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I was told, at the age of 5, that "No Vacancy" at a hotel meant that no animals were allowed. (we were on vacation, I was talkative, parents were saying anything to answer my questions so I would shut up) Well, I grew up, but I never put two and to together, just would see a hotel/motel and believe that no vacancy meant they didnt allow dogs/cats. At the age of 11 (yes, 11!!) I was walking with some of my parents friends in Orlando, FL, and I mentioned "Wow, alot of places around here dont allow animals!!" Well... with alot of laughs,I finally understood. :-)
Sarah
top belief!
I believed that all of the fiction that I read were real in some parallel universe. That when things happened, they set up echoes or waves that could travel between the universes, and that some people could hear these waves and would write them down, and that this is how authors worked. I always wished I could live a more exciting life, in case anyone was reading about me. I believed that people like Benjamin Bathurst, the man who walked around the horses, had found a place where the boundaries between the universes were thin, and he got to go to another universe. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what such a thin place might look like, because I wanted to go to the universes where of Oz and Narnia and Star Trek.
Ex Libris
top belief!
When I was 7 I used to pick up one of my 'long' storybooks and start reading, then I'd sort of glance up to see who was around and I'd sneakily flip a huge chunk of the pages of the book. I would continue like this, reading little bits and skipping huge chunks until the book ended. I did it because I thought people would be impressed that I had finished the book so quickly. No one was.
top belief!
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!
Emily
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.
Roy
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'.
binz
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.
anon
I could never figure out what No unauthorised entry" signs meant, as I thought unauthorised was una-thor-sized. I was about 19 years old before I heard someone read one of these signs out loud and realised my mistake.
And there was a magazine that we used to get that would say on the cover "full story on centre pages", I thought it said "certain" pages and would spend ages flicking through the mage looking for the certain pages that the story was on!
Lobelia Overhill
I used to stop breathing. You know how you dont consciously breathe? Id be engorssed in a book (i love reading), and suddenly, id stop because there would be a sound missing. Then, id notice i wasnt breathing, take a deep breath, and carry on again. It was weird, because to test that it wasnt my imagination, after that happened once, i consciously held my breath for 7 minutes (best otherwise is 2:32). After wards, i was convinced that when i read a book my soul was sucked into it to talk to the charcters, adn my body got left behind, and kinda forgot to carry on working.
Sam
top belief!
We would drive by UNION BANK here in California and I would say "Onion bank!" My Mom would bust up laughing.
BINGO
i used to believe if i kick the books GOD will pick my eyes.
top belief!
When I was about 4 years old my mother said that I would learn how to read when I went to school. I was scared I'd get sent to jail because I already knew how to read.
As a child my reading vocabulary was much larger than my spoken vocabulary. As a result, for years, I thought that 'Yosemite Sam" was prounounced with two syllables, a long O AND a long I sound (yOse - mIte). Imagine my surprise when I first heard somebody prounounce Yo-seh-mih-tee!
Not as bright as I thought I was
I used to believe that the people on magazines and books could see you. (waayy before the Harry Potter moving picture thing) So when in the loo I'd have to turn the faces over or put them in a cupboard so they couldn't see me using the toilet.
28 and still strange
As a child, I was a voracious reader. Unfortunately, I didn't read aloud to anyone to correct my pronunciation. For years, I thought the word "awry" was pronounced "ow-ree". Hearing the word "awry" in conversation did nothing to dispel this belief. I jsut assumed they were two separate words.
Ian
I used to believe that photos of people in magazines or books, if they were looking straight at you from the photo; then they could REALLY see you and everything you were doing. It still creeps me out to this day, a little.
Maggie, NJ
Here in Norway, we have a weekly magazine with Disney comics, called "Donald Duck & Co." When I was a kid, maybe about 8 years old, I used to read it every week. Then, my older sister told me that Donald Duck was dead, and they therefore had ended publishing the magazine. I actually believed her, and started crying!
I used to believe that dangerous was pronounced dangaroos. When I seen the sign 'these animals are dangerous' I believed it meant something similar to these animals are mammals.
Cherise
Used to go around my school classes and brag to people that I read "War and Peace" (being of course famous or infamous for its horrendous length). It was a lie... and I know I was just a kid, but I guess I didn't realize it was such a LAME thing to brag about.
ME: "I read War and Peace!"
THEM: "Nice, want to play Legos?"
ME: "I READ all of it! War and Peace!"
THEM: "Uh, okay. Cards?"
ME: "Tolstoy is cool, WAR!"
THEM: "Okay, you nerd."
ME: "And PEACE!"
THEM: *goes away*
ME: "I think I shall read it again!"
You may have, by now, gauged my level of popularity back then.
Ashton Sanderson
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