nationalities

Until...yesterday, actually, I was certain that Cleveland was in Denmark. I thought a lot of unusual things about them, now that I think about them. I used to think the Danish were called the Netherlanders. And they also invented doughnuts and dogs. And because they invented dogs, God lived there.

Anon

so public schools have yearly standardized testing where i grew up. and there was always the section to fill in basic information about yourself. like name, age, grade, etc...

one of those was also for ethnicity. all the standard choices, african american, hispanic, asian, pacific islander/eskimo/native american/other and caucasian.

only i didn't know that caucasian meant "all white folks" (tha�d be me) so i marked the eskimo pacific islander one until middle school.

erin

Up to about 14yrs I used to think that Welsh people where called "Waleish" as in Scottish, Irish and English.............my relatives (in Wales) never lived it down

WelshLass

I am Canadian and I moved to Switzerland. I would tell people that I was English because I couldn't understand how I wasn't. I spoke English, didn't I?

Anon

When I was about eight, my family went on a trip to Canada. Since I was "American," I decided it would be cool to call peoplefrom Canada "Canadians." I was so convinced that I made up the word "Canadian" that I was really disappointed that they didn't mention my "great new invention" on the news that night.

So what did Canadians call themsleves before, really?

Jackie F

When I was younger, I had twin friends that just happened to like taking really hot baths. As they were part Japanese, I naturally thought that Japanese people were immune to hot water. I truly believed that you could dump scalding hot water on a Japanese person and they would be perfectly fine.

Autumn

I used to believe black people were made of chocolate. My mom took me to the toy store to buy a doll and i desperately wanted the black cabbage patch kid... i cried and cried I WANT THE CHOCOLATE ONE!!!! She was so embarrassed!

Katie

I live in Quebec, Canada and when I was 8 years old there was the referendum and all the adults were talking about it. I thought that if Quebec seperated from Canada, they would literally take a jackhammer and detach Quebec from the rest of Canada along the border lines and we would float into the ocean.

Anon

I used to think that if you were pregnant and your baby was born in another country, the baby would be of the nationality of that country and you wouldn't be allowed to take the baby home with you (it would be adopted by one of the native citizens).

Alen

A friend had a penpal from Germany and the penpal went into deep detail of what a house looked like - thinking people in Australia have no idea what a house looks like!

Glenys

When I was young I believed that if you stayed in another country for an extended period, you started to look like its inhabitants (change if skin colour, hair colour, facial characteristics, height, etc.)

Emma

Chinese, French, German, English, Clownisian.
When I was 4, these were some of the world's nationalities. Chinese people in China, French people in France and Clowns in Clownisia. This was obviously the truth at the time.

Stalin

I thought that people in foreign countries dressed in their native costumes all the time, like German's in Leiderhosen, and Dutch in wooden shoes, and Russians in big furry hats. I guess those filmstrips we watched in grade school were REALLY old.

me

I used to believe that there were only two countries in the world, England and France. Everything in France was the opposite to how it was in England, so a frown meant they were smiling, and when they cried it meant they were laughing!

Tala

When I was little I used to confuse the word "Lebanese" with "lesbian." There was a civil war going on in Lebanon when I was little, so I thought all Arab-looking people were lesbians. I remember my mother being very embarrassed when I ran into an Iranian classmate in the supermarket and said, "Look mom, a lesbian!"

texasbabe

I use to think pedestrians were a special race of people who if you hit them specifically you would get in trouble. I thought there was a country called pedestria.

Tara

Whenever I heard the term "redneck," I pictured something entirely different than anyone could imagine... I actually thought that there was a race of humans walking around with red necks! I mean... Why not?

Punky

I'm the middle child of three, and when I was little my Dad told me that they'd had three children because every fourth child born in the world is Chinese, and they'd only wanted English children. I believed him for years.

Anna

When I was in seventh grade, a girl I was in Social Studies class with named Susie was reading her paragraph out of our geography book. We were discussing the Shiite and Sunni Muslims and she was the first one to read about the Shiites. The rest of us in class were not quite sure how to say it but we knew it probably wasn't how we thought it should be said. Sure enough, though, Susie kept struggling through her paragraph and got to Shiite, pronouncing it "Shitty" and making the whole class and our teacher laugh. When he finally got control of himself, the teacher explained to us how to pronounce it, Shee-ite. To this day (and I've already graduated from both high school and college), I still use "Shiite" (pronounced the correct way) as a euphemism for that other expletive.

Jess

I used to think the word “racy” had something to do with racism. Specifically, I thought the word was to racism what “sexy” was to “sexism”.

Anon