When I was about ten or eleven, I somehow mixed up the words "lesbian" and "leprosy." I used to be afraid of catching "lesbian" after that. One day I overheard my mom on the phone; she was talking about some woman she knew who was a lesbian, and I freaked out and started screaming at her to get away from me because I thought she'd picked up "lesbian" and I didn't want to catch the disease too!

Needless to say, I felt very silly when my mom explained my mistake.

Manda

when i was little, my mom, my little sister (6 yrs) and me were watching, "fiddler on the roof" in the part where it shows the army on horses, my little sister said, " mommy, are those the gay people?" i started laughing so hard, but my mom LIGHTLY slapped my leg, trying to hide her laughter. obviously, she didn't want to explain being gay to a 6 yr old, so she just said, " no" and went back to watching the moviee. :)

Anon

I thought that people who couldn't hear were called "death" people and that was not a very nice name for them. They couldn't hear, but they certainly weren't dead!

Anon

I used to be afraid that when I have a kid I won't be able to teach it how to speak English and it would just grow up never knowing how to speak.

Danielle

When I was about 10 I first came across this work "fuck" and had no idea what it meant, just that it had something to do with love. So, when we were doing a story in class in which a boy and girl meet, I told my friends afterwards, "I bet they'll fuck."...meaning, "I bet they'll fall in love and marry."

Bill The Butcher

When listening to CasyKasem on America's Top 40 while growing up, I thought he always talked about such-and-such band's 'day view' album. It wasn't until my 9th grade English class that I learned d-e-b-u-t was not pronounce dee-BUTT, but in fact day-BEW, and that it wasn't a 'day view album' but a 'debut album.'

Ugh.

Thanks, Mrs. Hermann

I used to pronounce choir as chore. It was until my 5th grade teacher corrected me when the whole class was reading the passage together. And the worst thing was, I was sitting right in front of my teacher the whole time. Imagine how embarrassing it was when she had to peer out from under her book and correct me in front of everyone.

JG

I used to think that the jokes ... to screw in a light bult ment that that the people actually had to SCREW inside the lightbulb. I've thought this for many many years.

haha

I used to think genre was pronounced "jen - er". Sometimes I still pronounce it that way by accident.

Jener

For the longes time, I said ,"Human Bean."

Amber

One time I got in trouble for picking up a phone without asking at my grandmother's house. She yelled at me and said," You need to ask for permission before playing with things!"
I had no idea what "permission" was. I figured that it was some kind of lotion. I thought ," Why would I need lotion to play with something?"

Amber

I used to think Casserole was a suit case that roled. My mom once made casserole for dinner and asked where the suitcases were. I saw a backpack and started to role it...i thought it was like an activity we were gonna play for dinner...everyone laughed at me. we had people over too

case role

My two best friends were shopping and we passed a stand called 'The piercing pagoda' and one of my friends proclaimed "It's the Piercing Padoga!" She honestly thought it was called this. It wasn't just that she read it or said it wrong- She actually beleived the word Pagoda was pronounced Padoga.

Blu

I used to be confused no end by the use of the phrase "You never can tell". It seemed to imply that the outcome of an event being spoken of would remain a mystery forever, no one EVER knowing the result. But generally the phrase was applied to matters whose outcome would actually soon be obvious. I eventually figured out that the intended meaning is that you can never tell IN ADVANCE about such outcomes, but only after a whole lot of confusion in thinking that "never" always meant never, forever.

Tiffany

When I was little, My mom and I were going somewhere in the car when all the sudden I started yelling "MILITARY, MILITARY, MILITARY!" When she did know what I was talking about, I said to her "The place with the little rocks were the people died." I thought a cemetary was actually a military when I was little.

Liz

Once when I was a kid, I said to my mom, "Woudn't it be neat if they invented two machines: A mess-maker, and a mess-cleaner-upper?" She sarcastically replied, "Oh, I already have TWO mess-makers!"

For several minutes, I was impressed, but confused, wondering why she had opted to buy TWO mess-makers, and not a single mess-cleaner-upper, as that was clearly the more useful of the two inventions.

That is, until I realized that she was referring the my sister and me.

Joe Martinez

When I was very young, we were leaving my Grandmother's house, and she said to me, "I'll have to come visit you at your house one day."

I had never heard the words "one day" used in this manner. As far as I was concerned, the only usage of that term was at the beginning of a story (i.e "One day Johnny was walking down the street..."). To me, "one day" always meant something in the past, and I thought she was crazy to use it to talk about something in the future.

Joe Martinez