Shortly after reading "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel", my family traveled to New York City, where my brother explained that the steam pipes rising up from the pavement were from the steam shovels that had dug the skyscrapers, and had subsequently been paved over. I felt so sorry for all those poor, trapped steam shovels! He reassured me that they got out when there was road construction...

Jennifer

when i was little, i thought that people put up phone lines so that the birds could have a place to rest. i called them 'bird wires'.

kyleigh

As a boy fond of throwing and catching, I believed that if a ball or frisbee touched a telephone wire, the thrown object had to hit the ground before being caught to knock the electricity out of it. To not do so was to die immediately of electrocution. My friends still make fun of my continuing trepidation towards catching anything that has touched a suspended wire.

ben

When i was little i thought that it was bad to not be talking to somebody so when I was in public places and no one was talking i would pretend to be having conversations with people or myself so it didnt look like i wasnt talking.

Spanky the Friggin Nifty Bic Pen

When I was a kid i thought that stone lions in front of buildings (like libraries) were real lions that had been frozen, and i would whisper to them and tell them it was okay, and i would scratch them behind the ears.

Jerry Moe the Gimp

When I was 4 years old, me and my 11 year old sister were playing near the window when a brown UPS truck pulled up to our house. She told me "Hide! Hide! Dont make any noise! They come here to steal children!" For years afterwards I was always on the lookout for that evil UPS truck.

Mike

that my neighbors house across the street had a "magic" attic. My buddy said his house was so tall (it was huge) that it was far enough away from the earth that there was no gravity and you could float around up there. I was 4 when he told me this, and I begged him every time I saw him to take me there until I was 5 1/2 and we moved.

Jeff

I also hate my neighbours. Up until i was 7 i believed Satan lived next door to me. I still dont like meeting new neighbours.

T. Castanet

A kid on my block showed me this particular square on the sidewalk under this tree, kind of at the corner. He said it was a big secret for kids on our block. If you rode your bike really fast around the block three times and then concentrated really hard when you passed over that square, you could go into the future. If you went the other way around the block, you went back in time, of course. He must have had a great time watching me try repeatedly. I think maybe he was influenced by that Superman movie.

Cosmic

I used to believe - because my brother told me so - that if I stood on a manhole cover and cover both holes with my feet, the road would blow up because of the build up of pressure underneath. I felt genuinely uncomfortable and anxious when he did just that.

Anon

I used to believe that the pictures of the people on a semi-circle in the parking lot of places (aka, the handicapped sign) meant that the place had restrooms.

Anon

My father was a lawyer, so I knew what a law suit was. When I'd see real-esatate signs saying "Build to Suit" I thought this meant that they would build something for you until you got mad and sued them.

Anon

When I wanted to know if the mail had come or not my mom would tell me to see if the flag was still up or not. I can't tell you how many hours I spent looking for some secret flag on a flagpole

Richard

I realized that there were tons of cracks in the cement and asphault right about the same time that the space ship Challenger blew up. For many years I was convinced that the explosion caused the cracks.

Dave Hare

I used to think I was allergic to Grass and/or Hay, because when I would roll around in it I would begin to itch and little red bumps would appear.

Allergies or Red-Bugs you decide

When i was about 4 my parents were looking for a new house and once we bought one i saw it and said "daddy, why are we buying the house with no walls?"

Anon

I used to think that when people moved house, they had to find a house they liked, and then show the people who lived there their house, and agree a trade. I thought that house moves would be incredibly difficult, finding someone to trade houses with.

Heather

when I was little I use to to love bums who played music in the train station for money.I used to ask for money from my mother every time that I saw one. I thought that they might want a sandwich and a house so I would put money into the cups until my mother told at once that they would spend the money on drinks and drugs and then I lost interest in bums.

lovely1