For some reason - and I have no idea why - when I was very young (probably about 3-4 years old) I thought that the sticks that fell during a rainstorm that were still wet would bite you if you touched them. If they were dry, everything was fine, but if they were wet, they'd bite you. Further, this applied only to small sticks, not to branches or limbs, but sticks of the specific length of maybe 2-7 inches. Anything larger or smaller was deemed, for some reason, harmless. So I would get my yellow rainslicker on, take a plastic cup, and go around cautiously collecting these biting sticks, ultimately putting them either in the trash where they couldn't hurt anyone or in the garage to dry them out enough that they were once again safe for public use. Then, for some reason, I stopped thinking about it altogether, without any consideration as to whether or not what I'd been thinking had been correct or not.

Jake S.

I believed that leaves on trees only became individual when you you close to them, and then I got glasses.

nola

I remember hearing a series of newscasts about a dangerous power plant, some trouble with a power plant, and I thought that it was a big green angry plant (you know, the kind of plant that grows in soil) and that it was throwing a tantrum of some sort and everyone was afraid of this powerful angry plant. I can still see the image I had in my mind of this big plant thrashing its leaves, with people running in fear or else trying desperately to placate it.

Alison

I used to believe that wild flowers were really "wild". I was terrified at the thought of going into the countryside incase I was attacked by any "wild" flowers.

Peter Sanders

I was convinced by my older cousin that if I put moss in the letterbox then when you had enough the mailman paid you $10.00 We were 8 and 6 at the time.
Needless to say my mum always wanted to know why some idiot kept putting moss in the letterbox.

Jen

When i was younger my dad used to take me and my brother mushroom catching.

We had to leave at about 6 in the morning so that the mushrooms would still be asleep. We had to creep up the field slowly and throw our coats over them before they ran away.

gullible git

When I was 3, my brother told me there was a new kind of bee that looked just like dandelion seeds. It was late summer, and I had never experienced quite that level of terror before.

Matt Dukes

My grandfather and I planted a tree. It was only a few inches high, and he told me that if I were to jump over it every day, that I would always be able to jump over it. The important part was to NEVER miss a day, or the whole cause would be lost. Not only did I believe- but I actually jump over it every day for several months!

Anon

Someone once told me that mother nature was the Earth. I jumbled this up somehow and got to thinking that mother nature was kind of like santa claus, only she would watch you when you were out in nature and would punish you if you damaged anything. I was terrified to go running in gym class, but would never explain to my teacher why i HAD to run on the mulch.

The worst story, however, was in the woods on a class field trip. I tripped and snapped a branch off of a tree. I was badly scraped up, but wouldn't stop screaming about how "mother's going to kill me now"

britishbroccoli

My childhood best friend confessed several years ago that she had never realized as a kid that sticks came from trees. She thought they were just something you find on the ground, like rocks.

SBS in NJ