body parts: skin

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.

when i was a toddler i used to beleive freckels were cow poop. i had like a million freckels so one day i walked behind a cow and said give me more freckels and he pooped on my shoe. lol

I used to believe that stitches were zippers that doctors used, because when i was 6 my mom had brain surgery and attempting to reassure me, she said that the huge line of staples across her head was a zipper.
I fantasised the rest of the year about unzipping her head and seeing her brains.

When i was around 6, i thought that God had gotten white paint and painted people white until he ran out of white paint. Then He would take cinnamon paint and paint more people tan and then He ran out of cinnamon paint and He was now using black paint.

When I was young, my father had a mole on the back of his neck. I believed that this was a button and if I pressed it, his head would come off.

When I was little, I got sunburned and my skin started to peel, and I thought I was turning into a snake and I was sheading my skin.

I was a tom-boy and had scraped knees for about 2 years strait because of it. When I first heard that we only have 7 layers of skin I got so upset because I thought I had already used up all of mine and that the skin on my knees would never grow back

I used to think only White people could get sunburned!

I used to believe that girls had no nipples. I just assumed that nipples were for boys, and girls just had bags of skin on their chests.

i used to think the color of african americans skin was black because God had a chocolate pouring machine and he put some white babies on it and it would pour chocolate on them. i concluded that their palms were white because their palms were down on the conveyor belt so they didnt get any chocolate on them. then once i saw my black friend get water on his arm from the water fontain and i thought that his arm would turn white.

my grandmother told me when i was little that if you did not dry between your toes that your toes would web togeather.Today as an adult I still dry between each toe twice.

My partner thought women used the brown packing tape as wax strips.

When I was 5, my older sister (who was 15) was wearing flesh colored nylons. Knowing how niave I was, she told me that she had something to show me. She then proceeded to pull on her nylons. I was so horrified by this and for years believed my sister had a stretchy skin disease!

I used to believe that if you drank coffee while you were pregnant you would have a black child and if you drank milk you would have a white child.

This is actually a belief of my niece, who was about 10 when this little gem was unveiled. She comes from a very overbearing family and is never around non-white individuals. Once, while visiting my family, we all went to a grocery store and my niece happened to see an African-American woman breast feeding her baby. Very loudly, so everyone can hear, she asks if bl*ck women make chocolate milk, since they aren't like us. I was never so embarrassed in that store.

When I was little I used to like to put pieces of scotch tape on my face and arms. I thought it was neat that when you peeled it off, the dead skin would come off with it and make pretty patterns. My big sister got fed up with this, and told me that every place I would put tape on my body I would get cancer there! I never did it again.