When I read the book "Where did I come from?" in second grade, it mentioned that you didn't have to be married to have a baby. I thought that meant that sperm could travel out of the man, down the street on on the sidewalk, into a lady's house and up the legs of her bed, through her sheets and into her vagina while she was sleeping. A couple of times I peered over the edge of my bed to see if any of them were coming my way.

L.A.P.

When I was four my mom was pregnant with my little sister. Strangly, I kept mixing up the word "pregnant" and "retarded." Once when I went with my mom to the doctor's office for a prenatal checkup I met two ladies who asked me why I was there. I replied that it was because my mom was retarded.

Lisa

When my daughter, LIzzy, was almost two, I sat my four year old son down to tell him that we were thinking of having another baby. He burst out crying. I asked him what was wrong and he said, "I want to keep Lizzy."

Mark (Vermont)

My brother used to believe that when a couple left the church after they got married, there was a big wicker basket by the door with a selection of babies in it, so that they could choose one on the way home!

Lisa

When we were little, my mother had bought us a book titled, "How You Were Born". In this book, there was an illustration of a sperm under a magnifying glass. For years, I thought the magnifying glass was a frying pan and was totally mystified by where and how the frying pan fit into the reproductive process.

Amanda McMurray

To make a baby a man and woman touched parts of the body and that would make that part of the baby. So if they held hands that would make the baby's hands. If they kissed that would make the baby's lips. They had to rub butts in order to make the baby's butt. There was no doubling up. It wasn't like if they touched hands multiple times the baby would be some octopus monstroid. The parts would float around in the mommy's tummy until it was completed. The parts were good for up to 9 months. So you had to complete the baby in 9 months or you had some parts over.

Green Fool

Whenever we pester our mom about where we came from she would tell us either (a) she found us by a garbage can or (b) her favourite - we exploded from rocks.
Thanks, mom! At least it's more interesting than the stork story.

4-Strings

I used to believe that if you had sex underwater you would give brith to a mermaid.

Anon

I had always known about sex; I was never told that old one about the stork. However, I didn't learn the specifics until I was twelve. I came up with a truly brilliant theory, though. Men and women had magnetic force-fields around them, men were north magnets and women were south magnets. Babies were conceives when men and women got so close together that the magnetic fields touched, and had to spen a whole night like that. As you can tell, I spent much thought on the subject, and was convinced that if I held two ordinary metal magnets together for a whole night, more metal would appear in nine months.

Sara

When I was in 4th grade, I got to stay overnight at a classmate's house. Her big sister--who was in 6th grade and therefore a font of information--told us about where babies come from.

She said that the man and woman take off all their clothes, get into a bathtub together "and the woman rubs the man's 'thing' until it foams and foams. It fills the bathtub with foam and then they take the foam and rub it all over the woman's skin. And she becomes pregnant."

I actually believed this for a few years.

naive Washingtonian