I thought I could get a tan by sitting in front of the fireplace. I used to look in the mirror and see that the freckles had occured. I was quite old when I realized the fireplace wasn`t going to help my easter tan much.

Anon

When I was young I thought that police had soft skin, because this is how it sounds in French " Peau lisse "

amine

I used to believe that we had a finite amount of skin and that I would eventually run out due to pealing.

Anon

When I was in preschool I had a black teacher. One day she picked me up and set me on her desk to calm me down because I was upset about something. Upon close inspection of the palms of her hands I noticed they were much lighter than the rest of her skin. When I got home that day, I started crying and my mother asked me what was wrong. I told her, "Mommy, Miss Tucker's turning WHITE!" Needless to say, my mom explained that black people's palms and soles of their feet were a lighter color because that's the way God made them. Boy was I relieved to know my teacher wasn't turning white!

Color-Blind Preschooler

i used to believe that if you were a white child you would grow up to be black and if you were a black child you would grow up to be white. thanks michael jackson.....

andrea

When i was little and i stayed in the bath too long and my fingers got wringly i would think i was turning into a old man. So i would jump out of the bath and start crying.

lol ... i was stupid

My best friend as a kid was goofing around on a skateboard on my driveway and took a nasty spill. I didn't see how badly he was hurt, as I immediately ran to get my mum. She fixed him up and took him home, and told me that he had "ripped his lip" or something like that. I assumed she meant that his lips had entirely come off, and asked to see them.

Anon

One summer when I was about 6 my mom and I were sitting outside. She was wearing shorts and when she stood up I noticed she had a bunch of little dents on the back of her thighs (cellulite). I didn't know what they were so I asked, "Mama, were you sitting on rocks?" She told me she was, so for the longest time I thought the dents on people's legs were from sitting on rocks and they were only temporary! :)

Nicole, Colorado

my brother used to tell me when i turned 10(i was about 7 at the time) that all my veins would pop out of my arms, i was terrifyed!

little miss freakout

I had a mole on the inside of my armpit. I used to pick at it all the time. When I was about 4, I was riding in the car with my cousin, picking at my mole. He pointed out that if I rip my mole off, it will hurt more than anything, and I would bleed to death. That definitely made me stop picking at it.

Ms. Mole

I thought that I could get a suntan if I stood really close to a fire for long enough.

Mat

When I was little I told my great-grand mother that if she spent less time in the tub she wouldn't be so pruny. Later I find out that it was just wrinkles!

kerri

When I was young, I used to share a bath with my older brother. He had a large mole on his chest, and he told me it was there because I had bitten him! I felt so guilty. I then thought that all moles were bites, and used to really pity some people. My brother milked it for years (Me, not the mole). He had it removed recently. I hope it hurt!

Andy C

we live in a small, remote town in Europe. When we were little, my mum always had au pair girls from canada to look after us.

one of them was an african canadian girl. At that point, my little brother (he was 3, at the time) had never seen anyone that dark before, so he thought her skin colour was make-up and tried to rub it off...

Anon

When I was really little, probably about 5, I remember the thought crossing my mind that maybe black people were boys and white people were girls. Then I remembered my Dad wasn't black and blew my whole theory.

Ruth

When I was little (about 4 or 5), I had lots and lots of freckles across my face. I hated them and complained about them a lot because I looked like a dork. My mom, in order for me to tolerate them, told me that 'freckles' were kisses from God and he kissed me so much that they show up.

I believed it for the longest time.

Caley Richardson

When I was a kid, my older brother told me that black people were made that way on purpose. Like if you had a baby in the summer when you were tan, that baby would be born with a darker, sort of olive skin tone. And then when that baby grew up and had a kid, if it was in the summer and the mother was tan, that baby would be even darker, so of course if a darker-skinned person had a baby in the winter, the skin would be lighter.

Yup, I believed that a good portion of my life.

Me

When I was in kindergarten, living in a very white suburb outside of Seattle, there was only one black child in my grade. When we had our only full day (where the am kids and pm kids went all day together), I saw her. During lunch time, when we were all eating our sandwiches, she was the only one with wheat bread, and I thought she had brown bread because she had brown skin. Later on in school, she became one of my best friends... and now I won't even touch white bread. :)

taliba

I remember the first time I saw a person of African-American decent, I was with my grandma...I looked up and saw this person with such dark skin and shouted out to my grandma, "Why is that man made of chocolate!?" I was immediately ushered back into the house.

Heidi

I ticked off these older kids on the bus one day when I was little (and quite a punk). They had freckles, and told me if they touched me, I'd "catch" freckles too (as though it were some sort of disease). Being young and stupid, I was horrified. I went home in tears and would run away from anyone with freckles.

I believed them until third grade. Sad.

Lindsay