Remember the Mr. Clean commercial where the woman mops the floor and then the Mr. Clean guy appears? I thought he was actually living in my kitchen floor, and I was always very careful when I walked around and if I was wearing a skirt I wrapped it around tightly so he couldn't look up it. I was scared to death of him but I always pressured my mom to buy the stuff so I could see if it was real.

Babette

When I was little I used to help my Grandma clean, she used to tell me to "put some elbow grease into it", so I used to rub the duster on my elbow in the belief that there was some magic grease that would help me clean better!!

Kelly

When I was three, I “fed” the outlet because it looked, to me, like a sad, hungry face. Those faces must have been hungry, because I’d never seen anyone feed them. Immediately feeling responsible for the supposedly starving outlets, I pushed the crumbly graham cracker right into the plug holes.

Now, I was a pretty quick learner for a three year old, and I found out in about half a second that outlets are not, in fact, hungry.

Noa

When I was four or five, I used to believe that there was a little mani nthe toaster. This little man would light a match and toast the bread. That was his job.

Anon

I used to feel sorry for inanimate object like floors and couches for always being stepped/sat on. When I told my aunt, she asked me if they talked to me. I never told anyone ever again, and eventually it went away. I grew up to be an extraordinarily empathetic person, and sometimes, I might still wonder how the walls feel. :)

Mandy

The house my mom lives in now used to be my great-grandmother's and it's a two story home. When I was roughly 9 years old my mom told me that there was a little demon sitting on the landing of the steps waiting for me to come up so he could grab my ankles then eat me.

I know she said that to keep me from going upstairs and getting hurt but it was years before I went to the bathroom without running and slammng the door because it was at the bottom of the stairs!

Ravengoddess

I always saw people on TV take suitcases with them when they ran away. So I would threaten to run away when I was mad and grab my empty suitcase from the closet and go sit at the end of the driveway. I wasn't allowed farther from the house than that and didn't get the concept of actually running away.

Raku

I used to think that dishwashers would fill completely up with water. Imagine my surprise one day when my Mom opened the dishwasher to add another dish! I braced myself for quite a torrent.

Matt C.

when i was little, when i would go in the stairs, i had to slap the wall or else something really really bad (i can't remember what) would happen.

Annie

My grandmother would watch us when my parents wanted to go out, and often we would stay at her house. She told us that she had a tape recorder hidden and would play the tape back for our parents if we misbehaved. My cousin and I tore her house apart looking for the tape recorder. I even fell from a high shelf I had climbed looking for it. I didn't realize it was a scam for years.

jeff

I used to believe that the word for vaccum was "sonofabitch" because my mom used to say that when carting our huge ass vaccum out of the closet.

Anon

I used to believe that when you moved house, you also obtained all the possessions in that house, and the people who moved into your old house got your possessions and so on. I remember thinking how lucky it was that my cousins had moved into a house that had toys in it rather than that it was a house belonging to people with no children.

Alice

My house was pretty old, and we got a lot of those noises you hear in older houses. My friend was sleeping over one night, and she told me that there were rabbits in my air conditioning tubes (or whatever a.c. goes through) and that is what made those noises. I believed this until I was 9, and I fell off a chair when I looking through the slats in a vent trying to see the rabbits. I really wasn't the brightest kid around.

Mrs.JS

I used to believe when you moved, you traded houses with the person that wanted to move into your house. You also kept all their possesions. So i felt sorry for my cousin who moved into a smaller house than she was in before becuase i believed she has gotten ripped off.

Christina

Until I was about 9, I believed that there was a little girl named Jaamie who lived in the air conditioning vents on the ceiling. I thought she had black hair and green eyes, and that she got trapped up there a long long time ago and was very scared. I also thought that "Jamie" was mad at me and wanted to kill me, because I never went up there and saved her. One time I told my mom this idea, and she just looked at me like that was the wierdest thing she had ever heard.

Katie, who is still kinda scared of Air Conditioning Vents....

when my kids were little, we lived in a flat with hissing radiators. the kids thought the radiator in the bathroom sounded like darth vader from star wars, and believed that darth vader hid in our bathroom when the lights were off. so, they wouldn't go in unless someone went in first and turned on the lights, opened the shower curtain, and looked behind the door! needless to say, we just left the bathroom light on for years!

peg

When i was little I didn't know what being grounded was... well my next door neighbor who is like 4 years older than me (i was like 7 or 8) got grounded for a week and her sister had told me that and i was like oh... ok(not knowing what she meant by that) then i juss kinda left... i had thought katie's parents had buried her in the ground in between our houses... so the next day i was eating an apple and walked past where katie was "buried" so i kneeled on the ground and knocked on the ground "katie? are you there? hello?!" then i took the seeds of my apple and buried them in the ground thinking katie wasnt being fed(after all i hadnt seen her parents out there feeding her) and i thought the seeds would grow right where she was and she would eat the apples that came out of the seed

Christy from NC

When I was real little(5?), I had a ceiling fan in my room. I always had it on, winter spring, summer, or fall.. Mainely for two reasons
I was too short to turn it off
and I beleived that a man wasin the attic srewing in my fan eternely, and if I turned off the fan, he would lose he's job

Qwertsy

My great-uncle Ben (who was actully a friend of the family) died when me and my brother were quite little. We used to think that if we got to the attic, then we would be able to see him. We weren't aloud to go to the attic, so we designed some contraptions to get us up there. I put some food (camernbert cheese) in a bag, incase we were there for a long time, but the cheese went off!
We also used to beleive that the heater under the stairs was his heart, because it was coverd in red plastic, but it couldn't have been, because it was the same size as him!

Anon

I used to believe that the idea of insurance was so that when your house burns down, the insurance company replaces every single thing in your house.
I used to be amazed that the company knew about every single posession we owned, and assumed that basically everytime we bought something, the insurance company was informed.
I was sceptical though that they would be able to replace EVERYTHING so I used to fret about making sure I saved my favourite toys in an emergency. I was truly concerned about saving them!

Anon