criminals

I shared a bedroom with my sister and the water tank was in the loft above and it would make shushing noises and I never knew what it was but I thought there were burglars outside our bedroom door whispering shush to each other.

Anon

We had a juvenile detention center right down the road from my house, and my father used to say that they'd send me there if I was bad. I'm not sure if I ever wholly believed this, but it sure looked like a cold and scary place. I really didn't like the idea.

Laura W.

I grew up in a very rural area, and there were signs posted on the neighbor's fenced property stating "No Trespassers - Violators will be Prosecuted". I used to think it meant that the penalty was death.

Kek

I used to believe that if i behaved badly i would be taken away in a yellow van.

Mattio

I used to believe that Bill Stickers was a real person! I thought he must have been really bad because he had his name plastered all over town and they kept saying he will be prosecuted.I felt sorry for him. I used to imagine what he looked like. Maybe he was on the run from the police or something.

Christine M, Wigan

I understood that what I heard in stories wasn’t necessarily true, so I didn’t believe thieves actually existed.

Bjoern

When I was little I was convinced that if I went to sleep with my feet sticking out from my cover, then if a murderer came into the house and saw them he would kill me. For some reason, I decided that murderers were bound to break in one day. I still can't sleep without my feet tucked under!

rosemary

When I was little, I had always heard that when people go to jail, they eat nothing but bread, and drink nothing but water. Naturally, since I loved eating bread, I thought that jail wouldn't be such a bad place to go.

Heide

when i was a kid, I thought jaywalking meant the same thing as streaking. So my dad said he jaywalked (i don't know how it was brought up) and i was shocked and angry. he then said it wasnt that bad, telling me that mom,my grandparents, everybody did it. Eventually he figured out why i had reacted the way i did. LOL

Anon

When I was about eight years old, I heard something on the news about money laundering. I thought that money laundering meant that you'd accidentally left some money in your pockets when you did your laundry, and I couldn't see why it was such a big deal... but I made sure my pockets were empty whenever I put something in the laundry, because I did not want to go to prison for money laundering.

Athazagoraphobia

When i was little my parents kept me in line by saying that if i was bad they would call "the baby police" and they had an old phone that didn't work hung up on the wall and my dad would pretend to call the baby police. i'm still a little uneasy aroungd cops

C.Park

I used to believe that copying definitions out of a book counted as plagiarism!

Anon

When I was little I used to believe that the shop owners were letting the lights on to scare the thieves. And I was asking my self: how can they be so stupid (the thieves). If me, a small child I know the lights are turned on why they still risk to go in and steal?

Ramona, Romania

I used to believe that all burglars wore white and black striped suits and carried a bag that said 'SWAG'. I think this was due to watching too many cartoons!

Erin

After a session in grade school where we learned all of the walking/traffic rules for safety, for the longest time I thought "jay-walking" meant walking across the street naked.

Cyren

I originally thought that all graffiti was done with very large textas (thick permanent marker pens) instead of with paint spray cans.

Anon

I used to ALWAYS sleep with a comforter tucked in really tight because I believed if someone broke in, they would have a bunch of trouble trying to kidnap me.

Anon

When I was little I used to live in an apartment in a bad neighborhood. One time on the news, there was an alert issued for two kids that had been kidnapped and had been driven off in an unverified vehicle.
I guess it kind of scarred me because I started to sleep in bed with my parents, and I put the blanket over my head when I slept, so if any bad guys climbed up to the window, they wouldn't see any kids to kidnap.

I don't believe bad guys will steal me away in the night anymore, and I don't sleep in bed with my parents anymore, but I'm so used to sleeping with the blanket over my head I still do it!

Anon

When I was little, the whole "Don't Drink and Drive" campaign was so wide-spread that I remember yelling at my Dad in a McDonald's drive-thru for getting a Coke to drink before we hit the road. "Don't you know you're not supposed to drink and drive, Dad?!?!?" He laughed forever about that.

Julie Dodson

I once heard my dad say that the judge was going to "throw the book" at a guy from our neighborhood. I really thought that judges hit people with books after that. It scared me to think what the Gavel was for.

Anon