Back when I was growing up, it used to get a LOT colder during the winter, and thus my mother would go out and start the car and let it warm up for 10-15 minutes. I asked her why no-one stole the car during the winter. Her response - thieves don't steal cars during the winter. For years I was convinced that car thieves took the winter off.

Morry

that when a police officer was arresting a criminal and read them their rights, when they said anything can and will be used against you.. I thought that if you said crabs or alligators or spiders... they could use them to torture you on the witness stand.

Amanda Renee

When I was about 4 I would worry about robbers breaking into our house, but only till midnight. Because after midnight the witches would come out and no robber would be out when the witches were out.

Carolyn G.

I used to want to be a con artist,I thought you could actually go to college to be one,and whenever someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up,I replied "A con artist."

R.P.

My Granny once told me that if I was scared of robbers coming in at night to sleep with a knife under my pillow.
So every night I made sure my trusty butter knife was under the pillow. I thought it was a superstition thing that worked. When I grew up I noticed Granny slept with a sharp knife under HER pillow.

Chris

i used to hear people say "that guy looks familiar" and i thought they said "for Miliar", thinking there was a guy named Miliar that was on the run and certain people were hired to look for him. so these people would be looking for a guy named Miliar. i was very young.

Tim

When I first started coming home from school to an empty house, I would open the door and yell 'if anyone is in here, my eyes are closed, run out quick and I won't see you' because naturally, if a burglar thought I'd seen him, he'd kill me.

Steph

for some strange reason, I used to believe that criminals always ate prawns. And when my grandad got his car stolen and it was dumped at tescos i thought the robbers had stoped to buy prawns

joe s

I believe my mother once told me that you had to go to a special school to learn how to be a criminal. I imagined all these kids sitting in desks learning how to rob and kill people. I also imagined they'd get homework assignments like, "Go kill someone."

weirdo

When I was in second grade, there was a scare, someone luring kids into his car. Our teacher told us about a man in a green car when she was a kid "He yelled at us, and was taking his clothes off, being ugly..." She must have meant to tell us to watch out for ANY stranger, but her badly thought-out, stammering explanation came out as "ANY man in a green car."

For about three years, I FREAKED whenever I saw a man in a green car. If I was outside, I hid behind my mother. If I was in our car, I would duck down in the back-seat.

Beth

I remember reports of housefires on tv catching my ear. They often said that "arson" was suspected. I couldn't figure out why they couldn't catch this guy. They already knew his name...

Dale

I believed that I could make myself small enough and still enough that a robber would not tell the difference between me and my stuffed animals.

Igster B

when i was about 3or4 iwas very much afraid of burglars especially as i had to spend a few hours a day home alone.the only thing that really reassured me was this:i used to believe that if any burglar would break into our home i only had to break the tv set and i would get to the people in the tv who were of course going to protect me

mihaela from romania

My sister used to have two piggy banks.

One was where she kept her allowance money, which was well hidden. The other was filled with 5 pennies and left on her nightstand as a decoy for would-be burgulars!

Chris

I used to think that the crime scene was the same place for all crimes. I always wondered why people would keep going back to it.

Kate

when i was little i used it think if something bad happened... like a murder or bankrobbery... that it was me sleep walking and i just didnt remember it, and that they would catch me sooner or later... i got very nervous when the phone would ring thinking the cops were questioning my mother about where i was that night n stuff....

now that i think about it i was a very paranoid child :-P

ChArLi

when i was little, i thought that a con artist was a person that painted pictures of people commiting crimes

kimkim

I used to think that a mug shot was a picture of the criminal that was put onto police mugs which were then handed to cops all over the country so that they could recognise the bad guy.

claire

I used to believe that when the judge sentenced a criminal to an impossibly long sentence (like 100+ years) that they kept his body in prison after he died until it was there for the whole sentence.

Camille Noire

I used to only sleep with this one red blanket because I thought if someone broke into our house and tried to kill us, they would think I was already dead and covered in blood. One time my parents sneaked into my room to see if I was sleeping and I thought they wee killers. I screamed "Im dead leave me alone". They still talk about it.

Anon