neighbourhood: going shopping

when i was a child i stole used to believe that if someone in a super market, the police would go to their house to arrest then.

When I was 5, I went weekly to a supermarket called Morrisons. There are two Morrisons near where I live, one near a train station and one further away. The one near the train station (where we went weekly) was smaller than the large one (which had a much larger range of stock as well as toys). I thought they were the only two Morrisons in the whole world.

I thought the "We Card" logo in the window for businesses that sell tobacco (meaning they'll ask for your ID card) meant there was some kind of identification program called a "We Card", not yet recognizing that card can be a verb.

I used to believe that shopworkers always had to question people about why they were buying something when they went to the checkout to pay for it.

It's simple: I thought Dollar Tree was a casino.
So, from a young age I was told gambling was a bad idea, and from the age I was, I thought that the name Dollar Tree referred to all the money you could earn. I later learned it was a dollar store.

When I was a child, I used to believe that mannequins moved around and changed their clothes at night while the store was closed.

I used to think shop workers served their customers by hokding up the item at the counter, and saying 'this will cost you ____'.

When I was young I watched the movie ‘The Great Escape’ with my father and he explained to me what solitary confinement was.

Fast forward and we drove past Society of Saint Vincent de Paul thrift store,
it was an old building and the store was closed with roller shutters covering the doors and windows,

I misread the sign and thought it said ‘The Solitary Of Saint Vincent de Paul‘ and I thought it was an old solitary confinement prison that once held someone named Saint Vincent de Paul.

I used to think small furniture shops were basically cottage converted charity shops.

In recent years, I thought 50 Shades of Grey was just an ordinary book series until I bought one from Ann Summers, cos I hadn't realized it was a sex shop, like Victoria's Secret.

When I was around 5 years old, I was suspicious of certain mannequins in the department store (the more life-like ones), because I believed that they could move if they wanted to, and that they were experts at standing perfectly still. I remember gazing at one to see if I could catch him moving, even just a twitch. After a moment I gave up, and as I walked past him I believed he was moving his eyes to watch me walk by. Thinking I might catch him looking at me, I quickly turned my head, but by that time he had already resumed his blank expression. Damn! He's too quick. I believed the reason that some of the mannequins had such smirks on their faces was because they knew they were fooling me. I also believed that they furtively communicated across the store to each other by winking one eyelid. That was their version of giving each other a "high five".

When I was younger I noticed that some stores had separate "enter" and "exit" doors. I thought that if you entered through the "exit" door or vice versa, you would get arrested and thrown in jail.

When my brother was around 5 years old, he saw a woman in a black burqa for the first time at Walmart and he yelled "Look Mommy!! A ninja!". The woman just laughed and my mom was mortified!

hehehehe

I used to believe that a strip mall was a mall with people who stripped down naked. This stemmed from a TV show in which a person didn't want to work in one. I thought "duh,who would want to work in a place with naked people?"

When I was told about a wok shop, not knowing the word 'wok', I thought it was actually a 'walk' shop and sold shoes.

I thought that if you didn't jump over the top of the escalator, you'd be sucked inside and would never get out. I blame my dad for this one, cuz he told my brothers and I this little story about a child who stayed on the escalator and got sucked inside and if we heard knocking sounds while on the escalator, that was the kid trying to escape. It gave me the shivers and after hearing that, I always jumped the last few steps.