In 3rd grade we started learning about immigrants so naturally I was curious and asked my dad where we came from. He told me that my great-grandparents were royalty and came to America when their small country rebelled so they wouldn't be beheaded. I went around for a year after this telling everyone I was a princess and when I grew up I would go back to this country and claim the throne.

Anon

I used to think that my dad was olser then my aunt (who is actually 20 yearsolder than him) becuase I thought all men had to be older then women. Ahh...so naive!

Clare, Ireland

Up until I was about 9 years old, I used to think my Dad was Superman! So I used to put my fingers behind my back and ask him to use his X-ray vision to tell me how many I was holding up. He got it right EVERYTIME! I used to think he was amazing! I mean... how many people's Dad is Superman? Of course, I didn't tell anyone because I couldn't let out his secret identity. It's only now I realise I always used to ask him in his room... right infront of the mirror...

Holly

My Dad used to tell me he was the heir to the throne of Denmark, and would one day have to leave us in order to fulfill his duty there.

Spike

When I was little, my dad told me that he was transforming into a welk after he pricked his finger on a thorn in our garden. Me and my sister got really upset about it and started crying. We used to make him little "I love you" presents just in case he turned into a welk any time soon.

Fridgy

I never met my father, so when i was little, even though my friends had dads which i met, i used to assume that there was only like 5 dads in the whole world who fathered us all, and we all belonged to one of the 'dads', but that they gave us away to our actual mums and 'stand in dads'. I used to believe that one of these 'dads' was a statue of a fat butcher outside my local butchers, and that at least two of them were probably psycho killers, and that mine was probably either the butcher or a psycho killer, and I really hoped that it wasn't the later because I would be doomed to take after him since i was nothing like my mum, i must naturally be like my dad.

Anon

My father's side of the family has a Portugese background, but I was never taught to speak the language. I did however, have to call women on that side of the family Tia so-and-so (Tia Norma, Tia Evelyn etc). I always wondered why I never had to call them auntie, and why they all had the same first name.. that is until my 8th grade Spanish class when I learned that Tia means aunt in Spanish, and I figured out it does in Portugese too!

Amy

when i was old enough to know what birthdays meant, my grandfather told me that he quit having birthdays. It was very strange to me that my mom (which was his daughter) was getting older than him. But, everybody backed up his story. To this day, he is still 29! (and holding, of course!)

Anon

When I was young I had this wierd irrational fear that my dad was going to kidnap me and take me away from my mom--no parents were not divorced. he used to take the "senic route" everywhere and I would panic when I didn't recognize where we were and ask repeatedly "where are we going?" This fear lasted unitl I was about 12 I thought I was nuts but I finally figured this one out. when I was very young my dad used to listen to books on tape in the car. There was one particular story by Mary Higgins Clark called "Little Lost Angel" where a little girl is kidnapped by her dad....

A. T.

Used to believe that my little brother was literally a pest that came from the department of sanitation. I thought the garbage man was his real dad. One time when the garbage man came, I was 5 and my brother was 3, and I took my brother out yelling "Wait, you forgot something!"

Really wanted to be an only child

My sister was born when I was 7. My parents asked me and my male cousin, who was a year younger than I was, to be my sister's godmother and godfather. I assumed and believed for years that this meant that when I grew up I'd have to marry my cousin (since obviously the godmother should be married to the godfather!).

Naive

When I was about six, my grandfather told me he had the last pet pterodactyl on his block, and it got old and he remembered the day it died.
How silly of me to fall for that!

Ashen

As a disney-saturated child, I once told my pregnant mom that I wanted the baby to be a boy so I could marry him when i grow up.

Rebecca

My mother told me when I was little that they had forgotten to pay the bill at the hospital and if I made too much noise the hospital bill collectors would come and reposess me.

Anon

My mother had many misconceptions about things when she was younger. Her and her friends were imaginative - they would take a large piece of lint, run down the street as fast as tehy could, and think they were flying off to Candyland. She also thought the TV could hear her when she talked.

Stacia

I must have been around 7 or 8 years old when my mom informed me that she had "jewelry duty" the next day. I thought it kind of weird that she had to leave the house and go make jewelry, but hey, what the heck. When she came home the next day, I asked her to show me what she had made. She had a confused look on her face until I explained that I wanted to see what she made at "jewelry duty". She stifled a laugh and in her sweet southern accent told me that she had been called for J-U-R-Y duty, where she then explained about how people participate in the court system. Did I feel stupid? Absolutely not! I was just bummed that I didn't get any pretty jewelry from my mom! LOL!!

Karen

I admit that I have a creative imagination even to this day, but when I was younger and noticed a change in my parents' behavior or temperment, I would assume that my real parents had been abducted by aliens and that these new, strange, people were actually robots or aliens.

olivia

My Grandad used to tell me and my brother that he had a donkey living in his shed. He always had a plausible excuse for us not being able to 'visit' it. He used to pretend to take carrots out to it and one day showed my brother a squashed toy car 'that the donkey had stood on!

Paula Nugent

At one time when my brother and I were misbehaving and getting on our parents' nerves, my father said "Oh, do what you want."

We thought he meant it - so of course we got in even more trouble.

Anon

I used to believe that you just 'got pregnant' you didnt have to actually do anything for it to happen. I also didn't understand about relatives and thought you had to choose what you wanted to be. Eg: you could only choose to be either an aunt, a mother, a cousin, a grandmother etc.

Anon