When I was in kindergarten, I thought "blast-off!" was the same as "zero," because I saw a sketch of a rocket launching on Sesame Street. So, when we practiced counting backwards out loud in school, I'd say "blast-off!!!" instead of zero. Neither the teacher nor my mother bothered to correct me, because they thought it was cute. :)

Emily

I used to think that the abbreviation lb (for pounds) stood for Lilla-blams (like Kilograms)

Jake

When I learned that 1 times 0 is 0... And that 2x0 is 0... and that 3x0 is 0... Naturally, I concluded that ANY number multiplied by ANY other number is 0. Genius.

The Rabbitlord

I used to believe that, in Algebra, every letter was assigned a number and it never changed. Like A would be 1, B would be 2, etc. So all you had to do was memorize the number that went with the letter and put it in every time you saw it...I never quite got the hang of Algebra...

Mathew

I remember one time when I was in kindergarten I couldn't comprehend what the teacher was saying after she counted to 12 because the next number was 13 and in my head I heard it as being three saltines as in the crackers. So ever time my teacher would ask whats after tens I said Saltines.... maybe that's why I was left back

AJ

i used to believe that 100 was the biggest number in the whole wide world and cried when a boy told me that you could get two or three hundred as well

cleabea

Well, I guess I'm not the *only* person to give numbers genders, colors and personalities!

1=male, burnt orange
2=female, yellow
3=female, green
4=male, dark blue
5=male, orange
6=female, red
7=female, terquoise
8=female,dark green
9=male, burnt orange, but lighter than 1

4 and 5 were best friends, but 5 was often very bossy (probably because he was bigger). 6 and 7 were best friends, too, and they were tomboys. 1 and 2 were toddlers. 3 was a preppy "girly girl". 8 was often very lonely; she had no friends. And 9 was a weird teenager who just didn't care about anything and he did drugs.

I hate math.

Shirley B.

When I was just starting school we had that ryhme "one, two, skip a few, 99, 100". I thought that was actually how you counted to 100 and that "skippafyu" was just another number that just didn't have a written version yet. I spent a lot of time trying to invent the written form of the number "skippafyu".

Anon

My cousin used to think that the lowest number in existence was negative zero. He knew that negative numbers were all lower than positive ones, but he wouldn't believe me when I told him they were in reverse order.

Joe Martinez

When I was in third grade, I had lots of Playmobil toys (dolls and all the furniture and stuff for the world they live in) and one thing was a box that said No. 28 (number 28). I thought that said "No 28" as in 28 had been removed from the counting sequence. My image of 28 for some reason was this really nice teacher who taught all the lower numbers until she spontaneously exploded! Poor 28! To this day 28 is my favorite number (followed by 48 and 8, but I have no explanation for these).

i love 28

I thought I was the only weirdo in existence who thought numbers had gender and personality but I see I wasn't the only one! Even more bizarre though, is that I felt they had "ages" also--1 & 2 were older, 3 & 4 were younger, 5 & 6 older, etc.

Muffin

When I was a little kid, I asumed the word "several" was another way of saying "seven". And several could ONLY mean seven, and I would actually sometimes substitute "several" for seven while counting!

Pablo

My neighbors used to believe you could never count to 100 in a day, it would atleast take a week.

raceystacyUS

I used to believe that 'a couple' meant three of something and 'a few' meant four of something. So, if my Dad asked me to go and get a couple of cups I would come back with three!

Claire Bussey

When I was really little, I used to imagine numbers had personalities. 1 was a guy and he was dating 2. 3 was jealous of 1. 4 and 5 were always arguing. 6 was always confused. 7 and 8 looked on with bemused disinterest. 9 was always trying to get 0 to lose some weight. 1 and 0 were buddies and were always hanging out with each other when 1 wasn't being romantic with 2.

Jasmine

That numbers went 1-99 the A hundred, a hundred and one til a hundred and ninety nine. Then ONE hundred...

Foolhardy

I remember one time I was riding in the car with my dad and I was showing off how high I could count (which must've annoyed my dad to no end) and I got stumped at 112...I asked what came next and he said, "Now you start over". So I thought 112 was the highest number possible until second grade. Good going, dad.

Lyndrodius

When I was about 5 or 6 years old, I thought, I could count up to 1 million. I counted correctly to 100, but then 101, 102, 103,.....108, 109, 1000, 1001, 1002, 1003, ....1008, 1009, 1 000 000.
I actually thought, this was the right way.

I was very proud on this ability and always wondered, why I didn't get very much respect for this by grown-ups.

Anon

When I was very young I was convinced that there was a biggest number. And I was continually annoyed that no one would tell me what the biggest number was. I asked my mom all the time but she would never give me an answer. It seemed to me that if there was a smallest number (0) then there must be a biggest number too. I was extremely annoyed by this until I was 6 or 7!

Ashley

My uncle told me that there was a number between six and seven called "bleen".

Five...Six...Bleen...Seven...Eight...

Dave