When I was little, and my mum was pregnant with my little brother, we went to the supermarket. In the checkout behind us was a man with a very large belly, I turned around and said to him, "Oh my mummy's having a baby like you are too!"

Anon

I love motorcycles, and I enjoy sometimes just going to drool over the new models--
My mom had me duped for a long while that there was a "chrome-polishing fee" to enter a motorcycle shop so I couldn't go if I didn't have the money!
Not to mention the fact that a motorcycle-thug bouncer would kick you out if you'd spent too long or gotten fingerprints on the metal!
The kicker is, I had to actually *ask* a woman who'd been to this shop whether or not this was true, because my mother was evasive about the whole thing...

(And I'm ashamed to admit this wasn't too long ago, either! <*cringe*>)

L.A.

when I was about 5-6 my father worked a part time job at a large department store weeknights. My mom would have to pick him up when the store closed, my brother and I in tow. He worked in the cash office.. the last people to leave the store... anyway, I was always afraid that he would get locked in the store and have to sleep on the beds in the linens section... plywood boxes with sheets on them! When the lights went out and he was still in there I would get hysterical!

Robin

I used to think that the WH Smiths bookstores were pronounced 'Wuh Huh Smith'. To this day, I still get teased about it.

Cat

I used to think that there were two worlds, and that both were exactly the same. The reason was because when we went shopping we would go to the shopping entre, enter through one door on the ground floor, then go out of another on the first floor. Wasnt until I was older I realised they were just built on hills.

Anon

If things were out of place in the grocery store (i.e. candy in the pasta isle, etc) I thought it was free. I ended up taking a few things home.

Whitney Sauve

In our neighborhood supermarket, the register had a computer woman's voice that said the price of the food as it scanned. I believed that there were little women working in the basement of the supermarket speaking into a microphone.

Anon

As a child I would get all worked up when we went to stores because I didn't quite understand the concept of change. For example, if we purchased something for $20 and gave the guy a $100 I would get all upset because we were actually giving the guy more than he needed. I knew we got change back but I guess it never really clicked for me.

Chelle

When I was young, every time I walked by the clothing store called HOT TOPIC, I was never allowed to set foot in there because my mom told me that whoever steps foot in there worships the devil. So every day when I go to school, whenever my classmates mentioned to me that they bought this or that at HOT TOPIC, I would get scared and I tried my best to go along with the conversation or else they could've killed me anytime they wanted to.

ai

I once asked my Mum what 'prosecuted' meant after reading 'Theives will be prosecuted' on a sign in Sainsburys. She told me it meant that they would be killed! I attribute this to my happy crime free life.

billy.b

I believed that you could get sucked into the gap at the end of the escalator, the moving stairs disappear into the floor. I was terrified of going on the escalator and would walk backwards on it until I worked up the guts to take a running jump over it. These days I sometimes let my feet slide off the escalator onto the ground just to prove to myself that I can't fit through the gap even if I try.

Tania

when i was about 5 or 6 i asked my mom what a flea market was. i had been bugging her so she told me that it was a store that sold fleas just to get me to shut up. i believed her and thought it was true until i made a complete idiot out of myself when i was about 11.

Anon

The first time I heard of a store being "out of" an item, I was very surprised. I had previously thought of stores as magical places able to create an unfailing supply of whatever things they sold.

Alice

I used to believe that if you weren't wearing rubber soled shoes when you rode on an escalator, you would be sucked into it unless you jumped before you reached the last step. ( My Grandmother used to tell me this!)

Anon

I used to believe that when I went back to the Sears Wish Book and I could not find a toy that I had looked at previously that someone had bought it.

Donna

When I was little I used to like to wander away in the store so my mom told me that a man with a sack was going to come and get me if I left her sight. Well in Spanish (the language she spoke to me in) the word for sack is the same as the word for coat. So for a long time I was terrified of any man wearing a coat!

K

I used to think that when my mom went brought groceries, I didn't understand why she said she went fruit chopping. Later my sister told me I had misheard food shopping.

Shannon

you know at the convenince stores and such, they have those round mirrors on the ceiling, so the clerks can see if you are shoplifting? well, im 14, and up until a short time ago, i always thought those mirrors were actually hidden security cameras, so if i was in an isle alone with one of those mirrors, i would either wave, make faces, or glare at it, because i thought some security gaurd was watching

anastacia beeverhousen

When I was probably about four years old, I was at this home-improvement shop with my parents. The shop had rolls of colored chains there, like the kind that you hang a swing or a bird feeder with or chain a door closed or something. But I didn't know what they were for, and I asked my mum and she told me that they were used to hang naughty children from the ceiling by their feet and let them hang there forever. I actually believed this for years and years until my dad bought similar chains and used them to hang a swing in the back yard. All that worrying for nothing!

Rikki

when i was little, my parents would take me to the store and leave me in the car till they got back, and i used to beleive that when they didnt comeback after a while that they were being held hostage, and that everyone outside that had baggy clothes on was in a gang and after me.

eddie