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top belief!
When I was a kid, I thought that a pair of panty hose was plural - and that if you were only talking about one leg, it was a panty ho.
When I was young, my grandparents had a mutt named Princess. At one of my birthday parties, my grandmother and great aunt were discussing Princess Di. Having only heard a part of the conversation, I burst into tears thinking that my beloved dog Princess had died.
No one told me about 'colonel' being pronounced 'kernel'. As a kid I used to tape-record things for my grandparents who lived far away, and I did my favourtite poems: one of them was 'Colonel Fazackerly Butterworth Toast, bought an old castle complete with a a ghost'. My parents were killing themselves listening to me scan 'colonel' (it got a lot of mentions in the poem...)
My grandmother used expressions such as "Hold your tounge" and "Keep your shirt on."
I remember holding my tounge for about 5 minutes before I asked if I could stop.
Or holding down my shirt incase it accidently flew off.
I once developed this belief that you only got a certain number of words in your lifetime. I got very worried I was using them all up at a very young age, and I wouldn't have any left when I was older, so I would be mute. It made sense- everyone was always telling me to be quiet! I decided to try and save them, so I wouldn't talk for a week, until I promptly forgot about it and went back to my normal mouthy self.
top belief!
Believe it or not, I used to believe the word gullible was fake and went off telling everybody it wasn't in the dictionary. It took me years to find out that the saying "gullible isn't in the dictionary" was only a joke, and the people I told it to thought I was just saying that joke rather than really meaning it.
My friend used to believe that the phrase "missed by a hairs bredth" was really "missed by a Hares breath". To explain this he said " A hare was crossing the road when a car just missed it." The Hare said,"Phew that was close" Thus the hares breath.
I used to believe that American people were the only people in the world who didn't have accents. I always conplained that I was born in the one place where people didn't have accents. I got over it, though, when my brother informed me that I have an American accent.
I always got the words kidnapped and adopted mixed up. When I was in the first grade I almost fell over in the lunch line when my friend said she was adopted, (thinking she was kidnapped) I told my mom as soon as I got off the bus that day and she had to explain the difference.
top belief!
I used to think that my younger brother who was just learning to speak could talk to my even younger cousin who was just a baby (i don't even know where i got this strange idea) but when my cosin would cry i would try and get my younger brother to ask her to stop.
I had a little brother who played soccer and watched a lot of sports movies. In the movies they gave people "pep talks". My brother, since the people were yelling in the movie, thought they were calling people "peptoks" and called me that all the time because he was mean and still is.
Once, when my sister an I were about 6 and 8, my mother grew exasperated with our unruly behavior and said, "You could try the patience of Job." I thought she said, "You could fry the potatoes of Joe," I was puzzled by why she wanted me to fry potatoes, and repeated that back to her asking what she meant. She started laughing. After that, it became a family inside-joke.
I am an older sister and took great pleasure teasing my younger sister. I told her you had to be 16 before you could be sarcastic (a bit like buying alcohol). She reached 16 and asked if she was old enough yet. I said she had to wait until she was 18 and she very nearly did - Sorry sis.
At age 7 my daughter had great fun shooting "baby guns" at summer camp (well, they were little and that's what I thought the counselors were saying", she explained. Okay I can see that but this next one???
Her and her friends thought that being "raped" meant being attacked with a garden implement, in other words *raked". I chose not to correct them on that one....they figured it out themselves when they were old enough to know.
For years I believed that "giblets" was a made-up word my parents used to describe me and my siblings. My maiden name was Gibbs, so "giblets" obviously meant "little Gibbses". It makes perfect sense. I was in my teens before I figured it out.
Whilst going on holiday once, my mother starting talking about how emigrating really appealled to her. My sister who was only young at the time came out with the classic line.... Who's Emma Grating? thinking that mum was talking of a person.
6 year old : I want to watch this film!
Dad : No you don't. It's about romance.
6 year old : So?
Dad : You don't like romance.
6 year old : What's wrong with romance?
Dad : Do you even know what rhe word means?
6 year old : Sure I do! People who live in Rome!
I opened the car window a crack and my mother told me to shut it because I'd "catch a draft," which I interpreted as "catch a giraffe." I didn't question the sense of it, and just assumed it meant "to get a chill." I think I must have been learning about idioms at the time ("have a cow", etc.), because it seemed perfectly natural to have an expression that made no sense literally.
When I was little, I thought the phrase "taking something for granted" was actually "taking something for granite" - made sense to me (and kinda still does)
I consistently misheard "Dracula" as "Jack Lear" and that's who I was every Halloween until the third grade. I also believed that "The United States of America" was both spoken and spelled as one long word, and I spelled it phonetically for all of the 1st grade.
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