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

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 used to believe that the Pillsbury doughboy actually lived in the refrigerated shelves in the grocery store. I always secretly looked for him when we went grocery shopping just hoping to be able to push his belly.

Natalie

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.

Whenever I'd ask for something when my mom and I were shopping, she'd tell me we couldn't buy it because she didn't have a coupon or it wasn't on sale. I used to think that you LITERALLY weren't allowed to buy it without a coupon/sale, and it was only for display until it actually went on sale. I never threw a tantrum about not getting what I wanted because I thought the store wouldn't let us buy it.

Anon

When I was little my gee-gee, in order to make sure we held onto the hand-rails, told us the story of a little boy who got his tennis shoe caught in the grid at the bottom of the escalator and was sucked under and ground up. For years my parents had to walk miles in malls and airports to find elevators because I would become hysterical near escalators..

jen

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 believe that price tags in stores were what the store paid to get them from the manufacturer; they paid their employees from the sales tax

blake

In the parking lot of the shopping mall once, my mother and I were talking and my younger sisters (aged 2 and 3 at the time) were in the backseat complaining loudly that they wanted to leave. So my mother told them that if they didn't behave those people coming out of the mall, the *mall people* were going to come and take them away.

It became very easy from that point on to discipline my little sisses. We would just tell them, "Don't make me call the mall people!" This did, however, cause them to be afraid of shopping malls for many years.

Stephanie

As a child, a place like the grocery store can seem enormous! I grew up in the 60's-70's. During that time there were a lot of colorful and unique characters regularly used as spokespersons in comercials for products. You probably recognize many of these: Madge (Palmolive dishwashing liquid "You're soaking in it."), Mr. Whipple ("Don't squeeze the Charmin!"), Jolly Green Giant (Ho Ho Ho!", Mr. Bubble, Kool-Aid Pitcher, Honey Bear (Golden Sugar Crisp cereal)...and lots more...There were hundreds of them! And I believed that somehow they magically resided somewhere in the grocery store. So, for that reason, I really didn't mind going shopping with my mom. Well, that and I could help pick-out the snacks!

Rich G.

I always thought that a strip mall was a mall you had to strip to get into. For some reason my mom couldn't ever get me to go to one......

~Erin

I used to believe that the overhead-pages on the loudspeaker in supermarkets was from lost children looking for their parents.

Jackie F

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 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

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

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

I used to believe that if I stayed on the escelator too long, if I didn't step off before the last stair disappeared, that I would disappear as well...wooh! I had a lot of anxiety at the mall.

Christina Hickel

For most of my childhood I thought the tiles on the grocery store floor were magic that only affected kids. There were big sections of white and big sections of pink, and I thought stepping on the white would make me weaker, and staying on the pink would keep me strong. Along the edge of shelves there was a strip of dark pink that I thought stepping on would keep me extra strong. Eventually it was replaced with a grey line that I thought stepping on would make me extra weak. I also thought the line was made grey just to make it more challenging for me because I was getting older and better at it.

GazBevMOO

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