neighbourhood

I used to believe that the "No Outlet" sign on the road near mine meant that there were no power outlets... I thought the little boy that lived down there was Amish...

I used to believe that if I stayed on the escelator too long, if I didn't step off before the last stair disappeared, that I would disappear as well...wooh! I had a lot of anxiety at the mall.

From those Florida orange juice TV commercials, I used to believe that when you went to the supermarket for orange juice, you could reach through into an orange grove and a farmer would hand you a freshly-filled carton.

I used to believe that that drainage ditches (common in our neighborhood) on the sides of the roads, the 4 or 5 ft long kind and the slope that is next to them would cause you to fall into them if you got too close, and that alligators would eat you once you were in. In walking past them I would steer clear of getting too close. Even though the opening is no greater than 6 or 8inches I thought you could still fall through them, even sitting on them was a scary thing!

I used to believe (up until about 3 minutes ago) that if you went for a wee in a swimming pool, special chlorine in the water would turn the water pink or green around you. The sad thing is the only reason I now know this not to be true is from reading other peoples beliefs from this site and coming across someone who believed the same thing as me. AND I AM TWENTY THREE YEARS OLD lol!!

When my brother were small( 4 and 5), our parents would talk about taking a couple of drives around the block. My brother and I were confused when we didn't see any blocks. We thought that our parents meant the kind of blocks that kids play with

When I was 8, I would go to my elementary school's after-school program and every Friday we would all walk down to the pool at another school. The teacher that was with us made everyone sit down (every week) so he could explain the rules. The most important rule was to not pee in the pool because it had special chemicals in it that would make a purple ring would appear around you and everyone would know you did it and make fun of you. He even told us this whole elaborate story about how when he was little his brother told him the same story and he didn't believe it and when he peed in the pool the purple ring appeared and everyone made fun of him for the longest. Then, at my summer camp, one of the counselors told a similar story, except at that pool, apparently, the chemicals made the water turn red instead of purple. Needless to say I always made sure I got out to go to the bathroom after that (but only at those 2 pools!) Long story short, the tales were so convincing that I believed them all the way up until yesterday when I first heard about this site. I was reading the list of the most common beliefs and saw it listed, so I asked my mom if it was all a lie and she just laughed at me! I was so stunned! I couldn't believe it! I felt so ashamed that I was 15 years old and just finding this out!

When I was younger, my dad had me convinced that the noise from the houses on the neighborhoods AC was the ice cream man making his ice cream... I believed him until I was probably 10...

When I was younger I used to believe that sharks lived in any body of water (including swimming pools). So everytime I jumped off the edge or the diving board I would swim as fast as I can to get back out because I thought a shark would come out of the pool wall and eat me.

When i was little i used too believe that gas at the gas pump came strait from the ground. Like a pie in the ground the gas came up from directly into your gas tank.

I was about seven. And my parents had just divorced. I was at was at the grocery store with my mom, and this guy starts flirting with her. Well I was getting impatient, and wanted to push the shopping cart. The guy turns to me and says, "you know you've gotta have a license to drive that thing," and for several years, I was afraid to push a shopping cart because I wasn't a licensed driver, and I was scared of breaking the law. And still I had wondered why they would make those children's shopping carts, when it was illegal for them to use them anyways.

When I was like 8 or so, we had this ice cream van that came by and played the Mario Bros. theme song. At first I though it was Mario who was handing out the ice cream to the kids, until one day I had enough money to buy one and found out it was actually a woman.

The house I grew up in had an irrigation ditch behind it, and my parents (not wanting us to drown or otherwise be hurt) had done a very good job teaching my sister and I that we were never, ever to go beyond the fence onto the ditch bank without a grown-up with us. However, we carried it a bit too far and believed the "no kids on the ditch bank alone" rule was some kind of cosmic law, and if you broke it, you'd be struck dead on the spot. When the (poorly supervised and mean) kid who lived next door went on the ditch bank to play, we'd both watch over the fence to see him drop dead. As he was an extreme bully, we were rather disappointed when he didn't. Bet he's in prison now, tho.

My gran told my mum that when you were anywhere outside people are watching you wherever you go, in houses and shops. She used to find it amazing and used to look around everywhere when walking down the street!

When very little, my mother told me the man driving the Ice Cream Truck was the Music Man. When I heard the music, I needed to run inside, get in bed, and take my nap. If I didn't do that right away, the Music Man wouldn't come around playing tunes to lull me to sleep with anymore.

When I was young, my mom would always take us on a car ride which would pass oil fields and windmills. When we would ask what they were for, she told us, "oil pumps make the world go around, and the windmills send it in the right direction." We believed her for years.