A childhood belief about around the house

One time we'd had something or other, and my dad asked me to put it back in the "icebox". I grew up in a more modern era and didn't know that term. I guessed it must be the freezer because the freezer was rather box-shaped, and it had ice in it(we had the kind of refrigerator most people do: with the freezer on top of the refrigerator; not the side-by-side model). Of course I wondered at the time why we would want to freeze it, but that was what my dad said, so. . .
Later my dad was looking in the REFRIGERATOR, wondering where that stuff was. He asked me where it was; I said, "I put it in the icebox, like you asked me to" and opened the FREEZER to show him. So then he had to expain archaic terminology.

A very long time ago, people used to have to buy large blocks of ice they would put in the refrigerator to keep things cool (there was no built-in cooling system in those days), so a lot of people called it the ice box.