When we were little kids in Alabama, my sisters and I loved to sing our two favorite hymns in church. Eventually we (like so many others) learned that what we called "The Gladly Song" actually wasn't about an unfortunate bear who needed an operation to get his eyes fixed (which was exactly what we could look forward to ourselves, because if we kept crossing our eyes like that, they'd get stuck).
One Sunday morning much later, my mother was totally mystified when we asked whether we'd get to sing our other favorite hymn - the Plastic Thunder song. We had to sing it for her before she understood which song we meant: "I've got a piece of Plastic Thunder standing, down in my heart, down in my heart to stay." She laughed so hard, she cried... the real lyrics? "I've got a peace that passeth understanding down in my heart"...
She'd heard us sing about Plastic Thunder countless times, but never listened closely enough to realize. Of course, to this day we still prefer our version!
A childhood belief about hymns

others believed things like this
- The song called heart of glass mixed me up as a kid. I heard "Heart and ass". — oops
- The Kim Carnes song called 'Bette Davis Eyes' well my dad used to sing "She's got Dickie Davis Eyes" Anon
- I thought that singer/songwriter was spelled this way: sing-a-song-writer...Anon
- in the song "show me heaven" i used to sing "make me breakfast" instead of "leave me breathless"Anon
- Did anyone else sing "Hark, the hairy angels sing"?— Jill
- My mum said that when I used to sing "noahs arc" at school I would sing "who built the arc, no one, no one"— Clare