language

I used to believe…

When I was a little kid we traveled long distances by car--this was in the '40s--and my parents spoke of "living out of our suitcases." I thought they were saying we were living out of our soup cases and I used to look for the cans of soup in our suitcases to no avail.

I used to believe…

Before I went to school, I used to believe that what ever marks I made with a pencil or pen were words written in another language. I used to scribble on a page in lines from left to right, and then look at it, wondering what in the heck I had just written.

I used to believe…

since at least 1998, when i started playing starcraft, i would spell notice with a k...
knotice that?
well one day not too long ago my girlfriend pointed that out to me... and i was like nuh uh... no way...
well, my mom bein a scrabble freak and all, i just reached over and looked it up, and sure enough, i noticed that i had been spelling it wrong for over 6 years...
and to think... i graduated highschool last year and have just about finished a year of college

I used to believe…

A girl in our primary school class had been kept back a year because of learning difficulties, so - presumably to prevent her from feeling worse about it - the teacher forbid anyone from saying "stupid". Being one of the smarter ones, it was obvious to me that calling someone "stupid" wasn't very nice, but 2 years later when I told someone "I don't like football, it's stupid!" the whole playground fell out with me. In our small school words like "bum" and "poo" were okay, but "stupid" was just far too far. If someone said it you would run to the teacher and whisper "James said the "s" word!" in her ear.

They must have thought that we were terribly brought up.

I used to believe…

When I was a kid, the first time I heard my parents use the word "babysit" I thought they were actually going to find a baby to sit on. When they said it was me they were talking about me, I thought they were going to turn me back into a baby and I wanted to know why I needed to be sit upon.

I used to believe…

when i was an innocent youth, i thought that foreign lagnguages all sounded enlish to forieners. so when french people spoke to eachother, wat sounded like forien to me, sounded like english to them.

I used to believe…

Until the 12th grade, I used to think "fuck" was the ugliest word in the English language.

Then in English class, someone said "fuck". The teacher said "I heard the f-word". People said "what do you mean by f-word". And I said "the ugliest word in the English language".

And the teacher said "actually, it's NOT". I was surprised and asked what it was. She said "I'm not gonna say it, I'm not gonna define it, I'm just gonna spell it:

C-U-N-T

I had never heard it before. But you bet that when I got home, the first thing I did was look it up in the dictionary.

English was our second language, BTW.

I used to believe…

when we were kids, my dad would always call me and my sister 'little buggers' when we were being bold. we didnt know that buggering meant anal sex, and he certainly didnt mean it in that way. so one day when on holiday and my sister had just turned 17 my dad let her have her first alcohol drink, some alco-pop which she got drunk on very quickly. we were telling jokes etc when my sister told a rude one and my dad colled her a little bugger. she stood up in the very busy bar and said for everyone to hear 'Ah stop buggering me! You're always buggering me! Go bugger someone else, you big bugger!' Needless to say she got in a lot of trouble and we prompty left the bar!

I used to believe…

Since the words of the English language obviously needed to have been created at some point in time, I believed that the responsibility of coming up with all of the words rested upon the shoulders of one man. He thought up all of the words after sundown, with a group of his friends helping him along. They sat in his backyard while he played the banjo, and pointed at objects and then decided what to name them.

I used to believe…

In my native language, the word for "scar" is pronounced the same way as the letter "R" (the word for the letter, not the sound). Therefore, I thought for a really long time that if you hurt yourself bad enough you got a big red "R", possibly on your forehead (I don't know where that came from. I suppose I had heard of (obviously not met!) a person who had got a scar on their forehead).

I used to believe…

For forty years my family has reminded me about Christmas when I was five years old. A relative who traveled extensively brought blue jeans from Paris as a gift for me. I tried them on, and the family quickly made a big deal of my 'spiffy European pants'. I soon announced to the family that I was wearing my "new spiffy I'm-a-peeing pants".

I used to believe…

My favorite crayon color as a kid was cerulean, but I actually thought for a long time that it was called "chlorine." I guess I must've misread the label because a lot of the same letters are in both words. I thought it was a good name, though, because the shade of the crayon was a lot like swimming pool water. I'm just glad that I never had a reason to talk to anyone about my chlorine crayon before I realized my mistake!

I used to believe…

When I was a lil 'un, I used to think that if you cursed at someone, you actaully put a curse on them. I never learned the term swearing until I was about 10. So you can believe my suprise when I heard my older cousin getting in a fight with one of the other kids at our trailer park, and called him a mothaf*cka. I thought that the other kid [who always gave me sweets to make my cousin jeleaus], would die and I would have no more sweets! So the next day I went up to the other kids caravan and asked his mum "did robby's boils go away yet?"

I used to believe…

In second grade I learned the f-word. It was somewhat sudden. We where talking about stuff, then a friend said "THE BATHROOM WALL HAS THE F WORD ON IT!!". Both me and the other guy was curious, so we asked what it was. "F*cking" he replied. When the other guy asked me what it ment (everyone went to me with questions, me being the class nerd.) so I said "I dunno, big jerk?"
so then he reacted like I called his mom a prostitute. "YOU SAID A BAAAAAD WORD" he explained it was bad because "Big" was in front of it. And then he suddenly thought "What's so bad about 'Fun King'" and said it over and over. Then I learned what it meant from my then best friend. He said it meant "Having sex" for so long I thought a nasty way to say "Having sex" was "Having F*ck"

I used to believe…

When I was very little, I lived in an apartment complex next door to some VERY religous people. The children of said family beleived that stomach, butt, and belly were swear words.

I used to believe…

When I was really little, I would remark on how fat people were because I didn't realize it was rude. My mother explained it to me, but rather than understanding, I figured that "fat" was a swear word. The next time someone overweight walked by, I declared, "Mommy, that lady is NOT THIN!"

She also told me I could never say the word "ain't" so I assumed it was a swear. I was very distressed, because I was afraid this meant I wasn't allowed to sing "The Old Gray Mare" anymore.