language: reading

One of my big sister's friends was reading a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. I was afraid of it because I believed if you read it, you would actually be transformed into an animal.

When I was 8... I read the book Fantastic Beasts and where to find them, which is written as part of the harry potter books.

I read the entry about a Letifold which the book said was a big black blanket-like animal that slithered under the door and ate people. I made my parents keep my bed facing the door so i could always see if there was one crawling in. Then I read the book again and noticed that it said they could only be found in tropical areas. So i was safe.

Then my parents made me go on vacation to Hawaii. I cried myself to sleep because I was so scared. After we went home my parents managed to convince me there was no such thing.

I used to think that the "rod" in a "Rod and Gun Club" was the tamping rod used to push everything down the barrel. I thought that people in these clubs only fired old fashioned muskets.

From the time I first learned to read until perhaps the fourth grade I thought if you parked your car illegally it would be blown up, because that's what the sign said:

Vehicles Exploded

I used to think that everything involving the name Alice had to be Wonderland or Looking Glass related.

All through my childhood, there was a commercial for a group called R.I.F (reading is fundamental) The announcer would loudly say "Reading is FUN! Damental!"
I thought they were saying "Reading is fun- The Mental!"
As in, those children with mental disabilities should read, too.

When I was in first grade (1995) I had read the book "Shiloh" (Bad idea). After reading it, I was terrified Judd Travers (Bad guy from the story) would come into my house and shoot my beagle. I belived this until 3rd grade, when I realized it was just a story.

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, =)

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'.

When I first encountered "lb.", I had no concept of abbreviations and would read it aloud, "lib". So Dick and Jane would go to the store to get two libs of butter...

As a kid I loved to read and I would read in bed almost every night. I especially loved books about animals and the natural world with lots of big glossy photos. However I believed that if a book was left open any "bad" creatures such as spiders which were on that page could come out and bite or eat me so I was always careful to close my books up and if there was a photo on the front or back cover I would turn that side face down to the floor.

I used to believe that the notice "Case sensitive" when you put in a password on the computer meant that if I got it wrong, they'd take me to court. I'd always check twice before I logged in!

I thought "please print" in magazine subscription forms meant you had to put your name with a printer instead of writing it without cursive!

I used to think the Guardian newspaper was named after someone's guardian, and when I saw comments from the Guardian on the back of books that I read as a kid, I thought it was someone's guardian saying their child enjoyed the book.

It's not really something I misheard in a song but there is a song called "You're a grand old flag" or something around that, and we had to play that in my music class and when I first flipped through the music book I thought it said "You're a grand old fag". Even my two friends that were with me in my music class thought it said that.

My friend and I used to read Judy Blume books but we had a bit of trouble understanding some of the American expressions (we're English). First of all, lots of the girls had bangs - we had never heard of this before and thought that it meant big breasts. Secondly, they talked about cuticles - no idea what this meant but it sounded rude. We would have been so disappointed if we had only bothered to use a dictionary. (Actually I only found out about the bangs when I went to university!)