getting older

I couldn't wait to turn 20 so I could go through the Roaring 20's and be a flapper like my Grandma.

Susan Bonnell

Boys were never 16 years old - they went straight from 15 to 17. Girls made up for this by missing out on being 19 years old.

Luce

When I was very small, I thought that when you were born you were always a little girl, then you turned into a little boy, then a female, and then a male.

TopTopper

As child when ever I did something I wasn't necesarily supposed to do, all i heard my parents say about it was "it's a phase...phase this and phase that...etc."

One day I over heard my parents and my aunt talking about one of their cousins, and how he was gay. So I asked "What's gay?" and they said "Oh nothing son, it's just a phase he's going through" after I found out what "gay" was I thought "Oh shit I have to go through a GAY phase too?!?!" Needless to say that up until I was 11 I used to believe that being gay was a phase we HAD to go through and I was NOT looking forward to that phase.

Albert

I didn't know at first that your signature is your name I thought people just scribbled whatever they want, because most signatures looked like a scribble to me

Nate

That adults came into the world as adults and were never children

Anon

When I was little, I saw my dad wearing a Hooters t-shirt while he was fixing the car, so I naturally associated the two things and thought Hooters was an auto repair shop. Whenever I'd hear my parents say something was wrong with the car, I'd always suggest, "let's go to Hooters!" i never understood why they'd shoot it down all the time until i finally realized what Hooters was when I was... 16

anonymous

My younger cousin, who is five years younger, for the longest time believed that his mother was under the age of eighteen. This was because when the TV infomercials for toys came on, he would ask his mother to buy them. Well at the end of the infomercials the voice would always say "Must be eighteen or older to order." So to get out of buying the toys, my aunt would tell my cousin that she was under eighteen.
This went on for some time, and she got some strange comments from people after he had apparently told them she wasnt eighteen yet.
To date, this has been a running joke in our family.

Steve

I used to think up until I was about 6, that you stayed a kid forever, and that adults were always adults and were never kids. It wasn't until one day I heard my mom say something along the lines of when she was a kid. I asked, Wow! You were a kid too? lol I was shocked.

Sage

From the time I was in 1st grade to 3rd grade I knew that I wanted to be a lesbian when I grew up. I knew that meant when a girl loves another girl, and I loved my mom!!!

michelle

When I was about four, my grandmother joked that she was twenty-one. I believed her, despite the fact I knew my mother was in her thirties and you needed to be a certain age to have kids. I just thought it didn't make sense because I was bad at math.

still bad at math

When I was a kid I didn't realise that many old ladies had perms - I just thought that as women got older their hair became curly. My hair is very straight, so I used to look forward to getting old and having curly hair!

Anon

I used to think that when you were an adult you never slept because as you got older you got to stay up later and later, so i thought that eventually you just didn't sleep.

Anon

When I was around 5, I used to think age was based only on the month and day of your birthday. Therefore if your birthday was July 6th, then anyone born after that day July 7 - December 31 obviously had to be younger than you.

Elistariel

Due to both of my grandmother's and my granny's friend being called Barbara, I used to believe that when a woman turned 50 (aka got old) she had to change her name to Barbara. I really wasn't looking forward to my 50th birthday...

Charli

My uncle was born on the same day as me (Feb 28) but is about 30 years older. When my mother told me about this, I imagined how much more food he had been eating to be twice as big as me but be born on the same day...

Leon

I used to worry about becoming a teenager, because I thought that they had to wear jeans all the time, and it seemed to me that they must be really hot all summer.

Anon

When I was little, I was determined to grow up to be a firetruck, and it took my mom quite a bit of talking (and probably bribing) to convince me that I couldn't be one.

Madison

i thought alzhiemers was pronounced old timers, i believed this till i was about 11 it made sense to me it was a disease old people get

lost and confused

Until I was about 3 I believed that as I grew older my parents would grow younger and that I would look after them when they were little.

' Mum, when i grow big and you grow little.....'

Anon