creepy crawlies

when i was about 5 i used to flush ants down the toilet thinking it was a lovely waterslide for them! Poor ants.

liverpoolfcx-Jade

When I was about 5 or 6, my older sister convinced me that mosquito bites only itched when the mosquito had been interrupted mid-bite and didn't get to finish the job and seal up the whole. She told me if I held perfectly still and let the mosquito bite me undisturbed, then the bite wouldn't itch. I suffered through a LOT of bites before I finally decided she was wrong!

Katie

My mom told me when I was about 4 years old that spiders could run faster than humans. One day, while in the basement, I put my finger in a hole in the wall and a spider came out. I almost killed myself running up the stairs, certain that the spider was right behind me!

Barbara

When I was little, my mom told me that moths would eat my clothes. She neglected to specify, "when they're in the closet." So I thought that moths had these huge teeth and would land on me and eat right through my clothes and bite me. Then someone told me that butterflies are just pretty moths... To this day, I am terrified of both moths and butterflies.

Evie

When i ws a kid, i taught that ants where nice and spiders where evil, and they where fighting in an endless war

Anon

i used to read 'asbestos' as a plural, and i believed that an asbesto was a kind of insect, like a beetle. whenever i read about asbestos being found in a building i imagined it was infested with these insects, and they would send in pest control to deal with it...

sarah

My mom used to make little kids scream by telling them they had garments on their backs. (Mom had a slightly mean streak.)

traumatized daughter

I used to believe that killer bees would take over the world by the time I was an adult.

Kristy O.

I used to believe that I was queen of the butterflies, and I could telepathically communicate with them. My brother believed he was king of the dragonflies. So when we'd be outside, I would try my hardest to tell a butterfly to rest on my hand or attack my brother, and he'd do the same with his dragonflies.

April

In order to get me to clean my room as a child, my grandmother always told me that spiders came from dust. She said they just materialized from the dirt and grime in a dirty child's room. I know now that they hatch from eggs, but to this day I am still scared to death of spiders of any size, any kind.

Skye

I used to believe that if you killed a spider, for example stepping on it and crushing it, that in the final second before it died it sent out signals calling all other spiders within a certain range to the spot. So I was always careful, after killing a spider, to leave the immediate vicinity to avoid being swarmed by thousands of spiders!

mc quake

When I was very young, after a night of catching fireflies with my brother, my brother filled the jar with green fuzz from His sleeping bag and told me, that after a few hours. Fireflies turn into that green fuzz. If you Keep them captive for too Long... I believed this until I was about. 10 years old.

Anon

I was once told that white roaches where that color because they just got married.

Andrew

When I was maybe six, I thought that "Sea Monkeys" (the little shrimps you could whip up as pets) really were little people- as depicted on the packages I saw at the store. I remember thinking how horrible it was that you could buy these tiny little people who were then totally at your mercy- what if some stupid kid didn't take good care of them?
Of course, none of that stopped me from wishing I had some of my own. I asked my mom for some and when she told me they weren't really people but were only boring little shrimps I didn't believe her. I thought she was just lying because she was too cheap to buy me some.

Carrie

When I was about six or seven one of those big black ants bit me...and I started screaming, my mom and one of my older brothers came running in to see what was wrong. When they found the ant and got it off they said it was a "Pouting ant", it would only bite you if you were pouting....needless to say I WAS pouting about something at the time...but I was much more careful from then on...those pouting ants can hurt!

Anon

until a few years ago, i still believed that worms were coming out of the ground to play in the rain. it didn't occur to me that they could be drowning down there...

krystle

My sister convinced me that sharks lived in my aunt's water bed. As we laid there trying to fall asleep, she'd start humming the Jaws theme under her breath and making waves until I screamed.

Jennifer

When I was 4 or 5, I saw my Dad kill a spider in the hallway. I ran off to tell my Mom, and when I got back to show her, the spider was gone. I decided that when you kill a spider, it will clean itself up by the time you get back. I still hope for spiders to be gone by the time I get back with a tissue.

Sean

I used to believe that I was the secret master of all the spiders in the world. If I clapped my hands in a certain way, in a certain rhythm, ALL the spiders on the planet would come to where I was standing. I tried not to clap my hands very often.

caro

My mom told me once, when I was about 6, that I came out of my room yelling "There's a black weirdo in my room!" and she ran in there thinking there was someone dressed in black really in my room (like a robber). She went into my room and didn't see anything. She asked for me to show her what I was talking about and I pointed out a black spider. I thought it was a black weirdo....not a black WIDOW!!

Becky