We lived in a condo on the 3rd floor. I thought that our neighbors from the 4th floor did nothing 24/7 but holding our ceiling lamps. One day it occurred to me that we weren't holding anyone's lamps even though people on the 2nd floor probably had them too.

Jo

When I was a toddler I kept trying to put my fingers in the electrical outlets, so my mother would always tell me "no no Anna." I thought all electrical outlets were called "no nos" until I was about seven.

Anna

In my old house we used to have floor boards, and one would always creek when I stepped on it, and I used to think that something was hidden under there, like old treasure or something, so one day I finally plucked up the courage to get out of bed at night, peel back the carpet and unscrew the floor board. I had a flash light so I could see underneath, and I heard what was like a ghost voice saying, go back to bed!!

So I quickly screwed on the floorboard and put the carpet back and ran to bed. I wouldn't walk on that part of the floor ever again. I always used to have to hold my breath for 5 seconds then run past other wise the ghost would come for me at night.

It's only recently that I found out, it was my dad telling me to go back to bed.

Scarey Cat

When i was very little, I lived on the 2nd floor, which had a clothesline attached from my neighbors house to ours. Our neighbors would hang clothes to dry on this rather frequently, and the pulley that was connected to my house was right on the wall outside my room. So, when I was a kid, I would hear my neighbor pulling the clothesline so she could hang more clothes... and it sounded like a moan.

So naturally, I thought that my walls were Sad. I would stand near my walls, looking up, saying "It's Ok, It's Ok. until they stopped!"

Tanin'iver

My mother used to tell us that if we incessantly rang the doorbell, it would make the house burn down in a fire.

Katie Bonk

When I was little, I thought that vacuums were for smoothing out the carpets, not cleaning them. Whenever my mom would vacuum I would tread as lightly as I could across the carpets because I didn't want to ruin them.

T

I believed that the word "contents" was a verb and meant "explodes". Why? Cans around my parents' home all had printed upon them the same thing: "Warning: contents under pressure". I figured that if you squeezed the can, it would explode. I handled all cans very carefully for a very, very long time!

Rhonda

I watched a lot of SciFi and adventure TV when I was a kid (a brother who was 8 yrs older and into that stuff helped). One day I asked my mom where the oxygen tanks were. When she asked me what I was talking about, I explained that the house HAD to be equipped with oxygen tanks because otherwise, when we closed the windows in the cold weather, we'd eventually use up all the air and we'd suffocate. But we'd survived many winters quite nicely, so there MUST be oxygen tanks in the house somewhere. Mom laughed and explained that the house wasn't airtight, that plenty of air got in. I was a little relieved and a little disappointed, I'll admit. The house seemed so...ordinary after that.

A Non-Ymus

When I was very little, a kindergarten classmate told me that naked pictures of people were very very bad and they were called pornography. I was to young to grasp this concept, however I remembered the word. I spent the next week secretly angry at my Grandparents. I thought they were bad people because they had a few classical art paintings hung throughout their house, in which half naked people and cherubs were painted. I told my mom one day, "I love Grandma, but I wish she didn't have so much pornography in her house." My mom was shocked, she burst out laughing. She set me straight.

Anon

For whatever reason, when I was young, it was usual for us at my house to get a Christmas tree a little too tall to fit in the living room. So my father would cut off a bit of the top to make it fit. For years, I thought that was what was meant by "trimming" the Christmas tree.

Sophie

I thought that if you look long enough into the hole of the sofa between the seat and the back, I would be transported into another world.

Jen

I thought Napoleon invented linoleum.

Steve Murphy

I didn't understand that selling your home was something you shose to do...I believed that anyone who wanted to buy your house could just come to your door and say so, and then you'd have to move. Until I was about 5 or 6 I lived in constant fear that we'd be forced out of our house.

Phil

My sister used to believe that if you stood in front of the microwave while it was on, you could be zapped to another planet. Thus, when she felt like running away she would pack her bags and stand in front of the running microwave. If you tried to talk to her she would say "I can't hear you I am on another planet."

Anon

when i was around 7 yrs old, my father was vacuuming and found a straw sticking out of an electric outlet. My father told us that whoever (me or my 2 younger sisters) did it must tell him immediately so he could rush them to the hospital before their hair fell out. I started crying profusely... and my father assumed I had stuck the straw in the outlet. As he dragged me to my room, i yelled... " i didn't do it" and he asked "then why are you crying?". I screamed at the top of my lungs.... " I DON'T WANT A BALD SISTER!!!!"

frank

I used to believe that if you walked around while on the telephone, the place where the person on the other end of the line would move around. One day, while on the phone with my Grandfather, I started jumping up and down and asked if his house was shaking.

Anon

In order to get out of doing dishes I told my brother that I had secretly been keeping a record of who had done dishes and when, and that he was sorely behind. I got away with not doing dishes for two weeks before he decides he wanted to see the "secret record."

Samantha

I used to believe wall-to-wall carpeting meant the walls were carpeted too. I was so disappointed when we first had our house wall-to-wall carpeted and the walls looked exactly the same.

Anon

i used to believe that my be sheets with winnie the pooh on were a window into another world and if you jumped onto them you'd become part of that world. I spent countless numbers of hours jumping at my bed

jo

When I was little I used to spend lots of time with my dad since my mom worked and he didn't. Usually that meant that i was in the garage a lot and dad was always hammering something. Until I was about 8 I thought that hammers were called dammits because that's what he usually said when he was using one.

Hoot's daughter