When I was old enough to go to kindergarten, I thought it meant only visiting the place for an hour or so - just like a zoo or a birthday party. I was absolutely horrified when my mom left. I stood hours in the playground, not uttering a word and thought my mom had simply gotten rid of me.

Marion Schimmelpfennig

When I was like four I thought that you only had to go to your grade for one day then move on,and if you didn't learn it all in one day that you were held back.Well when I went to kindergarden the first day and the teacher said"I'll see you all tomorrow" I thought that I was stupid and I cried that night until I found out that I had to go all year.=]

too stupid

when i was in kindergarden, 1st grade 2nd and 3rd, i always thought that each day of the week had a color(and i still think about that sometimes). Monday=red tuesday=blue wednesday=orange
thursday=pink friday= black
An not until recently did i realize why i thought that! In kindergarden, we always had playtime. There were 5 things you could do, but only 1 each day. My teacher made a chart with colors representing weeks that told us what we could do taht day.

Lobsta

i was so proud to be able to tell all my mates at school that my bedroom had been painted 'batman blue' that word spread around the playground like wildfire. all the kids went home and gave their mums and dads such a hard time begging them to do the same for them, that when my mum came to collect me at home time, she had loads of requests as to where to buy it from as they couldn't find it in the shops. it then transpired that in actual fact my dad had gone into the garage and mixed up any old paint that he could find, which came out a kind of light blue colour, and coined it 'batman blue' so i wouldn't complain and say i didn't like it... ..swizzed again!

shube

in the fifth grade, we were evacuated from the school because of a fire near one of the transformers right outside the gym. watching from the opposite end of the playground, we were all hysterical because we thought that if the fire reached the transformer, it would explode and the fire would jump down to the ground and follow our footsteps wherever we went.

jenny

when i was in first grade, on the first day the teacher announced that, as a class, we'd be taking a trip to the lavatory. i had no idea what that was, so i assumed it was the laboratory and we'd be experimented upon. i was extremely relieved when i realized she meant the bathroom.

ana

I often beachcombed as a child for agates with my great-aunt. She would say that some stones I found were not quite ready and should be put back to finish turning into agates. I accepted this version until age 18 when I was publically caught out in a geology classroom.

Granny404

Embrassing as this is I still believed it up to about 15. When we did geography exams (this is in the UK)you sometimes got given a map to work from. At the bottom there was a grid of 4 blocks of colour. If one of them hadn't printed properly it meant you might not get some of the details on the map and you might fail. Beside this it said @If 4 colours are not shown, please return the map to the invigilator@ I used to think the invigilator was the machine that printed the maps, not the teacher sitting at the front.....

Oliver

When I was in elementary school, there were four water fountains side by side. They were labeled "Coffee, tea, milk shake, pee". "Milkshake" had the strongest flow, so everyone wanted to drink from the third fountain. "Pee" just trickled out, but sometimes some hapless kid would drink out of it. If he did, he would be teased for the rest of the day.

(Jacob, did you happen to go to the same school as I went to: Hillside School, in Berkeley, CA? Or was it a more widespread phenomenon?)

Kdees

As a preschooler, I used to think that at school testing starts on Day 1 and testing, not teaching, was what teachers mostly did. I knew how to read, write, add and subtract before I went to school, but I knew there was a mathematical operation called multiplication and I didn't know how to multiply. So on my first day of class I was trembling with fear because I thought the teacher will ask me to multiply two numbers and give me a failing grade.

tk

I use to believe that everyone in Florida didn't go to school because it was warm all year around.

Julia

I used to believe that the teacher's paper slicer was what she used to cut off our tongue when we talked in class

Anon

When I was little, I use to think if you missed a day of school, you would be arrested.

Kaity

I used to believe that they secretly had school on holidays and that I was the only one who didn't know.

Anon

When I was 7 yrs old at my school, the timetable of the day would always be written on the board for everyone to know what was going to happen. One day I saw "Drama" written on the board. I literally freaked out, I thought that I meant that there was going to be a lot of "drama" happening and I believed that maybe we would all have to go to the hospital and there would be alot of "drama" there.

Janine

When i started going to school, i thought that you finish a grade in a day instead of a year, so in like 18 days(according to educational system of my country), you would be done with school forever. But, it turned out to be different...xD

Anon

I was in 1st standard, and I reached home and told my mom and my sister that the teacher has got a big slate upon which she writes. They had a hearty laugh before they told me that was called a "black board". Well, i didn't hear the last of it for years!

Ajith Nair

When I was 15, I thought that Semoo was an animal (but yet unsure). It came out of a homework assignment in Chemistry class. Take the element name and rearrange it so that it forms a name of an animal. My friend got the elements Mo Se and O. He arranged it to SeMoO (Semoo). It turned out that the animal was supposed to be moose.

Viet (thanks to Johnny G!)

When I was in grade school I believed that my Dad would be home with Mom and us kids during the whole summer too! I was so upset to find out that my Daddy didn't get any time off~he was really my hero then!!!

Susan

My young sister-in-law used to say she had been to gym-elastics which sounded much more energetic than gymnastics!

SueE