When I was in Kindergarden, I had a friend that was black. She told me that during the summer, I would turn black and during the winter, she would turn white. I actually believed her.

Kathy

When I was in elementary school I absolutely loved African animals, safaris, etc. I figured that this must mean I was African American (strange because I'm very much Caucasian). I told all my friends "Hey, did you know I'm part African American?" We were so young they believed me.

amy

When I was about 5 my older sister told me that if a white person and a black person had babies they would be piebald (like my pet mice). My brother's best friend had parents of different colours and I spent a lot of time trying to see under his clothes where the patches of other colours must have been!

Debbie

i thought that people got tans because they got enough reckls that it looked solid and that some people got freckles faster than others.

Sara

I was born in the Watts area of Los Angeles in 1960. When an adult. I overheard an adult talking about the "colored" people moving to our block. I imagined a face with swirling colors.

Pete

When I was in kindergarten, I used to think that if you didn't take baths then all the dirt would build up on your skin and grass would grow on you.

Tanis

i used to believe that when i had an itch or a tickle, it was because there were ants crawling beneath my skin

Willa

The sad thing about this one is that I wasn't even a kid - I was a young teen with new ZITS! I worked out in my head the idea that I could carefully but effectively remove them with sand paper. It did remove them in a sense, but did not have the desired effect. And it really hurt! A stupid believe (theory) but a true story. (PS - I only tried it once.)

Jon

I was a pretty sheltered child, and when I was about 5, my grandparents owned a Gunsmith shop. I was in the shop playing on the floor one day, and the Sherriff, who happened to be Black, came in to have his gun worked on. This was my perfect opportunity to ask him a question that had been burning in my mind for days. So I asked him, "Hey Mister, is your tounge black too?"

Imagine my Grandparent's embarassment.

Desiree

i used to believe that the brown birthmark on my arm was a coffee stain that had been there to long to be washed off.

julia hibbert

On a day out at the beach when I was young and obviously hyperactive, I was told (and believed) that I would only get a suntan if I lay very still and was very very quiet - took me years to work that one out....

Minnie

When I was little, I thought that because my mom used Oil of Olay lotion on her skin to get rid of her wrinkles, that that meant she was going to die. In reality, she was 27 years old. What was I thinking??

Samantha Kennedy

I used to think that you could get a tan if you turned the oven on, opened the door and stood in front of it.

Anon

I had a very distant aunt who had a very old, faded and distorted tattoo on her arm. When I was a little kid, I used to think that the green splotch on her upper arm was actually where a bird had pooped on her and left a permanent stain.

Stephanie

I have a mole on my stomach and not until a few years ago did I realize that it really was a MOLE... not the result of a cockroach bite from my baby years. I'm 17 years old.

Charita

until LAST YEAR, I used to think that cellulite was caused by sound waves from using cellphones, and I was worried about using my cellphone too much because of it. but its just fat!

abby

my sister believed up until about age 6 that coloured people, bevcasue she had never known many, were "chocolate" people. It took alot of convincing without her trying to eat one before she decided that they just had different coloured Skin!

Anon

I have a birthmark on my leg, which kids would say looked like different things in grade school. I thought it was roughly in the shape of the outer outline of a paper clip and wondered what made it that specific shape. One night I dreamt that it would change shape on its own, but that I could also change its shape by putting a sticker on it and then taking it off; the birthmark would then take the shape of the sticker's silhouette. So at one point I put on a sticker that was, of course, of a paper clip, and kept it on for a long time so that the shape eventually became permanent. I believed the dream was real after I woke up, and I also thought that I could still change my birthmark's shape by placing stickers on it. The only reason that it didn't work so well was because I couldn't keep any of them on long enough (the sticker either fell off or I had to take a bath).

J.J.D.H.

I had never heard the term "colored" used to describe a person until I ran across a reference to "a little colored girl" in a children's book I was reading when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I assumed it meant she was rainbow-colored - and I thought "How cool! There are people that are all different colors?!"

Barbara Wills

When I was little I heard about moles, the mammal, and became convinced that the moles on people's skin were actually the tip of burrowed mole's tails poking up. I had no clue how they got into your skin, but I became very scared of them.

Joe