getting older

When my stepson was 5 he said he wanted to be a prawn cracker when he grew up. Puzzled, I asked him to explain - he said "you know - those boys who walk around town carrying radios playing loud music". I eventually worked out he meant "punk rocker"!

Marina

My grandfather was missing his thumb on the right hand due to an accident that happened when he used to work in the oil fields. Even though we had been very close from the time I was born, I never noticed this until I was 5 years old, so well had he adapted to using his maimed hand. I noticed it suddenly one day while watching him use a typewriter in his office. The very next day, he had to leave the upper plate of his dentures overnight at his dentist's for repair. I decided that the thumb also was removeable and that this was a normal part of becoming an adult; your body parts would be replaced by larger, detachable ones.

carson

When I was about 6, my mother told me I could be anything when I got older. I told her I wanted to be a dinosaur or the color orange. I am 21 now with a math degree and I still destine to be "orange!"

The Dirtie D

Migets were people who were bad when they were kids and there parents didn't let them grow up.

Teresa

My nephew used to think that when people got old, they developed a foreign accent. This is because both sets of his grandparents were Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, and they (and the rest of the family of their generation) all had accents. So he thought it was part of getting old. This was revealed to the family when he was about 4, and one of his mother's friends brought her Dutch boyfriend to the house for dinner. My nephew said in amazement, "He's young, and he has an accent already!"

Ronne

i use to believe that adults all belonged to a secret club, and when you went to sleep at night all the adults got together to talk about us kids (especially me) and conspire against them ...

as i got older i revised my belief so that it was just women that belonged to this secret club, and they conspired against men ...

i'm still half convinced this club exists ...

Anon

When I was little I used to believe that all old women were called Betty!!

Katie

When I was a little kid I used to believe that as people grew up, their bodies didn't grow but an older version of them just grew around the younger version like a shell and that person would take over. There were different stages as you grew up and I though that when I was a teenager I'd be trapped inside some teenage guy's body, and then later we would both be trapped inside an adult body..and so on.
Funny thing was, when I explained this to my Grandma at the age of five she understood it! I remember she made a joke and said, "My God, I must have a ton of people trapped inside me."

Andy

I always thought (up until I turned twelve) Alzheimer's disease was Old Timer's disease, because only old people, or old timers, got it

Puck

i used to believe that when older women had hot flashes it meant that they had flashes of young, hot men pop into there heads.

Alexus

On one of my earliest birthdays, my grandmother (who was at the time receiving therapy for dementia) presented me with a beautiful doll. A little confused, she said "I think you should call your dolly 'Therapy'." I agreed, and carried the doll everywhere for years. It wasn't until I was in my late teens that I realised 'Therapy' wasn't actually a girls name...

D

My birthday is February 14th, Valentine's Day, and when I was little, I thought that when I turned sixteen, instead of getting my licsence, I was going to turn into Cupid.

Brandyn

I used to belive that the girls don't necessarily grow up into women also boys don't necessarily grow up into men, and I was wondring if I would be a man or woman.

A MAN!

I used to believe that a Granary - the place where you store Grain was a place you put people - Grans - when they got old.

Anon

i used to believe that people never stopped growing. i was very concerned about this for logistical reasons, and it took my parents months to grasp that when i repeatedly asked "what happens when you get too big for your house," i was not speaking metaphorically. for some reason i never noticed there weren't gigantic 20ft+ people around everywhere.

Anon

I didn't want to get tall when I was younger because I believed that I would fall over.

Gabi

When I was very small, I thought that as we got older, we went back in time. So I figured I'd get to be a gladiator when I grew up.

Jim knows better now

Every old person I met smelled bad, and I thought old people smelled bad because they were slowly rotting.

Jasmine

I believed we were little kids till we were 17, and at our 18th birthday we woke up as adults.

Hoppip

I used to think that growing up and getting taller wasn't a gradual process. I thought I'd wake up one morning and be a couple feet taller. I remember thinking how hard it would be to go to the store to buy new clothes since all my others obviously wouldn't fit me anymore. I'd wonder why, when we went shopping, I'd never seen any kids older than me wandering around the aisles wrapped in bedsheets.

Jalinnet