counting

When I was in kindergarten, every Wednesday I went to this place where I visited this man who built obstacle courses for me to do. He also liked to spray shaving cream on the mats so we could write words and draw pictures in the shaving cream. One day we decided to write and solve some simple math problems in the shaving cream, and the guy wrote out one problem that really puzzled me. My brain did not certainly record my response, but I wall all like "What the heck? The letter A is not a number!" This was the first variable I ever solved for in my entire life.

10 years later, I have a perfect understanding of algebra!

It always confused me when my mom would ask someone what "percent" certain they were, and they would answer 80% or 90%. I thought, if you're certain, you're certain, and these people all must have an agreed upon number that would mean they are certain. Finally, my mom asked me the question one day, and I asked her "out of what number?" I thought it was a perfectly intelligent question (since the number could be anything) and she said 100. So I was 100% certain. What bothered me though, was that I would still hear other people quote other percents, yet my mom always told me the number was 100. It took me a while to realize you didn't always have to be 100% certain!

CB

i used to secretly think that numbers were rally letters dressed up to disguise themselves

Hunkofjunk

I also believed that numbers had personalities. 6 and 8 were best friends, and they worked on this special project (14) together. 9 was mean, tricking other numbers into giving up their rightful places in the teens. 8 and 9 were sometimes friends, but 8 like 9 more than 9 liked 8.

cool cat

Before I started kindergarten, I used to beleive that there were only 12 numbers, 1-12. I thought this because at the moment, my fave number was 12 :P lol. (I was also under the impression, "Save the best for last", so 12 was the last number). dont get me wrong, I was pretty smart, i knew all of my ABC's! (but i knew there were 26 letters of the alphabet...) my know-it-all cousin who was the same age as me, finally set me straight and told me that numbers went on forever! man, i was soo disapointed! :'(

Charlotte (age 14 =] )

I used to believe (at 3 or 4) that counting money was very difficult and confusing. I was so very worried that I would grow up to be a cashier. Counting back all that change made my head spin just thinking about it. I still get confused when to give the cashier one penny to round out the total.

Jennifer

this isn't a belief, really - just the way it has always been for me ......when I visualize numbers, they are 3-dimensional and have specific colors: 5; is red; 6 is blue; 3 is yellow; 4 is brown; 2 is gray; 8 is pink; 9 is very pale gray and 1 and 10 are white; 11 is also a light gray...............after that color doesn't bear any relation to numbers for me.

katy

Like Lena, katy, Bewildered (and somewhat like Ericka) I too have always associated digits with colors. 0=white, 1=gray, 2=red, 3=green, 4=yellow, 5=brown, 6=maroon, 7=silver, 8=blue, 9=orange. Letters of the alphabet, too. I recently read about the brain condition synesthesia, in which senses are mixed, and wonder if this is related.

Walter

when i was in kindergarten i used to think that 100 was the highest someone could count!

Jessica

[i went to a french school, btw]
When I was in 1st and 2nd grades, I was convinced that however you said the numbers, was how they should be written, as in, the number twenty-two, should be written 202 [20-2]
if you wanted to write 22, you should say two-two.

I was adament that this is how it was, and would throw crying fits when my teacher tried to tell me otherwise.

Clementine

Zero and Zorro were easily confused words.
Of course you can't divide by Zorro! It's not a number!!!!!!

Anon

I come from Norway. When I was a child I believed that twenty and seventy was the same number, they sounded alike to me, in norwegian. So when I was told to count to a hundred I counted ...28,29,80,81...

Kim

When I was little I used to think that when you counted the numbers went 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10---- then 11-19 was replaced with one-ty like twenty or thirty. It went ten, onety-one, onety-two, onety-three... and so on!

Kratz

i dont remember what 1-19 were, but 20-29 were yellow, 30-39 were green, 40-49 were blue, 50-59 were red/pink, 60-69 were lighter green, 70-79 were orange, 80-89 were darker yellow, and 90-99 were dark red, or something like that

ben

I used to believe that all the numbers up to 20 had different personalities, like 5 had 4 children (1,2,3,4) and she was married to six who was always getting attacked by 7. This is how I remembered my math problems.

Jonelly

I once counted to ninety-ten. I think it was a moment of absentmindedness, which are cmmon with me, but you can never be sure...

Hilary

I used to believe ther was a "One-teen" and "Two-teen"

Like this: Nine, Ten, Oneteen, Twoteen, Thirteen...

Lecia

I used to believe that 100 plus 100 is 1000 as I couldn't figure that anything as large as 100 could NOT result in 1000!

Marion Schimmelpfennig

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

108, 109, 110...what?

when i was little, i used to count one, two...twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven...

schmoo