language

I used to believe…

When I began learning about algebra, I didn't understand what was so hard about it or why there were so many problems. Once you knew that "x" was the 24th letter of the alphabet, why did you need to solve for it? It would obviously always just equal 24.
I thought that algebra just meant memorizing which letter (a-z) coordinated with which number (1-26). Don't we wish life was that simple?

I was about 4 watching the Naked Gun movie, and Leslie Nielsen instructed someone to stick their middle finger up. I had no idea what it meant, but seeing as how everyone laughed at that scene, I kept doing it to everyone because I thought it was supposed to be funny. Everyone kept telling me not to do it, but since they couldn't explain to me why it was bad, I just kept at it.

I used to believe…

When I was little I didn't know that "a couple" meant two so when my teacher told me to pick out a couple pieces of candy I just grabbed a handful and hid it.

I used to believe…

When I was younger I thought a dozen meant the same thing as a lot and so when I was in first grade we were supposed to collect coins for some charity and I asked my uncle, he asked how many I wanted and I said a dozen, and that was when I learned a dozen equaled 12

I used to believe…

When I was little I thought that numbers stoped at 110 and had no idea what came next until one day I was talking on the phone (I dont know who to) and I asked what came after 110 and of course they answered 111 then I realized you could count as far as you wanted

I believed that all foreign languages were complete gibberish. Therefore, I believed that if I spoke complete gibberish I was actually speaking a foreign language. I thought these people were trying to figure out the real, English, word for things by complete guesswork.

I used to believe…

As a child, my mother had a flower box on the front porch. She tended to be pretty foul-mouthed, and her favorite curse when frustrated was "Son of a bitch!"

For some reason, I always thought that the flower box on the front porch was the "son of a bitch."

I used to believe…

My mom would always use old sayings but in front of them she add "You know what they say". I imagined "They" as several british policemen and ladies with eighties hair. I was a wierd kid......

I used to believe…

My dad always used to say that swearing was really bad, so whenever I swore I thought I would get arrested and taken away by a huge policeman with a big round nose. (That's what I thought they all looked like!)

I used to believe…

When I was first taught the alphabet I thought that each letter had a spelling as in bee(b) and ef(f). I got rather upset when the teacher couldn't tell me how to spell o.

I also thought when taught about apostrophes, as in it's rather than it is, that this was some fantastic new discovery and people across the land would only now be learning of it.

I used to think that bastard was another word for beast so one time my friends and my dad were throwing snowballs and he was throwing a lot so I said dad you're a bastard!

I used to believe that if you counted up to any number above thirty or forty, it could be 100 at any given time. Like: "38... 39... 40... 41... ONE HUNDRED HERE I COME!!!"

I used to believe…

When I was in kindergarden when I just learned how to read, I always stared at the Union bank trucks.I believed that union was pronounced 'onion.' When I asked my mother why they had a bank where they used onions for money, she told me it was pronounces YOUn-ee-un, and I learned a lesson in language. =)

I used to believe…

My dad is in the Navy and my family goes to the Navel Base a lot. When I just learned how to read, I always thought to myself that we were going to the 'belly-button' base, =)

I used to believe…

When I was little, I had a friend who was Chinese, and I'm Filipino. When my mother and her mother had a conversation, they spoke the same language. I assumed that people from a certain country could only speak that language and English( because I also thought that English was the primarey language of the world) so I thought Tagalog and Chinese were exactly the same.It turns out that they could just both speak Tagalog! =)

I used to think that language was invented by the prime minister and that every time there was a new prime minister there would be a new language. The language would be announced on TV where he would sit there and read out words explaining the language, like "the word toaster means toaster, the word bus means bus" etc etc etc