neighbourhood

Up until I was 14, I thought that the store" Car toys" didn't sell car accesories, but that they sold phones, phone accesories, and mp3 players and walkmans. I was shocked to see an ad on tv for "Car Toys" selling tvs for your car and speaker systems for your car.

I used to be afraid to swim in the deep end of our pool if no one else was in the pool. For some reason, I believed piranhas would come out of the filter and eat me.

I used to think the little power boxes at the top of telephone poles were people's mailboxes, and I always wondered how on earth they managed to collect their mail every day.

When I was little, I kept hearing about skyscrapers for some reason...and I couldn't figure out what they were. I couldn't figure out why there was a need to scrape the sky... maybe something like street cleaning trucks that I saw in illustrations in books? (We lived in a very small town, I was also sidewalk deprived.) So, I pictured some kind of rig extending up into the sky with a scratchy metal brush.... until the night I dreamed about the Sky Scraper... a nasty man like the Sand Man... in a hot air balloon, coming to throw sand in my eyes! Quite a nightmare... after that, I no longer worried about sky scrapers... too intense to contemplate! Not quite sure what section to put this in so I'll pick....This One! I also used to believe that touching a telephone or power pole would give you polio.

I used to believe, at night, sharks inhabited the dark recesses of the deep end of our pool. Even now, as an adult, I get a slight shiver across my skin as I swim to the deep end of the pool at night.

One hot summer day I heard the ice cream truck approaching. I got all excited and wanted to buy an ice cream but my mom said "No, that's not the ice cream truck, that's just the music truck." For the longest time after I thought the ice cream truck really WAS the music truck, sent to provide happy music to people playing outside.

my mom told me that if i went inside the dresses at the clothing store, the dress would eat me...

When I was about 5 I was watching a game of Rugby Union with my grandfather. During the scrum I asked what they were doing and my grandfather replied that they were 'deciding who gets the ball'. I thought this meant that they were in the scrum saying "we should get the ball because..." and the other team were saying "no, we should get the ball because..." and that's how it was decided!

When I was smaller (I guess I'm still technically a child) I used to think that stores, especially liquor stores, would buy things at a slightly lesser price than wholesale from companies and that they'd pay the rest through a kind of "tax" when you bought it. I've no idea where this came from, but I remember thinking that it was "So complicated and stupid, so what's the point of having a higher wholesale anyway, what's it for?" Hahaha. It's truly ridiculous...only a left-brained person could think like that as a kid. Also, I don't remember when I realized that this was complete b.s. that I'd sold myself XD

when i was mayeb 5 i used to believe that if i went into clothing store wearing something i had not bought at that store, they would be offended and would yell at me. same thing if i went into a store with toys in it, i always got really nervous when my little brother insisted on bringing a toy into a store with him, i was convinced that we would get in trouble.
needless to say, i really hated shopping with my mum.

when i was a little i used to believe the travel section (the section with all the mini bottles of shampoo and stuff) was the aisle where little people shopped. when i say little people i don't mean dwarfs, i mean miniature grown-ups a little taller than i was. it only made sense that mini people needed mini things. and the reason why i never saw them was because they only shopped at night when everyone else was sleeping, there was a whole different mini world at night. then when i went to bj's for the first time i thought "this must be the place where the really big people shop." i have no idea how old i was when i believed this or when i realized i was terribly mistaken.

Whenever we drove by a field with hay bales covered with white tarps, I would squirm in my car seat and get all excited. Why? I thought they were giant marshmallows. And the ones not covered with tarps? Those were dipped in hot chocolate, of course.

I used to believe that the distance of a "block" was how many streets you passed by. My teacher was really confused when I told her I walked twelve blocks to school.

When I was little, we were driving in the car and I saw a radio tower blinking in the sky. I asked my mom why the towers blinked, and she said that it was so the airplanes wouldn't fly into them in the night. I firmly believed her, until a little while ago. I saw a very low radio tower, and asked her why that one blinked, since the airplanes couldn't possibly fly that low. She wasn't sure what I meant, until I related the story to her. She laughed and said that she wasn't sure why they blinked. Even now, I still believe that the only possible reason why they blink is because otherwise the pilots wouldn't see them. It baffles me to this day, and I'm thirteen.

When I was little sometimes we drove by power plants. They had all kinds of ropes and blocks and I was certain they must be playgrounds. So one time we went by one and I asked my mom "do we have time to stop and play at the playground?" She still likes to remind me...

When I was little, 3 or so, I used to think the elevator in the department store was somewhere you went while the rearranged everything. I mean you go in the box and come out and everything is different. I never used to get confused if we took the stairs though.