when i was ten i was in the classroom with my teacher and some kids rushed in and excitedly announced that we were all going to die on sunday because some guy was going to blow up the world. i was terrified and criwed about it all the time, no matter how many times my mum tried to reassure me, explaining that they'd just overheard something on the news about saddam hussein and nuclear weapons. i was convinced that the world was going to blow up right up until sunday.

paranoid

When I was annfant my mother wished to keep me away from an electricity sub-station by telling me that the bogey man lived there. It had the opposite effect to that intended, as I thought that the bogey man sounded nice, and I would go up to the sub-station to try to attract his attention.

Another thing: I was born in World War II, and my father was called up for army service. After the war i remember my mother saying to my father at one breakfast 'If there's another war you're not going in it!' I asked why. 'He might get killed', she said. Who would kill him, I asked. 'Some nasty men', she replied. As I had visited my father while he was stationed near the sea, I somehow thought that the war was a cave, and these nasty men lurked in a corner.

Anon

I used to believe that during the war and before that, that TV and cameras hadn't been invented and I used to be confused when I saw photos of Hitler. I have no idea why.

Fiz

We had a cannonball in our back garden (I had a strange upbringing), and my brother told me it was the very one that had destroyed the castle at Scarborough, where we would go on holiday each summer. Later, it transpired this was a lie - it came instead from a museum my mum used to run in Dundee, and dates probably from the nineteenth century.

Nicholas Jones

Back when the Iraq war first started, I thought that Iraq was where Canada is!

Haha, xD

Holly

I used to believe that a swastika was just a mark to differentiate a military airplane from a regular airplane. I had no idea what a Nazi was, I had just seen the symbol in a couple of movies and figured that's what it was. I finally discovered the truth when I drew swastikas on an airplane at school and the teacher told me not to. My mom explained it was a symbol of hate, and I stopped immediately.

bear claw bill

When I was a kid growing up in fear of nuclear devestation, I used to think that Vietnam footage was ancient (since they were using guns, grenades, etc and NOT nukes). I could not grasp the fact when my dad told me that Vietnam was only a few years before I was born and not around 1930.

Pablo

when i was 5 my mum told me that hitler was an evil man, from then on i thought he was the devil

death bunny

I was like five and a half during desert storm, and I didn't quite get how we could be at war if there were no soldiers in army greens tearing through our neighborhood (like in mash) or fighter planes in the sky (like in topgun). Even though I had a very very dim view of what was going on I still would watch the news and it wasnt until about three years ago that I realized that the guy I believed was george Bush snr when I was little was actually donald rumsfeld.

child of the 80's

When I was small, I believed that Geurrilla warfare was apes running around with guns. Zoos terrified me!

Michael

In 4th grade we had to read "Number the Stars" (for those who don't know, that's a children's book about how the people of Denmark helped Jews escape the Nazis). Awesome book, except that I became convinced that the Nazis were going to come and get me. This is a bit strange because there is a section in the book where a Jewish little girl is staying with her Christian friends and the family has to convince some Nazi soldiers that she's thier daughter, using the name and baby picture of one of thier real daughters who had died years ago. The dead daughter happened to have dark hair when she was born (and which later turned blonde). The dark-haired baby picture made the soldiers accept that the dark-haired Jewish girl could have been born to the blonde parents. Given that I am a natural blonde myself, and so much was made of blonde hair meaning "not Jewish", I have no idea how I could have believed the Nazis were after me, too.

Blonde girl who would have helped the Jews too

When I was very young, probably about six or so, my father told my younger sister and I that he had been a Ranger in Vietnam. Until I was in my second year in college, I had this mental image that he was one of the people that made sure that the two sides “played nice” and that he made sure that the animals in the jungle weren’t hurt.

It was a bit of a shock to finally figure it out...

- Saint

My little brother is severly misinformed about World War II. First of all he thinks everyone hates the Germans and that we're still at war with them. He also thinks we (US) killed Hitler. And he thinks everyone except Americans are communists. I can only guess that he's somehow mixed up things he's heard on TV or in school because he leanred nothing of that sort in our house.

Anon

I used to believe that all wars lasted 4 years!

Bob Holschen

I used to believe that the "armory" was the "army" and the war was being fought there. I was afraid to walk on the street where the "armory" was located.

beverly finley

When I was in kindergarten the first Gulf War was going on. All I really remember is hearing about "some war" and knowing that at one point my father was in the military.

Well, hear comes show-and-tell one day and I forgot to get something so I do what any normal kid would do: make something up (I also did this in second grade and told everyone I had read the entire encyclopedia -- my parents had just bought a new encyclopedia set).

So I told everyone how my dad was in "the war" and how he would come home every night "rugged and tired," because you can come home every night from Iraq! Mteacher was very concerned for me and called my mom to express how deeply she felt that "that little girl's daddy is at war". Needless to say I wasn't allowed to have any play dates for quite some time!

Stacey J

When I was small
My father told me about his aunt
Who foretold the event of the Great War
(It was World War I)

She said that one night,
She saw soldiers marching across the
moon.
That story never failed to give me the shivers.

Elissa

I was into wars and battles when I was a child, I used to believe that if I was a pilot in the war and captured in Germany that I could blag my way out of it and say I loved Germany, I thought they would give
me my own german plane, then I would fly back to England and be free.

The Fluffster

When I was a child, I thought wars lasted a couple of days.

Andrea

I used to be convinced that the world was about to end in a nuclear war. I used to make my mum and dad kiss my hand every night before I went to bed so that I would still have their last kiss on me when I died.

Anon