telephones

My older brother told me that when you diled '0' for operator on the telephone, that a doctor performing an operation on someon (an 'operator') would have to leave the operating room to answer your call, and his patient could die from being unattended while the doctor was talking to you. He explained that is why you should never dial '0' on the phone - you could kill someone. He would then pick up the phone, dial '0', and make me scream.

Tikifish

When I was little, my older sister told me that If I picked up the telephone and dialled the number for that telephone it would automatically trip a self destruct devise and blow up the whole house. I believed this for a very long time.

Pauline

When I was about 4 and 5, I believed that the voices heard on the telephone handset travelled in the space made by the coils in the cord, and that I could interrupt the conversation by putting a finger into that space.

John

When I was little I called a radio show to request a record for my mum. I got the busy signal but I thought that if I stayed on the line, listening to the busy signal, that when the line was free, I would be put straight through....I was on the phone for HOURS!!

mairin

I used to believe that written messages could be passed through the phoneline. I spent ages trying to send cards through the reciever! I even tried to send my grandmother some icecream...

Anon

I used to think that you could show something to the person on the other end o the phone line by holding the receiver up to the object. I still remember trying to show my grandmother a present I got for Christmas. I held the receiver to the present and said "See, Gramma?"

Kdees

Car phones were just coming out when I was kid...I used to think that your lisence plate number was you car phone number so the people you met on th eroad could call you to chat.

Jenni

The phrase, "the line is busy," always made me imagine a lion at a telephone switchboard working frantically trying to connect all the calls going through. Unfortunately at the time that my parents were calling he was just too busy to put their call through.

Andy

After watching some TV programme I used
to think that 666 was the devils phone
number. For some strange reason I got a
number unobtainable tone if I dialled it
from my house phone but one day I tried
dialling it from a phone in a hospital and
got an answer. I asked if it was the devil
and they told me it was the cardiac arrest
number. Next minute loads of paramedics came
running into the room thinking that someone
was having a cardiac arrest. I ended up in
lots of trouble for making that call.

Riaz

i used to think that people's phone numbers were 1-800 and then their name. i'd always be trying to call 1-800-bigbird or something like that. because, yeah, i thought big bird was real too.

Anon

As a kid I believed that the dial tone on your phone was the operator going *oooooooo* all day long. I used to pick up the phone to see if I could catch her not doing it, like on a break or lunch.

Heidi

I used to believe that if someone offerered to give you their phone number, you would have to actually permanantly swap your home phone numbers. I liked my phone number, so I would always turn people down when they offered me theirs.

anonymous

my daughter, when she was 2 or 3, used to believe that if you put the wrong amount of change into a pay phone, the pay phone would explode. God knows where she got this belief, but I found out about it one day when I stopped the car and got out to use a payphone and she burst into tears, begging me not to use the phone. I asked why and she explained that she feared I'd put in too much change, thereby causing the phone to explode and kill me.

mr strauss

I had a crush on the boy next door and one night I decided to call him. I figured if my number was 555-0221, his would either be 555-0220 or 555-0222. He wasn't at either number and I totally didn't get why.

Princess Sara

As far as I can remember, my Dad always worked on computers. And when I was like 5 or so, my father would let my sister and I play "Hangman" on his CPC black and green screen computer. But there was a problem: whenever the hangman died, I would freak out and leave the room.
Knowing this, it was obvious for me that the hangman lived in the computer, and would try to kill me if he has a chance. My mom locked me in my parents room once, because I had done something bad probably, and that's where the computer was. I went mental, yelling my guts out, banging the door and checking over my shoulder every to seconds it the computer made a move yet!

ZeChandler

When I was little we had dial up internet. My dad told me that when we were waiting for the internet to come on the computer and the phone were talking. I used to pick up the phone to hear all the strange chirps and beeps. I then concluded that the phone and the computer must have their own secret language and I was dissapointed that I couldn't understand it.

Anon

I thought that 911 was the number you called for fire/emergency because that was the temperature fire burned at (i.e 911 degrees farenheit)

Tesseract

For years and years I thought telephone poles grew.

Maureen

When I first phoned a call centre, they told me that I was put on hold. Then some music like Greensleeves was played into my ear. I thought that the person on the other end got out her recorder and played it to me down the phone!

Helen

When I was young(about 6ish), my mother's friend mentioned that she had bought an answering machine.
I, for the next few years wondered what voice the 'answers' would use, and what the 'answers' would be.

(damn.. shoulda asked what the meaning of life was)

Gish