skin

if you have freckles it is because you didnt wash your face well enough

Anon

When I was younger, I used to believe that gremlins and fairies would come into my room while I was sleeping and melt chocolate chips on my face which explained my freckles.

Anon

When I was very little I thought that tattoos were blue dots and everyone had one, like a birthmark. As a teenager my mother attempted to give herself a homemade tattoo. My grandmother caught her before she was able to do more than a little blue dot on her thigh. As a result of my belief I would go around asking people where their tattoos are.

John

I guess when I was really little, I hadn't seen too many black people. My dad invited a friend of his for dinner who was black. I guess I just assumed he was dirty and told him he needed to wash his hands. He understood, laughed, and said he had been trying to wash it off for years.

Jamie V.

My parents and I are white. But, I have a mole completely covering my belly button. I always told my parents that I was half black. My mom would say..."yes...you are."(sarcastically) But I believed it for a long time!

Nik Wil

My sister always liked to tell me tails but being five years younger I would always believe her. She once told me that if you pick off a freckle you will bleed to death, that there wasn't anything that could help you and it could never, ever be closed up ... it would be a gruesome death for sure.

Rebecca

When I was in kindergarten a kid told me that moles were really iniature moles (the animals) that had dug into your skin then reached back out and cut off their tales.

Elizabeth

My family is African-Amerian, and we lived in a place where we were the minority. One day my little sister came home from camp and asked, "When is my skin gonna turn white like the other girls?" We weren't quite sure how to answer the question.

limisscandy

I was 4 when told a total whopper by my dad. He said if I stepped into the street, he would "skin me alive". It worried me so much I never did it, but I always thought I'd be really cold without skin and all my guts would fall out.

Sally

During the war years - I must have been about 4 at the time - I remember having a small red spot on my arm. I was quite proud to tell people "a bomb did dat.."!

joan corderoy

My mum used to call my freckles beauty spots when I was little, and I always thought they were called that - I thought they must make me more beautiful!

Julie

My mom used to put on a "Alien Skin" mask, (you know the facials you use that are like avocado and aloe vera used to cleanse your skin and poures.) Well when i was about 7 my friends would come over and my mom would put one on and then after it dried she walked in the living room/playroom and started peeling it off and my friends and i would get scared because she would be like" Some day your going to have to do this to because when you guys get older you're going to turn into ALIENS!" And then she would start laughing so i knew she was kidding but the other kids stayed up all night asking their parents if they were Aliens, and the moms would get mad at my Mom.
-Haha......Good Times!!!! :)

Sonnie

I used to believe that if a baby was born white, he'd grow up to be black, and if a baby was born black, he'd grow up to be white.

Heather Collins

When I was young I used to believe that when I scraped any part of my body accidentally on some surface some skin would be left there and I would die soon. I would always make sure that I rubbed my bumped part (usually my hand) over the same spot again, to 'collect back' any skin that I had 'lost'.

Lynn

I used to believe that if I stayed in the bathtub long enough, I would wrinkle up until I turned into a raisin.

Shari

There used to be an ad on the tv for after shave and it showed a man who was shaving and his face was on fire. I thought this looked cool and watched my dad shave every single morning waiting to see the fire. I couldnt understand how he never had fire on his face even though he didnt use after shave. I believed this until I was about 8 or 9.

Anon

When I was like 6 I went to a gym/club with my mom. There were these tanning booths, and I asked what they were, and my mom told me they made people dark- I don't remember if she said dark, or black, but I always thought after that that there was a machine someone could go in if they wanted to turn black.

Gina

I used to believe that if you were Caucasian you from New Orleans because they eat cajun foods.

Serena

My mother is a South-African who emigrated to Europe before I was born. As a political activist she always referred to Blacks as "Africans." I was unfamiliar with the term black as a noun rather than an adjective.
When I was five we visited South Africa. On a trip at Kruger Park I encountered a washing area that had a sign that said "Nie vir swartes nie" ("Not for black people"). I assumed that it meant that the washing area was forbidden for people who were, like me, black from playing in the dirt, and was consumed with the thought that I would be arrested for washing there. I also wondered how they expected me to become pink again if I wasn't allowed to wash, and where the washing area for dirty kids was, and whether I would be expelled from the country for putting my muddy feet in the basin.
When my father and mother explained about Apartheid and the meaning of that sign I cried in righteous indignation for hours.

Sanne

I used to believe clip on bow ties were inserted into your throat and that is how they stayed in place

Anon