neighbourhood

There used to be a swimming pool dealership near our town. They had a few pre-formed pools sitting on their lot. When I was 4, I thought those were bathtubs for giants. When I started reading, and could read the sign, I was very disappointed to learn that they were just pools!

We used to go out to eat a lot when I was younger. When we were finished with our meal and the server brought the check, my parents would start searching for their wallets. When they couldn't find them they would tell us we would have to do dishes in the restaurant's kitchen to "pay" for the meal that way. I remember we got so scared that we would have to do everyone else's yucky dishes! But every time, they "miraculously" found their money just in time. WHEW! I think I was well into my teens before I knew they were joking with us. And now that I'm a server, I love to play this little game with some of the kids at my tables.

I used to believe that the dark, trench-coated, hat-wearing figure with slanted glowing eyes on “Neighborhood Watch” signs was actually a member of the neighborhood watch. I envisioned him as a stealthy crime-fighter, cloaked in black and sneaking around the neighborhood after sunset to keep an eye out for criminals. I assumed his picture was on the signs as a deterrent so burglars would know he was watching from the shadows with his piercing white eyes, waiting to pounce the moment they broke the law. I also deduced that each neighborhood had their own “Watcher” since the signs were everywhere. At some point it occurred to me that the drawing was actually the caricature of a thief – the kind of people the neighborhood was watching out for rather than a neighborhood superhero.

The first time I ever saw a "Garage Sale" sign, I knew how to read the word "garbage" but not "garage". So I misread it as "Garbage Sale" and thought the sellers were expressing a low opinion of their merchandise.

When I was too old to know better, I believed that there were swimming pools on top of RV's because of the ladder on the back - hey, it looked like a pool ladder!

Once when I was little I lost a balloon when we opened the car door and it flew out. There was this water tower sitting on top of a hill far away in my town, and I was convinced for a long time that the water tower was my balloon.

When I was in second grade we went on a field trip to the zoo, later on that day I broke out in chicken pox, well for years I thought i got the chicken pox from the zoo and wouldnt go back.

When I was a kid, there was an intersection in my home town and another that looked very much like it to me in a city that we would occasionally visit, a little over a hundred miles away. The latter reminded me of the former so much that I became convinced they were somehow the same intersection, but in two different towns. I thought, somehow, almost magically, that the street that turned off there in the distant town (which we never turned down) would therefore be a shortcut home, getting us back to my hometown in only a few blocks, rather than 100+ miles. One day I finally ventured to ask my father why we never turned there and took that drastic shortcut home. He just seemed to react like I'd gone crazy, and I don't think he ever caught on to what I was thinking.

When I was a kid, I was scared to death of Ferris wheels. I thought that if I got on one and it started going too fast, the wheel would break off and roll away and I would be lost forever. For some strange reason, even as a (very old) adult, I'm still afraid to get on those things!!

I used to believe that strip malls were bad because I thought you had to strip off your clothes to go there. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to shop naked.

The first time I heard of a store being "out of" an item, I was very surprised. I had previously thought of stores as magical places able to create an unfailing supply of whatever things they sold.

i used to believe that when i heard of a flea market, i thought they used to sell fleas at the super market.
and when i saw a garage sale i thought they were selling their garage.

when i was little, my parents would take me to the store and leave me in the car till they got back, and i used to beleive that when they didnt comeback after a while that they were being held hostage, and that everyone outside that had baggy clothes on was in a gang and after me.

I used to belief that the bumps on the road around neighbourhoods(to slow cars down)had dead people buried in it...and when I stop believing that, I made my younger sister belive it too!

My mom told me when I was about 5 that we were moving. For some reason I thought that meant that big strong men would come pick up the house and move it somewhere else. Before we ended up moving, I wondered how many men it would take to move our house, and where they would put it.

After a spate of getting separated from my parents (lost) on outings, I was only allowed to go to the Royal Show if I wore an envelope with my name and address attached to my shirt with a safety pin (I now realise, so strangers would know who I was). I gripped my mum's hand and made sure that I didn't get lost the whole day, terrified of being found by a stranger and sent home in the mail.

When I was probably about four years old, I was at this home-improvement shop with my parents. The shop had rolls of colored chains there, like the kind that you hang a swing or a bird feeder with or chain a door closed or something. But I didn't know what they were for, and I asked my mum and she told me that they were used to hang naughty children from the ceiling by their feet and let them hang there forever. I actually believed this for years and years until my dad bought similar chains and used them to hang a swing in the back yard. All that worrying for nothing!