When I was little, My dad told me that I had freckles because I was really born black and they painted me white. The freckles was from the paint chipping off.

Lauren

I used to believe that freckles were angel kisses.

Anon

When I was little, I was told that we all have seven layers of skin. I thought those layers were all I was going to have for the rest of my life, and if I were to lose them all, my insides would be exposed! Every time I got a cut or a scrap, I was terrified that I would run out of layers of skin before I got old :)

Christina

I had a lot of pet reptiles when I was a kid. When I got my first really awful sunburn and started peeling, I thought I was just shedding my skin.

JR

My mom used to always tell me not to stay out in the sun too long or I'd get dark, so I made the genuis asumption that if the sun made you darker the moon made you lighter. For a whole summer I would play in the sun all day then wait until my parents fell asleep and sit outside for a few hours determined to "undo" the darker tone i gained from playing all day.

Kohana

I'm the youngest of 9 kids, all of us gingers. Every last one of us has bright red hair and freckles. I happen to be covered in more freckles than any of the others--I look as though I've been splattered with paint. As a child, my brothers and sisters used to call me names like "dot face" or "little dalmatian" to make me mad, so my mother told me the freckles were angel kisses and I had more than anyone.

One day when my sister made me particularly angry, I told her that the angels loved me more than her because they'd kissed me more times. She told me Mom lied to me and the freckles were actually demon kisses and I was getting more and more of them every day (it was summer and we had a pool, so I actually WAS getting more). She told me they'd come into our bedroom at night and kiss me to mark me as theirs and she had seen them do this.

I slept in my Mother's bed for 2 weeks before she got out of me why I was so terrified of sleeping. But I was unsure of whether my freckles were angel kisses or demon kisses until 3rd grade when a lovely teacher explained to me that, both unfortunately and fortunately, they are neither--just spots of pigment. Thank goodness for honest teachers!!

Rachel

The first eight years of my life were spent in a predominately white small town in Iowa. There were a total of about five minorities in my neighbourhood - my mother (Honduran), my best friend (Filipino), my other best friend (Japanese), and then there was the only black girl in my school. She and I never had classes together, but her first grade class and my first grade class would often get together and do activities. For some reason I was really fascinated by her. I knew that people tanned when they were in the sun and so I thought that her family must have lived somewhere REALLY sunny where they just tanned all the time. I also knew that when *I* tanned I had tan lines and that when I got undressed I'd see the white parts of my skin next to the darker shades of my skin. I truly believed that black people had tan lines underneath their clothes and I would spend so much time trying to take a glimpse beneath the girl's clothes to find those tan lines!

Chelle

My little brother used to believe that my skin could be pulled away from my body almost 3 inches.

He didn't know I was wearing pantyhose.

Taryn