neighbourhood

I used to be afraid of the drains in pools and bathtubs, because I thought they would suck me down them. Whenever I took baths, I'd stay as far away from the drain as possible. I just avoided swimming altogether. It got worse when my parents told me to "stay away from the deep end," because I looked down and saw that huge drain there! I thought people were crazy for swimming at all, and I always tried to keep my parents out of the pool.

Everyone just thought that I was afraid of drowning, they kept trying to teach me to swim. I was terrified! My parents finally found out and told me that it was impossible to fit down the drain, but I wasn't convinced and refused to go into the pool, or even walk near the deep-end for fear that I'd fall in and be sucked up.

To this day I am wary of drains, and I never have learned how to swim.

My mommy told me that if i messed with my belly button, it would unravel and my guts would fall out!!
She also said the ice-cream van was called the 'ding-dong' man and he came round the streets playing music to the children at bedtime!! (I later found out this was actually 5PM! - I was eleven when i realised he actually SOLD ice-creams!!!)

I used to believe, until I was 5, (I'm 12 now) that the little design in the bottom of paper shopping bags was a monster, and when I got too close to the bottom, I would get attacked.(Well, anyway, it looked like a design when I held it to a light, and saw the overlapping paper, but I also thought that that was the only way you could see the "monster".)

this is my moms:at road side vegetable stands, people often put a list of what they have, and at the bottom blow horn, to let them know you want service, my mom thought blowhorns were a vegetable!

My dad always told me the Ice-cream van was the manure truck and he told me "wow isn't it so nice of them to play music for the kids and bring healthy manure for everyone's gardens?" I didn't know otherwise until I moved to the U.S and a friend of mine told me they sold ice cream.

Once I was out running errands with my mom. She was telling me all the things that we were going to do "okay, we'll go to the grocery store, the drug store, and then we'll hit the bank..." at this point I said, "mommy, why do we have to hit the bank?"

I thought that mannequins in department stores were real people who were paid to stand there wearing the stores' clothes and stay very, very still. When I was five I told my mom that being a mannequin must be the most horrible job in the world. Cause how can anyone stay still for that long? What if they get tired or get an itch?

I grew up on the East Coast of the U.S., where there was a chain of Thom McAn shoe stores. Whenever my parents took me there to get shoes, I always asked when Thom was going to come out and try shoes on me! I waited and waited, but he never did...

We didn't have a lot of extra money to buy ice cream whenever we felt like it, so my mom told me and my sister that we didn't have an ice cream man in the area, only a music man. We thought that the music man was just a big fan of ice cream with his ice cream wall paper, and that he was just driving by to play a little music for us.

When I was around 3 years old, I used to belive that when you crossing a pedestrian crossing, you must step only on the white lines, so the car drivers will be able to pass between your legs.

My parents told me that the woman in any picture in a restaurant was "The Mademosielle," and the Mademoiselle ate children who misbehaved. If we were ever at a resturaunt and heard a child crying, my parents told me it was because the Mademoiselle was eating them. Needless to say, I was always very well-behaved at the dinner table.

My dad told me that whenever the ice cream van played the familiar tune, it signified that they were out of the frozen goodies. I spent my childhood waiting for a van that had some.

I used to think that the Bookmakers made books but could not understand why there were so many of them and they all seemed to have stained glass windows of horses. I was 18 before I found out it was a betting agents and that Scotland wasn't some great Literary Capital of the world.

When I was about 4 or 5 Iwe had these pool floats and I thought they could talk and had feelings so I gave them all names and kept them all in our pool at once and pretended I had a herd full of them.

My grandparents told me that there was this guy named Walter the Float Man that took all the floats at the end of summer and stored them in his home. he also had a daughter named Rozz. So thats where I believed all our floats would go. Yes I was a very weird child who would believe anything

on the way to my grandmothers house, there was a road running along a graveyard, and there were two huge speed humps which were painted in black and white checkers.
When i was about 5 i used to think that the big speed humps were chessboards and the graveyard was were all the pieces were.

I used to believe that the lines down the middle of the road were painted on by someone leaning out the passenger side window of a car. I just assumed you had to have a really steady hand and long arms to get hired for the job.

Mad Butcher is a small chain of supermarkets in the South. Thanks to my older brothers, I used to believed they were called that because when little kids got separated from their parents, they chopped the kids up and put them in the hamburger meat.