When I was little, my mom had this typewriter and I believed that I could just press random buttons and it would form a story. I would type a bunch of jibberish and then go to my mom and ask her what it meant she said nothing, I did it again and asked her what it meant: nothing, I figured out by about the fifteenth time that you had to try to write a story

lauren

I used to think "fonix" was a dangerous drug that would mess up your spelling because a kid at my school always wore one of those humours "hukt awn fonix wurkt fer mi" t-shirts

xfactorial

Up until I was 10 or 11, I thought the word anonymous was 'annoymous'.

Anon

When I was three or four I believed that letters and numbers were either boys or girls. The letters A, B, H, K, M, N, P, Q, R, U, V, W, and Y are girl letters whereas C, D, E, F, G, I, J, L, O, S, T, and Z were boy letters. X always kind of tricked me (ironic considering our chromosomes). 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 are boys and 4, 6, 8, and 9 are girls. I can remember to this day (20 years later!) exactly what letters and numbers are the girls and which ones are the boys!

Lindsay

When I was little and had been taught the Alphabet Song, but before I could read I thought that LMNOP (el-lem-en-opie) was one letter because of the way they're run together in the song. I still think of them that way when I'm trying to remember letter order. I'm 38.

egbert

i used to believe that cursive was another launguage, and that you learned how to read it when you grew up. I would always make squiggly lines on paper and ask my mom what it said.

Anon

I used to believe that organism and orgasm were variations of the same word. Then while reading aloud one day in Grade 7 science class, I replaced the word organism with the word orgasm. Most of the class, including the teacher began laughing. I was dumbfounded until about 1 year later.

Bianca

I used to think that an explanation mark only had a dot at the bottem because they were normally at the end of a sentence and it was the full stop. If there was an explanation mark in the middle of a sentence, it would just be the stick.

Anon

When i was first learning to write and put words together, i wondered what the purpose of vowels was... it made perfect since to me that "ct" meant cat, and "trck" meant truck, etc. "LL" (that means LOL)

i'd like to buy a vowel, please... ""

My friend once told me that when she was younger, in a spelling test a question was 'my favourite toy is my ........' my friend, hoping to spell beanies., as in beanie babies, spelt it penis. The school called her mum and had a chat to her aswell!

Anon

I was confused by words with similar pronunciation or spelling.

- cavalry vs. Calvary (Did they take Jesus to a horse? And what did Jesus have to do with war and the armed forces? I was baffled.)
- prostate vs. prostrate (When I read sentences about men lying prostrate on the floor, I thought that one of their organs had been dismembered and tossed to the floor. Horrifying!)
- Andes vs. Alps vs. Appalachians vs. Adirondacks (Were these different names for the same mountain range? Then I thought maybe all mountain ranges started with the letter 'A'.)
- Mozart vs. Michelangelo (With so many similarities, I didn't realize they were different people. Both were men, and long dead, and European, and artistic.)
- Einstein vs. Edison (Hmmm. Both scientists of a sort...but it didn't help that one made discoveries about the speed of _light_ and the other invented _light_ bulbs.)

Kevin Wiatrowski from Colorado, USA

I used to believe that I had created the word "lesbian" when I was in the 4th grade. I had never heard the word before and used it in naming a landform (i.e. Lesbian Lake) for a social studies assignment involving naming your own country and creating mountain ranges, bodies of water, and cities within the country. I had thought of the word "Lebanese" and turned the letters around because "lesbian" sounded like something important and creative...only my teacher did not see it that way, and made a big deal out of it (since she was not a nice teacher anyway). In front of the entire class, she made me look up the word, and (no kidding) in my dictionary, it said "homo". I was laughed at for days. Gotta love paranoid people in the 1980's.

Victoria

i used to spell eight "ate" cuz of the stuped: why was six afraid of seven, cuz seven ate(8) ten joke...

8

when i was in kidergarten we were learning to spell numbers and letters. I thought i did real good on the test, because my mom got called into met with the teacher. they had to expalin to me why i couldnt spell six "sex" as i thought was the right way to spell it

Anon

I used to think that L M N O P was part of the alphabet song only and they were not letters but "enomenopee" and that was part of the lyrics to make it ryme with Q R S T U V

sarah

When my parents would give our last name to someone over the phone, they would say, "B, as in boy" continue to spell, and end with "M, as in Mary." They both did this the same way, and I heard them doing it all the time.

For years I didn't even realize that they were spelling our name; I assumed it was some sort of code.

S, as in Silly

Once, I got really worked up because my father wouldn't tell me how to spell the letter 'u'.

Shayla

I used to think that Popeyes was spelt Pope Yes and I never understood that Pop Eyes and Pope Yes were the same restaurant and I was like "Can we go to Pope Yes?"

DancingTennisPro

My cousin walks up to my grandmother and myself and said "I can spell trashcan, B.F.I." We both bust in to laughter and then try to explain to her that B.F.I. is a company, not the way you spell trashcan.
That same cousin also thought sec. (as in second)and sex were the same word.

Anon

I remember asking my Mama if there were two "N"s in the alphabet: the first one falling between "M" and "O" and the other one between "Y" and "Z". Singing the alphabet, the "and" always sounded like an "N" to me :) Now I understand that there is only one!

Jade