criminals

When I was around 6 or so, I always kept hearing people on the news talking about people being assaulted. For the longest time I thought that bad men were running around throwing salt in unsuspecting people's faces.

Anon

Every time my family traveled to the coast, they'd buy a crab. Never wanting to share it with me, they told me that it was illegal for people under 21 to eat crab..I believed them for several years.

Delilah

Me and my cousins used to watch Law and Order a lot, and often times people would get convicted for assault and battery. Well, I knew what assault was, and I knew what it meant to be battered, but it never really clicked that "battery" meant the act of battering someone. So I just thought they were talking about batteries, like AA, AAA, and so on.

I'm really glad I never asked anyone about that.

Katie♥

When I was 6 or 7 me and my Best Friend Alexis Acord spent the night @ each others house every other week. We used to think that every time a white van drove by, someone got kiddnapped!!!

Victoria Elizabeth

i used to think being "prosecuted" meant getting the death penalty. i remember crying hyserically when my family and i went hiking, and there was a very old sign that said "do not trespass, violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law" i totally thought if we got caught we'd immediately get the electric chair. i thought it was an awful extreme punishment.

Against the death penalty

When I was little I used to believe that college really meant jail. So when my older sister was planning to go to college, I cried.

Jacob

When I was little I used to believe that real life villains talked backwards and wanted everything to be bad in their lives.

Marco

when i was 4or5 i thought if i was naughty i would get sent to jail.

JESSELEE GWYNNE (VICTORA)

when i was a child, i used to believe that when a judge would say to a criminal"you should be sentenced to 317 years in prision." i thought that when the person would had died they would burn the body to keep the smell away for the next hundred something years and put it in a safe not realeasing it untill the 317 years were up in to the sea.

j boogie

When I was 4 years old I saw a commercial on tv warning viewers that drinking and driving is against the law and will result in getting arrested. The next day I went shopping with my mom and she was sipping her coffee while driving. I started screaming! When she looked at me, concerned, and asked me what was wrong I told her to throw it out the window before the police came. She then explained to me what "drinking" meant.

Sara

When I was about 7 I used to be really scared of anything "bad" getting into my room at night while I was asleep. So I invented an ingenius method for keeping out the baddies: I put up my own imaginary "force-field" over my door and window. This involved drawing a square around the door or window with my finger. Of course, I had to turn the invisible ink on first by clicking my fingers. As soon as the square was complete, the force-field activated and only let good thing pass through (parents, dog, etc.). I have no idea where this protection method came from but it worked. I've never worried about "baddies" since.

Suspicous Little Child...

When I was a little kid,about 3 or 4,if I started to get rowdy in public,my mom would always say "Do you want that man to get you?" and pointed to the nearest able bodied male.
Thus,I believed that all men where child abductors until I got lost in the mall when I was 5 and a guy tried to help my find my mother,but I punched him,kicked him,and ran off into the clothing department to hide in the clothes rack.Of course,I ran off everytime a male shopkeeper asked me where my mom was.

After a female clerk finally found me and took me to my mom,my mom yelled at me for running all over the mall.I shouted,"BUT EVERYONE WAS TRYING TO GET ME,MOMMY!There are a bunch of kidnappers in this store!I can tell,if they're a boy and they're not related to me or a police officer with a badge,they're a kidnapper!"

She never used that threat again.

Charly

We used to watch " America's Most Wanted" and I pictured the killers and rapists outside seeing us seeing them and how they were bad and I thought they would come kill us so we couldn't tell on them, or find them.

Scared

when i was young (5 or 6) i would line up a row of stuffed toys either side of me in bed because i was convinced that a burgler would come in the night and shoot me. For some reason i thought that the bullet wouldn't get to me, because it had to travel through all of my teddies first.

zebra gurl

when i was about four i stole a pack of gum from the store and later my mom found out how i got the gum. she told me i had to go back, give the gum back, and apologize. i told her i wouldnt go back untill she told me if i didnt i would go to baby jail, so until i was seven i never did anything bad because i didnt want to go to baby jail.

kelly

Most people are comforted by night lights, right? I used to be very terrified by nightmares when I was young, so my mother installed a night light by the side of my head.

At first, it comforted me. Somehow, though, I became convinced that an evil, female criminal lived inside of the night light. So whenever I slept, I would turn away from the night light, because I didn't want to provoke her.

John T

My son recently asked me what "battery on a cop" was, after watching "Cops" with me, and I asked him what he thought it meant. He blushed and responded quietly, "Electrocution?"

A.J.

my little cousin who was 3 at the time, kept on freaking out and screaming and crying everytime my aunt told her she could leave her toys/books where they were and come to dinner. You see my aunt was saying "leave it there, nobody will take it" my cousin thought that NOBODY was the name of a person.

Zo

When I learning to drive, my mom told me it was against the law to drive in bare feet.

I duly informed others when they attempted to drive bare-footed of this obscure, little known law.

Ten years later, dozens of people informed, I found out it was my "mother's law" not a traffic violation at all!

I often wonder how many people passed what I said along to others and just how many are out there are wandering around obeying "mom's law." haha

Leslie

When i was little my friend told me that there were always burgulars in your house every night. She said that if you were asleep the burgulars would leave you alone, but if you were awake they would kill you. So if I ever woke up in the middle of the night I would never open my eyes so the burgulars thought I was asleep

Kate