speaking

When I was in elementary school, a substitute teacher once tiold us we were going to go to the lavatory, but I heard her tell us that she was taking us to the "laboratory." I honestly thought she was going to perform experiments on us in there. You can imagine the impact it's had on me ever since.

Steve W.

I used to truely believe that everyone had it wrong and that "yellow" was actually pronounced "lello". when i was 4 i slapped a girl because she insisted that it was "yellow" and that i just didn't know how to talk properly. When i told the kindergarten teacher why i slapped her, she said that it actually was "yellow" and i screamed at her that she was an idiot and didn't deserve to be a teacher!

lello lover

When MSN and AIM first got really popular, everyone said LOL when they laughed. I thought LOL meant hello, so I went around saying LOL whenever I see someone. That continued for half a year until my friend told me I was weird.

LOL

One night, my luittle sister came into my room. She saw a tag on mu dresser. it had been torn off of a set of pajamas, and read something along the lines of "this garment is not fire-retardent"

My sister asked me what a "garment was, and I told her that it was the trident-shaped peice on a bike-helmet buckle.

She belived me.

Anon

I was frightened to say the word peanut thinking that I might be misunderstood for saying penis. Also for hearting penis when people would say peanut. Can you imagine the tension all this misunderstanding caused!

Gregory

When I was a precocious 3 year old, I was certain that all adults spoke Martian among themselves.
I "proved" it to myself by slowly sneaking up on conversations between my mother & our neighbors.
Sure enough, as soon as they psychically detected my presence, the wa-wa underwater-sounds of Martian would smoothly segue into English.

Anon

Until I was around 15 I thought minestrone (soup) was pronounce MINE-strown.

My sister used to pronounce Jai'Alai (sport) like this: JAY-a-lay.

Guess it runs in the family...

Cathryn NY USA

I never had health class or "the talk" from my parents; so I always thought that vagina was pronounced like Regina. (va-jeen-a)

Anon

I thought that "Doube Bubble Toil and Trouble" was "Doube Bubble, Toilet Trouble"

Anon

You know that little toy that you ask a quesstion and then shake it and it lands on yes or no? I had one when I was little, and a few years ago, I was talking about it, and wondering why it was called an ape ball. I found out when everybody laughed at me that it's called 8 ball. To this day, whenever I try to say it, it comes out ape ball.

keyboardplayer

When I was in my seventh grade science class, I kept pronouncing the word organism as orgasm. I wondered why every time my teacher would correct me he would laugh at the same time. It wasn't until I got to high school that I realized what I was saying. LOL

Anonymous

It took me FOREVER to realize that "Vewers like you" meamt veiwers, like me. I thougt it was giibeish

Veiwers like you

At 2nd grade, I changed schools, and in the new school, they called the toilet the "lavatory". I had never heard the word before, and I thought they were saying "laboratory". So on my first day at the new school, when kids said, "May I go to the lavatory?", I wondered where they were going.

I reasoned that if everyone wanted to go there, it must be some kind of room with toys.
After about a week, I finally figured it out. Boy, I was disappointed!

tabi

I used to think that green was purple and purple was green... and now I still have to think about it before saying purple or green.

Cassie