When I was about 6 years old I got up early one morning to draw. I was using the pens in my stepdads office and found some white-out (the white liquid that you use to coverup any mistakes). I used HEAPS of the white-out on my drawings until I saw that the warning on pen which said 'Excessive inhalation of white-out fumes may cause death'. This warning stopped me in my tracks because the whole room smelt of the white-out. I began to cry hysterically because I thought that once you inhale the fumes it takes a couple of hours to kill you. I ran into my parents bedroom to tell them that I was going to die only to find my stepdad on top of my mum 'doing the deed'. They both looked over at me and yelled that I need to knock and for me to get out. I ran out and lay down on my bed feeling extremely depressed that I was going to die and that my parents didn't care. Eventually my mum came in (dressed in a bathrobe) and after I explained my iminent death she told what the warning label actually meant.

Quite a way to catch your parents having sex, isn't it?

Chirko

I used to believe that every one was born with a set amount of sentances and once you got to your last sentance you died. The amount varried from person to person, and that's why people died at different ages. This is also why people spoke about 'last words'

Fewer Sentances Than I Thought

I always believed at 12am, all the dead people would come alive and eat anyone that was still awake. I can only imagine which parent told me that one.

Organick

My grandmother died when I was 9. I asked my mother what had happened and she told me grandma had went to sleep and never woke up. I ended up being the only insomniac in my 4th grade class. It was years before I could sleep normal.

theresa

I used to believe that when people died and were buried, the bottoms of their coffins would open, the dead person would fall out and join the underground party that all the other dead people were at. It's like I thought there was this huge party six and a half feet under the cemetary.

J.L.S.

When I heard of reincarnation, the ability to die and come back as a animal, I dug up a worm in the lawn and said,"Is that you, Uncle John?".

reincarnated as a worm

When I was young, I never could understand how they could get the people pictured on the obituary pages to smile. After all, they were dead!

arline

There is a girl in our Year 3 class (8 yrs old) whose nan has sadly passed away recently due to a stroke.

We were obvoiously concerned about her, particulary as she was displaying some really odd behaviour soon after the death - she kept walking up to her class teacher, and gently patting her on the arm and then standing back and staring at her intently.

It took a while, but we eventually worked out that she didn't understand why her nan had died, and was seeing if she could kill her teacher by giving her a 'stroke'!

Mr Staples

You know the scene in "Star Wars, Return of the Jedi" where Yoda dies? I was born the year that movie came out (1983), so I was quite young when I saw it for the first time. Because Yoda's body disappeared when he died, I therefore believed that whenever ANYONE died, their body disappeared. Don't ask me what I thought cemeteries were for, because I didn't exactly think this through.

Allison