As a little kid in pre-war New Guinea, my parents would read out the eagerly awaited letters from family in Australia - "Grandma asks if you are being a good boy, and Sport (her dog) still likes to play", - and so on. So I knew early that those marks on the paper meant real words, but I wanted to talk to Grandma too, and would scribble on bits of paper while carefully shouting out my message (I knew she was a long way away). But I thought it had to be like a conversation, so I would have to invent Grandma's reply and shout and scribble that too. But if I had to know what her answer would be before "writing" it down, what was the point in asking the question? I was a logical if rather confused child. Things haven't changed much.

Swanny

This is for my oldest sister. Our family went out to eat to an Italian restaurant and, while reading the menu, she asked my mother what "Lensquata" was. It turns out it was Lasagna, she misinterpreted the cursive writing. It was pretty sad since she wasn't a child when she said that.

Spooky

I read books avidly as a kid and was always awaiting the Library doors to open. I was born in 1943.

I always had a problem with two words. For years I pronounced 'Slough' as 'Sluf' and also 'Hugh' (a hero in one of my books) as 'Huff'. I suppose I had learnt to pronounce Rough and assumed the other words corresponded.

Penny

As a kid, I believed that Little Red Riding Hood was "Little Red Writing Hood". I found considerable cause for puzzlement in wondering what her hood had to do with writing.

Wendy

when i was about 7 i had misheard the name of the great Shaw play and truly beleived that there was a play called Pigmania. i used to think it would be a really cool show like the muppets.
this came to light to my eternal shame in a game of trivial pursuit - by which time i was 12 and i hav never lived it down. "of course i know its really called Pygmalion, i was just being funny" ... yah right...

chrissydontsurf

I used to think that Horoscopes were actually Horror-scopes, and I never wanted to read mine because I didn't want to know what horrors I would be encountering in the near future.

PS

I used to believe that the word sickle was short for popsicle. "He cut the grass with a sickle," would mean a guy cut some grass eating a popsicle - like on a hot day perhaps? Made sense to me at the time.

Popsicle kid

When I was little I never understood why adults liked to read. I thought that all the read were information books or dictionary/thesaurus... I never knew they actually had fiction books! Not until I was about 10!

Bekkie O.

my friend from grammer school thought that to kill a mocking bird was actually about killing a mockingbird, sadly enough i didnt really know what the book was about either, and we were in the eight grade!!!!

Anon

When I was about 9 or 10 I was very into reading the dictionary - my brother (5 years older) must have thought this was kind of geeky and asked me, very seriously, if I knew that the word 'gullible' wasn't in the dictionary - you can see what's coming next can't you?

t

From when my parents divorced was when I was able to read with some understanding. This was around the age of 6/7. My parents would send eachother Christmas cards saying Happy 'Xmas' to eachother. I thought that Xmas was a christmas word that ex boyfriends/girlfriends husbands/wives said to eachother.

Jake

There was a Chinese takeaway near us called the Orient Express. I thought it was Onion Press. Yeah.

Spook

I used to believe that the sign "in case of fire, do not use elevator" was meant to be proactive. I read it as "you shouldn't use elevators, because someday, there might be a fire." It never stopped me from using elevators, but I remember being puzzled by the sign.

Karen

When I was in third grade, and I had my cousins visiting us, and my oldest cousin, who was 12, told me that The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien would be too hard for me to read.(I was a very good reader.)My retort was that I had read Harry Potter books. I thought if you had read Harry Potter, you could read anything. Amazingly, after my cousins were gone,I read The Hobbit.

Lane

When I was seven years old, I used to believe if you closed a magazine and left it alone for a few days, all of the pictures inside would change to new ones. I have no idea why . . .

Jerre