I used to believe that I could tell the time by looking at the clouds and imagining I could see numbers. What I could actually see was the church clock in Audenshaw, and as it stopped a lot my friends were never very impressed with my David Blaine-esque talents.

Ricardo De Force

My brother and I shared a room growing up. At bedtime every night when the lights went out he told me he had this black dot and that by pressing it he was able to contact any person I wanted him to. I used to have him contact people for me and ask them questions that he would answer. Anytime he was mad at me he would press this black dot and contact lots of scary people. Boy, did I have a lot of sleepless nights. :)

Pam

When I was little by brother told me the UPS guy had such a big truck because when the UPS guys found little girls playing outside without their parents they would steal them. One day the UPS guy stopped outside my house and I was playing outside. He walked up to me and I screamed, "Leave Me Alone" and I ran away from him. I still believed it even after my mother told me it wasn't true!

Anon

Not strictly mine, but I had a friend (let's call him Keith, that's his name) whose dad told him that numbers went in the sequesnce 'one, two, three, four, five, six, several' . . . he was nearly into secondary school before much persuasion got him to grudgingly concede the existence of the number seven.

toots

I had a belief about the facts of life. When I was about 9 I asked my mum what the facts of life were, because a friend said he knew 7 facts of life and wouldn't tell me what they were!

Max

My husband and I tell my four year old daughter that when she telling a fib her ears turn red. I can tell when she's lying anyways, so I always know when to say it. I have even gone to the extreme of saying something she knows isn't true and pinching my ear so she will believe me! She doesn't lie to us anymore.

PeanutLuLu

My sister once told me that I was given away by my father, who supposedly owned the Barbie doll factory (Mattel INC); she also made me promise that I'd send her 1 doll every month if I ever went back.

Anon

I was a pesky little sister to two older brothers and apparently annoyed them with my constant chatter. Finally, they told me that we are all born with just so much air in us, and the more we talk, the more air we use. In solemn tones they said that when all the air is gone, we die, and I was very close to using all of my air. Since they didn't want to lose me, I ought to think about not talking.

Of course, I believed my brothers completely, so from then on I didn't say a word to anyone. My parents, suspicious (as always) that my brothers were behind this change in my behavior, eventually made them confess their lie, but it took them a long time to convince me otherwise.

Judith

When i was little i always believed whatever my brother said.....foolish ... i know....one day i was walking to the backyard and he said " STOP!! you have a jumper on you". i didnt know what he meant so i screamed "Whats a jumper do?". While looking all over myself. Then he told me that they suck your brains out, so i ran screaming to my mother "have i got a jumper on me?". She said "yeah, of course you do" (it was a cold day at the time). So i ran screaming inside, wacking myself all over and cried for ages....Until my brother came and told me it was a joke and laughing his head off, ahhh welll i was so easy, but he got grounded for 2 weeks...but i cant get over it...

Shaun Clarke

My neighbor, Mr. Starkey, told my sister and I that baby-sitting was just that; sitting on the child until the parents returned. I was terrified for years of having anyone babysit me for fear of getting squashed.

JodiB

I thought Van Goh BIT his ear off for a lot of years... I didn't occure to me that it was impossible to bit your ear, I was telling my mom about it and she like He didn't bite his ear off! and then I tried to bight my ear and I was like WHAT? He really didn't bite his ear off! I think I was 10 or 11 when I found out!

You just can't bite your ear

i used to bealieve that my eyes turned white when i was lying. my parents told me that they did so when asked "did you do this or that?" i would answer and if i was lying i would ask my mom if my eyes were white. and my parents would die laughing every time. i fianlly figured it out at the age of 7
rachel

Anon

when i was a kid i had a bit of a big forehead my two sister told me that i was adopted and that my real mum and dad were mr and mrs conehead and that my real name was tandori conehead i cryed for hours until my mum made them tell me that it wasnt ture.

sophie

When I was little, I had this really nasty babysitter. She told be that if I lied the world would explode in fire and brimstone. Not that I knew what brimstone was. But it got me to tell the gospel truth to anybody who asked for about a week, then I forgot.

Virginia W.

My parents told me if I lied to them, my tongue would turn black, and boy did I believe it -- how else did they always know I'd lied? (Maybe it was from them saying suspiciously, "Let me see your tongue," and me furiously shaking my head no with my lips pressed shut!) I used to run to the bathroom mirror afterwards to catch before it returned to normal, but my parents nipped that in the bud by telling me only moms and dads could see it. Good trick -- I think I need to keep this one going with my own kids!

Carrie from Appleton, WI

Where I live, there's a HUGE statue called the Driller outside of the fairgrounds.

Well, when I was little, my Papaw told me that the Driller was really a sculpture of him, since he was a famous astronaut.

I believed him for YEARS.

Kate

When I was about 6 years old I thought that if you repeated a lie to yourself for several minutes that it wasn't a lie anymore. I learned that I was really mistaken when I was caught doing something that I had lied about.

silly me

My horrible older brother told me that I came free with a box of washing powder and that is why my family had to keep me.

Johanna

I'm 5 years older than my sister. Even so, when I was around 10 she could still get me in trouble with my mum by saying 'he did it' these were invariably lies.. I convinced her that her eyes turned from blue to green when she lied. Boy this worked a treat - from then on she covered her eyes up when 'snitching' to mum... Problem solved :-). She's 30 now and still cant tell a porky without averting her eyes somehow.

Scott V

When I was very little, in elementary school, my brother told me that when I was a baby, he had taught me how to catch frisbees in my mouth, like a dog. He stopped doing it, though, and over time, I forgot how, hence why I wasn't able to do it anymore.

We had to write a small "report" talking about ourselves, telling what we thought about ourselves and our lives, like explaining who we were. I mentioned, "And when I was little, I could catch frisbees in my mouth." I totally believed him. The other day when visiting my mom, I found the very report I wrote. It was true. I wrote that. She kept it for that reason.

Maxi Rose