After watching snow white and the seven dwarves (Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it’s off to work we go…), my sister, aged 2-3, developed some strange ideas about my father, who was a teacher at the time. Each day mom dropped him off at the school and he walked in with a briefcase. In my sister’s mind, he walked in to the school and produced a screw-together pick from his briefcase and started mining. That’s what “work” was, according to Disney and according to my sister.

Jonathan

When I was born, my father used to work for a company called Durham China, which made china tea sets etc. As a child, adults used to talk about 'the China Factory' (i.e. the place my Dad worked.) I assumed this was a factory full of Chinese people, making Chinese lanterns, pagodas, etc. It wasn't until a few years back when my Mum died and she still had a Durham China tea set, that my memory was reawakened and it finally dawned on me just what 'the China factory' had really made.

David

I used to belief that you could only become a barrister or a judge if your hair grew that way, i.e there were a priveliged few who were determined at birth!

Kat

My brother wanted a part time job on a milk round, so he decided to look it up in The complete 'works' of William Shakespeare. He now uses the yellow pages!

Joey

Before I was 6 whenever my parent's mentioned that they had to go to work I always imagined them going to some farm and chopping wood. I also imagined that they had to wait in line to do this.

Anon

When I was 5, my mom and i hopped in the car to pick up my dad and i asked her why we had to pick him up. She responded "he got fired". My eyes got wide and i said "They're going to shoot daddy!?"

LeeAnn

I was very amazed by the concept of ”work” when I was little: I just couldn’t figure out why people got paid at all (wasn’t money something you got from you parents?).

The only explanation I came up with was that you had to pay someone if they were to give you a job, and that a good job had to be more expensive than a bad one...

Bjoern

I used to think that every work place looked like a court and grown-ups argued all day. Kinda true I suppose...

Anon

I used to believe that what my dad did at work was what every other dad did at work: turned a handle on a machine and then money came out.

Andre

I used to think that my uncle was a secret agent because everytime he came round to our house when I lived in Glasgow he used to speak to me in a series of grunts and whistles and stuff rather then in english. He'd then sly-lee give me money.

Sumeet S

I used to think that adults had paid money to get a job and when got paid they were being paid back - so they had to work a certain amount of time to be paid back the full amount that they paid for the job.

Anon

I am sure my four year old son belives that the only reason I go off to work is to get the newspaper home.

Mark

I thought being a hippie was a job or a career of some sort in which you had to have long hair and wear interesting clothes and talk about peace and flowers. This sounded absolutely wonderful to me. So when I was around the age of four or five, if grownups asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up (which of course they would constantly) I would say, proudly and with glee, "I'm going to be a HIPPIE!" Naturally, adults always reacted with enormous amounts of consternation, which I could not fathom--what could be wrong with pretty hair, peace and flowers? My parents told me never to say that again. In spite of their worrying--perhaps also because of it-- I grew up to be pretty much EXACTLY what I had planned. I have no regrets.

Demitria Monde Thraam

When I was around ten or eleven, something behind my grandparents house caught fire. I think it was the transformer on the telephone wire. Well, they wound up having to call fire-fighters to come put it out. I remember after the whole thing was over and all the men were leaving... I ran over with a pen and paper and asked for autographs. *lol* I thought they were famous just because they were firefighters, and this was waaaaay before Sept. 11.

Jenny