Up until I was about 10, in my mom's car as she was backing up out of our driveway, I never noticed she used the handle to put the car in reverse. I always thought the car knew what she was thinking, and she would think "go backwards" and the car would.

Anon (from transport : cars)

When I was little, my dad told me to "sit there until the cows came home", and I kept looking back at the door waiting for the cows to come through. I always wondered why the cows were never in our house to begin with.

Kate (from animals : general)

I never thought I could grow up to be a giraffe or a police car, like many others did. I was very well aware I would stay a human being, but I believed I could MARRY anything imaginable.

Around the age of 5 I had this daydream about having all my relatives in the church, watching me walking down the aisle in a pretty wedding dress and marrying a two metre high piece of licorice candy.

I was worried if I could control myself to only eat a very little piece of my licorice-husband every day, so that it would last for the rest of my life.

a cured licorice addict (from grown-ups : marriage)

When I was a child I used to believe that clowns were born clowns with a red nose , big feet , multicolored hair...

Sathia (from people : clowns)

When I was very little, a kindergarten classmate told me that naked pictures of people were very very bad and they were called pornography. I was to young to grasp this concept, however I remembered the word. I spent the next week secretly angry at my Grandparents. I thought they were bad people because they had a few classical art paintings hung throughout their house, in which half naked people and cherubs were painted. I told my mom one day, "I love Grandma, but I wish she didn't have so much pornography in her house." My mom was shocked, she burst out laughing. She set me straight.

Anon (from at home : around the house)

When I was very young, about 4 years old, I believed that I lived in the "United Skates of America". I really loved roller skating at the time..

Anon (from the world : nationalities)

I used to believed that Barbra Bush was the first woman ever created because everyone called her the First Lady during the 1992 election.

Kayla (from the world : politics)

When I was a little girl, I used to think that Daddy's turned into Santa Clause. My father dressed up as Santa one year.Later that day, I walked passed the bedroom and saw him taking the beard off. Instead of assuming Santa wasn't real, I just thought that he had turned into Santa.I just knew I had the Secret to Santa Clause. I told all of the kids at school.

Anon (from make-believe : father christmas)

When I was little I used to believe that the blank pages at the end of the book were for writing a different ending if you didn't like the original ending to a book.

Becca (from language : reading)

When I was little my dad told me I was born with unusually large feet and that since his feet were really small the doctors surgically switched them so that our feet would match the rest of our bodies.

Bigfoot (from body parts : general)

I used to think that every country had their own cheese and it was named after the country like the way we have American cheese (there would also be English cheese, Canadian cheese, German cheese, Chinese cheese and so forth) and that we could only eat the kind from the country that we are from. I thought it was illegal for us to have Swiss cheese in our market because we didn't have any of the other kinds of cheeses.

Cassaundra (from food : dangerous food)

When I was about 7 or 8 we had neighbors and all the kids had red hair. They also ate Ketchup on EVERYthing, and I thought that was why they had red hair.

Judy (from body parts : hair)

When I was about nine or ten, I heard for the first time people talking about someone "putting her head in the oven" to kill herself. Of course it's something to do with breathing in the oven fumes, but I didn't know that. I thought if you wanted to kill yourself you had to cook your head, and when it got cooked through completely, you would die.

Anon (from death : people)

This wasn't me but a work colleague, and it made me LOL. She believed that Star Wars really was filmed in space and all the flight sequences were filmed just above the Earth's atmosphere. She hadn't grasped the concept of special effects in her earlier years

Debs (from media : films)

When I was around 8, my sisters told me whenever they went to sleep, they turned into animals and went about their daily business. One of my sisters told me she was a tiger, and the other two who were twins told me they were monkeys. She told me to wait for a minute, then came back with reddish stripes on her arm as proof. I believed this until I was 10.

Anon (from animals : general)

I used to think that if the colour of a car was gold, it meant the owners must be really rich. After all, they had managed to make a car out of gold. Now, I know its just tacky.

Lizzie (from transport : cars)

I used to believe that when you got scurvy you'd grow scales. I don't know why. my dad always told me to eat my oranges or else I'd get scurvy. I didn't eat an orange till I was about eight. I wanted to be a fish.

myninjaknees (from body functions : eating)

I used to belive that BBQ Ribs came from humans. When my older sister and dad ate them i closed my eyes, thinking of the person who gave up a rib for them to eat. I though all the way till i was 12!

Anon (from food : general)

When I was little, the cartoons would sometimes show the characters sneezing because of breathing pepper that was in the air. I tried it myself by inhaling some to see if it would work. I spent the next 30 minutes with a wet towel up my nose because of the stinging. And no, I never sneezed.

Megan (from media : cartoons)

When I was in elementary school, my mom would always complain about the large amount of cops on the roads at the end of the month. She always said that they were "getting their quota in"....I thought she was saying "quarter" and for the longest time I thought cops got paid a quarter for every person they pulled over.

Mary (from the law : police)