general

when my dad would cook breakfast for me, he would give me burnt toast and tell me that i had to eat it so that i would get tan like him (he is of mediterranean descent but, apparently, the olive skin gene didn't get transmitted to me). i wanted to be just like him, so i dutifully ate whatever burnt toast he gave me...and started eating burnt toast on my own. it didn't work (i'm still pasty white) and it was only years later that i realized that my dad couldn't cook and just said that so i would eat the things that he burnt!

anon.

Heh, when I was really young I hated mustard sauce, so everytime it came in a fast food sandwich my mom would tell me it was "yellow ketchup" - you know, just so she didn't have to order one without it. Reasonable enough, since you can't even taste it. Still, I believed it until I was about 13 or so.

Robert

My Dad used to tell me that if I didn't eat my beans I would never grow. One day we were shopping and my Dad ran into an old friend of his and introduced his wife. The wife was very, very short. I piped up and said, "She didn't eat her beans, did she daddy?"

Tracey

This was something I made my boyfriend's little cousin believe. We were on holidays in a caravan park and we had gone to get some hot chips whilst the 'little' kids weren't looking so we didn't have to share them. When we got home, we were sprung by Scotty. He asked us where we got the chips from and I told him there was a chip tree outside. Meanwhile, my boyfriend had gone outside and strategically placed some chips around this tree. Scotty raced out, all excited and came back with all these chips. He believed chips came from trees for years to come and we still give him grief about it.

Katrina

My father told me that Cheetos were actually "Cheesetoes"-severed, deep fried, and flavored toes from a human...damn yummy, though. I still love them.

Tiffene

I once knew a girl who until her earlie 20s beleived that the cherry on an ice cream sundae was actually a red beetle and the pink juice that gets on the whipped cream was its blood. That one was thanks to her older brother.

Rachael

When I was 4 years old, I was eating breakfast with my brother. We
were having eggs (which I loved), and all of a sudden, he asked me "How
do you like eating that dead chicken?" I was completely horrified. I knew
that chickens had eggs, but I didn't know the eggs would turn into
chickens. I couldn't eat eggs for the longest time, until I learned that the
egg had to be fertilized in order to become a chicken. To tell you the truth,
sometimes I still can't eat eggs!

Teri

I never understood it, but my grandparents used to tell me that if I didn't wash my ears, potatoes would sprout out of them...I still don't get it.

magali

When I was a child, I often heard the adage, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." I found this very disturbing and confusing. My father was a doctor and he loved apples. He ate them all the time. I thought maybe he ate the apples so he could stay away at work all the time. I wasn't sure. Maybe if other people ate apples, my father would die. I never developed a taste for that fruit. It gives me the creeps.

pestela

I guess because my mom used to say things at the dinner table such as"leave some room" for dessert or whatever, and because we learned about the "different food groups", I thought that my stomach was like a little house with different shaped rooms for the different foods. There was a round room or compartment for the scoop of ice cream.

Stace

when I was a young man my dad convinced me that haggis's were little hairy creatures that lived on Scotish hillsides with legs that were shorter on one side so they could stand on the hill comfortably, how easily we are mislead :0)

Adrian Garden

Once, when I was about 8 years old, my mom allowed me to make a batch of brownies from a box mix. The directions said, "Stir by hand" so that is what I did: I stuck my hand in the bowl of batter to stir. My mom and I both got a good laugh out of that one.

juner

I used to believe that "popovers" would flip themselves upside down in the oven (like a giant popcorn kernnel) so I when we finally got an oven with a window in it-I sat and watched them cook. I got sad when I realized it wasnt true and never ate them again.

Anna

When I was about 4 years old, my mom and I were making muffins. We mixed the batter and she said, "Okay, now all we have to do is throw them in the oven." I picked up the muffin tray, worked up my strength, and THREW the muffins into the oven, batter spilling everywhere. Mom just shook her head and we started over.

Kathy M.