pool every friday. It was a small school, only about ten kids... anyways. We thought boys had some weird disease, and that if they touched us, we'd turn into boys. At the pool, they'd always be on one side, we'd be on the other... we decided to have a 'war'. The boys splashed water on us. I convinced every girl there that if we put our arms out and spin fast enough in the water, we'd create water tornadoes that would wipe them out.
Everyone believed me, but we just spun around there looking like little morons!

Jade

You know how some hotels are called "Hotel Name and Suites"? Well I always used to think suites was meant to be suit, as in bathing suit. I thought that all of those hotels had a pool, and they had extra bathing suits in case you forgot yours. I pictured this big room with men's, women's and children's suits, in every size. I thought that was a lot of work for a hotel to go through.

Laura

I used to be scared of the drain at the bottom of the pool, especially the big one at the community pool. I imagined it would suddenly suck me down to the underworld and there was a monster down there that wanted me. I stayed scared of pool drains for a very long time.

jenx

There was this one area of the local pool that I thought was called the "Disney Area". Why? Because I thought it looked like Mickey Mouse's head.

Anon

I used to think that a "pool shark" was an actual shark that lived in a swimming pool

Anon

I used to think that a pool room was this big room full of swimming pools but I never could figure out why all the people were swimming in the dark.

Anon

After watching the movie Jaws as a child I developed an increasingly irrational fear of sharks. I was convinced that sharks could survive in any bodies of water, including baths (baby sharks), spa pools (teenage sharks) and swimming pools (full-grown, eat-you-slowly-limb-by-limb sharks). To this day I don't like being in pools alone (baths ok) and swimming in the ocean terrifies me. Big Thanks to the makers of Jaws!

how to develop a phobia by watching scary movies

I used to believe that the water in the swimming pool of a cruise ship was actually the ocean water. I thought that the only thing "keeping the people in the pool" was wire or mesh.

looney

After I watched Jaws for the first time when I was little I could not go swimming by myself. If I was swimming with family or friends and they got out of the pool I would sit on the steps in the shallow til someone else came in the pool. I used to think that Jaws would come out of the light in the deep end and eat me. I did this until I was about 16 and realized I was being childish.

Shark Killer

In 2nd grade, I started wearing glasses but, of course, I could not wear them when I went swimming. For well over a decade I thought it was blurry whenever ANYONE (with good eyesight or not) opened their eyes underwater. I believed that the pressure of the water directly on one's eyeballs caused the blurriness.

Donna M. Gage

I used to love watching National Geographic documentaries when I was little. And my dad couldn't swim. So one day, he made me watch Jaws, explaining that it was a documentary of what happens when humans get into deep water, being of course, the shark's environment.
I quickly became very wary and hesitant to swim in the sea... but then I discovered swimming pools. His solution was to tell me that all the pools in the world were interconnected by underground channels that lead out to sea, and Jaws could find me in any pool any where at any time if it wanted to.
Since then I don't swim alone in pool or sea, and I am paranoid about shark feeding times and anything that may attract a shark to me. But i still love to swim.

Anon

I used to believe that a killer whale lived in the deep end on my local swimming bath, but he didn't ever come out because he could only live in the deep part.

I also remember my mum talking about why she didn't like rodents because when she was small she picked up a gerbil by its tail when it was dead, and I thought she meant 'turtle' so for the longest time I thought that gerbils were a type of turtle.

S.J

My mum told my sister and I that we were moving to a house with a disco in the attic and a swimming pool in the cellar...she kept this going for weeks and my sister told all her friends at school. I spent ages trying to figure out how the water would stay in the cellar and how people could swim in the dark (cellars were always dark in my childhood imagination). When mum told us it was only a joke, my sis had to tell all her friends at school! meanwhile i was still trying to figure out if it WAS possible to have a swimming pool in your cellar and worried for weeks about electricity and the dangers of filling up your cellar with water!

Joanne

when i was 6 or 7, my sister's and i were swimming at our great aunt's house. (she's the same age as my mom, so we went to her house quite often and i trusted everything she ever said) well, she told us one day to be aware of the "trail" that you get when you're older. the "trail" was when you were on your period and you weren't wearing a pad. so at the young age of 12, when i first got my period, i told my mom that i didn't want to go swimming one afternoon b/c i was afraid of the "trail". i had to explain to my rather confused mother what that was and who i had learned it from, and she gave both my aunt and me a really hard time about it!

I never left a trail...

When I was about three, Southern Bell (one of the phone companies) had this commercial with an announcer guy and a woman at a hotel pool. The woman dove in and the announcer pulled this string and sharks came out of this holding cell, and the woman managed to get out in enough time. Because of that, I believed that there were sharks in a bin at every swimming pool, so a few months later when I started taking swimming lessons at the YMCA, I dove in the pool to go look for the sharks myself and was very mad when the instructors found me and wouldn't let me swim the rest of the day.

Funky Cold Candita

My Grandma's sister lived in a granny flat at the back of my Grandma's house. There was an above-ground pool behind the flat that I used to swim in.

When I was little, my Grandma's sister would watch from her front door and everytime I was about to jump in the ppol, she'd scream out, "LOOK OUT!! There's a shark in there with it's mouth open and you're gonna jump straight into it's mouth!!"

Because she used to do this, I used to think there were sharks living in the shadowy side of the pool (Eventhough I couldn't see them). I used to make my Pop come down and sit beside to pool all day just to make sure the sharks wouldn't eat me... haha

Jay

I have always been afraid to swim in a dark pool. I have always believed that they keep sharks in the cage (drain) that they let out at night to protect the pool. I am 30 years old now, and I still won't swim in dark water!! lol!

teesha

I used to believe that if I swam long enough in my pool or in the ocean with my legs together, I would turn into a Mermaid and could play with Ariel. I think a part of me still believes that.

Sabina

I used to believe, at night, sharks inhabited the dark recesses of the deep end of our pool. Even now, as an adult, I get a slight shiver across my skin as I swim to the deep end of the pool at night.

Diana