When I was very small, I couldn't deal with the fact that there were "number words" that weren't definite. I mean words like "a couple", "a few" and "several". I pestered my mother about this until she told me that "a couple" was 2. Eventually I made up a whole system where "a few" was 3, and "several" was 7. It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that people were sometimes just talking about an unspecified number!
A childhood belief about counting
others believed things like this
- when i was little i believed that your social security number was the number you were born on the earth — christine
- that the word "couple" as in "a couple of items" was synonymous with "several", rather than "just two".— Blair A. Petterson
- My little brother once asked my mother when we past a couple of factories.. if the factories made clouds— nicky
- i used to think that the red colourin gon Smarties was made from Beatles blood. In fact, I still do!!— pigsy
- I used to believe that all four-letter words are bad words.Anon
- My mum told me that cold custard (which I hated) was in fact Banana Blancmange. I lapped it up for years.— Chalky