When I was a little kid I saw a billboard for hooters. Curiously, I asked my dad what "hooters" are. For years I've believed that they are fluffy pillows. The next day I told my mom if we could go to the store to buy new hooters because mine are too flat.

Cherie

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

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 brothers, who (as brothers often do) loved to mess with me, told me that every girl grew up to be a boy and every boy grew up to be a girl. I totally believed it.

Marnie

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 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

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

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

My mom worked nights when I was little and would then sleep most of the day when my dad was a work. To keep me from running around and playing outside while she was asleep my mom told me the garbage men kidnapped little kids they found outside and would take them away to sort garbage or something. I was afraid of the garbage man until I was too old to still believe such a thing! It didn't stop me from going outside though -I would just hide behind the house when they came.

Anon

In 2nd grade my dad told me he skipped a rock across Lake Michigan, and I believed him and defended him when I told my class. It was a few years later that I found out how big Lake Michigan actually was.

Kristen

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.

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 my little brother was younger my two sisters and I told him that he was going to turn into a girl when he grew up. We told him that we used to be boys and we just turned into girls one day. He believed us for the longest time! One day he was talking to our dad and he said "When I'm a girl..." and my dad was like "WHAT" We were in big trouble after that haha.

Horrible Big Sister

When i was younger, my older cousin made me believe that m&ms grew in flowers, so everyday i would ask her and check her flowers for m&ms

erica

When I was little, my dad told me the reason i got freckles is because he lifted me up against a screen when a cow farted then he would sit me out in the sun to dry. I believed him for years

Nykole

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

When I was 4, my dad told my brother and I that Bill Clinton lived in the neighborhood, because a guy who lived really near us looked a lot like him. We didn't figure out that they weren't the Clintons until Hillary was running for the Democratic nomination, and my brother said, "Wait a second! That's not Hillary Clinton! She doesn't look like that and she's in some other state right now!" We figured it out when I was 11. At first, my dad told us this as a joke, but we believed him to the point where once I went up to the neighbor and said, "Hello ex-president!" he gave me a really weird look. How incredibly sad...

Anon

When I was little my parents told me that the oil rigs off of the coast were pirate ships, and that they would come and take me away if I was bad. It frightened me so much, it even brought me to tears once.

Emma