For the longest time, I thought my uncle Gus and my uncle Angus were two separate people. Well, sure, they looked alike, but they were brothers after all...

Silly Dan

I have only one cousin, who happens to be male. I thought, like dads, uncles, or brothers, cousins could only be male. I was probably 10 before I realized the truth!

ESN

When we were small children we had an aunt that was extremely overweight. At some point we came to the conclusion that you eat so much, you get fat and then you blow up and pop like a balloon. The aunt is still alive.

Lori

when i was little and my mother was getting angry with me, she would tell me that she would take me down to the woods and give me to the used kid man. he was a man that took bad kids and ate them. it scared so bad i used to cry.

megan

when my brotherand I were little we got into a fight as to who my mom loved more. I told him Mom loved me more because I had been around longer and he ran away and wouldn't stop crying- how cruel was that :)

mary

I used to think that when my mum tucked me into bed upstairs, my sister and parents used to turn into aliens, and plot a plan against me.

pineapple

For a short time when I was younger, I don't know exactly how old but probably about six, I was absolutely convinced I had an uncle Frank. Now in actual fact I haven't, so when I went up to my mum and insisted that he existed, she was somewhat bemused...I think it was because I'd read a book which I liked very much, with a character in it who had an Uncle Frank. I obviously identified with this character and got wrapped up in the story so much I got it confused with reality!

Emma W

My great-grandmother was Hungarian. She passed on some of her sayings to my mother. So, whenever I was bad, Mom would say, "I'm going to sell you to the gypsies!"

Terrified of Gypsies--I wonder why

up to the age of 4 years i believed that you had be king and queen to get a child. i was very confused when my dad told me that my mom and he had never been king and queen. i needed a lot of time to get over this crushed belief of mine.

maya

This happened to my ex husband. After my grandmother, whom we called Nana, died, my ex husband told me that he believed her name was Nana, and was shocked to hear that it was Elsie Mae.

Anon

When I was a small child, my Nannan would keep me amused by telling me a mixture of world + family history, fairytales, + Bible stories. I knew she was speaking from memory when she told me about the Second World War + my Mother's childhood, so I assumed that everything else must be from her memory, too... I thought she must have met Henry VIII + Jesus + Oliver Cromwell in person, or at least watched them on the news...
I can't remember when I found out she wasn't immortal, but it must have been a bit of a dissapointment.

Nin

My parents divorced when I was a baby. When I was 3 they tried to get back together, the result being my sister.

Up until I was about 10, and had already had some sex-ed in school, I thought my sister was a residual pregnancy from my parents marriage. Then one day my mother pointed out to me that that is impossible, and confessed they had been "trying to make it work" when I was 3....

Sexually Uneducated

When I was younger my dad would go to work and my sister would go to school. I was convinced that they were hiding from me because they didn't want to play with me. I spent hours looking for them everywhere. I loved to check the clothes closet, probably because it was MY favorite hiding place.

Gene B

When i was 10 years old i used to belive that my older brother and sister were twins. Because they were in the same grade but only to find out later my sister was left back in the 8th grade!

Shafeqah

I used to think that all dads were older than moms. I think this was because both my grandpas were older than my grandmas and all my friends' dads were older than their moms. The thing is, my mom is two years older than my dad! I was relieved when I found this out, because I always got along better with boys at school who were younger than me.

Me

I used to believe I was at my parents' wedding, even though I was the last child born of 4, and they just pretended I was the youngest.

Kristine O.

I used to think I was adopted and that my real parents were in some source of trouble so they put me in a trash can to keep me safe. Both of them were supposed to have been killed. so my real parents found me in the trash can.

Mie

When I was little, I had two close black friends whose adoptive parents were a white lesbian couple. I also had two black cousins that my white aunt and uncle adopted. So when I was 5 or 6, I didn't know any black kids who lived with their birth parents. One day my parents were watching a movie and I walked in during a scene where a black woman was crying and saying "They're going to take my baby away from me". So, using what was apparently good logic at the time, I assumed that the U.S. government forced black people to give up their babies to white people. I finally got corrected when we were learning about Martin Luther King in 2nd grade and I raised my hand and asked why no one protested the law about blacks not being allowed to have babies. She gave me a pretty strange look for a while, there.

matt

I used to think that Grown-ups couldn't cry. I was 5 and my mom and dad were going through a divorce. i had never seen a Grown up cry. I just thought that they didnt cry. Up until the day my mom feel through the attic.... she was so upset about the divorce and trying to be so strong for me, my sister and my brother that she just broke down.
I remember just being shocked... and I asked her how she could cry.....

LOLA L

My grandfather used to sit me down and say, "watch this." Then he would pull and tug on his front teeth and let out a big grunt as he removed his upper dentures from his mouth. Then he would shake his head and say, "phew!" as if it had taken a lot of effort. Then he would carefully replace them and press them hard and grunt again. Then he would wipe his brow, sit down exhausted, then look at me and say, "O.K. , now you try! I think he must have gotten a lot of enjoyment in watching me try to pull out my upper teeth in one big bunch!

oakeydoottle