police

When I was 4 i broke a window by throwing a stone, and my mates told me the police would come after me. For the next 4 years I was hiding whenever I saw a policeman.

Petter

when i was about 4 or 5, i first heard of "kids jail" (juvenile hall). i don't remember how i learned about it or who told me about it, but up till i was about 8, i thought it was a place where there were lots of toys and you got to go and get as many toys as you wanted. needless to say, when i learned what "kids jail" really was, i felt very stupid.

not so stupid nemore

When I first started driving I always hid my cigarette when passing a police car. I didn't differentiate Mom and "the law"!

marilyn

I thought Jaywalking meant you crossed the street without looking both ways and holding an adults hand... I think I was 12 before I realised that I wasn't jaywalking when I didn't look both ways..

Anon

When I was around 6 I asked my mum what FBI stood for. She told me it was the Federal Investigational Bureau. I believed it was FIB for the next four years.

L MAN

I remember one time when my mother and I were in a shop. I really wanted a pack of chewing gum, but my mother wouldn't give me one. The next thing I remember was me and my mother walking at the street, and suddenly about six packs of chewing gum fell out of my pockets ... My mother took me back to the shop and had me give them back to the lady, who looked very angry and told me that she maybe had to call the police and tell them to come and get me. I got really scared, and for many weeks later I imagined that a policeman would walk up to our house and arrest me. (I have never stolen anything after this, however.)

Skrunn

Growing up in the 60's, I constantly proved to be quite the source of amusement to my siblings, especially since I was the youngest of eight kids in our family. Like the many times I overheard my eldest sisters cursing at police cars when they'd go zooming past us. They'd say, "Hey look, there goes another %$&^@%! Pig" and I'd just kept trying to look for the cute little piggies in the back of the squad cars, always wondering why the police would have those critters in their cars and how my sisters could see these animals in the back seat, but I couldn't. It took a few years, although eventually I learned that this was just another derogatory, slang euphemism they used! What I find even funnier now, is that one of them is actually a Sheriff's Deputy and they don't care much for being called a "Pig" one bit, but I never miss a chance but to rub it in that she used to call Cops that, all the time. haha!

Dazed n' Confused Redneck Ridgerunner

I used to believe that when my mom or dad would get pulled over for speeding or some other traffic violation that they were going to be arrested. As you can imagine that could be tramatizing for a child.

Chrissy S.

When I was five I thought that if several police cars were going 100 mph on a residentual road that the back car would arrest the one in fron of his car and he would arrest the guy in front of him and so on. I was afraid that soon there would be no cops to protect my families uninsured savings account.

Danny

I used to believe that it was aganst the law to eat snow! and the police would come to take you away!

Katie Lyn

I used to think that Legal and Illegal meant the same thing (illegal)

Dhruv

i used to want to be a police woman when i was young because i was terrified of going to jail and i throught if you were a cop you couldn't be arrested.

Joanna

I believed that the police had a laser beam like the radar detector that could tell if you had your seatbelt on and if you didn't you went to jail. My mom told me that when I was like 4 so I would always wear it. I found out otherwise when I was 16 years old.

Emily

I thought that if you went to jail you wouldn't die. I think it came from someone telling me that if I went to jail I wouldn't go to heaven and I kind of misinterpreted it. I remember imagining going to jail and being the only person left in the world (because no-one else ever went to jail of course) as humans had become extinct and i could see that crocodiles had taken over and they were crawling into the jail where I was.

Ashley

When I was about 4 my family and I took a road trip with our luggage "secured" to the roof of the old station wagon.Of course all the luggage ended up on the road somewhere between CO and OK. When my dad reported the issue he called the State Patrol.I thought he had called in the trolls who lived under the bridge and I was scared crapless-there was more than one troll under the bridge?They helped locate lost luggage?My dad was fuming over the lost luggage so I never did ask why he called the trolls.I am sure I believed that the state patrol had offices under all bridges until I was 10.

Bridget