one night, when i was 4 or 5, i heard sirens and went to my dad to ask what they were, i thought he said "they're simon" so for a while after that everytime i heard sirens, i'd think "there's simon, he's kinda scary"

Jasmine

I thought all the streets of every city connected to each other. So if you started on Main St in New York, for example, you could keep walking through to Main St Chicago, Main St Denver, and Main St Los Angeles.

Anon

i used to believe anyone who didn't live in my neighborhood was rich.

Spencer

When I was really young, I was always escaping the house into the yard or street or whereever. My mom had decided the best strategy was to instill fear into me by telling me that if I strayed too far, dogs and cats would attack and kill me, tearing my body to pieces. At the age of 2, I was pretty gullible. (I'm pretty gullible now, but not to this extent.) One day, I was at my cousin's place and we were going up a steep set of old stone steps in the backyard. I was in front and being much younger could not see the neighborhood's meanest cat ("Rusty") at the top of the steps who turned and hissed at me. I remember waking up in my aunt's place with my head supposedly split open. It would be another couple of years before my fear of dogs would go away.

Anon

I used to believe that I could find a route to ride my bike
to my friends house that was all down hill. Maybe this
was not so far fetched, but I also thought, if I tried really hard,
I could also find a route to coast downhill ALL THE WAY HOME!

Doug

When I was little my dad used to take my younger sister and I to the Rose Garden in Marquette Park in Chicago. We'd roll up our pants and jump into the fountains, collecting quarters that my dad pointed out which mysteriously seemed to keep appearing in whatever direction we were walking. We believed the people who ran the city of Chicago put them there for our benefit, because they knew our family needed the money. I remember once feeling incredibly charitable by offering my dad a couple of the quarters I'd found. It wasn't for years until I realized he'd been the one dropping them for us.

Leah

When I was 5 I believed that large birds would grab you with their talons and fly off like in the cartoons, so whenever I was outside and saw one I would grab onto something. I was somehow convinced that the birds were actually bigger than me.

dan b

I lived in a town where there were ditches at the side of every road. On the way to and from school, sometimes kids would fall into these ditches and get soaked. Cars would have accidents and crash into the ditches too. I used to believe that, before you became an adult, you would at least ONCE fall into the ditch. Some sort of rite of passage or something. And I truly dreaded when it would be 'my turn' to fall into the ditch.

I never did fall into the ditch. But in my dreams, 25 years later, I still have nightmares about death and ditches.

momcat

Once when I was about 4 years old we drove past a Burger King restaurant, and I asked my dad what the "Home of the Whopper" sign meant. He told me it meant that they make the Whopper sandwiches at home. So until I got old enough to understand what "Home of the..." meant, I thought that the workers at Burger King made the Whoppers at home and brought them to work. My dad was such an ass.

Christopher

I had a dream that I confused with real life that an umbrella could keep me aloft for a very long time while walking down the street (we're talking like twenty feet.) I'm pretty sure I tried while awake and just thought there wasn't enough wind.

Ryan

When I was young I thought that VOTING was actually BOATING. One November I went with my mom to vote, and I was being bad during the ride over, so she threatened to leave me outside. "But Mom, who is going to watch and make sure I don't fall in!"

Kat

I use to think whenever we drove past property that had signs saying "commercial property", that was where commercials were made.

angie

I used to believe that all English fire trucks all had their own individual names!
What made this even more special was that i was forever seeing the same one, embarressingly it wasn't untill my now husband pointed out that "DENNIS" was in fact the name of the company that made them!!!!!!<---CRINGE-------->

Anon

When the mosquito truck comes through our neighborhood, my son and I dash inside. We did this for several years before my son realized the truck was killing mosquitos -- not spitting them out at us.

Kevin Hogencamp

When I was about 5 or so, my good friend (same age) and I used to play this game called "Pie Pie". It involved us trying to unscrew the manhole cover near the bottom of my neighbor's driveway with my plastic tool toys. I don't know why we named it Pie Pie; we could have possibly been trying to pronounce "Popeye". Anyways, I thought that below the manhole there would be a world of dinosaurs while my friend thought there'd be a lot of hot women. Needless to say, we never managed to open it. My dad still likes to joke with me about this.

Matt

We once lived near a drive-in cinema, we could see the screen from our front porch. I never understood why people would pay to see a movie without sound. In addition to that I was frightened to look at the screen in case they caught me watching without paying.

Steve

Across the road from where I lived as a kid there was a house with a giant white concrete wall out the front. In this wall they had placed rows and rows of sectioned earthenware pipes perpendicular to the wall, in all there were about six rows of twenty pipe sections. This created a cheesy quasi Spanish effect and the whole neighbourhood quietly laughed about it. My mum once joked that they often went on holiday and built that wall so their mailbox wouldn't clog up every time they delivered the local paper, I missed the humour and totally believed this. Just this year I moved to a house near this wall and while driving past with my girlfriend I *almost* said, "hey, there's the wall of the people who always go on holiday".

Steve

I used to believe a sign "MOD Hostel" near a building where I lived was a place for bad "mods" opposed to "rockers". It wasn't until I was a bit older the penny dropped and I realised it was a place for people to sleep in the Ministry of Defence.

John Cooper