language

I used to believe…

As a pre-teen, when I read the back of the Aqua Net and it said, "caution: contents under pressure", I thought "contents" was a verb. I wondered for years how the can would content if it was put under pressure!

I used to believe…

When I was about 3 years old or so, I believed with unbreakable conviction that every single person on this planet spoke Swedish (which is my mother tounge). When my brother broke the news to me that there are a lot of different languages being spoken all over the world, I just couldn't accept it.
I remember being extremely mad and yelling at him; "THEY ALL SPEAK SWEDISH! You're lying! I hate you!" =)

I used to believe…

When people used to say 'Search Me' when they didn't know the answer, I got terribly confused because surely that meant they did have the answer somewhere about their person?

One day I asked my dad if you searched a person who said 'Search Me' you'd find a small piece of paper with the answer written on it. I still have visions of this whenever people say 'Search Me'. I am 30.

I used to believe…

that terraced houses were actually terrorist houses. and if there were terrorist houses, why didn't they just arrest all the terrorists since they knew where they lived. I'm from ireland so this was a really big deal.

I used to like reading Marvel comics and such like. Quite often a story ended with a quote from the editor: "Nuff Said". I used to think that 'Nuff' was a person but I could never find any other references in the comics, no matter how hard I tried. I thought that everyone else knew who Nuff was but I didn't and I always felt kind of outside the gang. Gave me a real complex. Took me till adulthood to finally figure that out.

I used to believe…

There was a game I wanted to play that I thought was called Togg-Ither, but I didn't know how to play it. I read it in a book where it said that the rabbits were playing it.

I was dismayed when my teacher actually told me I had read it wrong, and that the rabbits were playing 'together'.

I used to believe…

That the multiplication tables were made up by someone just like someone decided how to spell words. I just learnt them by heart, never understanding that 4 times 5 really makes 20.

i was never very religious and even when i was very young, i doubted the existence of god. but one day, when i was about four, i was at my friend's house and she had given me this very small chair to sit in. i said something like "i dont want to sit in that f--king chair!" she gasped and told me that i had sinned and said god would hate me forever if i ever said a curse word again.
i didn't say another curse word till i was eleven.

I am russian and I moved to US not a very long time ago. But when I was little my parents tryied to teach me how to speak english and I didn't understand why they did that. I couldn't understand how someone can't speak russian because it was so easy. I thougth that people had to translate their thougth from russian to english before they spoke.

I used to believe…

When I was in kindergarten, there was a Chinese kid in the class. One time he said something to us in Chinese. I did my best to remember it, and then repeated it to my mom when I got home, demanding to know what he said. She wouldn't tell me (not speaking Chinese, after all). I got quite made at her, thinking she was holding back or that it was a bad word or something.

I used to believe…

When I first learned about infinity I thought it was totally the coolest idea ever. Zero was almost as cool because when you divide by zero, you get infinity. (Also zero was neither positive nor negative, but unique and totally its own thing -- how cool is that?) The wussy teachers and the math books used to say that dividing by zero was "undefined," but I thought that was some kind of a cop-out -- if you graphed it out, it obviously went to infinity. Why didn't they just say so?

And for some reason the teachers never really wanted to talk about infinity much -- they just looked uncomfortable and changed the subject. What were they hiding? I was sure there was some kind of conspiracy going on.

I have always had a strange feeling that even numbers are round, friendly and helpful because they are willing to be divided by two (and also because 2, 6 and 8 at least ARE roundy).

Odd numbers are mean and spiky and obnoxious because they refuse to be divided by two. (Also 1, 3, 5, and 7 ARE sort of pointy.)

Odd numbers are also bad because you can't share odd numbers of anything with a friend.

I used to believe…

When I was first learning subtraction with two-digit numbers, we were told that to subtract a big digit from a little digit, you have to "borrow a one" from the tens place, which of course reduced the digit in the tens place by one. All true.

The problem was that I had been told very clearly as a child that when you GIVE something you get to keep it, but when you BORROW something, you have to give it back -- it isn't really yours. When the teacher completed the problem on the blackboard, I asked her when we were going to give the one back. She looked at me as if I was crazy, and said that you don't give it back.

I found this rather disturbing, and from that day to this I have always thought that subtraction was mean and unfair.

I used to believe…

As a young reader with limited travel
exposure, I read James Michener's, HAWAII without understanding Hawaiian pronunciation. I, therefore, thought the kings name Kamehameha was pronounced Kah Me Hah Me Hah
rather than Kuh May Uh May Uh as I later discovered. Then miraculously I became aware that I already knew his name.

i used to be a bit of a pretensious kid when i was younger, and thought one day that i'd give reading 'don quixote' a go. unsurprisingly i gave up shortly after, but it wasn't until years later that i found out the book wasn't about a bloke called 'don' whose second name was pronounced 'quick-sote'. genius.

I believed that my father and I shared a secret language called English as my mother could not speak it (we are portuguese). When I went to primary school - I got the shock of my life - every one spoke English :( I was extremely upset that people found out our secret