I used to think that if you were pregnant and your baby was born in another country, the baby would be of the nationality of that country and you wouldn't be allowed to take the baby home with you (it would be adopted by one of the native citizens).

Alen

I used to believe that there were only two countries in the world, England and France. Everything in France was the opposite to how it was in England, so a frown meant they were smiling, and when they cried it meant they were laughing!

Tala

When I was young I believed that if you stayed in another country for an extended period, you started to look like its inhabitants (change if skin colour, hair colour, facial characteristics, height, etc.)

Emma

Whenever I heard the term "redneck," I pictured something entirely different than anyone could imagine... I actually thought that there was a race of humans walking around with red necks! I mean... Why not?

Punky

Chinese, French, German, English, Clownisian.
When I was 4, these were some of the world's nationalities. Chinese people in China, French people in France and Clowns in Clownisia. This was obviously the truth at the time.

Stalin

I used to believe that immigrants to a new country would eventually grow to look like the typical inhabitants of the country that they make their new home. For example, I thought that Chinese immigrants to the United States would eventually grow to look like "typical Americans" and no longer "look Chinese" after a sufficient period of living in the United States. That sufficient period, I envisioned, would be a few years or so.

Diana

I used to think that lesbians were from another country or related to Germans somehow...I believe this until I was about 14 years old

Caelistis

When I was little I used to confuse the word "Lebanese" with "lesbian." There was a civil war going on in Lebanon when I was little, so I thought all Arab-looking people were lesbians. I remember my mother being very embarrassed when I ran into an Iranian classmate in the supermarket and said, "Look mom, a lesbian!"

texasbabe

I'm the middle child of three, and when I was little my Dad told me that they'd had three children because every fourth child born in the world is Chinese, and they'd only wanted English children. I believed him for years.

Anna

I thought that people in foreign countries dressed in their native costumes all the time, like German's in Leiderhosen, and Dutch in wooden shoes, and Russians in big furry hats. I guess those filmstrips we watched in grade school were REALLY old.

me

so public schools have yearly standardized testing where i grew up. and there was always the section to fill in basic information about yourself. like name, age, grade, etc...

one of those was also for ethnicity. all the standard choices, african american, hispanic, asian, pacific islander/eskimo/native american/other and caucasian.

only i didn't know that caucasian meant "all white folks" (tha’d be me) so i marked the eskimo pacific islander one until middle school.

erin

My father told me that Frenchmen had three legs.

Anon

When I was younger, I had twin friends that just happened to like taking really hot baths. As they were part Japanese, I naturally thought that Japanese people were immune to hot water. I truly believed that you could dump scalding hot water on a Japanese person and they would be perfectly fine.

Autumn

In the early sixties, as a 3 year-old I was taken to England for a 2-week visit. I have no memory of the trip. I did however grow up with the knowledge that the English were tiny people that lived in flower pots. When I grew old enough to question the idea, I couldn't understand where such a deep seated impression was from. As an adult, I finally mentioned it to my mother and she laughed saying that while we were in England I used to watch a tv show called the "Flower Pot Men". Mystery solved, although I did visit again as an adult just to be sure.

Frances

My brother once referred to the neighbor as a lesbian (she was Lebanese...)

Anon

When I was in seventh grade, a girl I was in Social Studies class with named Susie was reading her paragraph out of our geography book. We were discussing the Shiite and Sunni Muslims and she was the first one to read about the Shiites. The rest of us in class were not quite sure how to say it but we knew it probably wasn't how we thought it should be said. Sure enough, though, Susie kept struggling through her paragraph and got to Shiite, pronouncing it "Shitty" and making the whole class and our teacher laugh. When he finally got control of himself, the teacher explained to us how to pronounce it, Shee-ite. To this day (and I've already graduated from both high school and college), I still use "Shiite" (pronounced the correct way) as a euphemism for that other expletive.

Jess

I thought that asylum seekers were people who were mad and wanted to find an asylum.

Little Penguin

When I was a kid, I used to think that all animals reflected their owner's nationality. For instance, I am Portuguese so I thought my dog was Portuguese and my cat and my parakeet were all Portuguese. I believed the butcher's dog was Greek; the Pizza Parlor guy's dog was Italian and my best friend's dog was Polish. My father used to curse the parakeet in Portuguese every time it got out of its cage and "pooped" on the curtain so that only confirmed to me that the bird was Portuguese. Just a dumb Portigee Kid.

Kathy S.

A friend had a penpal from Germany and the penpal went into deep detail of what a house looked like - thinking people in Australia have no idea what a house looks like!

Glenys

I used to believe that the stereotypical politeness of Far Eastern Asia was because everyone there knew martial arts. Logically, you would never be rude to anyone in case they'd kick your ass.

Anon